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1991 “Barefoot & Pregnant?…” reprinted by Ligature in 2021.(2)
Category Archives: Female orphan photographs
Earl Grey’s Irish Famine Orphans (70): Tinteán
Some Good News
Just in case you haven’t heard already, the Irish-Oz online magazine http://tintean.org.au intends running a series of orphan histories over the next few months, beginning this Saturday 7 September.
Last month, August 2019, the editors approached me to help organize it. I was happy to do so for their philosophy is very much in line with my own. Open access to knowledge lies at the core of every republic of letters.
I am also an acquaintance/friend of one of Tinteán‘s editors whose work i happen to admire. She is a world authority on James Joyce and Joseph Furphy, and an editor of great skill and integrity who will do the contributors proud.
A small number of people have accepted an invitation to write a short narrative history of ‘their’ orphan ‘girl’. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart. It is wonderful to see the orphans stay close to you 170 years after their arrival in Australia.
The first history will appear 7 September inst. How long the series runs will depend on how it’s received, i imagine. Would you like to subscribe to the magazine? It’s free, and easy to unsubscribe. See the top right hand of this webpage https://tintean.org.au/about/ And don’t be afraid of letting us know your reaction.
How many millihelens (the word is from Sinéad Morrissey’s On Balance) would it take to launch another series, do you think?
Wabi Sabi
Earl Grey’s Irish Famine Orphans(56): Contents of the Blog
Blog Contents
This list should make it easier to navigate the blog. Some of the bits and pieces, photographs, maps, graphs and family reconstitutions et al., are meant to illustrate what I’m saying in other posts.
Clicking on the http:// link should take you directly to that post. At the end of each post, after the ‘Comments’ there is a Search box. Type in what you wish to search for and you will see if I’ve said anything about what you are looking for
Origins of the Earl Grey Scheme http://wp.me/p4SlVj
ORGANIZATION of the scheme http://wp.me/p4SlVj
Organization of the scheme (continued) http://wp.me/p4SlVj-2p
THE ORIGINS OF THE FEMALE ORPHANS http://wp.me/p4SlVj-3I
WHO WERE THE FEMALE ORPHANS? (cont.) http://wp.me/p4SlVj-4X
Hiatus: Graphs and family reconstitutions http://wp.me/p4SlVj-6Z
THE VOYAGE http://wp.me/p4SlVj-7z and
Voyage cont. http://wp.me/p4SlVj-8C
VOYAGE N.B. http://wp.me/p4SlVj-7X
Fotos and Family Reconstitutions http://wp.me/p4SlVj-cs
NO ROSE TINTED SPECTACLES; some sad stories http://wp.me/p4SlVj-d
Some Pics (Oz online Libraries) http://wp.me/p4SlVj-fE
Family Reconstitutions http://wp.me/p4SlVj-go
Maps (orphans in Victoria) http://wp.me/p4SlVj-gJ
GOVERNMENT PREPARATIONS FOR THE ORPHANS http://wp.me/p4SlVj-g4
Some more Pics http://wp.me/p4SlVj-jt
“Belfast Girls” http://wp.me/p4SlVj-k0
ARRIVAL OF THE ORPHANS AND THE EARLY DAYS http://wp.me/p4SlVj-h8
ORPHANS SCATTERING (maps and graphs and photos) http://wp.me/p4SlVj-nv
Another Aside: orphan pics and stories http://wp.me/p4SlVj-p7
20 British Parliamentary Papers: ORPHAN EMIGRATION RETURNS http://wp.me/p4SlVj-rc
WHY DID THE EARL GREY SCHEME COME TO AN END? http://wp.me/p4SlVj-q8
CANCELLED INDENTURES http://wp.me/p4SlVj-vf
Orphans and their families in Australia http://wp.me/p4SlVj-yU
Some more orphan family reconstitutions http://wp.me/p4SlVj-zv
Suey Taggart http://wp.me/p4SlVj-AB
NEW SOUTH WALES PARLIAMENTARY ENQUIRY 1858-9 http://wp.me/p4SlVj-BT
I’ve found an orphan (Jane Troy) http://wp.me/p4SlVj-Di
H.H. Browne and NSW PARLIAMENT REPORT http://wp.me/p4SlVj-D6
Where to from here? http://wp.me/p4SlVj-Gf
Implications http://wp.me/p4SlVj-I0
Family reconstitutions http://wp.me/p4SlVj-Ji
Unfinished stories (1) “Belfast Girl” MARY McCONNELL http://wp.me/p4SlVj-JQ
Unfinished stories (2) Mary McConnell http://wp.me/p4SlVj-LL
Another Aside; Register of applications for orphans http://wp.me/p4SlVj-OI
More snippets; notes from VPRS115 Superintendent inward correspondence http://wp.me/p4SlVj-P4
An uplifting story Bridget McMahon http://wp.me/p4SlVj-PV
Digital Maps? http://wp.me/p4SlVj-Sw
Useful websites and links http://wp.me/p4SlVj-TK
Irish Famine women : a challenge or three+ http://wp.me/p4SlVj-Ut
Addendum (South Australia) http://wp.me/p4SlVj-V4
Famine Rock 2016 http://wp.me/p4SlVj-XE
Barefoot & Pregnant? vol. 1 Preface https://wp.me/p4SlVj-YX
Barefoot vol.1 Introduction pp.1-5 https://wp.me/p4SlVj-Zg
Barefoot Intro vol.1 pp.6-11 https://wp.me/p4SlVj-106
Barefoot Intro vol.1 pp.12-17 https://wp.me/p4SlVj-10w
Barefoot Intro vol.1. pp.18-23 https://wp.me/p4SlVj-111
Orphan stories from Family reconstitutions https://wp.me/p4SlVj-12P
More orphan stories and their families https://wp.me/p4SlVj-2
A few QUEENSLAND orphan stories https://wp.me/p4SlVj-1au
More brief stories https://wp.me/p4SlVj-1ew
A few stories from SOUTH AUSTRALIA https://wp.me/p4SlVj-14R
Photos with tales https://wp.me/p4SlVj-1ub
SKIBBEREEN AND BEYOND https://wp.me/p4SlVj-1Aq
SKIBBEREEN AND BEYOND continued https://wp.me/p4SlVj-1G0
Some PORT PHILLIP stories https://wp.me/p4SlVj-1Qx
https://earlgreysfamineorphans.wordpress.com/2019/02/08/earl-greys-irish-famine-orphans-65/ Lucia’s podcast
https://earlgreysfamineorphans.wordpress.com/2019/09/05/earl-greys-irish-famine-orphans-70-tintean/
https://earlgreysfamineorphans.wordpress.com/2020/02/28/earl-greys-irish-famine-orphans-71-asylums/
https://earlgreysfamineorphans.wordpress.com/2021/02/04/75-criminal-women-again/
Earl Grey’s Irish Famine Orphans (52); photos with tales
Some orphan stories, with photos
Catherine Fox from Armagh per Earl Grey
Ann Nelligan from Mallow per Pemberton
Eliza Geoghagen from Athlone, Westmeath per Digby
Bridget Gaffney from Butlersbridge, Cavan, per Digby
There is a good report on the Digby voyage in State Records of New South Wales. The reference I have is SRNSW (State Records new South Wales) Microfilm reel 2852 Reports1838-49, 4/4699. The Digby arrived in Port Jackson 4 April 1849.
- ‘..he did against the Government Regulations defraud the Emigrants of a large portion of their rations…
- the provisions and condiments etc. were not of the quality contracted for by the Government or such as ought to have been placed on board for the Emigrants “consumption”…(the Sydney Board comprising Merewether, Savage and Browne even went so far as to sample some of the provisions themselves! If only our present day so-called regulators were as keen).
- Dr Neville further charged the Master with having “permitted the sailors to be too familiar with the female Emigrants in opposition to the authority on board and clause No 20 in the Charter Party…”
- Other : shipping: house servant, cannot read or write, no relatives in colony; sister Catherine also on Digby; Register 10 Nov 1849 complaint; 18 Dec 1849 Sydney, transfer. Appendix J No.128. 17 May 1850 indentures with JB Wathen cancelled, disobedience and neglect of duty; married Nathaniel Lawrence at Bathurst 13 Jan 1851; 13 children; husband a labourer, shepherd and bushman, lived Wallerwaugh, Mudgee, Bathurst & Wellington area; she died 27 Nov 1899, buried Stuart Town cemetery.
Honora Shea from Callan, Kilkenny per New Liverpool
Rose Sherry from Carrickmacross, Monaghan per John Knox
- Surname : Sherry (Cherry)
- First Name : Rose
- Age on arrival : 17
- Native Place : Carrick Cross [Carrickmacross], Monaghan
- Parents : Patrick & Catherine (both dead)
- Religion : Roman Catholic
- Ship name : John Knox (Sydney Apr 1850)
- Workhouse : Monaghan, Carrickmacross
- Other : Shipping: laundress, reads only, no relatives in colony; married William Alexander Chamberlain, 29 Oct 1851, St Marys, Sydney; 11 children; died 12 Mar 1899, from injuries caused by a fall, aged 66, lived Clara Terrace, off William St., Double Bay; William, a fisherman, died 6 Nov 1902, aged 73, both buried South Head Cemetery. Margaret: margkenstephens[at]bigpond.com; Kim: k.connor92[at]hotmail.com; Pamela: p.wittingslow[at]gmail.com; Judy: ronjudyhinkley[at]bigpond.com others without email contacts
- Read Her Story
Rebecca Cambridge from Ballyreagh, Fermanagh per Diadem
- Surname : Cambridge
- First Name : Rebecca
- Age on arrival : 17
- Native Place : Ballyrag [Ballyreagh], Fermanagh
- Parents : Not recorded
- Religion : Church of England
- Ship name : Diadem (Melbourne Jan 1850)
- Workhouse : Fermanagh, Enniskillen
- Other : shipping: house servant, reads & writes; Enniskillen PLU PRONI BG14/G/5 (841) Ballyreagh, entered workhouse 9 Apr 1849, left 3 Oct 1849. Empl. Mr George Moulds, baker, Collingwood, £8, 6 months; married Samuel J Harvey, 11 Oct 1854; 11 children; husband gold digger, labourer & woodman; lived Morang, died 25 Jun 1905, buried Yan Yean. She left 10 acres of land & cottage in Separation, valued £100 & 5 cows & furniture worth £40
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Earl Grey’s Irish Famine Orphans (51) : just a few from South Australia
A FEW MORE ORPHAN STORIES
One of the advantages of this blogging business is that you can lay your cards on the table however you like. Some of what I’ve done already is all of a jumble, set down and put out as I came across material in my filing cabinets. The beauty of it is, nothing is set in stone. My intention is to revisit some of my more substantive posts when I get the chance. Post 16 http://wp.me/p4SlVj-h8 looks as though it could do with some reworking, for example.
In the meanwhile, here are a couple more stories I hope you will like. South Australian Irish Famine orphans are relatively neglected. It may be because there weren’t so many of them or maybe they are just hard to trace. Let me suggest some avenues of research which I hope may have wider application. I’m just casting a net and hoping when I drag it to shore I’ll have an interesting catch.
Mary Taafe from Dublin per Inconstant to Adelaide
Mary was to live a long life with her convict husband, Samuel Dunn from Nottingham. After marrying, the couple moved quickly to Victoria where Mary was to give birth to fourteen children, nine boys and five girls, three of them dying in infancy or childhood. She herself lived till she was ninety.
It must have been Dawn Barbary who sent me this. Thankyou Dawn. Dawn supplied the names of her and Samuel’s childrens’ spouses, Hanns Wanned, Niels Jorgens, Nellie Plunkett, W. Renison, Tom Lucas, and Maud Tr…. Maybe their descendants have yet to discover they have an Irish Famine orphan in their family.
Our starting point, as always, must be the Irish Famine Memorial database for it has the most up to date information. There in synopsis is what is known about Mary. I wonder if Eliza was Mary’s older sister. That would mean she had a younger sister called Ellen and a mother called Mary. What kind of proof would we need for that?
I remember working with those North and South Dublin workhouse Registers in 1987. They were large, heavy registers closely packed with names which were sometimes difficult to read. Nowadays you can gain access to these Dublin registers online if you subscribe to findmypast.ie
In the North Dublin Register (National Archives of Ireland [NAI] BG 78/G/6 number 30984) Mary was described as being ‘in good health‘ and from Jervis Street in the city. Jervis Street runs directly north from the Ha’penny Bridge, not far from the city centre. Not that Mary would recognise it today. In Mary’s case, the Workhouse Register explicitly states, “sent to Australia“, as indeed it did for some others, Bridget Fay (28228), Eliza Harricks (29777), Mary Ann Newman (BG78/G/5 No.20650) and in G4, no.14640, Rebecca Thompson. Mostly, however, one has to use the method I described in blog post number five, http://wp.me/p4SlVj-4X See about a third of the way down under “Identifying the female orphans”.
The next step is to Peter Higginbotham’s brilliant work on workhouses to find out more about the workhouse Mary was in. See http://workhouses.org.uk/DublinNorth/
That is one excellent website, worth the many hours I’ve spent exploring it.
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Casting the net a second time, I dragged ashore an article by Flinders University academic, Mark Staniforth, that treats the orphans who came to Adelaide on the Inconstant. Do have a look for yourself
https://ehlt.flinders.edu.au/archaeology/department/publications/staniforth/2002e.pdf
Dr Staniforth also offers information about individual orphans, some of it originating with family historians. Mary Taafe is one such, where the claim is made that Eliza was indeed her sister. But no proof of that is offered there. I believe it is important to always ask, how do you know that, what evidence do you have, and how reliable is your evidence? Is your claim based on hard fact or have you taken imaginative license or a leap of faith? Just so long as you state clearly what the position is.
Catherine Bracken from Parsonstown
And to emphasise how treacherous this ‘telling orphan stories’ can be, compare Dr Staniforth’s brief biography of Catherine Bracken with Karen Semken’s that appears on the Irish Famine memorial website at http://irishfaminememorial.org/media/Catherine_Bracken_Inconstant.pdf These two accounts show us how easy it is to become ensnared in the tangled webs we weave.
One is a straightforward account of Catherine from Parsonstown (Birr) workhouse marrying William Robinson at Mount Barker in 1851, their having at least three children, and Catherine dying aged 52 in the Clare Valley. (Staniforth, p. 37, after the endnotes).
The other is a thoroughly researched and beautifully illustrated tale of ‘murder and mayhem’. Catherine’s first husband had his throat slit in 1856, and her second was executed in 1862 for the murder of their servant Jane McNanamin at Salt Creek. Catherine married yet again, for a third time, to George Ingham in 1871. According to Karen, she died in 1915 and is buried in West Terrace Cemetery, Adelaide. Karen mentions that one of Catherine’s descendants Dawn Ralfe was writing a book about Catherine. Does anyone have any news about this?
I see Dawne Ralfe has published her book. It’s called Murders and Mayhem: the true secrets, Inspiring publishers, 2014.
Karen has a facebook page devoted to the orphans. There are some great photographs there. https://www.facebook.com/EarlGreyIrishOrphans/ On the 5th April 2015 for example, she posted a pic of Matthew Moorhouse’s residence, next door to the Native School that acted as an Immigration Depot for the orphans. The same pic appears in her account of Catherine’s history at page three of the link above.
Karen’s revision of Catherine Bracken’s history raises a larger, interesting question: how many of the orphans had a criminal history in Australia, however minor their crimes or misdemeanours might have been? Those that did were found guilty of minor crimes, being drunk and disorderly, obscene language, petty theft, or ‘vagrancy’, a charge which the police often used instead of ‘prostitution’.
Margaret Dehee (or Duhy)
Dr Staniforth also draws our attention to a South Australian government report that lists sixteen Inconstant orphans who were prostitutes, including Margaret Dehee (various spellings) from Donohill in Tipperary. Dr Staniforth argues convincingly her surname was Duhy.
The information on this next family reconstitution form was from an excellent genealogist, Wendy Baker, sent to me in 1986. I hope Wendy is still with us. Margaret Dea(n)(e)/Duhy had five female children by her first husband Robert Strickland and another, Lucy, by her second, Charles Lindrea. Like Mary Taafe she left South Australia and sought her fortune in Victoria.
The Government report Dr Staniforth refers to can be found in British Parliamentary Papers. I’ve used the hard copy 1,000 volume Irish University press edition.
On the second of November, 1850, Governor Sir H.E. F. Young wrote to Earl Grey,
“My Lord,
I have the honour of forwarding a report by the Children’s apprenticeship Board, on 621 female orphans introduced into the colony during the last two years.
2. Thirty two cases of crime or misconduct were brought before the police magistrate; six are mothers of illegitimate children, and required relief as destitute persons at their lying-in.
Six more are living in the country in adultery.
Forty three have fallen into the condition of common prostitutes; although all had been placed by the Board in respectable situations…”.
(In all, less than fifteen percent of orphans, my comment).
Sixty-six circulars had been sent to Police Magistrates throughout the colony asking about ‘the conduct and respectability’ of the orphans in their district. Only thirty Magistrates had replied. (British Parliamentary Papers, Irish Universities Press edition, Colonies Australia, vol.13, Sessions 1851-52, Papers relative to Emigration, p.292). [I only wish our own present-day pollsters explained to us the methods they use, and on what their results are based].
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Incarcerated orphans
I wonder if asking how many of the orphans were incarcerated in Melbourne Women’s prison or in Darlinghurst gaol, or in Yarra Bend mental hospital, or Wollston Park, in Liverpool Lying-in hospital, or Dunwich Benevolent Asylum, or any similar institution, is the question I want to ask. A minority of the orphans (and how substantial a minority is moot) i believe were bound to spend part of their life in such institutions.
More than twenty years ago I asked, retouching what I said just a bit, ‘did Irish immigrants (to Australia) agree with other immigrants on …”the big issues”? Did they accept ‘capitalism and the modernizing, anglophone, world’ (D. Akenson), or were the casualties among them those would not or could not adapt to this new world? … And among those Irish immigrants were ‘friendless’, single, Irish Famine orphans the most vulnerable of all because of their ethnicity, because of their sex, because of their class, because of their lack of independence, because of their lack of kin support, and because of their dependence on males? The questions are easier to pose than to answer’.
Some have even suggested the trauma of the Famine made the Irish more susceptible to mental illness. I remain unconvinced. As I’ve said elsewhere, to suggest our orphans were transmitters of some workhouse dumping ground mentality, or biologically prone to some sort of “Celtic Melancholy”, or psychologically predisposed to mental illness, ‘borders on bigotry'(Akenson?).
Unlike most assisted Irish immigrants, the Earl Grey orphans were not part of a safety network. They did not have a network of ‘friends’,– friends in the usual sense of people from the same village or locality with whom they had a close, long-established relationship, and friends in the Irish sense of family members, once, twice and even thrice removed–friends they could turn to in times of need. They did not have a complex safety-net, woven with threads of kinship. That is what made them vulnerable to alienation in their new Australian world.
Orphan stratagems
The question we may prefer to ask is what stratagems did the orphans use to deal with whatever life threw at them? What legal rights did they have? When they were young, did they get married in order to escape a burdensome master-servant contract? And if their husband was legally allowed to beat them with a stick, how did they withstand domestic abuse? Did they adopt the drinking habits of their husband? Fit in, or flee? Ellen Leydon from Ennistymon in County Clare who arrived by the Thomas Arbuthnot, ‘married’ six times, using(?) males as her ‘shelter’, her way of coping. See her story towards the bottom of http://wp.me/p4SlVj-dQ And when old, if your husband has died and you do not meet the requirements for entry to a Benevolent Asylum, do you deny your children, say you have lost touch with them, say you have no money, and no means of support. Then you will meet requirements. Do as needs must. Did the orphans contest the historical role colonial society imposed upon them? Did they negotiate a place for themselves? Or is that being too optimistic?
(I’ve just started reading Garry Disher’s Her. That will cure any desire to return to the ‘good old days’).
May I ask if anyone knows a good general history of women in Australia that would help answer the questions asked in the last part of this blog? Which historians can we turn to? Shurlee Swain? Christine Twomey? Tanya Evans? Diane Kirkby? All suggestions gratefully received.
For those who didn’t get to hear Dr Kildea’s oration at Hyde Park Barracks on the 27th August 2017, Tinteán have kindly put it online at https://tintean.org.au/2017/09/06/only-nineteen/
Thank you Jeff for a brilliant, poignant speech.
Earl Grey’s Irish Famine Orphans (21):why did the Earl Grey scheme come to an end?
Why did the Earl Grey scheme come to an end?
AS per the “About” page of this blog, you are not forced to accept anything I say. Please feel free to let me know your take on why the Earl Grey scheme came to an end. History is always about discussion and debate.
One of the problems we face is that the most accessible sources that have survived, government enquiries, parliamentary papers, newspaper articles and the like, were written from the vantage point of the upper and middle lass establishment. It would be a shame to let only that decide for us what was important, and accept what they say at face-value. But sometimes, as in this case, they are very important. I just hope we do not lose sight of the young women themselves, or at least ensure that we come back to them.
My earlier attempt to analyse the demise of the Earl Grey scheme had ideology and Imperial-colonial politics at its base before suggesting the scheme’s innate structural weaknesses doomed it from the start. What also worked against it from the start were the scandals associated with the Subraon , and the first vessel to arrive in Sydney, the Earl Grey.
IN the end demolition of the scheme came from within the colonies themselves. Mounting opposition in the colonial press maligned the young orphans as ignorant workhouse Irish; they were untrained and immoral girls sent out to Romanize the colonies. The cry soon went up, send no more young women from Irish workhouses.
In my initial version of this post, I asked, were colonists opposed to the scheme because the orphans were Irish, Bog Irish dirty, Roman Catholic, from the workhouse, poorly trained and immoral? Because there were too many of them, and not enough from England and Scotland? Because the scheme originated with Earl Grey and the British Imperial power? Because they wanted full control of their Land Fund, and immigration policy? My intention was to direct readers to ways they might unpick prejudices against Irish female workhouse orphans.
We might start by looking at Earl Grey’s relationship with the Australian colonies. THat is the large context of the Orphan Emigration Scheme.
Returning readers will be aware of recent revisions (June 2017) to this blog post (first published in August 2015). Here’s another go (July 2019). My initial effort constructed its analysis of the demise of the Earl Grey scheme with ideology and Imperial-colonial politics at its base before suggesting the scheme’s innate structural weaknesses ‘doomed’ it from the start. What also worked against it from the start were the scandals associated with the Subraon and the first vessel to arrive in Sydney, the Earl Grey.
The larger context: Imperial and colonial politics
What political issues formed the backdrop to the Earl Grey scheme? For example, who controlled Imperial and colonial finances? Where was the money to pay for government-assisted emigration to come from? We’re colonial Crown Revenues completely under the Crown’s control to be used and spent as Earl Grey wished? Did Earl Grey arbitrarily charge colonial crown revenues for continuing convict transportation to Van Diemen’s Land?, and for an underhand renewal of convict or “exile” transportation to New South Wales?
What I’m suggesting is that there is more to the question than first meets the eye. The ideology that underpins political decisions is worth considering. Things which on the surface do not appear to be linked, are in fact very much part of a whole.
At base, the Irish Famine orphan emigration scheme is linked to a number of sensitive political matters: colonial labour supply and the expansion of government-assisted emigration; Grey’s attempt to continue Lord Stanley’s renewal of convict transportation to New South Wales; control of the Land fund and colonial revenues generally; and how Imperial Government and Colonial legislatures would handle the approaching constitutional reform.
If i might illustrate this further, at an early stage of his administration Grey accepted pastoralists’ demands for access to land that Governor Giáp’s had previously denied to them. But Grey had little faith inNew South Wales pastoralists’ ability to govern in the best interests of the colonies. The question of constitutional reform for the Australian colonies that was to lead to “Representative” and later “Responsible” government, was a burning issue for Earl Grey’s administration. AS my good friend Emeritus Professor Frank Clarke puts it, “Grey always harboured the most serious mistrust over the ability of squatter-dominated colonial legislatures to administer the land revenues in an impartial fashion. He though they would more often than not treat the land funds as loot to be distributed among themselves.” Some may contend that constitutional reform was all in the future. But it was very much there and not always in the background, as opposition to the orphan emigration schemes unfolded in Australia.
Let me give you an example to clarify this.
The convict issue and Earl Grey’s attempt to supply labour.
Even though convict transportation to New South Wales had ceased in 1840, Grey, without consulting colonists sent a number of convicts between 1847 and 1849. For him it was another way of supplying labour for the colonies. The Joseph Soames, Adelaide, Randolph, Havering, Hashemy and Mount Stewart Elphinstone arrived in Port Phillip, Port Jackson and Moreton Bay carrying convicts or ‘exiles’ as they were euphemistically known. The ‘exiles’ were given tickets-of-leave immediately on landing, and superseded throughout New South Wales. Some were forwarded to Sydney from Port Phillip because they were unwanted there. Others were farmed out to Maitland, Newcastle, Clarence River, and the Moreton Bay districts.
When the Hashemy arrived in Port Jackson in the middle of 1849, c.4500 people took part in a public protest in the streets of Sydney, precisely when the Irish orphan emigration scheme was in full cry. In June 1849, the protesters presented Governor Fitzroy with a petition asking the ‘exiles’ be sent back to England and Ireland. When he refused, he was presented with resolutions adopted at a public meeting viz. (1) censuring the Governor himself for his lack of courtesy, (2) demanding the dismissal of Earl Grey from office, and (3) advocating the introduction of responsible government immediately! One can see how easy it was for colonists to say “we don’t want your convicts, and we don’t want your paupers”! Reports of “The Great Protest against Transportation” appeared in newspapers around the country: “the injustice they now faced was far more flagrant, far more oppressive than that which had given birth to the American rebellion” (Colonial Times, Hobart 29 June, p.4). Little wonder then, that the Imperial Government in London was ready to listen, and put a stop to Grey’s sending convicts and workhouse orphans.
By September 1849 Orphan Committees in Adelaide and Melbourne were calling for a reduction in the number of orphans, and by the end of the year or early 1850, that the scheme should stop. [See the documents appended at the end of this post. They were part of H.H. Browne’s submission to the NSW Parliamentary enquiry.] As early as October 1849, for example, the Melbourne authorities were suggesting orphan immigration to the Port Phillip district should be suspended. But it was not until April 1850 that the last orphan ship, the Tippoo Saib, would leave Plymouth.
To quote something I wrote earlier viz. “Grey’s larger concern, providing the Australian colonies with labour, was to draw him into the quagmire of renewed transportation, ‘exile-ism’, and the emigration of convict families, political issues that would tarnish his name and from which he never really recovered. Not helped, of course, by his own high-minded attitude to colonials. Grey’s principal means of meeting colonial demands for labour was the renewal of large-scale government-assisted emigration. And of this, the female orphan scheme was but a part.
Yet, as Grey responded to pressing colonial demands for labour, he failed to resolve the long-standing differences between colonist and Imperial authority over the question of how government-assisted emigration should be funded and run. In fact he aggravated these differences by insisting that Britain keep control over land funds, and hence, emigration policy. His opponents would seize on the Female Orphan scheme as a means of embarrassing him and of pursuing their own political claims. In turn, some of the odium attached to Earl Grey rubbed off on the female orphans. Whether the orphans, themselves, were aware of being pawns in this larger political contest remains to be seen, it is clear their immediate fate was inextricably bound up with the name of Earl Grey”.
Weaknesses of the scheme
Some of the scheme’s weaknesses were ‘structural’ or ‘systemic’ weaknesses. Even before the first orphan ships had arrived, South Australian government officials were advocating the scheme should include a proportionate number of female ‘orphans’ sent from workhouses in England and Scotland. But that was always difficult to arrange. Young people in English Parish workhouses were sent into service at an early age, 14 or 15 years, was the response when the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners (CLEC) enquired about the possibility. [There were c. 80, in fact, sent from English workhouses to different parts of Australia, including some on the Ramillies to South Australia]. From a purely organisational point of view, it was easier for the CLEC to bring young women from Irish workhouses. Nonetheless, the cry that there should be young women sent from England and Scotland in proportionate numbers, was something critics of the scheme in Australia could and would use to their advantage.
The CLEC became a victim of their own organisational skills. Once the ‘production line’ of orphan ships was set in motion it was difficult to stop. Commissioners sent too many, too soon–that is– from an Australian point of view, not an Irish one. By early 1850, there was an oversupply of Irish female servants in Melbourne and Sydney. It became increasingly difficult to find employers the Sydney and Melbourne Orphan committees approved of.
Similarly, organisation of the scheme in Australia–Orphan Committees, master-servant regulations, children’s apprenticeships and the like–would come back to cause trouble for colonial authorities. South Australia, for example, stepped around the master-servant apprenticeship arrangements the Imperial government had asked for (except for the very young): they were too expensive to administer. Only to find the Irish orphans could exploit this weakness. Some of the orphans, knowing authorities were obliged to ‘protect’ them, returned to immigration depots when things were not to their liking. The orphans were to prove a lot more savvy than people expected. But their returning to the immigration depot was also an unwelcome expense colonial authorities had not foreseen.
After the scheme had ended, the Irish Poor Law Commissioners were to “ascribe much of the misconduct of the Irish orphan girls, to the mistaken injudicious leniency and indulgence shown to them by the [Children’s Apprenticeship] Board…whilst they were allowed to resort to the Depot from the country and from their employers, and to the absence of sufficient discipline and control whilst they were at the Depot on their first resort to it…“. Grey himself agreed: “...in my opinion the Irish Poor Law Commissioners have succeeded in showing that a considerable part of the causes which led to the failure of the plan is to be found in the injurious though well-meant kindness which was shown to the orphans by the colonial authorities” (Grey to Governor Young 24 Feb. 1851, British Parliamentary Papers Colonies Australia vol.13 Session 1851-2, p.348). See the same place for the full Report of the Irish Poor Law Commission, pp.348-52.
a ‘collective male mentality’
Also working against the scheme, was what we might call a ‘collective (male) mentality’ towards single female emigrants who dared travel “without natural protectors”. Here’s something from my Preface to volume one of Barefoot and Pregnant? to clarify what I mean.
“It is worth making the general point that contemporary attitudes towards females were inimical to any easy acceptance of the orphans. Single female immigrants to Australia were too often looked down upon by religious leaders and members of the upper and middle-class public in both Britain and Australia for much of the nineteenth century. It was as if the language of ships’ captains and surgeons, who were uncomfortable if not downright hostile to women convicts and female paupers in their charge, was the accepted way of saying things. Their condemnatory language was repeated parrot fashion by a succession of commentators on female immigrants as a way of attracting attention. The hostility of the early days towards convicts, and the paupers of the 1830s, for example, was to forge images and condition attitudes towards later female migrants, not least the famine orphans from Irish workhouses. Virtuous single women just did not emigrate to such a faraway country as Australia ‘without natural protectors’. Therefore those who did, could not have been really virtuous. George Hall put it to a South Australian Parliamentary enquiry in 1856 that one ‘could never expect to derive such girls of good character from such a source’, as Irish Poor Law Unions. Such a propensity for prejudging the young women led to the condemnation of them all, not just a few, as prostitutes, ill-disciplined and promiscuous during the voyage, and ill-suited for work in the colonies. The stereotype, once fixed, became very difficult to remove”.
No doubt there are exceptions to such generalisations. Surgeon Strutt comes immediately to mind, and no doubt many male commentators were well-meaning; they saw themselves as guardians working to improve the morals of the lower classes. Their fear was that the orphans would easily be led astray, and fall on ‘evil courses’. All they required, however, was one or two examples of ‘misconduct’ and their prophecy became self-fulfilling.
Thus for example, the Presbyterian Reverend Robert Haining accepting his appointment to the Orphan Committee in Adelaide, and before any orphans had arrived, suggested the young women be allowed “as little intercourse with the town of Adelaide as possible until they obtain situations and never if it can be managed, without some sort of surveillance for otherwise they will undoubtedly be thrown into the society of evil disposed persons who will both lead them into much harm and hold out inducements to them to withdraw themselves from under all control whatsoever and thus defeat the object which the government at home has in using that of indenturing them to respectable colonists who will look to their welfare and morals…“. (State Records of South Australia GRG 24/6 1287, 22 August 1848).
Or, from the Sydney Immigration Board, on the scandal associated with the Subraon which arrived shortly before the Earl Grey.
“a party of 12 female orphans had been put on board from a foundling institution in Dublin. The ship had not long left Plymouth when some of these girls were taken to wait on the officers and surgeon. A connexion of the worst kind sprung up between the first and third mates and some of these girls; and it is difficult to doubt that the same was the case with the captain, whose conduct and language to the girl who attended upon him is described by her as of the most improper and corrupting kind…the girls were repeatedly seen intoxicated with liquor given them by the captain and mates…several of these girls are now pursuing in Sydney the evil course into which they had been initiated on the voyage by the misconduct of the captain and his officers”. (Minutes of the Proceedings of the Immigration Board at Sydney respecting certain irregularities which occurred in board the ship “Subraon”. Printed for the use of the Government only, Bent St., Sydney, 1848) The enquiry into what happened on the Subraon occurred in May and June 1848, just a few months before the arrival of the first orphan ship.
A troubled beginning. The scandal associated with the first orphan ship, the ‘EARL GREY’.
Shortly after the Subraon brouhaha came the shock of Surgeon-Superintendent Henry Grattan Douglass’ report on the first vessel of the official scheme to arrive in Sydney, the Earl Grey. In a letter to the Colonial Secretary, dated 7 October 1848, only a day after the ship arrived in Port Jackson, Douglass claimed, that in the selection of orphans,
“gross imposition had been practised upon the Land and Emigration Commissioners;
that instead of girls educated in the orphan schools in Ireland (as the Secretary of the Emigration Board in London had led him to expect) the females placed under his charge had been early abandoned to the unrestricted gratification of their desires, and left to conceive as erroneous any idea of the value of truth as of the necessity of personal restraint;
that there are not wanting among them those who boast of the prolific issue of their vices;
that expatriation had been held out to them as the reward of the workhouse, and that the professed public woman and barefooted little country beggar have been alike sought after as fit persons to pass through the purification of the workhouse ere they were sent as a valuable addition to the colonists of New South Wales”.
Two weeks later, shortly after the arrival of the Roman Emperor in Adelaide, a similar letter was sent to the Colonial secretary by Surgeon Superintendent Richard Eades,
“the moral education of a great number of the emigrants was neglected, erroneous or vicious, careless of the opinion of society, possessing little self respect, and less self control, they were governed by their passions and impulses. Hence I experienced much difficulty in preventing moral degradation and in establishing and preserving good order…I gave several lectures on the cultivation of moral virtues“. (GRG 24/6 1763 CSO letters received)
The rationale of sending mainly Protestant northerners in the first vessels had backfired on the Imperial government.
But it was Surgeon Douglass’s report and the ensuing Sydney Immigration Board enquiry that was to prove the most damaging.
It was to take a year and several other enquiries–one by the Sydney Immigration Board, one by the Irish Poor Law Commissioners led by C. G Otway in Belfast, and one from the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners, in London,–before Grey made his own views known, viz.
Dr Douglass made charges of too sweeping a nature; …I think it is to be lamented that he had not been more scrupulous in specifying the persons he felt justified in describing in such unfavourable terms, instead of casting a general and indiscriminate stigma upon a large body of young women, several of whom must be presumed from the present evidence to have been undeserving of such blame.
The length of time it took for communication between England and New South Wales had worked to the disadvantage of the scheme. It, too, was a victim of the ‘tyranny of distance’.
Colonial opposition to the scheme
The immediate cause of the scheme coming to an end was that colonists in South Australia and New South Wales demanded it end. And Grey acceded to their demand. One advantage of the ‘electronic revolution’ of the last forty or fifty years is that we can read about, and explore, the opposition to the scheme by means of http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper The National Library of Australia has digitized, and made available online, lots and lots of newspapers. May I invite you to explore this great resource for yourself?
Not every newspaper is digitized; I recently was unsuccessful in looking for the Port Phillip Patriot (trying to find out more about William Kerr, the editor of the Argus) and The Miner and Weekly Star (what happened to poor Mary Coghlan). Alas nor is the Melbourne Morning Herald. But there are enough newspapers for our purpose. We might compare how the orphans were treated in South Australia, the Port Phillip district, and the rest of New South Wales, for example. The press coverage in each was slightly different: the ‘bad press’ and ‘scandals’ associated with the orphans were not the same in each district.
Typing ‘Irish orphans’ into the search box will bring up too many items to read. It would be best to ‘refine’ our search terms. Try typing things like ‘Irish orphans Land fund’; ‘Irish orphans workhouse’; ‘Irish orphans immoral’ into the search box. Maybe set a time limit too: 1849, 1850 would be the years to search. Let me give you a taste of the ‘gems’ we can discover.
I’ll start with the rabid sectarianism of the Reverend John Dunmore Lang who was in England between 1846 and 1849. Here’s a link to some of the letters he wrote to the British Banner while he was in England.
https://ia902606.us.archive.org/25/items/LettersOfDr.JohnDumoreLangInBritishBanner/Letters_of_Dr_John_Dunmore_Lang_in_British_Banner_1953.PDF See page 8 in particular for the following well-known quotation,
…I am as confident as I am of my own existence that these young women (Orphans from the Union workhouses in the south of Ireland) who are almost exclusively Roman Catholics, from the most thoroughly Romish and bigotted parts of Ireland, have been selected as free emigrants for Australia, expressly with the view to their becoming wives of the English settler and Scotch Protestant shepherds and stockmen of New South Wales, and thereby silently subverting the Protestantism and extending the Romanism of the colony through the vile, Jesuitical, diabolical system of “mixed marriages”.
The views he expressed here were later taken up by one of his acolytes, William Kerr, editor of the Argus newspaper in Melbourne, and in letters to the editor of the Sydney Morning Herald. See the letter in the Herald from “A Looker-On” on page 3, 1 March 1850, http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/page/1511476?zoomLevel=3
Kerr’s attack on the Irish orphans in the Argus and in the Melbourne City Council was to give rise to a furious debate in the first half of 1850. This link will take you to a passage that is often quoted about the orphans’ lack of domestic skills. I’m sure you know it already; it’s the one about ‘distinguishing the inside from the outside of a potato‘, and ‘chasing a runaway pig across a bog‘–page 2 of the Argus 24 January 1850. It also reiterates the views expressed by the Reverend Lang above, and criticises migration policies that neglect the ‘braw lasses of bonnie Scotland‘ and ‘the rosy cheeked girls of England‘. Do have a look.
The South Australian denunciation of the orphans took a different turn, even though the underlying issues were much the same. I’ll call this one ‘CULTURE CLASH‘.
Aliquis (hiding behind a pen-name is obviously not the prerogative of present-day social media) wrote in a letter to the South Australian Register 21 January 1850, page 3, column 5, under the heading “The Government Brothel at the Native Location”,
I allude to the depot at the Native Location for the reception of the female orphans landed upon our shores, where the most disgusting scenes are nightly enacted. I will not attempt to portray the Bacchanalian orgies to be witnessed there every night…
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/page/3932031?zoomLevel=1
The accusations were so pointed that Moorhouse [Matthew Moorhouse was the Secretary to the Children’s Apprenticeship Board which was the legal guardian of the orphans] organised an enquiry to show such claims were without foundation. (You can read the evidence collected at the enquiry, in my Barefoot vol. 2 pp.35-43 ). What came to light, however, is how fearful some of the young orphans were, left on their own, in a strange place, not knowing where the toilet was. Or maybe they were what Moorhouse accused them of being, ‘dirty Irish brutes” .
On the arrival of the Inconstant we had for some time from 70 to 100 girls in the Depot. Their habits were insufferably dirty; we had ample water closet accommodation, but they were too lazy to cross the yard, to use this convenience…(ibid. p 42)
And to defend himself against calling the orphans ‘brutes’, he told of the orphans assaulting one of the matrons, Mrs Kelly. They were obviously hungry for food that reminded them of home. Maybe another kind of ‘culture clash’?
There were 110 girls in the Mess Room, and as soon as they saw the potatoes, they rose, en masse, seized the Matron, tore some of her clothes off her back, and got possession of the potatoes. (p.42)
The Register later concurred with the Board that the allegations made by Aliquis were groundless. But nonetheless continued criticising the orphan migration scheme. See page 2 column 5 and particularly page 3 column 1 of this http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/page/3932169?zoomLevel=2
[The young and friendless orphans from Ireland] are provided with situations sometimes, and occasionally retain them with credit and character. Those who have not been debauched on board ship by the men, in some instances, from the Captain downwards to the cook, of course have a good chance of a quieter and a happier home than poor Ireland can give.
The contemporary media; a critical refrain
By early 1850, the refrain of the major Australian newspapers was the Irish orphans were ‘useless trollops’ who did little for ‘their’ colony. They were sent from the workhouse, without any skills, imposed upon them, using ‘their’ money when that money could be better spent on bringing others from England and Scotland. There were just far, far, too many of them flooding into the country. The SYDNEY MORNING HERALD stated its objections in its editorial of 13 March 1850. See page 2, beginning column 2, near the bottom of the page,
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/page/3932169?zoomLevel=2
Instead of a few hundreds, the girls are coming out by thousands. Instead of mere orphans, we are being inundated with Irish paupers. Instead of a temporary expedient,…we behold a settled system of poorhouse deliverance which, if not checked by colonial remonstrance, bids fair to go on as long as the Irish parishes have girls to spare, and the colony the means of paying for their emigration…
Of British female orphans we do not complain that we have had a disproportion, but that we have had none at all. This new species of immigration is altogether one-sided–it is exclusively Irish, and exclusively Roman Catholic…It is not an immigration of mere labour, but of sex; of females, and of young females. The destiny of these girls is understood by everybody…
The ground, then, upon which the colonists complain…is not simply that Ireland monopolises too large a share of their emigration fund, nor that Irish paupers are thrust upon them under the name of orphans; but that their unmarried youth are coerced into matrimonial alliances with Irish Roman Catholics.
To which the ARGUS added its own besmirching commentary; ‘their [the orphans] coming amongst us has not tended at all to raise the tone of colonial morality’ (editorial 22 December 1849): ‘…they hang on hand at the depot till a very considerable proportion of their number join the ranks of prostitutes infesting the more public streets of the city’ (15 March 1850 editorial):
and from a correspondent, ‘Adsum‘, 24 April 1850,
The females of this class can neither wash nor bake, they can neither attend to household wants nor field labour. They refuse in general to go into the country, and when placed in town they refuse either to work, or to learn those parts of their business of which they are ignorant. They lose their places, -and they have no friends to fall back upon–the brothel is open, and it receives them–and there amid unhallowed orgies, that youth, and strength and beauty, is spent and ruined…
[My own Barefoot & Pregnant? volume 2 pp. 35-78, has lots of extracts from the Melbourne press about the orphans and the great furore that occurred when the Melbourne Irish community took up the cudgels in their defense. See for example the wordy report in the Melbourne Morning Herald, Friday April 19, 1850, “Irish Orphan Immigration. Public meeting. In pursuance of a public notification to this effect, a public meeting of all persons interested in the cause of Irish immigration was held at the St Francis Hall, Lonsdale Street, last evening; the attendance was numerous in the extreme, every part of the building being filled to overflowing“. Alas the Melbourne Morning Herald does not appear to have been digitised and made its way to Trove as yet].
Some positive reports
Sometimes one reads a positive newspaper report about the orphans–the arrival of 105 orphans in Yass along with Dr Strutt, in the Goulburn Herald and County of Argyle Advertiser, for example,
–Or of their compatriots taking up their defense, the St Patrick’s Society of Australia Felix, in the Melbourne Morning Herald, 11 May 1850, 24 May and 6 June– against the Argus and the Melbourne City Council.
[See also Edward Finn’s letter to the Superintendent of Port Phillip at PROV VPRS 116/p unit 1 file 51/95 reporting the motions passed at a public meeting at St Patrick’s Hall, Melbourne on the 9th May 1850 for another taste of that Melbourne furore].
–or from letter-writers who were at pains to point out the young women entered agreements with their employer to be taught the trade of domestic servant. For this they were to be given food and lodging, and wages below the current rate for servants. Give them a chance and they would learn.
–or perhaps most interesting of all,
orphans who in the Moreton Bay district, in the words of Dr Connors, “appropriated the politics of law to defend their rights and status”. It is as if some orphans had heard the young woman in Brian Merriman’s Cúirt An Mheán Oiche (Midnight Court). I like to think some of the orphans in Brisbane courts did indeed channel that particular young woman.
Tar éis bheith tamall don ainnir ag éisteacht
Do léim ina seasamh go tapa gan foighne,
Do labhair sí leis agus loise ina súile
Is rabhartaí feirge feilce fúithi:
http://midnight-court.com/tmc-part-iv.html
Maybe there’s a different kind of culture-clash. That of feisty orphans. Here are some orphan voices from court cases,
“Mrs Williams caught me and put me out of the house–and I slept at Mrs Baldwin’s. I want my agreement cancelled”.
“She called me a bitch and ordered me out of the house…and held up a stick as thick as her arm to beat me with…I had to sleep on the dresser and buy soap to wash my own clothes”.
“What quality do you expect on Sunday that ye must have the knives cleaned?… No, I don’t know any better”.
“I’m not going upstairs just to please you”. “I won’t eat with a heretic”.
NOT THE WHOLE STORY
Clearly the press campaign against Earl Grey’s Irish orphan scheme is not the whole story. But it helps explain why the scheme was short-lived. The first vessel arrived in early October 1848, the last one, twenty-two months later, at the end of July 1850. Advice from the Governors of South Australia and New South Wales–based on requests from each of the Orphan committees in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney–may have been enough to persuade Earl Grey. A clamouring colonial press and ‘awkward’ questions in the British Parliament convinced him he should bring the scheme to an end. Thereafter, he simply may have re-directed other orphans from Irish workhouses to a different destination within the British Empire, Canada for example?
Some readers will have noticed that i have not made use of the “Legislative Assembly of New South Wales, Report from the Select Committee on Irish Female Immigrants..together with Minutes of Evidence, 1858-59, Ordered by the Legislative Assembly to be printed, 2 February 1859 (78 pages)”.
I intend looking at this separately. Indeed, there is much in the minutes of evidence about the Earl Grey scheme. It reminds us there would be further repercussions at a later date. But it is first and foremost about the Celtic Association in Sydney petitioning against the prejudices of the Immigration Agent, H.H. Browne. Browne had made adverse comments about Irish female immigrants in his Immigration reports for 1854 and 1855. He was allowed to attend the enquiry, able to put direct questions to witnesses, and given every opportunity to defend himself. The evidence he was allowed to present, as valuable as it is for the history of the orphans, is heavily weighted in his defense. There would be no rocking of the boat. Moreover, the witnesses, in talking about the orphans were relying on memories more than eight years old, a memory whose reliability may be questioned. I look forward to studying it more closely. See http://wp.me/p4SlVj-BT
By way of an incomplete conclusion
Obviously we need to pull all this together at some stage. The 1859 Report emphasizes opposition to the scheme was largely because the young women came from workhouses and were not domestic servants trained for city living: they were better suited to country living. But was this all of the story?
I’ve suggested ‘far from it’. There are other things in the mix as well: anti-Irish, anti- Catholic sectarianism, class prejudice, a very limited understanding of the famine and workhouse experience of the famine orphans both in Whitehall and in the colonies, a concerted campaign on the part of the colonial press against the scheme, particularly in Melbourne but not exclusively so, constitutional issues such as whether the Australian colonies should have control of their Land Fund, inbuilt structural weaknesses aggravated by the ‘tyranny of distance’, opposition to Earl Grey himself by his political opponents both in Britain and in Australia. In early 1850, for example, in the House of Lords, the Earl of Mountcashel repeatedly criticised the scheme for what he called its abuse “of the most disgusting and disgraceful character” of young Irish women, claims which naturally Grey ‘scornfully dismissed’ (Robins, p.218.) Under fire from so many quarters, Grey would call a halt to his female orphan emigration scheme.
Interestingly, right at the end of this chapter, Dr Robins answers a question i was about to put to you, “How much weight do you put on each of the things I’ve identified in this post?” He says (p.221) “…probably the main influence operating against the scheme was not so much that it related to immigrants who were both Irish and Catholic but that the colonists had now developed an amour propre which rejected the idea that their burgeoning state should continue to be built up on the unwanted produce of the workhouses and gaols of Britain and Ireland.”
Would you agree with this? With all I’ve said in this blog post? I’m glad to say that my analysis of the collapse of the Earl Grey scheme is not totally at odds with what Dr Robins’ writes in his chapter. His analysis concentrates on traditional political sources. He may disagree with my insistence that we attempt to view things from an ‘orphan’ perspective. He may disagree with what I have to say in my next post on “Cancelled Indentures”? http://wp.me/p4SlVj-vf
I’ve added (April 2018) some appendices from the NSW 1859 Parliamentary Report to the end of this post. They tell us WHEN exactly colonial officials made clear their opposition to the scheme, among other things.
Reminder
May I remind you of the annual gathering at the monument at Hyde Park Barracks on the 27th August, 2017? [The 20th annual gathering is on 25 August 2019] see www.irishfaminememorial.org for more information.
Just a few more orphan photos to end with; they are in order, Catherine Crowley per John Knox, Bridget Gaffney per Digby, Catherine Rooney per Eliza Caroline, and Eliza White per William and Mary. My thanks to their descendants who sent me these photos to use.
Catherine Rooney per Eliza Caroline
from the 1859 NSW Parliamentary Report
A Colonial Government want the scheme to end.
Appendix A is the Report of the Sydney Immigration committee re the first vessel the Earl Grey. These are appendices that H. H. Browne submitted to the NSW parliamentary enquiry. You will notice, page 62, that the Port Phillip Superintendent considered the William and Mary and Mahomet Shah to have brought orphans to Melbourne. These two ships were never recognized as part of the Earl Grey scheme.
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 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 
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