Bill to assist those affected by fever

March 13th, 1846: William Smith O'Brien tells the House of Commons that 100,000 Irish people are famishing

March 13th, 1846: William Smith O'Brien tells the House of Commons that 100,000 Irish people are famishing. He has seen families sitting down to a meal of potatoes "which any member of the house would be sorry to offer his hogs".

The Home Secretary, Sir James Graham, introduces a Bill to make temporary provision for the treatment of the destitute affected with fever in Ireland. Dysentery has broken out in almost every Irish county, "attended by fever in many instances".

The Bill will empower the Lord Lieutenant to establish a Board of Health in Dublin. A medical officer is to be appointed in each Poor Law Union, on whose representation the boards of guardians are to provide temporary fever hospitals.

The guardians are to defray expenses out of the poor rates. The scheme sounds fine at Westminster, but ignores the difficulties of rate collecting in Ireland.

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An MP, citing the Irish physician Dominic Corrigan, points out that what the people need is wholesome food.

Dr Corrigan thinks "sickness should not be made a chain to drag a man into a poorhouse".

In a pamphlet on famine and fever, he writes: "The generation that has thus suffered cannot again be what it has been . . . and the offspring will inherit for generations to come the weakness of body and apathy of mind which famine and fever had engendered."

Smith O'Brien, a landowner in Co Limerick, wants parliament to compel absentee Irish landlords to return to their estates instead of squandering fortunes abroad. He suggests the introduction of a property tax and compensation for tenants who improve their farms.

Rather than appeal to English generosity, "what Ireland claimed from a British parliament was just legislation - which should compel the landed proprietors to do their duty to the people."

Some 300 tenants are evicted on the Gerrard estate in Ballinglass, Co Galway. Prosperous by Irish standards, they are evicted - with the assistance of constabulary and troops - to turn the holdings into a grazing farm.

The Clonmel correspondent of the Tipperary Vindicator is at a loss for words to describe "the utter want and destitution of thousands of the labouring population. Many families are literally without the means of existence."

March 14th: Sub constable Michael Connell informs Insp W.H. Pierse, Tullamore, about a disease free field of potatoes in his sub district.

March 17th: Rooskey (Co Roscommon) Relief Committee requests help for the starving.

The Nation observes: "The Irish people, always half starved, are expecting absolute famine day by day; they know that they are doomed to months of a weed diet next summer. . . and they ascribe it, unanimously, not so much to the wrath of heaven [pace Archbishop MacHale] as to the greedy and cruel policy of England."