Peggy Melia

Who is Peggy Melia?

Peggy Melia, famine victim, died 29 May 1848.

Melia lived in the vicinity of Roundstone. About nine a.m. on the morning of Monday, 29 May, she was seen by her neighbours walking towards Roundstone. They observed that she was in a very weak state. That afternoon, her brother, Martin, asked his neighbour, John Adley, for a shovel to bury Peggy.

John, his uncle Valentine Adley and several neighbours followed Melia. He stopped on the sea shore, by his sister, who was lying on the sand. He began to dig a hole but to the consternation of the onlookers, Peggy was still alive. Stating that she would die when put in the hole, Melia placed her in it, covering her with sand and stones, saying he could not lose his rations by coming again to bury her.

Resident Magistrate John Dopping took a sworn statement from John Adley on 3 June 1848. Dopping had the following to say of the event:

"The wretched man chould have had no object in the commission of the savage act but to save himself time and trouble or probably to put an end to the sufferings of his sister who must have been at the point of death ... the persons looking on were scarcely less criminal in permiting the thing to be done - most of them women and children. The place of the occurrence is within a mile of Roundstone, in a neighbourhood in which - as well as in other parts of Connemara - I regret to say some of the peasantry are scarcely human."