ORPHANS ‘SCATTERING’
and
some more graphs, and some more photo-graphs
These maps were drawn in the mid 1990s and thus need updating with material that has come to light since then. I’m putting them up because i know they are accurate and they still give a good idea how widely the orphans were ‘scattered’ throughout Eastern Australia in the second half of the 19th century.
Another reason is that mapping the orphans’ movements is a useful tool for discovering more about their history. Barbara Barclay has made excellent use of maps in her study of Famine orphans from County Mayo. There is no reason this cannot be done on a larger scale. I’ve already mapped the origin of the orphans based on the workhouses they were from (see blogpost 4). Could maps be drawn which show their more precise origins in Ireland, as well as their place of first employment in Australia, as indeed Barbara does for those from County Mayo, on her website www.mayoorphangirls.weebly.com ?
Is there not a computer programme that would allow us to map their movements over time? We could follow them between places of employment, and through marriage, birth and death records for much of their life. We’d need to find out more about such a programme. Does it exist already? There may be a lot of work involved?
The other maps I drew for Barefoot vol.2 were frozen at specific points in time, 1848-50; 1861; and c.1890-1900. They are still useful I hope. I’ve run the 1861 ones together for the map below, as indeed Mike Murphy did, in the Atlas of the Great Irish Famine. The colonies of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland were ‘separated’ from one another by that date.
Location of the orphans in c.1861 from their childrens’ birth registrationsI’ll add a couple more which might allow a closer look. The first is of Queensland in c. 1861.
Orphans in Queensland c. 1861The next is of New South Wales in c. 1861.
And this one shows the location of Earl Grey Famine orphans in New South Wales at the time of their death in c. 1900.
See post 12 for maps showing the location of orphans in Victoria.
WORKHOUSE GRAPHS
Here are some more graphs illustrating workhouse conditions, a bit of a throwback to earlier posts. You may wish to compare these with the ones in post 6.
Armagh workhouse in 1848
Enniskillen Workhouse in 1848
South Dublin Workhouse in 1848ORPHAN PHOTOGRAPHS
Now for some more orphan photographs and once again, my heartfelt thanks to the descendants who kindly sent me these to use.
Catherine Grady per New Liverpool
Maria Maher per Thomas Arbuthnot and her granddaughterOh dear, I still haven’t made much progress in mastering WordPress. I’ll try uploading some more and see what happens.
Rose Sherry per John Knox
Mary Healy per Elgin and her husband
Mary Doherty per Eliza Caroline 
Eliza McDermott per Tippoo Saib
Catherine Moriarty per Thomas Arbuthnot
Honora Haydon per Lady Peel
trevo's Irish famine orphans 
Hi Trevor,
Thanks for the amazing research you’ve done on the Irish orphan Immigrants and in keeping their memory and battles alive. It seems you’ve become a lightning rod for orphan stories so I too will share mine.
My gg grandmother, Ann LYNAGH, came out to Sydney from the Navan Workhouse. I had the good fortune to visit Navan a couple of months ago. The workhouse is now a hospital wing, and is so often the case, the tourists seems to bring more knowledge about the place than the locals have. (The hospital secretary had no idea the building she worked in was once a poorhouse until it was confirmed by some of her older colleagues). Nevertheless, the Navan Library had available many of the Guardians’ Minute Books which provided first hand accounts of conditions in the Poorhouse. The minute books detailed various corporeal punishments dealt out to adult inmates for minor infractions. It reported anything of note that had happened in the last week – such as attempts at scaling the walls, deaths and so on. One story i cannot get out of my mind was that of a man with three children in the house. He obtained a day pass and never returned, abandoning his children. I was quite moved when the librarian produced a file on each of the Irish Orphan Immigrants, amongst them my g g grandmother.
Ann left behind her mother and four siblings for Australia. She worked at Suttor’s Brucedale property near Bathurst where she met her husband, John HODGES. Sometime later John was able to scrape together cash to pay for the passage of Ann’s mother and siblings to Australia. This is all the more remarkable given the sectarianism of the day. John was C. of E. and Ann was R. Catholic. They spent most of their married lives at Wattle Flat, north of Bathurst.
In researching the family story, and reading directly from the primary sources, it becomes evident very quickly that Ann’s life and those of the other Orphan Girls were held only by a thin thread. In coming to Australia they were making history, though would never had realised it. Today there are many thousands of descendants from the union of Anne and John.
Best regards,
Matt Ryan
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Thanks Matt. Glad i retrieved this from spam!.
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Hi Trevor, I just noticed your reply, I must not have ticked the comments box. That certainly looks like an interesting project – food for thought. I’ve bookmarked the site – I’ll need to confer with my GIS expert! Thanks, Barbara
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Thanks for your kind comments Trevor. I did my two simple maps with my basic grasp of ArcGIS. Any proficient user of GIS mapping software could easily produce the types of maps you suggest – given the data. Sounds like a great project for someone!
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Barbara, Have you heard of this? A friend sent me the link a good while ago.
http://web.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgi-bin/site/pub.php?id=23
The work involved puts me off
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