No workhouse registers, coroners' inquest records or Catholic burial registers exist for Skibbereen during the Famine period. Local newspapers are therefore a key source. This issue of the Cork Examiner contains reports on a number of inquests, such as that on two-year-old Catherine Sheehan, who died on Christmas Day 1846 after four days with no food other than 'a small morsel of bread and seaweed collected from off the strand'. The doctor's verdict was that 'the child died of absolute starvation'. The same paper reports on a meeting the Skibbereen Relief Committee.

In September 1846, men employed at Caheragh on a famine relief work scheme to break stones went on strike in protest at their pay and conditions. They marched on Skibbereen until food was distributed and they were dispersed by armed troops.

The following month, one Denis McKennedy dropped dead while working on this road. He had been drawing wages of 8d a day but had not been paid for two weeks. At the inquest, it emerged that his wife and her family of five had only 21lbs of potatoes (given by a neighbour), two pints of flour and one cabbage in the week of his death. The verdict was that he had died of starvation, owing to the gross negligence of the Board of Works.

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