British Association

In January 1847, was founded the British Association for the Relief of Extreme Distress in Ireland and the Highlands and Islands of Scotland which collected and distributed funds amounting to £263,251, shortly after increased by £171,533. One sixth of the total sums collected was allotted to Scotland and five-sixths to Ireland. Arrangements were entered into by the Poor Law Commissioners of Ireland with the British Relief Association for making the balance of their funds available in aid of those Unions in Ireland in which the greatest distress might from previous experience, be expected to prevail, combined with the smallest means of raising sufficient local funds for its relief.

Three of the six Unions in County Galway, Clifden, Galway and Tuam, were in the first instance, among nineteen others in Ireland, selected as likely to need assistance from the Association. To each of those Unions a Temporary Inspector was appointed to assist in the distribution of these funds, and to take care that due exertion in the collection of rates and otherwise should not cease to be made by the local authorities, in consequence of the external supply which might be given or might be expected to be given, in aid of the necessities of the district. The names of the Inspectors placed in charge of the Unions were: Clifden, John Deane; Galway, Captain Hellard, R.N., died of fever and afterwards Major McKie; and Tuam, Captain Labalmondiere.

In the other three Unions of Galway, Ballinasloe, Gort and Loughrea the means of delivering the destitute poor were limited exclusively to the funds provided by the collection of poor rates. During the famine years, especially 1847, the younger inmates of the County Galway hospitals and workhouses were attacked in considerable numbers by a peculiar and fatal nervous disease, which was fully described by Dr. Darby and Dr. Mayne; "It was characterised by the most extreme stiffness of all the muscles, similar to what occurs in lockjaw, and by such increased sensitiveness of the skin that the slightest touch or draught of air produced intense agony. It was induced by the preceding scarcity of food, and was not communicable from one person to another".

In the year 1847, the blight in the potatoes took place earlier and was of a much more sweeping and decisive kind. A very small breadth of land had been planted with potatoes in County Galway causing the great price to which they rose in the market so early in the months of October and November. The price was even then so high as to place the purchase of this food out of the reach of the peasantry, even when employed and in receipt of agricultural wages, and such fortunate labourers were few comparatively in County Galway. Few of them had ventured to plant this crop, rendered so uncertain by two years' blight, to a sufficient extent for the sustenance of their families. On the other hand, the large importation of Indian meal into the county had so far reduced the price of that and other description of meals that the money cost of human subsistence was not much greater than in seasons when the potato was in greatest abundance. In Galway, from want of enterprise or capital on the part of the landlords, employment was not available, the peasantry, being without the usual resource of potatoes, necessarily fell into severe privation; and after the exhaustion of the few vegetables they had planted instead of their accustomed food, inevitably required relief to preserve them from starvation.