Introduction

By Professor R. S. J. Clarke

Causes of death are rarely mentioned on gravestones, apart from violent and sudden deaths. Gravestones round the coast record shipwrecks, Drumbeg records a death in the Charge of the Light Brigade and many record deaths of those connected with the 1798 rising. However, several commemorate deaths from diseases now rarely seen in Europe, but common in the poor and overcrowded conditions of Ireland in the past.