When the cold weather had fairly set in, it frequently happened that the
straw which composed the bed, or the excuse for a bed, occupied by
members of a family dying of fever or hunger, or both combined, was,
piecemeal, drawn from under them and burned on the hearth to keep up a
scanty fire. It was felt, we may presume, that the dying could not
require it long, and those who had still some hopes of life were
famishing as much from cold as from hunger. An eye-witness, describing
such a family in Windmill-lane, Skibbereen, one of whom had already
died, thus writes: "The only article that covered the nakedness of the
family, that screened them from the cold, was a piece of coarse packing
stuff, which lay extended alike over the bodies of the living and the
corpse of the dead; which seemed as the only defence of the dying, and
the winding sheet of the dead!" The same writer says: "In this town have
I witnessed to-day, men--fathers, carrying perhaps their only child to
its last home, its remains enclosed in a few deal boards patched
together; I have seen them, on this day, in three or four instances,
carrying those coffins under their arms or upon their shoulders, without
a single individual in attendance upon them; without mourner or
ceremony--without wailing or lamentation.
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