United States or Solomon Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
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.
Butler, of Waterville, a successful salmon fishery, great part of the produce whereof goes, at some little advance on sixpence per pound, to the agents of a London firm, who also get an enormous supply of mushrooms from county Kerry. There is a greatly-improved property in county Cork, lying west of Macroom and south of Mill Street. This is Ballyvourney, one of the estates of Sir George St.
I mentioned it to-night at the County Club, when a gentleman said that this morning at Macroom a serious "row" had occurred between the local Board of Guardians there and a great crowd of labourers. The labourers thronged the Board-room, demanding the half-acre plots of land which had been promised them.
This had the desired effect, and the objects contemplated by the promulgators of the notice were entirely foiled. At Macroom, crowds of working men paraded the streets, calling for work or food. Food they urgently required, no doubt, for two of those in the gathering fell in the street from hunger.
Away they went, clattering over the road, with the whole tatterdemalion population of Macroom after, shouting for "ha' pennies." "Rags enough to set up a paper-mill," suggested Charley, "and all the noses turn-ups! Edith, how do you like this arrangement?" "I think Trixy's cleverer than I ever gave her credit for," laughed Edith; "it's a pity so much diplomacy should be 'love's labor lost."
In my own case, except for the splendid and most generous assistance given me by Mr Jeremiah O'Leary, the leading citizen of Macroom, who shared all the labours and all the anxieties of my campaign, I was left to fight my battle almost single-handed, having arrayed against me two canons of my Church and every Catholic clergyman in the constituency, with two or three notable exceptions.
Demonstrations of amazing extent and still more remarkable resoluteness of spirit were addressed by my friends and myself in Charleville and Macroom, County Cork; Kilfinane and Drumcolliher, County Limerick; Tralee and Castle Island, County Kerry; Scariff, County Clare; Goolds Cross, County Tipperary; and Ballycullane, County Wexford; and by the time they were over, the field was fought and won.
The first thing he did was to obtain the opening of a new line of road from Macroom to Killarney, and another to Kenmare. In the various works connected with these, the people first learned the use of the spade and shovel, and became inured to a continued day's work.
John Fitz-Thomas, his son Maurice, eight barons, fifteen knights, and "countless numbers of common soldiers were slain." The Monastery of Tralee received the dead body of its founder and his son, while Florence McCarthy, following up his blow, captured and broke down in swift succession all the English castles in his neighbourhood, including those of Macroom, Dunnamark, Dunloe, and Killorglin.
I obtained an editorial position in West Cork which left me free to devote my spare time to the Labour cause, which I again enthusiastically espoused, having as colleagues in County Cork Mr Cornelius Buckley, of Blarney, another of exactly the same name in Cork, my old friend Mr John L. O'Shea, of Kanturk, and Mr William Murphy, of Macroom men whose names deserve to be for ever honourably associated with the movement which did as much in its own way for the emancipation and independence of the labourers as the National organisations did for the farmers.
Word Of The Day