Despite the enormous death toll from disease, the population of Belfast increased by 10,000 in the Hunger decade and continued to increase as people flocked in from impoverished districts in the country and minor towns. Funds were low, and had it not been for generous aid elsewhere, especially from the American conferences, many conferences would have fallen into serious debt.

 

In Derry, St Columb's conference reported that they had to raffle a bible and prayers book to make ends meet, as typhus and other diseases swept through the town. Distress was aggravated in many places like Lisburn and Randalstown where weavers were reported to be out of work because of the American Civil War. Great concern around the end of the 19th century was for Christian education. Both St John's and Columb's conferences in Derry set up libraries, and in Coleraine an extensive circulating library under the local conferences's management was self supporting.

 

An extract from the Bulletin in January 1900 reflects some of the problems facing the Society. "...The members of the Conference of Magherafelt, in the diocese of Armagh, were visiting a family reduced to dire want through the intemperate habits of the father. The children had nothing to sleep on but the floor. The Brothers procured beds and mattresses for them, cleaned up the room, and, by exhortations and advice, succeeded in curing the father, though he had been pronounced incurable, of the vice of drunkenness, and in arousing in him a sense of his duties...."