‘MR MAHONY, WELCOME,’ SAID DAN AS HE GREETED JAMES MAHONY, the illustrator and journalist from the Illustrated London News, at the Becher Arms. ‘I trust you had a good journey despite this terrible cold weather.’
‘Yes, it was fine, though I saw crowds of hungry walking the icy roads as we passed in the carriage from Cork. At Clonakilty, where we had breakfast, they flocked around us, looking for money and food. One poor woman was carrying the corpse of a fine child in her arms—’
The artist’s voice broke off.
‘She was begging alms of us passengers to purchase a coffin to bury her dear little baby,’ he managed. ‘It was an awful sight. One that I will never forget.’
‘Unfortunately, you will see many such tragedies in this town, and worse,’ warned Dan.
‘Dr Donovan, I have avidly read the diary you publish in the Southern Reporter, which my own paper then publishes. Your words have reached many,’ he explained, his brown eyes serious. ‘Each of your reports is both moving and informative. They are why my editor suggested this visit, so that our readers are made aware of the terrible suffering faced by so many.’
Dan nodded. ‘Words in a newspaper can do so much.’
Nicholas Cummins’s letter published in The Times before Christmas had resulted not only in a huge wave of donations but also in the setting up of the British Relief Association, which had already raised substantial funds to aid Ireland. Dan’s published diary had been reprinted not only by some English newspapers but in some American ones too, his words helping to raise much-needed donations and subscription for relief from many quarters.
‘It is why I allowed them to be published,’ the doctor continued. ‘Too many people have ignored the plight of the hungry and needy in these terrible times.’
‘Then perhaps I can do some good also,’ James Mahony offered modestly, ‘by my reporting and illustrating the truth of the matter.’
Dan worried that the artist might not be able to cope with the terrible deprivation and human misery he would witness.
‘My assistant Mr Crowley and I are more than happy to have you accompany us on our visits to the sick and needy, Mr Mahony. But I have to warn you, it is exceptionally distressing work, even for a medical man.’
‘Dr Donovan, I have seen much in Cork City. The hungry and homeless roam the streets and the Cork workhouse is crowded out, but here, judging from your reports, the situation appears much worse.’
Dan had taken an immediate liking to the artist. He had watched him earnestly carrying his leather bag containing his paper and pens, and had decided that he trusted him. He might have slender hands and the long fingers of an artist, but it was clear that this Cork man was determined to do his best for his fellow man in his own fashion.
‘Have you been to other towns yet and seen the results of hunger and starvation there?’ the doctor asked.
‘No,’ Mahony admitted. ‘This is my first time undertaking such work. My forte is to paint in watercolour – French and Italian, and sometimes Irish landscapes. I endeavour to capture the beauty of such places.’
‘I fear there will be nothing like that for you here,’ snorted Jerrie Crowley, who had joined them. ‘Believe me, there is nothing beautiful left to see in this poor town of ours.’
‘I am fully aware of that, Mr Crowley, and will endeavour to record accurately all that I see.’
‘Well then, let us begin with a visit to Bridgetown,’ Dan said, ‘where there is enormous suffering and many of those weakened by starvation have succumbed to fever.’
‘It is a poor area, with nigh on a few hundred cabins and cottages – if you can call them that,’ added Jerrie Crowley, turning up the collar of his heavy coat to try to keep out the biting wind as they walked along.
‘So many of the people here have no coats or shawls, or clothes,’ Mahony remarked as they passed a group of paupers and beggars, and women and children who sat along the street, shivering. ‘How do they not perish in this freezing weather?’
‘Unfortunately, many do,’ Dan admitted. ‘In desperation, many sold or pawned every piece of clothing or blanket they possessed months ago to try to feed themselves.’
As they entered the narrow lanes of Bridgetown, Dan could not help but notice the artist wrinkle his nose at the fetid odours of urine and excrement that seemed to envelop the place, where human dunghills abounded.
‘Be careful where you walk,’ he warned.
‘Is it always like this?’
Jerrie grinned. ‘It can be worse on a hot summer’s day, but you just get used to it.’
The artist stopped and immediately began to sketch. He drew the curving line of low cabins and hovels with their rotting straw roofs and the cluster of barely dressed children and women who moved among the lanes.
‘Our first visit is to the Murphys,’ Dan said as he led them into the darkness of a low cabin where the sound of moaning filled the air.
In the dim light it was difficult to see, but the family lay on the floor, as near to the dying embers of the fire as they could get. An old woman with streeling white hair lay on the straw in a filthy shift.
‘Doctor, my son Paddy died a day – no, maybe two or three days – ago,’ she announced. ‘The daughter-in-law, Brigid, went not long after him. God be good to them, but I’m weak myself and left with the two young boys here.’
A bout of coughing consumed her as she pointed at the children lying on the rough earth.
‘And not even a soul to bring us a bit of food or sup of water.’
Dan caught the look of utter shock and disbelief on Mahony’s face as he realized that, with the exception of the old woman, the rest of the family were dead. Their eyes were staring and their bodies were already beginning to decay.
The artist pushed past Dan and rushed outside, gasping for fresh air.
Dan followed him.
‘Sit down,’ he ordered. ‘Put your head between your knees. The faint will pass. Just try to breathe slow and easy.’
He reached for the small bottle of smelling salts he kept in his inside pocket. He opened it and passed it back and forth in front of the man’s ghastly pale and clammy face.
‘Any better?’
After a few minutes, Mahony nodded.
‘Yes. It’s just the smell. The cabin and the children. I’ve never seen such horror. That woman, how did she not know they were dead?’
‘She’s old with no one to help her …’ Dan tried to explain.
Dan and Jerrie made their way back inside the cabin to make clear to Mrs Murphy that they would arrange for the bodies of her family to be collected by the death cart in a few hours’ time. There was little they could do to comfort her, but Dan promised to return the following day to visit her.
The next stops on Dan’s rounds were the Connollys’ and the Carews’ cabins. Both families had children sick with dysentery. The ominous signs of bloody flux from terrible diarrhoea were spattered all over the mud floor.
‘Keep back, Mr Mahony, it is dysentery,’ Dan explained. ‘There is little I can do about it except tell them to try to keep the children away from the rest of the family. If they don’t, they will likely all get it.’
In the Cotters’ cabin they were greeted by a skeletal young woman with two small children.
‘Have you a biteen of food for us?’ she pleaded. ‘For the hunger is fierce bad on us.’
‘I’m sorry, Mrs Cotter, but we are here on our medical duties.’
Dan examined the middle boy, who was about five years old. The child’s belly protruded and his little legs were like gnarled sticks. He was quiet and listless, and his huge eyes simply stared up at Dan.
‘Have you been to the soup kitchen today?’ he urged the young mother. ‘You must go and try to get some nourishment for you and the children.’
‘Denis is too weak to walk there, and I do not have the strength to carry him and Peggy together,’ she admitted tearfully.
The artist was visibly upset as he began to draw a simple sketch of the cottage and child.
‘I will arrange that soup is delivered to you and your family today, and for as long as it is needed,’ Dan promised.
With so many too sick or weak to walk to the soup kitchen, Dan and the relief committee had arranged for a number of men to deliver soup to his patients and those in desperate need.
‘I will also arrange for fresh straw bedding to be brought here.’
‘Thank you, doctor,’ Mrs Cotter said, her eyes filled with gratitude.
Over the course of the next few hours, the trio visited cabin after cabin. They saw typhus, dysentery and starvation everywhere. The snowy lanes were quiet, with no sight of a dog nor a cat nor even a bird. The silence was broken only by the scurry of rats darting down the tracks and among the rotting roof thatch of the miserable huts and hovels.
‘Rats are the only things thriving in this poor place,’ pronounced Jerrie. ‘There is not a cat in the place to hunt them.’
One crazed man, Peadar Dempsey, refused to let them take the body of his dead wife.
‘She’s hungry and tired, but I tell you she’s just asleep, Dr Dan.’
James Mahony said little, his skin still pale and his countenance serious as he drew and sketched. He filled his drawing pad with images of the dead and the living; the starving men, women and children of Bridgetown.
After their time in Bridgetown Dan brought Mahony to Old Chapel Lane. There they made their way to a tumbledown house with a window and door missing, which was crowded with destitute people trying to shelter from the cold. Some were already sick with typhus, and two or three were dead, including a big strong country fellow he bent down to examine. The man’s body was already cold.
‘Doctor, how could he be dead when he was only down here near me a few hours ago?’ demanded the man next to him.
Dan sighed.
‘I suspect he had typhus. Stay outside, Mr Mahony,’ he begged. ‘Do not come inside this place, for there is rampant fever here, and I advise you not to engage with those standing around you at the door, for they may also be sick.’
The artist moved down the street quickly, capturing with his pen the house and lane and those waiting admittance. Dan joined him shortly after and showed him the nearby watch hut that overlooked the graveyard in Chapel Lane. A matter of days ago, he and Jerrie had found a family hiding there, amid the decaying bodies.
‘They would have died here, among the skeletons and diseased corpses of the graveyard, except for the actions of my friend here,’ he said, praising Jerrie Crowley.
‘I don’t mind telling you that it was a shock to find the living, hidden among the putrefaction of this crowded graveyard, with not even a drop of water to sustain them,’ the doctor’s man told their companion.
‘What happened to them?’
‘Fortunately, Mr Mahony, the six of them were removed from this abode of the dead to the fever hospital, where they are improving. I will write it up in my diary,’ Dan affirmed.
‘Then certainly I must sketch this hut,’ Mahony said, trying to find a good angle from which to draw the structure without miring himself in the sodden, putrid ground around him.
With a few swift swipes and scribbles of his pen, James Mahony captured the watch hut from which the family had been rescued.
‘Tomorrow I must attend my duties at the Union workhouse,’ Dan explained. ‘But Mr Everett is a good man. He will collect you in the morning and take you to Ballydehob and Schull.’
‘Thank you for your great kindness today, Dr Donovan,’ Mr Mahony said as he took his leave of them. ‘I hope to see you when I return to Skibbereen to take the mail coach.’
Dan watched the artist walk down the street, hoping that somehow his sketches and drawings would help convey the terrible situation the starving people of West Cork were enduring.