Following on from my last blogpost here’s my preliminary search for female orphans by the Subraon, William Stewart and Mohamed Shah (note the alternate spellings). It should give you a small taste of what was involved in identifying the original orphans by the ‘Earl Grey scheme’. It’s basically linkage across as many records you can find. Nowadays, in some respects the internet makes things a lot easier. But not everything is digitized. I began by typing ‘Subraon shipping list 1848’ into a search engine, and was directed to https://www.records.nsw.gov.au
This took me to a shipping list for the Subraon, a ship that arrived in Port Jackson on 12 April 1848; and at page 5, among the single females we find the following young women,
| Alicia Ashbridge | 19 | cook | Dublin Orphan Institution | C of E | Both read and write |
| Ann Brennan | 17 | House servant | ditto | ditto | read |
| Ellen Busby | 17 | do | do | do | do |
| Augusta Cooper | 17 | do | do | do | do |
| Martha Magee | 18 | nursemaid | do | do | Both |
| Patience Newcomen | 17 | do | do | do | read |
| Dorcas Newman (see report abt her) | 19 | do | do | do | died on the day after the ship arrived |
| Mary Preston | 18 | do | do | do | read |
| Emma Smith | 16 | house servant | do | do | both |
| Mary Sneyd | 18 | do | do | do | read |
| Ellen Stephens | 17 | nursemaid | do | do | both |
Readers will know the Subraon appears elsewhere in my blog. By using the search widget at the bottom of any blogpost you will be alerted to exactly where it is mentioned.
But will that widget take you to the conversation I had a couple of years ago in the Comments on my About page? Scroll down to my exchange with a descendant of Ann Brennan (see above). Debbie Horrocks was in Dublin at the time. I opined that the young women were from Dublin and Cork Foundling Hospitals that had closed earlier, or were just about to do so. (Did i get this idea from Joseph Robins’ The Lost Children, Dublin, 1980? Does anyone have copy?) Debbie found reference to a Dublin Foundling House at 52 Cork Street, Dublin, and a mention of a request for eligible ‘girls’ to go to Australia, dated 21 September 1847. Unfortunately the Archives box with the 1847 correspondence that would confirm this, proved to be unavailable. Yet the Sydney Board of Immigration Enquiry and Report does say the young women were accompanied to Plymouth by a ‘Mr Chanut, the Commissioners’ clerk’. Suggesting the Irish Poor Law Commissioners were involved along with the Imperial government in Britain in a subterfuge ‘trial’ of the so-called Earl Grey scheme…yes?
Over the years i managed to preserve my copy of the Minutes and Proceedings of the Immigration Board at Sydney, respecting certain irregularities which occurred on board the ship “Subraon”, Printed for the use of the Government only, 1848, located in what was at the time, the Archives Office of New South Wales. Mea culpa, i have lost the precise reference to where it may be found. Perhaps someone in the State Records can help us find it again?
Readers will see from the following brief extract something of the shocking abuse that the young Subraon orphans suffered. Given recent events and revelations one wonders how deeply embedded such abuse is in Australian culture.
Births, deaths and marriages
My next foray was into birth, death and marriage records for New South Wales. I started by searching for the marriage records of those with a distinctive name, and then moved on to the others, using as terminal dates, 1848 and 1856 or 1857. New South Wales and Victoria have a world leading system of vital registration that started in 1856 and 1853 respectively. Records before that date are usually early church records. I only found two of those eleven young women who arrived by the Subraon; an Augusta Cooper who married Charles Nayler, 1854, and a Mary Sneyd who married Joseph Smith in 1853! Not very promising.
Assuming we don’t have free access to these records (which i was fortunate to have in the 1980s), what should we do next? Make an appeal via social media and genealogical societies for possible descendants? Check online sources such as Trove for any mention of the young women? Check British Parliamentary Papers and available records in State Archives and State Libraries? Did any of the women appear in court? Or in a Benevolent Asylum? Or should we appeal for help via a blogpost? What happened to them? Were they abandoned once they disembarked? Where did they go?
Port Phillip arrivals
This is where my enquiry faltered. It is easy enough to gain access to the shipping lists in NSW State Records but not so the Melbourne records. One needs to be a member of Ancestry.com for that. The NSW records do not identify which of the single females on board the Wiliam Stewart and the Mahomed Shah were from an orphanage. If as i suspect they were from an Anglican orphanage in Cork we might surmise that on board the Mahomed Shah that arrived in Port Phillip on 5 July 1848 were Eliza Green (15) Nursemaid from Cork, Episcopalian, R&R; Mary Hayes (15) ditto; Maria Norton (14) ditto; Jane Travers (15) ditto; Ellen Travers ditto, and Anne Wikinson(15) ditto. Among BDM records (Victoria’s brilliant system of registration began in 1853) there is a marriage of Jane Travers to Henry Perkins in Kilmore in 1853. Her younger sister (?) Ellen had married Robert Charles Crump in 1852. Whereas for Mary Hayes there are 7 possible marriages for the period 1850-56.
Again assuming there were some ‘girls’ from an Anglican orphanage in Cork on board the William Stewart , can we identify them among 51 single females? There were twelve of them, described as Episcopalian or Church of England and include Mary Byrne (17), Mary Clarke(16), Eliza Cook (17), Johanna Daly (16), Jane Donovan (16), Mary Garvan (16), Jane (19) and Mary (17) Green, Anne Hegarty (16), Julia Peel(16), Jane Thompson (17) and Anne Young (16).
An Appeal
Before going any further i think we should confirm the theory that young women from an Anglican Orphanage, or Foundling Hospital, in Cork were sent out on these two ships. I’m hoping someone in the Public Records Office in Victoria might be able to help. Maybe Christine(?) who helped with the excellent wiki entry below.
http://wiki.prov.vic.gov.au/index.php/Irish_Famine_Orphan_Immigration
Or anyone? Please.
Ethical issues
There is another Appeal I’d like to make. It is to ask anyone working in this area if they have grappled with, and resolved some of the ethical questions involved? The interface between the private and the public can be labyrinthine to negotiate. I’ve touched on this somewhere else in my blog. Now where is it? Scroll down. There were some interesting comments too.
Public historians, family historians and genealogists are well aware of these ethical questions. Here’s a useful diagram from the twittersphere summarising recent online discussion of the kinds of thing we should all recognize. It was put there recently by Julia Laite of Birbeck College, University of London.
Thankyou, public historians.
Finally, may i offer my very best wishes to those students at Macquarie University, PACE interns, currently working on Irish orphan stories. It must be nearing crunch time for your submissions? What do they say in showbiz? Break a leg!
Don’t forget to sign up for the free online mag www.tintean.org.au There is a new issue on the 10th of each month.
trevo's Irish famine orphans 
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