April 26th, 1847: The poor resent being reduced to beggars. There is a disastrous gap in relief measures between the phasing out of the public works and the installation of soup kitchens. After a winter of forcing skeletons to work for piece rates, the destitute are now to be given soup.
Initially, the people find soup kitchens degrading; they would prefer to receive wages, or cook food rations themselves. They also dislike the soup, or porridge as it is often called. They demand work, explains the Limerick Reporter, and "abhor the idea of being made beggars."
Resistance is widespread in Co Clare, where many were until recently employed on the public works. A crowd of several hundred people attack the newly established soup kitchen in Meelick, smash the boiler and tear up the relief committee's book.
They also destroy the boiler in Cloonlara and try to do the same in Ardnacrusha, until restrained by the police. A boiler is removed in Kilfenora, while in Corofin the local soup kitchen is demolished by people who request meal rations instead of cooked "porridge".
Rioting breaks out in Kilnish. A mob breaks the boiler and other utensils in Patrickswell, Co Limerick. In Castlemartyr, Co Cork, people threaten to "smash all the soup boilers in the country" because they want no more "greasy kitchen stuff but should have either money or bread."
The soup kitchens are viewed by the government as a temporary expedient to feed a large number of people with a small amount of money. Moreover, beggars cannot be choosers for long.
Alexis Soyer, the French society chef, opens a model soup kitchen on Royal Barracks Esplanade, Dublin. (This place is known also as the Croppies' Acre, where the bodies of executed rebels were flung into a mass grave in 1798.) After Soyer produces 100 gallons of soup for under £1, the Relief Commissioners retain his services to open a number of kitchens.
Meanwhile, a forest appears to have been cut down to feed Victorian bureaucracy - and account for every penny spent. The commissioners have distributed 10,000 account books, 80,000 sheets and three million card tickets. The weight of these papers exceeds 14 tons.
From Mount Melleray Abbey on the slopes of the Knockmealdowns, Dom Mary Joseph Ryan writes: "Even in this isolated place, on a most ungrateful and profitless mountain, we relieve from 80 to 100 wandering poor daily, besides 33 families around us ranging from four to 10 in each, who are our regular weekly pensioners and whom we have, under God, saved from hopeless starvation."
James Fintan Lalor addresses the landlords in a letter to the Nation: "If you persevere in enforcing a clearance of your lands you will force men to weigh your existence, as landowners, against the existence of an Irish people."