Employment was not, and, with the appliances in the hands of the Board of Works, perhaps, could not be given rapidly and extensively enough for the vast and instant wants of the people.  Hunger is impatient, and the cry of all men—­loudest from the South and West—­was one of despair, mingled with denunciations of the Government and the Board of Works for their slowness in providing work, and, if possible, still more, for their refusal to open the food depots.  “I am sorry to tell you,” writes the correspondent of a local print, “that this town [Tuam] is, I may say, in open rebellion.  They are taking away cattle in the open day, in spite of people and police....  They cannot help it; even if they had money, they could not get bread to buy.”  Works were often marked out for a considerable time before they were commenced.  At a place called Lackeen, in the South, they were in that state for three weeks or more, without any employment having been given.  If this goes on, writes a resident of the locality, there must be an increase of coroners, and a decrease of civil engineers.  “It is coffins,” says another, “must now be sent into the country.  I lately gave three coffins to bury some of the poor in my neighbourhood.”  This was bad enough; but a time was at hand when the poor had to bury their dead without coffins.

Three weeks had scarcely elapsed from the day on which the labourers engaged on the Caharagh road had shouldered their spades and picks, and marched to Skibbereen, when an inquest upon one of them laid open a state of things that no general description could convey.  A man named Denis M’Kennedy was employed on those works.  He was found dead on the side of the road one day, and a coroner’s inquest was held upon his remains in the historic graveyard of Abbeystrowry.  The evidence will tell the rest.  Johanna M’Kennedy, the wife of the deceased, was the first witness examined.  She said her husband died on Saturday, the 24th of October, and had been at work on the Caharagh road the day he died.  He had been so engaged for about three weeks before his death.  He did not complain of being sick.  She explained to the coroner and the jury what they had had to support them during the week, on the Saturday of which her husband died.  Her family was five in number.  She had nothing, she said, to give them on Monday; and then the poor woman varied her mode of expression by saying they had nothing at all to eat on Tuesday.  On Wednesday night she boiled for her husband and the family one head of cabbage, given to her by a neighbour, and about a pint of flour, which she got for a basket of turf she had sold in Skibbereen.  On Thursday morning her husband had nothing to eat.  She does not account for Friday; but on Saturday morning she sent him for his breakfast less than a pint of flour baked.  Poor creature! she had but a pint for the whole family; but in her loving anxiety to sustain her husband, who was trying to earn for them, she