FOOTNOTES: 

[213] Letter from Captain Wynne, Government District Inspector to Lieutenant-Colonel Jones.—­Commissariat Series, part 1, p. 438.—­The italics are Captain Wynne’s.

[214] Report of Central Relief Committee of the Society of Friends, pp. 180-2.

[215] Census of Ireland for the Year 1851.  Report on tables of deaths.

[216] The circumlocutions had recourse to by relief committees and Government officials to avoid using the word Famine were so many and so remarkable, that at one time I was inclined to attempt making a complete list of them.  Here are a few:  “Distress,” “Destitution,” “Dearth of provisions,” “Severe destitution,” “Severe suffering,” “Extreme distress,” as above; “Extreme misery,” “Extreme destitution,” etc., etc.  The Society of Friends, with honest plainspeaking, almost invariably used the word “Famine;” and they named their report, “Transactions during the Famine in Ireland.”

[217] Commissariat Series, part I, p. 409.

[218] Commissariat Series, part I, p. 382.

[219] Ib. p. 442.

[220] Appendix to Report of British Association, p. 181.

[221] Report of Central Relief Committee of Society of Friends, p. 168.

[222] This Workhouse was built to accommodate 900 persons.  The Fever Hospital and sheds had room for only 250.

[223] A Visit to Connaught in the Autumn of 1847:  by James H. Tuke, in a letter to the Central Committee of the Society of Friends, Dublin, p. 8.

At the end of February there was a meeting of coroners in Cork, at which they came to the determination of holding no more starvation inquests.

[224] Letters from Mayo to the Dublin Freeman’s Journal, signed W.G.

[225] The italics in the above quotation are W.G.’s.

[226] It is not to be inferred from this, that evictions were rare in Ireland immediately preceding the Famine.  A writer has taken the trouble of recording in a pamphlet Irish evictions, from 1840 to the 3rd of March, 1846; a period of about five years.  Up to March, 1846, evictions arising from the Famine had not really begun, although preparations were being made for them; so that those recorded in the pamphlet were carried out under no special pressure of circumstances whatever.  The writer premises that he regards his list as far from complete, inasmuch as it was compiled chiefly from the public journals, and every evicting landlord uses all his power and precaution to keep his evictions as secret as possible; still, it was found on record, that there were over 8,000 individuals evicted in Ireland during those five years, many of the evictions being attended with much hardship and suffering, such as the removal of sick and dying persons in order to take possession.  In one case a dead body was actually carried out.  In two instances, comprising the dispossession of 385 individuals, the evictions took place avowedly for the purpose of bringing in Protestant tenants; in a third, 1175 persons were evicted by a noble lord, and although he did not give his reason, his name and his whole career abundantly justify the conclusion that this vast clearance was effected to make way for a Protestant colony.