Famine victims who worked 10 hours per day on British funded outdoor relief projects (breaking stones, for instance in exchange for food) were not provided with coffins when they died.   As a result, bodies were left to rot on the road where they might be eaten by wild animals or buried in shallow graves wrapped in newspapers, blankets or nothing at all.  Some were simply covered with rocks or left in derelict structures.

Private efforts were made to provide coffins for the dead.  One I’d like to call attention to took place in Castlebar (a town in northern Mayo County) in early 1847.  A scant ten days after the Castlebar Coffin Fund was established, eleven dead had already been provided with coffins.  I came across a letter to the local newspaper, the Tyrawley Herald, dated January 21, 1847 by Father Michael Curley in which he thanks a man from Westport (a town to the south) for his contribution of 1 pound to the Fund.  Father Curley, together with a Methodist minister (Reverend Mr. Atkins) and a Mr. Patrick Walsh, established the Castlebar Coffin Fund.  Father Curley is further credited with taking decisive action when he found out that food distributed to outdoor relief workers in Ballyhane was sickening them.  He obtained a sample of the tainted meal and sent it along to a contact in London who had it examined by corn merchants there.  They concluded that the ‘food’ wasn’t fit for human consumption.*

*Based on reports appearing at the time in the Ballina Chronicle.