RootsChat.Com
Ireland (Historical Counties) => Ireland => Topic started by: Viktoria on Wednesday 20 February 19 23:42 GMT (UK)
-
Just thinking of something,during the Irish famine,I wonder if death certificates were issued?
Considering how so many died and the weakened state of the rest of the family ,would they have been able to walk perhaps many miles to register a death?
It is reported that whole families just gave up.
Closed the door of their little cabins and piled turves against the door and lay down and died,whole families together.
So the ruins of houses are probably graves, and in a staunchly Roman Catholic country must have been distressing to say the least that there was no service or wake.
Who would register the deaths?
The distances involved even to try and get a meal ticket,were unimaginable .
So the numbers quoted may be seriously fewer than the real cost.
I know records were burned and so even those that were reported may have gone.
Just interested in a shocking event.
Viktoria.
-
Civil registration of deaths didn't start in Ireland until 1864...long after the famine.
-
Oh Thank you,I did not know that.
So figures will have been estimated .
Whatever, the numbers are appalling.
Thanks again.
Viktoria.
-
Good question Viktoria, the aftermath of this catastrophe be-devils British politics to this day!
Skoosh.
-
As you say they are very religious in Ireland,my husband's parents were from County Clare.
So I very much doubt they buried anyone in the back garden. They would have done their damndest to get them to the local church to give them a proper burial and therefore one would hope that they appear in the burial registers of the day.
-
This will give you an idea of how low things got with regards to burials.
https://www.libraryireland.com/annals-famine-ireland/manner-of-burying-the-starving.php
-
The biggest killers were Typhus, Cholera so people weren't carried around so if they died in countryside they weren't brought to a town or village where disease might spread.
People moving around often had to bypass villages, towns due to barricades. Wells were guarded day and night. Livestock was brought in at night, dairy herds guarded 24/7.
Plenty of people buried in-situ.
-
from Atlas of the Great Irish Famine P372
A sailor from the HMS Tartarus delivering a cargo of food to Ballydehob (Co Cork) gave a close up description of what he witnessed:
The deaths here average 40 or 50 daily: 20 were buried this morning and they were fortunate in getting buried at all. The people build themselves up into their cabins so that they may die together with their children and not be seen by passers by.
p375 Skibbereen Co Cork
On 20 Feb 1847 American philanthropist Elihu Burrit visited the town.
"We entered the graveyard, in the midst of which was a small watch-house. This miserable shed had served as a grave where the dying could bury themselves.... And into this horrible den of death, living men, women and children went down to die....."
R.C. parish registers seldom have deaths or burials recorded, most have just baptisms and marriages.
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/sadlier/irish/Galway.htm From The Times 8th March 1847
https://www.irishcentral.com/news/one-thousand-famine-victims-found-in-irish-burial-site-132301653-237418841
Link about Kilkenny workhouse burials
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5htYzvdigFA
1 minute you tube clip about famine mass grave outside Skibbereen Co Cork.
-
This will give you an idea of how low things got with regards to burials.
https://www.libraryireland.com/annals-famine-ireland/manner-of-burying-the-starving.php
See also accounts "Sara's Bed and Burial" and "Death and Burial of Abraham" in chapter 4 and "Burial at Newport" and "Deaths in the Famine" in chapter 7.
-
Oh Thank you,I did not know that.
So figures will have been estimated .
Whatever, the numbers are appalling.
Thanks again.
Viktoria.
Estimated, but from concrete numbers. The before and after numbers of the 1841 and 1851 censuses, and numbers of emigrants. The number of deaths in the workhouses is also known.
-
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/sadlier/irish/Galway.htm From The Times 8th March 1847
Click "Irish views" below the extract for a list of more articles.
One is from "The Cork Reporter" 29th April 1847
"Overwhelmed Coroners Stop Holding Inquests for Bodies Found in the Street"
-
Thank you all, I have read many of the links posted and they are all overwhelming.
I will not say more because I feel so angry about it all.
So much is not widely known,even today ,and it ought to be.
Viktoria.