igate, and Mr. William Rathbone, and several other persons,
to show the state of the neighbourhood in which I resided, and to show
them the thousands whom we were feeding at the depot, While we were
going round a person told me, 'There is a house that has been locked up
two or three days.' It was a cabin in a narrow alley. We went in, and we
saw seventeen persons lying on the floor, all with fever, and no one to
give them assistance. Captain Forbes was struck with horror; he never
thought there could be in any part of the world such misery. That was in
the south suburbs. A poor, wretched widow woman resided there; she let
it out for lodgings, and received those people as lodgers, who all got
the fever. We three gave what relief we could, and got them conveyed to
the hospitals; but they all died."

_Question 2,365_. "Can you form any judgment what proportion of the
population, which is thus added at present, bears to the ordinary
population of the City of Cork?"

_Answer_. "Those poor creatures, the country poor, are now houseless and
without lodgings; no one will take them in; they sleep out at night. The
citizens of Cork have adopted what I consider a very unchristian and
inhuman line of conduct. They have determined to get rid of them. Under
the authority of an Act of Parliament, they take them up as sturdy
beggars and vagrants, and confine them at night in a market-place, and
the next morning send them out in a cart five miles from the town; and
there they are left, and a great part of them perish, for they have no
home to go to. When they fled from the country, their houses were thrown
down or consumed for fuel by the neighbours who remained, and those poor
creatures have no place to lay their heads."[243]

It would be a useless and a harrowing task to continue such terrible
details, I therefore close this chapter with some account of Bantry,
that town having had the misfortune to be the rival of Skull,
Skibbereen, and Mayo during the Famine-slaughter.

The deaths at Bantry had become fearfully numerous before it attracted
any great share of public sympathy, or even, it would seem, of
Government attention. The _Southern Reporter_ of January the 5th
publishes this curt announcement from that town: "Five inquests to-day.
Verdict--Death by starvation." The jury having given in its verdict, the
foreman, on their part, proceeded to say that they felt it to be their
duty to state, under the correction of the court, tha