Soup+Kitchens.

SOUP KITCHENS In 55 of the 130 Unions (workhouse areas) closed on 15th August, those in 29 Unions closed on 12th September and in 19 Unions on 31st October 1847. The total cost to the rate payers (who had opposed the Soup Kitchen Act because rates had already increased from 5d (pence) in the pound to 1s 8d in the pound since the beginning of the famine) was � 1.75million. The Soup Kitchen Act was only a temporary measure, designed to sustain the Irish until the autumn harvest.

But the harvest of 1847 was just a quarter of the normal size due to insufficient planting in the spring.