Potato Famine - Life in a Scalp

Reporters for The Illustrated London News, investigating conditions in Ireland during the famine, wrote horror stories about what they saw "in this country of wretchedness."  At the "bog of Cahuermore," pictured in this illustration, they found a pitiful scene:

Similar scenes of desolation to those I had beheld for several days continued; and on both sides of the road, as far as the eye could reach, it fell on "tumbled" and roofless houses. Now and then I saw on the borders of a bog or quagmire some of the scalps in which the people seek to preserve their lives.

On arriving at the bog of Cahuermore, I alighted at the scalp shown in the Sketch, which Mr. Monsel and his companions discovered to their surprise, and found in it a woman dying of the customary fever which attends on want of food and clothing and the ordinary necessaries of life.

Than this scalp, nothing could be more wretched. It was placed in a hole, surrounded by pools, and three sides of the scalp (shown in the Sketch) were dripping with water, which ran in small streams over the floor and out by the entrance.

Yet, wretched as this hole is, the poor inhabitants said they would be thankful and content if the landlord would leave them there, and the Almighty would spare their lives.

Credits

Image, and quoted passage, from "Conditions of Ireland:  Illustrations of the New Poor-Law," an article from the December 29, 1849 issue of The Illustrated London News.