The Killing Snows

by Charles Egan

  As she dressed, she thought back over the years of her childhood. There had been hard times before, but nothing ever like this. Most years – the years when there was little hunger – she had accepted the Workhouses as normal. As a child, she had known no different. To her, Asylums or Workhouses had always been her home.

  Her parents had first worked in the new Asylums in the 1830s. There was the huge Lunatic Asylum in Dublin with its thousands of inmates, that was where she had her first memories. Then there was the new Clonmel Lunatic Asylum for South Tipperary. Her father had been assistant to the Superintendent, and her mother assistant to the Matron. Here she wandered through the grounds of the Asylum at will. Reflecting back now, she found this almost impossible to believe. Her own friends were frightened of the inmates – terrified even. They called them loonies and told her they did all sorts of terrible things. She wondered why she had seen none of these terrible things.

  There was old Paddy, a patient, who worked as their unpaid gardener in the little house behind the Asylum. He was a small man, hardly her own height. He always had stories to tell her. And there was Eileen, another patient, who worked in the kitchen in their house. She never spoke, not once that Sarah could remember. She shuffled around the kitchen, and when she was finished, she shuffled back to the women’s ward.

  The Asylum had been built beside the Workhouse – the South Tipperary Union. It was here that her father had transferred to the Poor Law. He became Master of the Workhouse, but they did not have to move house, and Sarah was not even aware of her father’s rise in the world.

  Later they moved to County Cork. Dunmanway Workhouse was different. There was no Asylum there. Her father was Master of the Workhouse again, and her mother was promoted to Matron. It was far smaller than Clonmel though, and the area around was poorer. Even in the good years, she saw more hunger; more emaciated men and women. They never had enough potatoes to last the full year. In the month before the harvest, the numbers in the Workhouse doubled, and sometimes doubled again, emptying just as quickly as the time for digging arrived.

  Her mother was from Mayo though, and when Sarah’s aunt in Westport had written to tell them of vacancies in the Workhouse in Knockanure, they had applied at once. At first Knockanure had been no different to Dunmanway. The blight on the potatoes in 1845 had changed all that, and by the middle of 1846 the Workhouse was full. They had waited for the new crop when the inmates would be able to go back to their homes again. Then the rumours started coming in from the surrounding countryside, unbelievable at first, but confirmed every day, as more and more desperate people arrived at the Workhouse, until it was full far beyond its capacity, and her father was turning hungry people away. Outside the Workhouse, she had seen the gangs on the Famine Relief Works. She knew that there were thousands of them – tens of thousands according to some. Now, even with all the extra inmates, the Workhouse was unnaturally quiet.

  Her parents had been working without a break, and she had helped her father in the office, transcribing letters for him. He wrote to the Poor Law Guardians, begging for more money, more Indian meal, more provisions of any kind. He wrote to Lord Clanowen, Lord Lucan and the Marquis of Sligo; he wrote to Sir Roger Palmer, and on one occasion to the Viceroy. He begged for permission to operate Outdoor Relief and feed the people directly, without working. He had been doing this with Voisey at the end of 1846, against all the regulations. Dublin Castle would have to allow Outdoor Relief in the West, but Sarah thought it would have little effect in Knockanure. If they hadn’t enough meal to feed the Workhouse inmates, how could they feed the entire countryside?

  Now her father was dead. Apart from the horror and heartbreak, this had stunned her further, since he did not work in the fever sheds. Her mother had been much more likely to catch the fever, even Sarah herself had been in greater danger. But it was her father who had died. Now the Workhouse had no Master, and her mother spent many anxious hours in her father’s office trying to understand everything, but her year or two of schooling had given her very little ability with numbers.

  When Sarah was dressed, she ate a little meal for breakfast, and went across to the administration building. Pat was there already.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve only just heard.’

  ‘It’s kind of you to say so. It was a terrible shock to my mother.’

  ‘I’m sure it was. But what about you?’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’ Her voice was crisp, cutting off further discussion – or pity. She glanced at the papers, scattered all across the desk. ‘Working early, I see.’

  ‘I have to,’ Pat replied. ‘Things have been getting a little beyond us since your father got sick and old Donegan died. It’ll take me a few days to sort this out.’

  They worked together for some hours. Then Sarah left to help her mother in the fever sheds. Some of the inmates helped too, but in the past week, three of these had become patients. Again she thought of her mother; looking at her, wondering.

  When they arrived at the Union in Knockanure, McKinnon went to one of the offices, while Luke walked across to the main committee room. There were six other men waiting ahead of him. There was a clerk on the other side of the corridor.

  ‘Papers.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your work sheets.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Luke said, and handed them over.

  Just as he sat down to wait, he saw the Master’s daughter passing by. She stopped.

  ‘We’ve met before, haven’t we?’

  ‘We have. Luke Ryan. Just down from Brockagh. ‘

  ‘Yes. I remember.’

  She walked away. She stopped again, and came back .

  ‘You’ll be a while waiting. Would you like a look around?’

  Luke hesitated. ‘I’m not sure that I would, but I will anyhow.’ There were a few hollow laughs from the other men. He followed her.

  ‘Aren’t you a brother of Pat Ryan’s?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ he replied. ‘And you’re the Master’s daughter?’

  ‘You’ve a good memory. I was the Master’s daughter. Sarah Cronin. Miss Cronin to you.’

  ‘You were? You’re not now?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  They walked past a long line of inmates snaking down the stairs to the refectory. Inside, no one was sitting. There were only two small tables, both just inside the door. One of the inmates was handing out plates, most chipped. On the floor, there were two enormous pots – one with corn, one with cabbage. As he watched, two more pots of corn and cabbage were dragged in on a low wagon, and the two men drawing it waited for the other pots to empty. A woman was stirring the cabbage with a farmyard fork.

  The inmates shuffled past each of the two pots as the pot-women ladled food onto the plates. Then they shuffled in single file, pushing their plates along the shelves by the walls and eating with their fingers. Some of the younger children were barely able to reach the shelf. The line was moving at a good speed. Where it came to the end of the shelves, a woman on the second table was taking plates to a tank in the centre of the room, where they were rinsed in grey, greasy water and brought back to the start of the line. Some of the older people, who could not eat their meal in time, stood in the centre of the room, chewing as fast as they could, before returning the plates. Any plates with unfinished food were being sent back to the start of the line and given to other inmates.

  ‘My God. What’s this?’

  ‘This is how we feed them. We tried using tables, but we couldn’t feed them all.’

  ‘And this all works?’

  ‘It’s the only way. Father started it. This way we can cook enough, and still get the pots over to the fever sheds in the afternoon.’

  They walked across the lawn.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ he asked. ‘I just don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s only the numbers o
f people. The Workhouse was built for five hundred.’

  ‘And how many now?’

  ‘Over twelve hundred the last time we counted. Now – I don’t know. Pat might.’

  She opened the door of the first shed. He stepped back and whipped his hand to his mouth, dry retching.

  ‘Are you alright?’

  He shook his head. ‘Yes, yes. I’m fine.’ He followed her inside, trying to breathe through his mouth to avoid the overwhelming stink of gangrene. On either side were fever patients at different stages of disease. All the beds had two or three patients in them, more lying on the floor between them.

  A man dressed in better clothes was trying to feed one of the patients. The girl tapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘This is Luke Ryan from Brockagh, Mr. Yardley.’ The man stood.

  ‘Edward Yardley. Originally from Staffordshire.’

  ‘You’re not supposed to be in here,’ Sarah said. ‘You know that.’

  ‘I know, I know. I’m just trying to help out.’

  ‘You’re a long way from Staffordshire,’ Luke said.

  ‘Yes, yes. I’m from the Society of Friends, you see. We’re trying to set up a Soup Kitchen here in Knockanure, like we have in Castlebar.’

  ‘Where will you get the money for that?’

  ‘Mainly from the Friends in England and Dublin. And there’s some question we might get funds from the British Association. We’ll see.’

  The Quakers! It was just like McKinnon had said. They were the first to feed the people. He wondered when – or whether – they would come to Brockagh. Or Kilduff.

  Sarah led him to the other side of the yard. He could see a heap of clay, inmates shovelling from it into a wide pit. He could smell it before he got to it. They stood at the edge.

  Beneath him was a scene from hell. Bodies lay piled on top on of one another; legs, arms and heads at every angle. Parts of bodies protruded from where the inmates had already shovelled clay on top of them, the yellow of their bodies mingling with the brown of the clay. All the bodies were skeletal, many showing the advanced stages of typhus. Through the stink, he could recognise the familiar sweet stench of gangrene, mixing with the sour smell of decomposition and faeces. The heap seemed to be moving. Rats, dozens of them, gnawing at limbs, faces and eyes.

  At the edge, half buried under the other bodies, he could see the corpse of a child, head and shoulders protruding. The eye sockets were open and eyeless. The head was skull-like, the skin pulled taut into the teeth and the eye-sockets. The hair on the top of the child’s head had disappeared, and there was the familiar fur-like hair growing down the side of its cheeks. The face of a fox. The face of death.

  He could feel his hands shaking.

  ‘Are you alright?’ Sarah shouted.

  He wiped his brow.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ he said. He followed her back to the administration block.

  Twenty minutes later, he was sitting with the Board of Guardians. This time it looked like the full Board. Lord Clanowen was at the top of the table. Morton and Voisey were both there, though Luke noted the Workhouse Master was absent.

  ‘Your results are impressive as always,’ Morton said.

  ‘Yes, Mr. Morton.’

  ‘All four Works are running very well.’

  ‘Yes, Mr. Morton.’

  ‘Your next duty will be to shut them down.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Shut them down. All four.’

  ‘But we can’t do that?’

  ‘It’s not as bad as it sounds,’ Voisey said from the other side of the table. ‘We’re going to replace them with Soup Kitchens. Our brethren from the Society of Friends have shown us the way in other counties, and we think we will follow. It will give the people the chance to return to their own farms and grow the little they can. God willing, we may be able to stop the fever and hunger that way.’

  Morton gathered up the worksheets, and handed them back to him. ‘Your responsibility will be to close all the Works around Brockagh, by Saturday fortnight at the latest. After that, you will remain in Brockagh, and be responsible for opening and supervising the Kitchens.’

  ‘And when will the Kitchens open?’

  ‘We will notify you of that when we consider it appropriate,’ Morton said. ‘Next.’

  He found his way into the office where Pat was working. Sarah was working alongside him.

  ‘I’d heard you were here,’ Pat said. ‘Sarah said she’d met you.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Luke said. ‘She was showing me around. I knew it was bad here, but I never knew it was like this.’

  ‘And it shouldn’t be either,’ Pat replied. ‘It’s a matter of money – always money, money, money. We’re doing our best. We’re working all the hours God sent. But without money, there’s a limit. We can’t buy enough food. We can’t stop the fever.’

  ‘I showed him the fever sheds,’ Sarah said.

  Luke grimaced.

  ‘That’s the way it is,’ Pat said, ‘and from what Ian tells us, that’s the way it is right across the county. There’s nothing else we can do, just put them in the sheds and leave them to die.’

  ‘I know,’ Luke said. ‘Sarah showed me the way you’re burying them too.’

  Pat threw an angry glance at Sarah. ‘I don’t go up there anymore,’ he said. ‘I’ve a job to do, and there’s no point in upsetting myself. If I go over there, I can’t work for the rest of the day.’

  ‘Yes,’ Luke said. ‘I can understand that.’

  ‘I’ll just be going on,’ Sarah said. ‘I’ll leave you two to talk, I’m sure you have enough to talk about.’

  ‘Yes,’ Pat said. ‘Thanks for everything.’

  He waited until the door had closed.

  ‘Poor girl, her father just died.’

  ‘What? The Master?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Pat said. ‘It’s taken her badly, I’d say.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Luke said. ‘Would you tell her how sorry I am?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I wonder why she didn’t tell me?’

  ‘She’s like that.’

  Luke stared out the window. He could just see the edge of the trench in the dusk.

  ‘I don’t understand it anymore,’ he whispered. ‘All this dying.’

  ‘What’s there not to understand?’

  ‘Aren’t you feeding them?’

  Pat put down his pen. ‘True enough,’ he said, ‘and you’re not the only one that doesn’t understand. But it’s not the hunger that’s the problem. The fever’s worse than the hunger. Much worse. Ten times worse.’

  ‘So much?’

  ‘Yes, the fever’s the killer in the workhouses. They’re all running from the hunger, coming in to where we feed them. And what are we doing? Crowding them together in the kitchens and the dormitories. Packed like pigs they are, and if any man jack of them has black fever, in a few weeks most all of them have. We think we’re doing good, we think we’re feeding them, when all we’re doing in the end is killing them with fever instead.’

  He took two candles from the drawer of the desk, and placed them in the candle stands on the desk.

  ‘Is it that bad?’ Luke asked.

  ‘I’ll tell you how bad it is,’ Pat said, ‘I’ve been going through the numbers myself, and this is the way I reckon it. The fever is enough to kill the whole workhouse every second month.’ He took a scrap of paper from the floor and lit the candles from the flames in the turf fire. They flared.

  ‘Every second month?’

  ‘Isn’t that what I’m telling you? It’s a killing engine, this place, that’s all it is. One giant killing engine.’

  The trench was nearly invisible now. Luke shook his head in bewilderment, saying nothing.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Pat sa
id. ‘I shouldn’t have told you any of this.’

  ‘Arra hell,’ Luke answered. ‘It’s as well to know.’

  ‘At least it’s not as bad with ye in the mountains.’

  ‘Maybe, maybe not. Or maybe I don’t know. But there’s fever on the mountains too. And for every hundred workers you have down here, there’s a thousand up there, and I reckon the lesson’s the same, even if the fever’s slower spreading. The more work we give them, the more we bring them together, and the more we’re killing them, if the cold or hunger doesn’t get them first.’

  ‘Yes,’ Pat replied, ‘and that’s what they can’t see in the Union. The hunger started the fever right enough, but now it’s the fever that’s the worse, and all we’re doing is feeding it. The fever will kill far more than hunger ever will. And it’s a savage way to die.’

  Luke thought about that. The screams. The rotten stench of dying flesh, gorging on itself. He felt his stomach heaving, but controlled the urge.

  When he spoke at last, it was with resignation. ‘To hell with it all,’ he said, ‘we’re not going to sort it out, you and me, that’s for certain. It’s our own people we should be worried about. How’s things in Carrigard?’

  ‘As good as can be. Father and Mother are fine, Murty and Aileen too. Father is over the fever, like I told you. From all we hear, the price of corn in Kilduff is as high as it is here, but with the money we’re sending over, they’ve enough to eat.’

  ‘Thank God for that. At least that’s one thing off my mind for now.’ He looked at the papers scattered all over the desk. ‘I suppose I’d better help you with this.’

  Pat passed a pile of paper across to him.

  ‘Here, start adding this lot.’

  After an hour, they stopped.

  ‘Look,’ Pat said, ‘I was awful sorry to hear about that business about your wedding. It was a desperate thing to happen.’