The Cruel Year: Recollections of the Irish Emigration of 1847

Type of resource
Author/collaborator
Title
The Cruel Year: Recollections of the Irish Emigration of 1847
Abstract
Two letters written by John Wilson, a shipping agent, steamboat owner and a "Scotch Presbyterian gentleman", who lived in Quebec City in the mid-1840s. He wrote two letters to Francis Gunn, an Irish-born merchant living in Quebec City, about the plight of Irish immigrants landing at the Grosse Isle quarantine station, downriver from Quebec City, in 1847. He claims to have been "the principal agent in forwarding some eighty thousand suffering people from Grosse Isle to Point St. Charles, Montreal." He maintained that: "Five thousand eight hundred were buried on the island that year, and I can never forget the awful scenes enacted there. Doctors were of no use. Bread, meat, clothes and cleanliness were what was wanted, and we cured more of them on the boats than the Government gang put together."
Publication
Douglas Library Notes
Volume
Vol. 12
Issue
no. 4
Pages
4-8
Date
Autumn 1963
Language
en
URL
Citation
Wilson, John. “The Cruel Year: Recollections of the Irish Emigration of 1847.” Douglas Library Notes Vol. 12, no. 4 (Autumn 1963): 4–8. http://irishfamine.ca/quarantine-inland-areas/scotchmans-narrative.
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