These small farmers dwelt in thatched cottages of three or four rooms, in which they brought up large families[466]. Besides the farmers, there were the cottiers, who lived in cabins of the poorest construction, sometimes built against the sides of a peat-cutting in the bog. The following table shows the proportion of cottiers to small farmers on certain manors of the Marquis of Abercorn, near Strabane, at the date of the famine in 1817-18 (Rogan, p. 96): Number of Families Manor Farmers Cottiers Derrygoon 368 335 Donelong 243 322 Magevelin and Lismulmughray 319 668 Strabane 302 415 Cloughognal 328 279 The cottiers rented their cabins and potato gardens from the farmers, paying their rent, on terms not advantageous to themselves, by labour on the farm. For a time about the beginning of the century the practice by farmers of taking land on speculation to sublet to cottiers was so common that a class of “middlemen” arose. One pamphleteer during the distress of 1822 speaks of the class of middlemen as an advantage to the cottiers, and regrets that they should have been personally so disreputable as to have become extinct. It is not easy to understand how they served the interests of the cottiers: for the latter were answerable to the landlord for the middleman’s rent, and were themselves over-rented and underpaid for their labour. The system of middlemen did not in matter of fact answer; they hoped to make a profit from the tenants under them, and neglected to work on their own farms; it appears that they were a drunken class, and that they were at length swallowed up in bankruptcy. After the first quarter of the century the cottiers and the landlords (with the agents and the tithe proctors) stood face to face; but at the date of the famine of 1817 there was subletting going on, of which Rogan gives an instructive instance in his district of Ulster[467]. Under this system of subdividing farms and subletting potato gardens with cabins to cottiers, the following enormous populations had sprung up in four parishes within the Dispensary district of Strabane and in four manors of the Marquis of Abercorn adjoining them, but not included in the Dispensary District: Town of Strabane 3896 Parish of Camus 2384 " " Leck 5092 " " Urney 4886 Manor of Magevelin and Lismulmughray 5548 Manor of Donelong 3126 " " Derrygoon 2568 " " Part of Strabane 2796