When the cold weather had fairly set in, it frequently happened that the straw which composed the bed, or the excuse for a bed, occupied by members of a family dying of fever or hunger, or both combined, was, piecemeal, drawn from under them and burned on the hearth to keep up a scanty fire.  It was felt, we may presume, that the dying could not require it long, and those who had still some hopes of life were famishing as much from cold as from hunger.  An eye-witness, describing such a family in Windmill-lane, Skibbereen, one of whom had already died, thus writes:  “The only article that covered the nakedness of the family, that screened them from the cold, was a piece of coarse packing stuff, which lay extended alike over the bodies of the living and the corpse of the dead; which seemed as the only defence of the dying, and the winding sheet of the dead!” The same writer says:  “In this town have I witnessed to-day, men—­fathers, carrying perhaps their only child to its last home, its remains enclosed in a few deal boards patched together; I have seen them, on this day, in three or four instances, carrying those coffins under their arms or upon their shoulders, without a single individual in attendance upon them; without mourner or ceremony—­without wailing or lamentation.  The people in the street, the labourers congregated in town, regarded the spectacle without surprise; they looked on with indifference, because it was of hourly occurrence.[189]

The statements in the public journals about the effects of the famine in and about Skibbereen were so new and appalling that many people thought them greatly exaggerated.  Finding this feeling to exist, and perhaps to some extent sharing in it, Mr. Cummins, a magistrate of Cork, proceeded to Skibbereen, to examine for himself the state of things there.  He was not only convinced but horrified.  He published the result of his visit in a letter to the Duke of Wellington, in which he begged that exalted personage to call the Queen’s attention to the fearful sufferings of her people.  Convinced that he was destined at least, to witness scenes of real hunger and starvation, Mr. Cummins informs us that he took with him as much bread as five men could carry.  He began his inquiries at a place called South Reen, in the parish of Myross, near Skibbereen.[190] Being arrived at the spot, he was surprised to find the wretched hamlet apparently deserted.  There was no external appearance of life—­silence reigned around.  On entering some of the cabins he soon discovered the cause.  He was at once confronted with specimens of misery, which, he says, no tongue or pen could give the slightest idea of.  In the first cabin he entered he found six famished, ghastly skeletons, to all appearance dead, huddled in a corner on a little filthy straw, their sole covering being what seemed a piece of ragged horsecloth; their miserable shriveled limbs were hanging about as if they did not belong to their bodies.  He approached them in breathless horror, and found by a slow whining moan that they were alive—­four children, a woman, and what had once been a man—­all in fever.  Mr. Cummins met other cases as fearful, more especially one similar to that described by the writer quoted above, where a corpse was lying amongst the surviving members of the family, sharing their straw bed and their scanty covering.