December 27th, 1847: Nearly 500,000 people have died of starvation and disease - mainly fever, dysentery and smallpox. One should add so far, because this Famine is far from over.
John Mitchel foresees further "tremendous destruction" of human life unless radical steps are taken. He contends "that Ireland has wealth enough in her hands to support her own people if she will but use it". Mitchel's revolutionary views are considered impracticable by most of the Young Irelanders, and he resigns from the Nation.
At a lecture to the Confederate club in Newry, Co Down, his friend John Martin asserts that Irish agriculture is capable of producing food for a population of 20 million.
Of the estimated 110,000 refugees who fled to Canada this year, at least 20,000 perished on the coffin ships and at Grosse Ile. This does not include the thousands who died in fever hospitals and emigrant sheds of Canadian towns.
Irish immigrants turned Liverpool for a time into a "city of the plague", according to the medical officer's report. Up to 60,000 contracted fever and 40,000 dysentery and diarrhoea. Nearly 7,500 died. Priests picked up lice when they visited cellars to give the last rites and during the year 10 died. One Unitarian minister also died of typhus, along with more than 30 medical staff.
The Famine has claimed the lives of about 75 Catholic priests: almost 40 in Ireland; 25 in Britain; 13 in Canada, including the first bishop of Toronto, Michael Power.
Capt Wynne reports from Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim, where he is now employed as a Poor Law inspector: "I fear the extent of destitution in this union has never been fairly represented, it is perfectly frightful; accustomed as I am to scenes of misery in the western counties, I have never met with so extensive and hopeless destitution."
In one area of west Waterford, 200 constables assist rate-collectors "to force from the poor the means of relief for the poor". Relentless rate-collecting has produced £1 million this year to administer the Irish Poor Law.
The Coercion Bill receives royal assent - the 35th coercion measure enacted for Ireland since the Union. "The Famine may murder undisturbed," comments the Nation. This is our condition at the close of 1847: "A country to which its inexorable government awards punishment, but refuses protection."
Lord Clarendon feels as if he "was at the head of a Provisional government of a half-conquered country".
So with 15,000 extra troops in the country, workhouses enlarged to take 150,000 additional inmates, people dying of starvation in the west and fever still raging, Ireland wretched as never before passes from Black '47 into 1848.
This concludes the Famine Diary. A book on the subject will be published in 1998 by the Irish Academic Press