Black Potatoes by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

Author:Susan Campbell Bartoletti
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

SACK THEM UP

As the number of deaths increased, the British government accepted the fact that disease was epidemic. Officials acknowledged that the workhouses could not provide for the great numbers of sick people. They enacted the Irish Fever Act in April 1847.

Under the act, the government bore the cost of health care, in the form of grants that would later be repaid. The act allowed additional fever hospitals or sheds to be built beside the workhouses. It also permitted buildings to be whitewashed for sanitary purposes, the houses of sick people to be fumigated with sulphuric acid, and coffins to be supplied to those who could not otherwise afford to buy them.

People went to great lengths to obtain a workhouse coffin. A workhouse coffin was considered degrading, but less shameful than not having any at all. When Bridget Quin died, her fourteen-year-old son Tom walked three miles into Ennis to notify the relief officer and to request a workhouse coffin right away.

Tom returned home to wait with his ailing sister Mary and younger brother James. As they waited, they kept their mother’s body inside the cabin, probably to keep it safe from wild dogs. Three more days passed, bringing more tragedy. Mary’s condition worsened, and she died. “We had not a halfpenny to buy a candle,” Tom said. “We watched at night to keep off the rats.”

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