Coffin Ship Read Online Free

‘enable her to purchase a coffin and bury her dear little baby’. Upon enquiring at the hotel, Mahoney was informed that each new day brought ‘dozens’ more destitute and starving people to the town. [1]
    Upon leaving Clonakilty, Mahoney encountered yet more evidence of misery. He recorded meeting a funeral party almost every hundred yards. This continued until he reached an area close to the Shepperton Lakes. Here, the distress became even more striking. When he reached Skibbereen, he stayed at the residence of Mr J. McCarthy-Dowling. It was while at this location that he met with Dr D. Donovan and his assistant, Mr Crowley. Dr Donovan had been recording the devastation caused by the famine in his diary. He was also publishing extracts from the diary in the Cork Southern Reporter , yet people remained doubtful that such devastation in the countryside could be true. Accompanied by these two men, Mahoney visited areas around Skibbereen. He recorded that ‘neither pen nor pencil could ever portray the misery and horror, at this moment,
to be witnessed in Skibbereen’. Dr Donovan then accompanied Mahoney to Bridgetown where, upon arrival, they witnessed even worse sights. On visiting one particular house Mahoney noted that the dying, the living and the dead were indiscriminately lying close to each other with nothing to protect themselves, save a few miserable rags that served as clothing. Some of the dead remained scattered amongst the living for up to six days at a time; such was the level of weakness and fear of disease that family members delayed so long in burying their loved ones. These scenes were commonplace; all the houses contained similar horrors. No family was spared. Of some five hundred houses, not one was free from death or fever.

    Old Chapel Lane, Skibbereen, County Cork.
(The Illustrated London News, 13-2-1847)
    Mahoney and Dr Donovan proceeded to High Street or Old Chapel Lane where they came upon a house with neither doors nor windows. It was filled with destitute people lying on the bare floor. Amongst them was the body of a ‘fine, tall, stout country lad’, who had sought shelter from the piercing cold. The witnesses felt sure that the other occupants of the house would soon join him in death. It was a heart-rending sight and Mahoney and the other members of their group instinctively wanted to help alleviate the dreadful situation. But Dr Donovan became alarmed that they would put themselves at risk of infection and he pleaded with them not to enter the house and to avoid physical contact with the people gathered in the doorway. [2] Their next stop was at the Chapel yard. The following extract, taken from the diary of Dr Donovan, describes what they encountered:
    On my return home, I remembered that I had yet a visit to pay; having in the morning received a ticket to see six members of one family, named Barrett, who had been turned out of the cabin in which they lodged, in the neighbourhood of Old Chapel yard; and who had struggled to this burying-ground, and literally entombed themselves in a small watch-house that was built for the shelter of those who were engaged in guarding against exhumation by the doctors, when more respect was paid to the dead than is at present the case. This shed is exactly seven feet long, by about six in breadth. By the side of the western wall is a long, newly made grave; by either gable are two of shorter dimensions, which have been recently tenanted; and near the hole that serves as a doorway is the last resting-place of two or three children; in fact, this hut is surrounded by a rampart of human bones, which have accumulated to such a height that the threshold, which was originally on a level with the ground, is now two feet beneath it. In this horrible den, in the midst of a mass of human putrefaction, six individuals, males and females, labouring under most malignant fever, were huddled together, as closely as were the dead in the graves