August 2nd, 1847: While the "surplus population" of Connacht estates is being shipped to Canada, Irish paupers are deported from Liverpool.
Nearly 300,000 Irish have crowded into Merseyside, more than one-third of whom are described as paupers. The remainder are emigrants in transit or cattle drovers.
The Liverpool Albion reports that under new legislation, poor emigrants are to be sent back to Ireland. "About 300 of them had sailed up to Saturday night. All of these embarked with reluctance so marked that, were it not for the passing of the Poor Removal Bill, doubtless we should have had the pleasure of their company and the gratification of contributing to their continued support for many a day.
"Twenty of them refused point blank to quit England upon any terms, and seemed to think that the kind treatment and the excellent fare they had been receiving here were amply sufficient to banish from their minds every vestige of love of fatherland."
They are arrested and told, "what they appeared to be ignorant of, that the system of giving outdoor relief, as in England, was now in full operation in their own country; that they had long enough been a burden upon the industrious shopkeepers of Liverpool; and that they must go back that night and be supported in future by Irish landlords. And, accordingly, that very night they set sail, along with others, for Mayo, Roscommon, Cavan, Louth, Dundalk and Drogheda".
So they lay, the Nation comments, "that human freight, in the night air, on the bare deck, in the skipper's custody, a squalid, steaming mass - a horrid sight, unseen on earth before".
In Manchester, on the other hand, a surgeon has died after attending to patients in the workhouse, where fever is rife among Irish inmates.
Meanwhile, Maj Denis Mahon is clearing his 9,000-acre Roscommon estate of 3,000 tenants. He charters vessels to deport more than 1,000 of them to Canada, at a cost of £2,400.
The first shipload arrives at Grosse Ile. Conditions during the nine-week voyage of the Virginius were appalling; 158 of the 476 passengers died at sea; 180 are sick. Those able to come on deck, Dr George Douglas reports, are "ghastly yellow-looking spectres . . . not more than six or eight were really healthy".
Douglas adds: "Since writing the above another plague ship has dropped in, the Naomi from Liverpool. This ship sailed on June 15th with 331 passengers, 78 have died on the voyage and 104 are now sick. The filth and dirt in this vessel's hold create such an effluvium as to make it difficult to breathe." Some of the dead have to be dragged out with boat hooks, since even their own relatives refuse to touch them.
Calcutta sends £2,500 for relief of the Irish Famine (£14,000 has already been collected by members of the British army, many of whom are Irish-born). A sum of £3,000 is raised in Bombay.