Kerry Girls (23 page)
Authors: Kay Moloney Caball
In a nutshell, spending our own money, we have a right to expect the very best class of immigrants that can be induced to venture to this happy land, and it is downright robbery to withhold our funds from decent, eligible, well brought up girls, who would make good servants to-day and virtuous intelligent wives to-morrow, than lavish it upon a set of ignorant creatures, whose whole knowledge of household duty, barely reaches to distinguishing the inside from the outside of a potato, and whose chief employment hitherto, has consisted of some such intellectual occupation as occasionally trotting across a bog to fetch back a runaway pig.
Finally:
These women, all Roman Catholics, will naturally wed with our shepherds, hutkeepers, stockmen etc., who as a body we blush to say, are little better than heathens … The result of such a match, is if the children have any religion at all, they will be Roman Catholics; to an individual; the mother will dictate the religion and some day every one of these girls will be the centre of a Roman Catholic centre.
5
We stand upon no ceremony when we assert that we should look with very deep grief and dread upon the probability of the majority of our community ever being composed of Roman Catholics.
6
The most suitable emigrants, from the colonists’ point of view, would have been English females, free settlers, not out of orphanages, workhouses or convicts. This expectation was unrealistic, as these types of girls had no wish to travel halfway across the world to a place they regarded as only just above savage. ‘But the vision of an Anglo-Saxon Protestant Australia was powerful indeed, and each boatload of Irish was further reminder that this dream was receding, that the mixture was being further diluted.’
7
Charles Trevelyan’s warning to Lord Clarendon in 1848 proved correct.
8
Four years after the last of the ‘orphan’ ships, in a more thoughtful article on the Labour Question, the
South Australian Register
said:
They did not want Irish orphans. They wanted shepherds. Some persons might want housemaids, but the great want of labour in the colony was the want of shepherds. But he (the Attorney-General) had ascertained that from the hon. member’s district of Moreton Bay, where the best of the Irish orphans had not been sent, that they had all turned out well ; that in life, and that the others had conducted themselves in a creditable manner. He knew that when they first came into the colony the nature of the work might be for awhile strange to them; but scattered as they now were throughout the colony, he could assert, as a class, the Irish orphans had turned out well.
9
The newspaper and court reports from Moreton Bay reflect different types of accusations and offences to those of Sydney or Adelaide. They were mostly either the employer or the employee requesting that their Indenture be cancelled and both sides giving evidence of why this request should be granted. The girls were mainly accused of ‘impertinence’ or ‘insolence’ to their employers and in extreme cases of absconding without notice. On the girls’ part, they cited cases of excessive hard work, religious discrimination and impropriety on the part of the employers. The evidence of the girls and their presentation of this evidence shows that there were well able to defend their rights and their characters and did not intend to be subservient to anyone. Margaret Stack was accused by her employer of ‘repeated insolence and neglect of duty’. Charles Windmell, her employer, giving evidence, swore:
I ordered the girl to clean the knives and boots and shoes – it is a general rule in my house to have this done Saturday. I took my boots to her. On Sunday morning I found the knives and boots were not cleaned. I asked her the reason – and she wanted to know what sort of quality we were going to have that we wanted clean knives. I told her that if she didn’t clean them Saturday she should Sunday – she said she wasn’t going to clean knives or boots or shoes.
10
Reading the Australian newspapers of the day, there is no doubt that there was an inbuilt prejudice against both Irish females and their Catholic religion. The longer that the colony got settled and began to have confidence in its long-term future the more the wish was to have a replica of the ‘mother country’. Old fears and suspicions brought to the colony by English Protestants and Scottish Presbyterians in the main, came to the fore. A number of Ulster Scots, as they liked to be known, had taken their Presbyterian faith with them from the northern counties of Ireland. They had left small farms in Ulster and were now settled as substantial landowners in Australia, and they did not want to find themselves back with a Catholic majority. The difficulties of 700 years of Anglo-Irish relationships had followed to the other side of the world. These fears resulted in discrimination against the Irish population in the colony and the orphans were easy targets. As well as the strident editorials and letters to the main newspapers, James Dunmore Lang, who had protested even before they arrived, now got into his stride. He led a tireless crusade against ‘Popery’ and the Irish saying that they were ‘the most ignorant, the most superstitious and the very lowest in the scale of European civilisation’
In hindsight, Lang had little to fear as a great numbers of the orphans married outside their faith and their large families were latter pillars of the different Christian Churches. Nineteen per cent of the 1,285 orphans who disembarked at Port Phillip were Protestant and 28 per cent were born in the nine counties of Ulster, but they were all labelled with the ‘Irish orphan’ stigma.
11
So while the early colonial government wanted to promote family life within a stable society, in reality they wanted this to be a microcosm of what they had left behind in Britain – Victorian values in a white protestant community.
The ‘orphan’ apprenticeship contracts became another political issue. While the strict structure of indenture or apprenticeship which in the main was adhered to, with recognised rates of pay of between £6 and £8 per year, the rates were actually lower than the current rates then being paid to female servants in the colony. There was a fear that this would have the effect of reducing the wages of
all
female servants.
There is no doubt that the Earl Grey Scheme was meticulously planned and executed. The orphans were well looked after and properly fitted out for their new lives. But they were after all very young and inexperienced girls, sent to the other side of the world with little or no preparation for a new life there. Where they were guided and supported, as they were by Charles Strutt, they thrived. Where they were thrown on their own devices without support, they were not always successful.
The colonial pressure brought the Earl Grey Scheme to an end barely two years after it started. Gold had been discovered in Australia, Britain did not want to lose control of what was now a valuable colony rather than a penal outpost. Considerable profits were being made from the different agricultural exports. British companies as well as individuals were investing in both bush and town. British banks and mortgage companies had by now set up to operate in Australia. By the 1830s, wool had overtaken whale oil as the colony’s most important export, and by 1850 New South Wales had displaced Germany as the main overseas supplier to British industry.
12
The Australians who had been paying the bills to bring the immigrants to their shores, made it clear that this would no longer be the case. The Colonial Office in London soon saw the way the political will was blowing and needed no further persuasion to drop the initiative. They had got rid of just over 4,000 workhouse inmates, who would have been a continuing cost on their local ratepayers, without any cost to the Treasury.
Mary Ann Connor
Bev Cook tells us Mary Ann’s story:
Mary Anne Connor was my great-great-grandmother, through her youngest daughter Eliza Jane Smith.
Mary Ann was baptised in Kenmare on 21 March 1832, the daughter of Edmund (Edward) Fitzgerald and Mary O’Connor at the Church of the Holy Cross. Her parents may not have been married as she was baptised as Mary Fitzgerald but then went by her mother’s name of Connor. Her Sponsor was Mary Fitzgerald, who was perhaps a relative of her father. Their residence seems to have been at No. 14 Downing’s Lane Kenmare.
After both her parents died during the Famine she was admitted into one of the workhouses in Kenmare and then selected to emigrate to Australia under the Earl Grey Scheme.
The girls were sent to Cork on the 27 October 1849 under the supervision of the schoolmaster. £30 was supplied for their journey, maintenance in Cork and passage to Plymouth. They were transported to Cork city by Jeremiah Lynch for two shillings and six pence each plus one shilling and six pence per box. He supplied four good horses and cars with tarpaulin and straw for the emigrants and one horse and car with tarpaulin for the boxes.
Mary Ann left from Penrose Quay, Cork and travelled to Plymouth where she boarded the
John Knox
and then sailed via the Cape of Good Hope, arriving in Sydney on 29 April 1850. She was aged eighteen [arrival record says 17] and an orphan and ‘bodily health, strength and probable usefulness to the colony – GOOD. No complaints requiring treatment on the ship’.
There was an attempt to ‘educate’ the girls on board and schoolmaster J.J. Jones was employed to teach the girls to read and write, but he seems to have encountered a lot of opposition especially from the ‘Cashel and Cork girls who refused to attend their studies on deck’.
Mary Ann was initially housed in Hyde Park Barracks, the Immigration Depot for single females. She found a placement with the well-to-do family of Captain John Scarvell and his wife Sarah at Clare House, Windsor in the Hawkesbury Region of New South Wales. She was probably employed as a domestic servant. The uneducated Mary Ann seems to have had difficulty with her employers who applied during August 1850 to the Magistrates Court in Sydney to terminate her indentures. Mary Ann was then obliged to return to the Hyde Park Barracks.
The
Sydney Morning Herald
of 26 August 1850 reported the following:
Irish Orphan Girls – Mary Connor, a girl of apparently 17 to 18 years of age, appeared on the complaint of Mr Sydney Scavell, on behalf of his father and mother, Captain and Mrs Scavell, to answer the charge of neglect of work, laziness, and insolence. In answer to the charge, she made a long rambling statement, but as she spoke with her teeth closed, we could only catch a word here and there; indeed, their Worships, although she was purposely brought close to them, could scarcely understand a word she said. The Bench, however, listened with great patience, and having gathered something of alleged ill-usage, proposed putting her upon oath; but previous to doing so, Mr Fitzgerald (who had come into the Court a short time before, asked if she knew the nature of an oath? To which she replied in the negative. Did she know what an oath was? ‘NO’. The Bench finding that 10s odd were due her for wages, suggested that Mr Scavell should contribute that sum towards her to the place from whence she came, at the same time telling the girl that they could not compel Mr Scavell to do so, but it was a mere suggestion. This was most cheerfully agreed to by Mr Scavell. The indentures were, of course, cancelled. Mr Fitzgerald remarked, that during his whole career in his capacity as a magistrate, he had never met with such a lamentable case. It was truly lamentable to see a girl arrived at her apparent age come before that Bench and not known the nature of an oath! The Bench hopes that where she was going to she might have her mind enlightened by proper instruction, and thereby render her more sensible of her duties, and more anxious to perform them, if she should get another situation. The girl came by the ‘John Knox’.
The opinion of Professor Trevor McClaughlin, Macquarie University of New South Wales regarding the court appearance of Mary Connor brought by her employer Captain Scavell is as follows:
The newspaper account is most interesting and can be read in a variety of ways. It is a good example of an ‘innocent abroad’. Remember where she came from, the time she came, probably only speaking English as a second language, and she comes face to face with the judicial and other trappings of the dominant culture and makes her own stand against them. She probably comes out of that newspaper account looking better than her supposed social betters. Why didn’t the court listen to her claim of ill-usage – because she was innocent enough not to understand the significance of an ‘oath’ in court? A travesty.
By the time Mary Ann came to Sydney, the domestic servant market had to some degree been saturated with the female orphans. The practice of the authorities was to send those whose indentures were cancelled to somewhere other than Sydney. Soon after, on 2 September 1850, the steamer
Eagle
delivered 15 ‘Orphan Girls’ to Brisbane – it is a good possibility that Mary Ann was one of these girls.
Twelve months later the marriage of 40 year old George Hough and 19 year old Mary Ann was celebrated on 19 October 1851, at Pugin’s Chapel (St Stephens) Brisbane, by Robert Downing, the Roman Catholic priest for the parish of Brisbane and Ipswich in the county of Stanley, New South Wales (before separation). This priest was from Kenmare and his father, Simon Downing, was Mary’s former landlord. George gives his address on 19 October 1851 as ‘Kilcou [Kilcoy?], Brisbane River’. The marriage certificate shows Mary Ann, from Brisbane, was a Roman Catholic and was illiterate as she, along with the two witnesses, used an ‘X’ to sign the document. The witnesses were John Flynn of Brisbane and Margaret Sleet of Brisbane River. Mary was still unable to write when she registered Georges’s death in 1884 – again she used her mark.
Brisbane in the 1850s, with a population of 8,375, had all the crude, robust vitality of a frontier town. Horsemen, bullock-drivers and pedestrians formed the only traffic in the rutted dusty roads that served as streets. Teamsters camped at Hunter’s Forge, near the present centre of the city. Lean and bearded horsemen came in from distant stations, some with hair long and uncombed like kindred characters from the American West, wearing floppy hats plaited from cabbage-tree palm. They carried pistols in their holstered belts and shotguns in their saddle scabbards, for the roads were infested with marauding Aborigines and time – expired convicts turned bushrangers. A popular place for revellers was St Patrick’s Tavern. At the Treasury Hotel soldiers of the 50th Regiment of Foot, known as ’The Dirty Half-Hundred’, forgathered and often brawled with seaman, using their belt buckles as weapons. Aborigines were still dangerous in and around Brisbane in the 1850s. They were allowed in town during the daytime, but after sunset were forbidden to pass the ‘boundary posts’.
George Hough was born in Chester, England, about 1810. He was convicted on 3 August 1839 at the Denbigh Assizes of horse stealing. He was 28 years old and single at the time and gave his trade as horse breaker. He was sentenced to ten years and transportation to the colonies, along with 310 other convicts (302 arrived alive) aboard the
Maitland
.
He received his Ticket of Leave No 44/2599 dated 11 October 1844, but was arrested again for stealing in 1849 and received a sentence of months in jail. ‘A Ticket of Leave allowed a convict to work for his own benefit and acquire property on condition that he must reside in the prescribed area, attend a muster every few months and attend church weekly.’
George may have worked at Sir Evan McKenzie’s Station, Kilcoy (his marriage certificate gives his residence as “Kilcou”). The McKenzies were assigned five convicts, two of whom were Irish. They were hired in Sydney. George was employed as a labourer and timber getter.
George and Mary Ann seem to have settled at Ipswich on the Brisbane River where George worked felling timber. They then moved to Leichhardt St in Brisbane. During this time George and Mary Ann had two daughters born: Ellen Elizabeth (9 August 1852) and Mary Ann (7 May 1854).
George was arrested again in 1855, for stealing two pairs of socks, two pairs of trousers and two pillowcases from a washing line behind the North Brisbane Hotel. His excuse was that ‘he lapsed into a state of thoughtfulness while in a state of intoxication’. However, he was still sentenced to one month’s hard labour in Boggo Road jail. In spite of this and a couple more lapses there are indications that he still had a good reputation.
George converted to Catholicism and was baptised at St Stephen’s Cathedral on 24 May 1863. Teresa ‘Tess’ was born at Fortitude Valley in 1865. They were at Fortitude Valley when Queensland was granted separation in 1859.
The
Brisbane Courier
carried the following articles in reference to George:
Mr. A. Martin
… offered a number of properties by order of Building Society No. 2. Of twelve lots, nine wore sold as -follows : .. ; lot 8,at the risk of George Hough, subdivision 6 of eastern suburban allotment 31, containing 16 perches, with a 3-room house, for 25 pounds, to George Winstone.
Thursday: George Hough was apprehended in the street, by Constable Boc, having in his possession a quantity of wearing apparel, etc. which appears to have been stolen from the premises of Mr. Bond, of the North Brisbane Hotel, who identified the property. The articles had been hanging out to dry. The prisoner was committed for trial yesterday. (Saturday 30 December 1854)
George Hough was indicted for stealing some clothing, the property of Edward Bond, at Brisbane, on the 28th December, 1854. Guilty: one month’s imprisonment. (Wednesday 13 June 1855)
£1 REWARD.
STRAYED from Fortitude Valley, on Wednesday, the 7th instant, a Dark Brown MARE, branded J1 near shoulder, on neck near side. GEORGE HOUGH, Fortitude Valley. (Thursday 14 February 1861)
The family were at Windmill Street, Fortitude Valley for the births of Katherine 1967 and Eliza Jane 1970. George is listed in 1868 as a carter in Windmill St. and in 1870 as a labourer. At one time he collected timber from Downfall Creek, Chermside. His two older daughters are said to have helped him in this occupation. William and Richard both became draymen like their father.
George died at home in Windmill Street on 26 June 1884 of Apoplexy at the age of 74 (his death certificate says 84 years). Mary Ann lived in the house at Windmill Street until her death from abdominal cancer on 19 November 1896. Her daughter Eliza Jane Smith, who lived next door in Windmill Street nursed her while she was ill, and registered the death.
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF QUEENSLAND
Mr. Justice Real.
In the WILL of MARY HOUGH, late of Fortitude Valley, Brisbane, In the Colony of Queensland, Widow, Deceased. Notice is hereby given that the ACCOUNT of ELIZA JANE SMITH, the Executrix In the above named estate, from the Thirteenth day of January, 1897, to the Twenty-seventh day of February, 1897, has This Day been filed in my Office, duly verified by the said Eliza Jane Smith. All parties claiming to be interested in the said estate are at liberty to inspect the said Account at my Office, in the Supreme Court-house, Brisbane, on or before WEDNESDAY, the Seventh day of April next, and If they think fit to object thereto. Notice is also given that, whether any objection is taken to the said Account or not, I shall after the aforesaid day, proceed to examine and inquire into the said Account. Notice is further given that any person who may desire to object to the said Account, or any item or items therein, or the allowance to (the Executrix of a commission thereon, must before that day file in my Office a Memorandum to that effect.
Dated this Third day of March, A.D. 1897.
(L.S.) W. A. DOUGLAS,
Deputy Registrar.
Information about Mary Ann’s life in Sydney was supplied by Dorothy Chambers in her family history,
The Hough & O’Connor Australian Family
(2001).
