School: Cill Thiomáin, Durrus, Bantry (roll number 15989)
- Location:
- Kilcomane, Co. Cork
- Teacher: Máiréad Ní Mhathúna
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0288, Page 058
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- The events which led up to the disastrous famine in Ireland in the year 1847 are only too well known to even the most casual observers of Irish history. The failure of the staple food of the people - the potato - in the preceding year and the taking away by the landlords of the grain crops left the eight millions of a population to succumb to starvation. Men, women and children felt the torture of a slow, agonising death. Fever dysentery and diseases of every possible kind seized them. Thousands perished by the roadside. Graveyards were filled with coffinless corpses. Whole families were wiped out, and those who survived were left a prey to every conceivable form of agony. The parish of Goleen may be taken as typical of many another rural area of the time. Its geographical position shows it to be very outlying, and with the methods of transport obtaining at the time, it may well be imagined what the state of the people was before help could reach them.
A certain Captain Coffin, a military man who resided in the parish, wrote a description of the condition of the people and had it published. His disclosures attracted the attention of the Rev. F.F. French Protestant curate of Cloughjordan, Co. Tipperary. To enquire into the matter and to effect any possible remedy[?](continues on next page)
- Collector
- Eileen O' Driscoll
- Gender
- Female
- Address
- Kilcomane, Co. Cork
