Earl Grey’s Irish Famine Orphans (17): Orphans scattering, some graphs and photos

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 registrations

I’ll add a couple more which might allow a closer look. The first is of Queensland in c. 1861.

Orphans in Queensland c. 1861

The 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 1848

ORPHAN 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 granddaughter

Oh 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

Earl Grey’s Irish Famine Orphans (6): Hiatus- charts and family forms

HIATUS

(some things from the cupboard while I decide what i should do next)

Religion of inmates in 1848, South Dublin, Enniskillen and Armagh workhouses

I’ll add a couple more things from my filing cabinet  for your perusal.

South Dublin workhouse in 1848 by age and gender

Dublin, Enniskillen and Armagh workhouse populations were both bottom heavy and top heavy i.e. the largest age groups were the elderly and the young.

SOME FAMILY RECONSTITUTIONS

These were the foundation for my measure of orphans’ family size, age at marriage, age at death, marriage partners et al.

Sometimes  my family reconstitution forms proved difficult to understand. Here Allan Smith was very close to getting it exactly right.

Margaret Stack family

Sometimes I had my doubts I’d recaptured an Irish female orphan. I had doubts about this next one so did not use her in my calculations.

Charlotte Willis Family–not an orphan?

Sometimes I was fortunate enough to go back into civil registration records to check on things; I found family historians often underestimated the size of their orphan’s Australian family. Having to purchase every registration that was made was just too expensive. Here’s one that got it exactly right.

HONORA SHEA FAMILY

ANOTHER CHART

STATUS OF WORKHOUSE INMATES 1848

just found   http://www.slideshare.net/GeobitsLtd/mapping-the-great-irish-famine-mike-murphy

You may need to type ‘mapping the Great Irish Famine Mike Murphy ‘ into the box that appears