DAN STUDIED THE TORN FLESH … AND EXPOSED BONE … BITE MARKS were clearly visible on the corpse. One arm had been torn from its socket and chewed. Part of the torso had been gouged out and the dogs had done their worst in trying to feed off the man’s putrefying body.
Dan sat on his haunches, holding to his nose the lavender-scented handkerchief Henrietta insisted he carry. It was evident that Mr Leahey’s body had been savaged by the starving canines. He had seen the damage a few rats inflicted on the dead, but this was different. He detailed the injuries carefully in his notepad, for he had not seen the like of this before. Judging by the various-sized bite marks all over the body, five or six dogs had been involved. The only saving grace was that poor Mr Leahey had been long dead from fever when the pack of starving mongrels had found him in his cabin.
From the reports Dan had received, Mr Leahey’s wife and children had kept his body in the cabin for days. They had no way of burying him, but the stench of his decaying corpse finally drove the family out and they had fled.
Mr Leahey’s elderly mother had heard growling and barking inside the cabin. On opening the door she came upon the hungry dogs, chewing and gnawing the flesh from her son’s bones. She and some neighbours had managed to beat and drive away the animals but, to Dan’s mind, the dogs entering the Leaheys’ cabin in the first place was his primary concern.
Dogs were known to dig up corpses buried in shallow graves or to prey on bodies left awaiting burial, but for the animals to enter a dwelling to feast on human flesh wasn’t something he had come upon before.
Most of the dogs were crazed, abandoned by owners who had died, fled or could no longer feed them. The starving creatures roamed the fields, roads and lanes of the district. It alarmed Dan to see that they were becoming bolder, packing together unafraid, and likely to attack those who were weak.
The matter was serious and Dan intended to write an urgent report. He would recommend that, for the safety of the public during this crisis, all dogs in Carbery be culled. He found it deeply offensive that those with position and money still fed and kept their pet dogs and hunting hounds while the children of the poor starved.
On his return to the dispensary, he felt someone grab and tug at his coattails. Turning around, he discovered Mrs Keating, who was carrying her young daughter in her arms. Dan immediately went to help her but was shocked to discover that the small girl was already dead.
‘She died yesterday,’ Mrs Keating explained, caressing her daughter’s thin face. ‘As no Christian will come near me, I carried her into town myself to lay her alongside her father in the graveyard in Chapel Lane.’
Dan tried not to betray his emotion as he imagined the terrible journey the poor woman must have made along the roads. He ushered her to the dispensary immediately, where he took the girl from her gently and promised the woman that he would look after the burial of her child.
‘I am grateful to you, doctor, but it is my poor boy in the grave that you and your friend made the other night that I am worried over,’ she explained. ‘My neighbours’ pigs are scratching and digging at the ground. I fear they will uproot the grave and his coffin if they get a chance!’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Keating, but we did not know there were pigs roaming close by.’
‘Doctor, won’t you send someone to bury him properly?’ she begged. ‘Away from the pigs and other animals.’
After seeing what the dogs had done to Mr Leahey, Dan found himself agreeing to help Mrs Keating again. He sent two men to drive out to Letterlishe, exhume the boy’s flimsy coffin and have it transported to Skibbereen where it would be buried in consecrated ground. He also agreed to provide a coffin for the little girl’s burial.
A few hours later the men returned empty-handed.
‘I’m sorry, doctor, but there is no moving that putrefying corpse,’ Dinny Burke told him stubbornly. ‘’Tis in a terrible state and best left buried where it is. Paddy and I will not touch it!’
Mary Keating, however, was made of sterner stuff. She returned home and somehow found the strength and resolve to lift her son’s coffin from the earth by herself. The following day she carried it heroically all the way into town, so that her son could be buried properly, with his father and sister.
A week later, Mary Keating accosted Dan once more. Her gaunt face remained pale and worn, her eyes red-rimmed.
‘Doctor, I need another coffin to bury my youngest boy. He is the very last of my family,’ she pleaded, broken-hearted.
Dan was torn. He had given her the money for two coffins now and she was expecting him to pay for a third. Although he was a doctor and held a good position, he was certainly not a wealthy man!
‘In the name of the great God,’ she implored him, ‘don’t let my fine boy, who would be my help and support if he lived, be thrown into the grave like a dog.’
Dan looked at this ghost of a woman, who seemed near death herself. How could he possibly refuse her plea?
Mrs Keating took the money and disappeared to purchase another small coffin. He caught sight of her from the dispensary window as she set off for home with it placed on her head. She was far too weak to be carrying such a load and he ran down the street after her.
‘Mrs Keating, you are too sick to go home.’ He tried to persuade her to let him help. ‘I will endeavour to arrange a bed for you today in the fever ward. Please, I beg you, stay here in town.’
She shook her head firmly, refusing his offer. As he watched her walk away, Dan was overcome with a strange sense of foreboding.
A few days later, Dan heard of Mrs Keating’s death. The poor woman had collapsed and was found dead at the door of her cabin, the empty coffin beside her. The neighbours were too terrified of contagion even to come near her.
Dan arranged immediately for both her youngest son’s body and hers to be transported to Skibbereen for a proper burial in Chapel Lane with her husband and other child. At least she might sleep in death with those she had loved so much in life.
Her passing affected Dan so deeply that he vowed in time to erect a headstone over her grave.
Mrs Keating’s reaction to her children’s deaths, and Mr O’Shea’s to his son’s, demonstrated to Dan that people were fixated on the dead and their need for a coffin. In his opinion, the need for prompt burials before putrefaction set in was the most pressing concern. Proper arrangements needed to be made for a cart and a man – or two – to collect the dead both in the town and the district and bring them for immediate burial in Abbeystrewery to stop the spread of disease.
As a doctor, Dan’s focus needed to remain on the living. There was little he could do for the growing numbers of dead, except ensure that their corpses were collected and safely interred, but something had to be done to persuade the people to take action swiftly.