A SAD PICTURE OF DISTRESS.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume XI, Issue 1281, 23 February 1883, Page 2

A SAD PICTURE OF DISTRESS.

Of all the accounts of the distress now prevailing in Ireland none is more heartrending than that supplied to An English contemporary by tne Rev. F. W. Gallagher, parish priest, Carrick Gleu, Columkill, County Donegal. He says : “ Sheer want and the cry of m* dying poor force me with great paiir and reluctance to bring before your many readers their wretched, starving condition. Absolute famine and deep distress are increasing daily, and are being intensified by the great severity of the weather. I am hourly surrounded by crowds of poor sufferers begging with heartrending appeals the price of a few pounds of Indian corn to save life. By the charity of some few individuals—for which I heartily thank them, and earnestly pray that God mav reward them a thousandfold I have been enabled to prolong their lives up to the present. All resources are now exhausted, and it is heartrending to have to listen to their piteoua cry when one can’t assist them. for example, a few instances out of yesterday’s applications. One family of six children, father, mother, grandmother, had been subsisting for three days previously on the entire store of 41bs. of Indian meal. Another applicant was a poor woman, who in frost and snow travelled ten miles. left her husband and three children ' without food, nor had they any for two days before, and she was apprehensive that she would find some of them dead on her return. A third instance was the case of a family where the mother had been confined to bed after childbirth, her only food in this delicate state being the extract of Indian meal, obtained by pouring hot water upon itw and known among the poor as Indiaw. meal tea.” Mr Gallagher adds that he could supply similar instances of distress by the score.