The accounts from the Irish provincial papers continue to detail the unmitigated sufferings of the starving peasantry. Indeed, they are stated to be on the increase, notwithstanding the very great exertion of public bodies and individuals to assuage their pressure.
With the object of ascertaining the accuracy of the frightful statements received from the West, and of placing them in unexaggerated fidelity before our readers, a few days since, we commissioned our Artist, Mr James Mahoney, of Cork, to visit a seat of extreme suffering, viz., Skibbereen and its vicinity; and we now submit to our readers the graphic results of his journey, accompanied by such descriptive notes as he was enabled to collect whilst sketching the fearful incidents and desolate localities; premising merely, that our Artist must already have been somewhat familiar with such scenes of suffering in his own locality, (Cork), so that he cannot be supposed to have taken an extreme view of the greater misery at Skibbereen.
We must here revert to Ballydehob, on the Skibbereen road, which our Artist has sketched, showing Mount Gabriel in the distance. Here he was told by the Rev. Mr Triphook that the destitution was of so frightful a nature that such persons as could command five pounds were leaving the town, to avoid the contagion of fever, as well as the afflicting scene of persons dropping around them daily; and the informant added that the town was more than five times fuller of people from the surrounding country than it had accommodation for.
// SOURCE Illustrated London News - Saturday 20 February 1847
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