The Daily News and Evening Chronicle (Sydney, NSW) 3rd Nov. 1848 p.1
There is enough in the brief space of one week to show how the war of extermination is sustained, legislatively and executively, against the people. A letter from the Rev. Mr Mullarky says;
This townland is now made the theatre of many a melancholy and heart rending scene. The whole townland, I may say, presents the appearance of a battlefield the day after the fight. Nothing is to be seen but the shattered ruins of what were so lately the abodes of men. No less than thirty-three families, numbering in all one hundred and forty-five human beings, have been thrown on the world. It would be impossible for me to give a full and fair description of the wretched and deplorable condition of these unfortunate creatures stretched along ditches and hedges – many of them children and decrepit old parents, falling victims to cold, hunger and destitution.
The Limerick and Clare Examiner, received during the past week, gives from a special correspondent an account of wholesale evictions in the Kilrush union. It;
brings frightful details of the clearance system in unhappy Clare, and communicates the awful fact, that since last November one-thousand houses have been levelled with the ground in the Kilrush union.
The same journal, and under the same date states;
We have been informed that upwards of one hundred tenant farmers have received notice to quit in the neighbourhood of Broadford.
On Thursday, says another journal, ten families were ejected, under the superintendence of Dragoons, from the property, near Loughrea, of Mr. P. Connelan, who resides at Coolmore, county Kilkenny brother to Mr. Corry Connelan, Private Secretary to the Castle.
The Leinster Express and able Conservative organ, had during the past week, the following announcement;
More evictions at Clonaheen;
On Saturday last the sub sheriff the Queen’s County, John A. Fitzgerald Esq., accompanied by 100 constabulary, under Sub-Inspector G.S.Hill, and a company of the 71st Regt. accompanied by Capt. Colville, proceeded to the townland of Clonaheen, and ejected twenty-one families, numbering more than eighty individuals, including an old woman over ninety years of age! This property has been most fertile in the production of outrages; and this proceeding, especially at this season of the year, when the people had good crops, is not likely to diminish crime, or remove its causes.
This is a portion, a small portion only, of the published records of the week’s extermination.
The Burren and Beyond 