James Forrester was 16 when he died in April 1848. He had been refused admission weeks earlier to the workhouse in Boyle but was given "outdoor relief". A report of his death states: "He received 7lbs of meal on 8 April, the day being one of extreme severity, and is reported to have fallen on his way home with the meal in his possession."
This story is one of hundreds included in a new book on the famine, In Their Own Words - The Famine in North Connacht, written by Father Liam Swords, a priest of the diocese of Achonry.
It includes much new material uncovered by Father Swords in the National Archives and aims to personalise the tragedy of the famine by printing, in full, letters, reports and first-hand accounts of events at the time.
These are written by all kinds of people, from magistrates and constables to priests, ministers and relieving officers. It also includes letters written by individuals or groups of people begging for help. "I tried to concentrate on giving people's names, because most famine books just talk about people as statistics. This will also allow people to trace their relatives," Father Swords said.
The accounts of the suffering endured in townlands around Sligo, Mayo and Roscommon are shocking. One report describes children in a household as "bloated in their faces and bodies, their limbs were withered to bones and sinews".
Father Swords said he believes these accounts could help "demythologise" the famine. "It is clear from reading the book that there were a lot of local heroes and also local villains. It was not only on the government side that there were villains," he said.
The book is written in diary form with one or more entries for nearly every day the famine lasted. Place names for each entry are highlighted in the margins, allowing a reader with an interest in a particular location to find material relating to that place quickly.
In Their Own Words began as one chapter of a book on the history of the diocese of Achonry in the 18th century. However, Father Swords uncovered so much unpublished material that he decided to put together a separate book on the famine. The text runs to 500 pages.
Father Swords, who lived in France for 20 years, has published histories of the Irish in France and a first volume of the history of Achonry diocese was published last year. He is now working on the second volume.
In Their Own Words is published by Columba Press in Dublin and costs £30.