November 29th, 1847: As death from starvation returns, the Poor Law Commissioners begin to sanction outdoor relief.
Initially, able-bodied paupers in receipt of outdoor relief are expected to work at least eight hours a day. The commissioners lay down guidelines for this type of labour: "It should be as repulsive as possible consistent with humanity, that is, that paupers would rather do the work than `starve', but that they should rather employ themselves in doing any other kind of work elsewhere, and that it would not interfere with private enterprise or be a kind of work which otherwise would necessarily be performed by independent labourers."
With another harsh winter in prospect, stone-breaking represents a cruel test of destitution for the poor. A third consecutive year of famine is devastating for them.
After intense British lobbying in Rome Cardinal Fransoni, secretary of the Congregation of Propaganda, sends a sharp letter to the Irish archbishops seeking information about press reports that the clergy approved of murders.
The elderly bishop of Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora, Dr Edmund French, describes conditions to the rector of the Irish College in Rome, Dr Paul Cullen:
"The yellings of the poor, on the roads, in the streets of our towns, at all our houses . . . the heartrending scenes in the houses of the poor, lying sick of fever, starvation, of inanition and want are the daily prospects of our clergy . . . In one parish alone there were 21 deaths of heads of families in four days . . . they all died with the utmost resignation to the will of God, blessing the priest for a very small temporary help.
"These are the scenes witnessed by our clergy in the south and west of Ireland, and alas if we dare describe these afflictions of our people and our own agonies at their heart-rending sufferings we are stamped by our enemies of this English press and the leading Members of Parliament as surplissed (sic) ruffians and instigators of the murder of the landed gentry and the exterminators of the people."
Archbishop Michael Slattery tells Cullen: "The Catholic clergy being the only persons to stand forward against the oppression of the people, the landlords availed themselves of the national bigotry of England to raise the cry of murder against them to turn away public attention from the numberless murders caused by themselves. Hence the calumnies sanctioned by the government to forward their own purposes of blackening us in the eyes of Europe and even of Rome, thereby to destroy the liberty of our church."