February 1st, 1847: Replacing the public works with soup kitchens represents a radical change of policy. Relief by employment is to be abandoned.
New relief committees are to be nominated to distribute soup and yet another Relief Commission is to be set up.
Employing 700,000, the public works have been a costly failure and humanitarian disaster. The tide of Irish distress, Trevelyan admits,
"appears now to have completely overflowed the barriers we opposed to it ... This is a real famine, in which thousands and thousands of people are likely to die"; none the less, "if the Irish once find out there are any circumstances in which they can get free government grants .. . we shall have a system of mendicancy such as the world never saw".
What is going to become of the poor between the phasing out of public works and the installation of soup kitchens? Those works are objectionable and demoralise our people, Archbishop Michael Slattery of Cashel observes, "but at the same time they were the means of keeping them alive, although they barely did the same". Meanwhile, "the distress is every day increasing and persons, who three months ago were able to do without assistance, are now run out".
From Carrickmacross, Co, Monaghan, Bishop Charles MacNally writes that fever and famine are making frightful ravages. "Fourteen deaths in this parish on yesterday were reported to me. It is wonderful how the clergy can bear their unceasing labours attending on the sick and dying.
In Co Kerry, Archdeacon John O'Sullivan of Kenmare admits the strain in the privacy of his diary: "I often think of be taking myself to some other country rather than see with my eyes and hear with my ears the melancholy spectacle and dismal wailing of the gaunt spectres that persecute and crowd about me from morning until night imploring for some assistance."
As the destitute migrate eastwards, Bishop Francis Haly records that "the deaths from starvation average more than 50 per diem" in Carlow.
The medical officer considers that the Kilmallock (Co Limerick) workhouse cannot accommodate more than 800 without engendering disease; it now has 1,207 inmates. Dr Morgan O'Connell, who is a cousin of the Liberator, says that people with "famine fever" (typhus and relapsing fever) are sheltering in the Dominican priory ruins, so as not to spread the contagion among their families.
Mitchelstown workhouse, built for 900, now contains 1,533 paupers.
Skibbereen poorhouse is described as "a plague spot". The medical officer is nearing breakdown; seven of his staff have fever, other members resign. He asks the guardians to meet in the courthouse instead of the diseaseridden workhouse; 332 of the 1,169 paupers are suffering from fever or dysentery. Nevertheless, starving and sick people beg for admission daily.