coffinless

Updated: May 10, 2025

I can only express my great surprise that, with the people starving by thousands with such accounts as we have read during the last two days, of ten dead bodies out of eleven found lying unburied in one cabin; of seven putrid corpses in another; of dogs and swine quarreling over, and fighting for the dead carcasses of Christians; of the poor consigned coffinless to their graves, and denied the decencies of Christian burial, that the price of the coffin saved might prolong for a few days the sufferings of the dying, I, Sir, for one, look with amazement at the patience of the Irish people."

John O'Rourke - The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) : With Notices of Earlier Irish Famines