October 18th, 1847: Clearances are mushrooming under the spur of the Gregory Clause, which precludes anybody holding more than a quarter acre of land from receiving public relief. In the Golden Vale of Tipperary, vast numbers of smallholders are surrendering their farms to qualify for assistance. The main incentive for landlords to evict tenants is to avoid liability for poor rates on all holdings valued at £4 and under.
Many landowners and their agents now seize the opportunity provided by the Famine to impose order on estate management. A natural catastrophe is being turned to the brutal purposes of social engineering. When a family enters the poorhouse their cabin is generally pulled down, thus making them permanent paupers. But the system ensures that the focus of the guardians is on the bottom line of the ledger rather than humanity. Thus a father is threatened with prosecution for leaving Clogheen (Co Tipperary) workhouse to visit his children in the adjacent fever hospital.
Yet dispensary medical officers minister to the fever-stricken in their ill-ventilated cabins. In single-room homes fever patients are placed at one end of the dwelling, while the healthy try to ward off infection at the other. In larger houses, the practice is to isolate the infected in a room by blocking the door with sods. A hole is made in the rear wall, through which the doctor scrambles. Not surprisingly, 48 doctors have died in Munster this year.
The Cork Examiner reports food riots in Bantry: "The withdrawal of rations, coupled with the frightful prospect of an approaching winter, have blighted all hopes of existence and goaded the enraged multitude to desperation. The wretched and famished inhabitants of the neighbouring parishes proceeded to town, and from thence to the workhouse, where they demanded admission and were refused."
They are dispersed by a large party of military and police. Some of the people pluck turnips and eat them while retreating.
An English clergyman, Sidney Osborne, observes mealtime in a west of Ireland poorhouse: "It was quite a complete scramble; the parties bringing in the food - men - had short thick sticks, which they used very freely and I thought brutally, to protect the tons of stirabout from the rush made for them by these hungry women."
William Forster writes to his wife from Galway: "It was enough to have broken the stoutest heart to have seen the poor little children in the workhouse yesterday - their flesh hanging so loose from their bones, that the physician took it in his hand and wrapped it round their legs."
A coastguard officer points out indignantly that two-thirds of the people of Connemara are destitute; many ratepayers have become paupers, yet "collectors, aided by police, are out daily, seizing wearing apparel and tools even".