Kerry Girls (16 page)
Authors: Kay Moloney Caball
1
Minutes of Listowel Board of Guardians, 22 March 1851 – reproduced from John Pierse,
Teampall Bán
(Listowel 2013).
2
Killarney Board of Guardian Minutes, 10 June 1848 (Kerry Local History Section Tralee Library).
3
John Grenham,
Tracing Your Irish Ancestors
(Dublin 2012), p. 7.
4
The Killarney girls have not been included so far (January 2013).
5
http://www.scoilnet.ie/womeninhistory/content/unit3/
WomenInWorkhouses.html
.
6
Joseph Robins,
The Lost Children
, p. 274.
7
Dympna McLoughlin, ‘The Impact of the Great Famine on subsistent Women’ in
Atlas of the Great Irish Famine
, p. 261.
8
Emigration Commissioners to Colonial Department, 17 February 1848
, First Annual Report 1848
, pp.151–152.
9
Australian Dictionary of Biography
.
10
Reg. 2 No. 296, 2 March 1850.
11
Limerick Chronicle
, 12 July 1837, p. 2.
12
https://sites.google.com/a/aotea.org/don-armitage/Home/great-barrier-island-history/captjeremiah-w-nagle-1802-1882/convicts-on-the-neptune-1837-8-commanded-by-nagle.
13
Sydney Morning Herald
(NSW: 1842–1954), Thursday 19 September 1850, p. 3.
14
Goodbody, Rob,
Limerick Quakers & Famine Relief, Old Limerick Journal
No. 25.
15
S.M. Ingram,
Enterprising Migrants
, An Irish Family in Australia, (Melbourne 1975), p. 148.
16
Trevor McClaughlin,
Barefoot & Pregnant?
, Vol. 2 (Melbourne), p. 123.
17
Ibid., p. 123.
18
Freemans Journal,
Dublin, 16 July 1839, p. 4.
VOYAGE AND ARRIVAL
T
HE
E
ARL
G
REY
Scheme was a well-run scheme from the point of view of the care and attention put into the outfitting, conveying and shipping of the emigrants to Australia. Each ship carried a Surgeon, School Mistress and where possible a chaplain or religious instructor.
Stringent rules and regulations were drawn up by the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners, dealing with the most minute details of life on board ‘emigrant passenger ships proceeding from the United Kingdom to any of Her Majesty’s Possessions abroad.’
1
The first rule ordered that every passenger was to rise at 7 a.m., unless otherwise permitted by the surgeon. ‘Fires to be lighted by the passengers’ cook at 7am’. The rules continued, taking into account all and every event that could possibly occur throughout the day until ‘the passengers were to be in their beds at 10pm’. A great number of rules were taken up with the necessity of keeping the ship clean, who was responsible for the different duties and exactly the time at which they should be carried out. Interesting rules that do not apply on board ships today state the ‘no spirits or gunpowder be taken on board by any passenger’ and ‘no hay or loose straw to be allowed below’. Religion was taken very seriously and while ‘all gambling, fighting, riotous or quarrelsome behaviour, swearing and language, to be at once put a stop to’ so also must all passengers ‘be mustered on Sundays at 10am, when they will be expected in clean and decent apparel. The day to be observed as religiously as circumstances will permit’.
2
School hours were to be fixed by the religious instructor or, if no religious instructor, by the surgeon. Teachers were to be exempt from cleaning duties and there was a list of gratuities which would be paid at the end of the journey if the teachers had performed their duties to the satisfaction of the surgeon and the colonial authorities. The teacher’s gratuity ‘was not to exceed £5’.
3
The Colonial Land and Emigration authorities were scrupulous also in the arrangements they put in place in Plymouth, for the health, safety and welfare of the girls. Prior to sailing their health was assessed, taking into account the long voyage ahead. They were inspected for cleanliness and their ‘boxes’ were examined to check that the contents were in place as per the notice issued earlier to the workhouses. The matrons in charge had no compunction in replacing what they considered as inferior clothing and sending the bill back to Ireland. The surgeon superintendents were the people wholly responsible for the moral and physical welfare of the girls and a bonus of 12
s
6
d
was offered for each ‘orphan’ landed alive. The diet drawn up for the four-month voyage was an improved version of that already being fed to ordinary emigrants. The daily ration of half a pound of beef, pork or preserved meat as well as bread, sugar, tea and coffee was to cause physical upsets to the Irish girls, who had not been used to this quantity and quality of food in their Irish workhouses.
Rules were also drawn up for the conduct of the emigrants’ chaplain on arrival at Sydney. The chaplain was to visit ‘as speedily as possible’ and to ‘enter into communication with such of the passengers as may be members of the Church of England’. We would presume with the rivalry prevalent between different churches that the other denominations exercised similar visits to the ships as soon as they arrived in port.
Winifred Pierse
Winifred Pierse with an address in Causeway was baptised in Ballyduff, County Kerry on 17 December 1826. Her parents on the baptismal register are recorded as David Pierse and Bridget Cantlon. The priest in the Causeway/Ballyduff area at this time, Fr Eoghan McCarthy, disapproving of births outside marriage, christened all the girls born thus with the name of ‘Winifred’ and all the boys as ‘Jasper’.
The parish of Causeway comprises the older parishes of Killury and Ratoo but it is now divided administratively between Causeway and Ballyduff, each with its own church and presbytery. This confusing background must have led Winnie Pierse as she was then known, on arrival in Sydney to give her parents’ names as ‘David and Ellen’, her age as 19, her address as Rattoo, Ballyduff, Kerry. This record also tells us that she could not read or write. Winnie was in fact 24 years of age, over the actual limit of qualifying for an Earl Grey passage. She may have genuinely not known her age or she may have reduced it to qualify or she may have been supported by one of the Board of Guardians to enable her to get selected
Winnie was one of the girls who travelled on with Dr Strutt on the long journey to Yass. She was employed by J. Riordan of Gundagai at £8 a year.
She married William Hines Carrigg on 21 January 1851 at the Roman Catholic church in Yass, New South Wales. William was born about 1800 in Gort, County Galway, Ireland. They settled in Gundagai, where they had nine children: Bridget (1852), Ellen (1853), Ann (1856), William (1858), Ellen (1859), Mary A. (1862), Winifred (1864), Georgina (1866) and Frances (1869). William died in 1875 and Winifred in 1899 in Gundagai. Winifred and her family are included in ‘The Eden/Monaro Pioneers database’.
An interesting fact here is that there is an obituary of a John Pierse recorded in the
Adelong and Tumut Express
and
Tumbarumba Post
of Friday 1 July 1921:
After a good and useful life of 87 years, Mr. John Pierse, the squire of ‘Shadybrook’, Darbalara, died quietly at his home. Deceased’s only sister Mrs. W. Carrigg, Gundagai, died many years ago … John Pierse was like so many of the early Irishmen that came to Australia – a good citizen, straight, religious and clean living – an example to the younger generation of what constitutes one of Nature’s gentlemen.
Did Winifred send for her brother? Apparently he was initially a policeman in the late 1850s ‘in the stirring days of the gold escort’ and then he selected land at Darbalara. That he came to live in the same area as Winifred suggests that she had some influence in his decision to settle there
By May 1848 the scheme was in place and W. Stanley, secretary to the Poor Law Commissioners, was able to tell Dublin Castle that Earl Grey’s wishes had been fulfilled; 185 young females had been selected from workhouses in northern counties and their departure was imminent. In this letter of 24 May 1848 he also outlined an important fact; that his board hoped that his Excellency the Lord Lieutenant would approve of a decision they had taken. They wished to include in the overall scheme, ‘candidates who have one parent living, where the surviving parent, as well as the candidate herself, are both willing that the latter should take advantage of the preferred free passage, not just girls, both of whose parents were dead’,
4
which was the original criteria of the Emigration Commissioners. He added that if this proposal was not accepted ‘there is reason to fear that the full number for which free passage has been offered, will not be supplied’.
5
This statement was made after the majority of the Unions had replied to the Poor Law Commissioners with lists of girls, showing us that there were more girls in workhouses with one parent living than those with both parents dead at this time.
The first ship to leave for Australia on the scheme was appropriately enough called the
Earl Grey
, which left Plymouth on 3 June 1848 and docked in Sydney four months later on 6 October 1848.
There was immediate controversy on arrival. The girls on this ship were mostly from the northern counties of Ulster and it would appear that the surgeon superintendent, Dr Douglass, had an unhappy experience with them. How much of his later evidence was exaggerated is uncertain but he claimed that many on the boat were not orphans, that some were married, that they came from the ‘lowest grade of society and that many of them had been common prostitutes’. In a letter to Governor Fitzroy written the day after arrival he complained that the girls were notoriously bad characters. In order to get these supposedly bad characters out of the way and out of the public eye, thirty-seven of the more troublesome girls were put on a steamer for Moreton Bay, now known as Brisbane.
Moreton Bay had been conceived initially as a penal colony. Up to 1831 only hardened criminals had been sent to this convict community. It had a reputation as one of the harshest penal settlements resulting in a large number of deaths from malaria, prison breakouts, attacks from the native Aborigines and it was generally a tough and inhospitable territory. As well as convicts, two ships which berthed in Moreton Bay in 1849 and 1850 brought 517 Ticket of Leave men from Norfolk Island. Thomas Keneally points out the result of this shipment was ‘men let loose on the small towns of Brisbane and Ipswich, where they celebrated being free and on dry land by happily patronising hostelries and generally running amok.’
6
However, in 1838, with the discovery of a fertile hinterland, vast areas of land were opened up to free settlers and in the same year that the first Irish orphans arrived in Sydney, the first emigrant ship with free settlers, the
Artemesia
, arrived to Moreton Bay.
During the two years that the Earl Grey ‘Orphan’ Scheme was in place, Moreton Bay continued to be a location where the girls who were considered troublesome or difficult to place were sent. The main reason for this was that the colonial authorities wanted to minimise the negative publicity that might cause a further backlash against this scheme supported by the Imperial Government but paid for by the colony.
Eight more Famine ‘Orphan’ ships were to leave with girls from Irish workhouses, before any of the Kerry girls were to start on their voyage. One year on from the first departure, thirty-five girls left Killarney to travel initially to Penrose Quay in Cork, from there to Liverpool and on to Plymouth, where they departed, 31 May 1849 on the
Elgin
for South Australia. There were 196 Irish orphans among the passengers when it arrived at McLaren Wharf, Port Adelaide on 12 September 1849.
On the day of arrival, the
South Australian Register
recorded: ‘The female orphans on board the
Elgin
expressed themselves highly satisfied with their treatment and the Captain says he has not a fault to find with the young women’.
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He also had to report that one of his passengers had died at sea. This was Johanna Donahue (
sic
) one of the Killarney girls. Unfortunately it would appear that no proper details were taken on arrival, or if they were they have not survived. For all of the later Kerry arrivals in New South Wales, details of where each of the girls had come from, their parents’ names, their reading/writing ability or their religion were meticulously recorded. There seems to have been a rudimentary age given to each of these girls on arrival in Adelaide. As a result, we cannot say with absolute certainty that Johanna was one of the Killarney girls but we have a baptism recorded in Killarney for a Johanna Donoghue on 8 February 1835 and her parents were Thomas & Johanna Donoghue, which are the names recorded on the ship’s manifest. To compound the identification problem, the list of girls selected and compiled by the Killarney Board of Guardians for the Poor Law Commissioners and Colonial Land and Emigration Board has also gone missing. While it is referred to on at least two occasions in the minutes of the Killarney Board of Guardians, it has not survived.
Three days after arrival the Office of the Children Apprenticeship Board, who were the body vested with receiving, placing and the ongoing stewardship of the orphans, advertised:
The
Elgin
, with female orphans arrived. Applicants desirous of availing themselves of their Services, are requested to attend in person or by proxy at the Office of the Secretary, Native School on and after Friday next, the 14th instant. It is recommended that the orphans be removed immediately after the arrangements have been made. Signed M. Moorhouse, Secretary to the Board.
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