SNIPPET: "An important but forgotten chapter in the lives of the people of Limerick is to be found in a few lines of Maurice LENIHAN's "History of Limerick." The years 1771 and 1772 were a bleak period in the city. Unemployment, poverty and famine were widespread among the working classes. In 1771 the Pery Charitable Loan Fund was established for the relief of tradesmen through loans of three guineas to each, to be paid in instalments of 1s. 4d. per week. Though this fund helped to alleviate the distress of a large number of tradesmen, it did not prevent the hardship and misery from biting deep into the poor. A number of schemes were started to provide work for the unemployed, but by May 1772 work, money and food were still as scarce as ever. Matters came to a head on 12 May 1772, when a starving crowd gathered outside the Lock Mills seeking food. The people believed that a quantity of corn was hoarded in the building. The Mayor, Christopher CARR, called out the soldiers, and the mill was occupied by a sergeant's guard. The hunger-maddened crowd refused to disperse and were fired on by the guard. Three men on the opposite side of the canal were killed. The killing of the three men did nothing to asuage the anger or hunger of the people. On the following day another large crowd assembled in the Irishtown to again seek out bread or corn at the mill. The military was once again sent for and the 24th regiment was marched against the starving men and women. Three more people were killed, including a poor woman who was selling milk in Broad Street at the time. No further attempts were made to seek food at the mill. Charity, the ancient stand-by for all the social ills of the world, was again called into service. The Honourable Dean CROSBIE revived a neglected charity in the same year of 1772. This charity, known as the Widow Virgin Charity, was provided from a fund left by a widow named Mrs. VIRGIN in her will dated 30 August 1732. She bequeathed to the Dean of Limerick, in trust to the poor of St. Mary's parish a sum of 40 shillings per annum to purchase bread, to be distributed on every Christmas Day and Whit Sunday. Forty shilllings' worth of bread hardly went far among the famished poor but the widow's dying thought was a generous one. Apart from the fact that the Widow VIRGIN left a house in Quay Lane, held by Simon HOLLAND at forty shillings a year, little else is known about this woman. More is the pity. One would like to know much more about this charitable woman." -- From the Labour Party Conference Magazine" (1995), and republished in "The Limerick Anthology", ed. the late Jim KEMMY (1996).