The deaths in that week were 2,706, and
the average of deaths in each week during the month was twenty-five per
thousand of the entire inmates--a death rate which would have hurried
to the grave, every man, woman, and child in the Workhouses of Ireland,
in about nine months! but it gradually decreased, until in October it
stood at five per thousand in the week.
On the 19th we read that, "the number suffering from fever in Swinford
is beyond calculation." Some idea of the dreadful mortality now
prevalent in Cork, may be found from the fact, that in one day
thirty-six bodies were interred in the same grave; the deaths in the
Workhouse there from the 27th of December, 1846, until the middle of
April--less than four months--amounted to 2,130. At this period, dropsy,
the result of starvation, became almost universal. On the 16th of April,
there were upwards of three hundred cases of fever in the
Carrick-on-Shannon Workhouse, and the weekly deaths amounted to fifty.
Again: every avenue leading to the plague-stricken town of Macroom has a
fever hospital; persons of all ages are dropping dead in the streets. In
May, it is announced that fever continued to rage with unabated fury at
Castlebar.
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