School: Bán-Tír (C.) (roll number 2804)
- Location:
- Banteer, Co. Cork
- Teacher: Síle, Bean Uí Dheadaigh
Archival Reference
The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0361, Page 717
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- XML “The Famine”
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- Information from - Mrs Mary Cronin, Co. Cork, who heard her mother, who died about 30 years ago, Aged 84 years, speak about it.
The potatoes blackened in 1846 and rotted in the pits. There was no seed left to plant the following year and all the people died of starvation and fever. Imported potatoes were distributed for seed to the poor people in the Banteer district, by the Kanturk Union and these had not to be paid for.In the Banteer district, when persons died during the famine years, an account used be sent to the Union at Kanturk. There men would come from the Union with The Parish Coffin. This coffin had a hinged bottom so that the dead bodies could be dumped into the grave from it. This coffin could be used over and over again for the same purpose. Very often people were dead over a week before the parish coffin could come along. Often two or three would be dead in the same house together and May's mother used to say that it was no surprise to see the Parish Coffin making two or three trips to the same house on the one day. The legs of the dead used be swollen from eating green plants and weeds with hunger.
- Collector
- Julia C Deady
- Gender
- Female
- Address
- Banteer, Co. Cork
- Informant
- Mrs Mary Cronin
- Gender
- Female
- Address
- Banteer, Co. Cork
