The unemployed roamed the country, begging and sleeping in ditches. An army occupation of fifty thousand was throughout country, backed up in every town and village by an armed constabulary (Costigan, 1969). The manner in which the Irish were clothed was a sure indication of great poverty and unavoidable sufferings. Some Irish thought that the potato would be permanently destroyed. In September of 1846 there was much alarm and apprehension. There were epidemics in crime as the people stole to survive. Ireland in 1849 was a land of ruins, beggars and silence.