Kerry Girls (10 page)

  
6
  Joseph Robins,
The Lost Children:
The Workhouse Child 1840 –1860
, p. 199.

  
7
  Judith Iltis, ‘Chisholm, Caroline (1808–1877)’,
Australian Dictionary of Biography
, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University,
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/chisholm-caroline-1894/text2231
, accessed 12 August 2013.

  
8
  ‘Review’,
Australasian Chronicle
(Sydney, NSW: 1839 –1843) 6 September 1842: 2. Web. 12 August 2013
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article31737084.

  
9
  D.W.A. Baker, ‘Lang, John Dunmore (1799–1878)’,
Australian Dictionary of Biography
, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University,
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lang-john-dunmore-2326/text2953
, accessed 14 August 2013.

10
  Mary Durack,
Kings in Grass Castles
(Australia 1997), p. 369.

11
  Ibid., p. 369.

12
  ‘The Darling Downs Early Pastoral Settlement’,
Townsville Daily Bulletin
(Qld. : 1885 - 1954) 15 Aug 1952: 5. Web. 25 Oct 2013
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article63540602.

13
  Thomas Spring-Rice, Monteagle – Papers [M976], 1833–1857 Library of New South Wales.

14
  British Parliamentary Papers relative to Emigration to the Australian Colonies, (London 1848), p. 3.

15
  Ibid., p. 14.

16
  Edward Senior evidence to Select Committee on Poor Laws (Ireland), Third Report p.113.

17
  Ibid., p. 113.

18
  Edward Senior evidence to Select Committee on Poor Laws (Ireland), Third Report, pp.113–114.

19
  British Parliamentary Paper, Papers Relative to Emigration, p. 83.

20
  Ibid., p. 88.

21
  Ibid., p. 88.

22
  Robins,
The Lost Children
, pp. 176-270.

23
  Ibid., p. 179.

24
  Apendix to the First Annual Report, p. 96.

25
  Ibid., p. 96.

26
  Joseph Robins,
The Lost Children
, p. 201.

27
  
Sydney Morning Herald
(NSW), 3 March, p. 5, viewed 25 November, 2013,
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page1503148.

T
HE
E
ARL
G
REY
Scheme was met with differing reactions in Ireland. Most of the Poor Law Unions welcomed the proposals as a solution to the problems of overcrowding and associated costs of keeping the orphans indefinitely. Almost half of the inmates of the workhouses were children under the age of 15, either genuinely orphaned or abandoned temporarily by their parents in the hopes that they would survive.

In Kerry, Guardians of four of the six workhouses – Dingle, Kenmare, Killarney and Listowel – decided to participate. However, Tralee Union turned down the scheme. Cahirciveen did not take part either. The Guardians in Tralee were not impressed. Two of those present at the meeting when the matter was proposed, objected to it on principle, saying that ‘the emigration of the bone and sinew of the country should not be encouraged’.
1
Other Tralee Guardians based their objections on the precarious state of the Union’s finances.
2
They were prescient in this view, as shall be seen later, in that a number of the neighbouring Unions had problems paying for the outgoings they would be responsible for, due to their continuous cash-flow difficulties. While the Australian Government was picking up the costs of transportation from Plymouth to the colony, the Unions would be expected to outfit the girls with clothing and shoes, and they would also be responsible for the costs of conveying them firstly from Kerry to either Dublin or Cork and by steamer thence to Plymouth.

The quarterdeck of an emigrant ship at Plymouth, 1850.

Emigrant Ship,
Illustrated London News
, 1850.

Many others in the country were not in favour, in particular nationalist newspapers. Then, as now, there was ambivalence in Ireland towards emigration. Those with a nationalist viewpoint saw it as detrimental. For them the simple fact that the English Parliament had suggested and sanctioned the scheme meant that it could not be beneficial to Ireland.
The Nation
labelled the scheme as ‘one of the most diabolical proposals ever made or conceived since Cromwell’s time’.
3
The
Tipperary Vindicator
called the proposal a form of white slave traffic.
4
In Kenmare, the respected parish priest Fr John Sullivan disapproved of the scheme, as he did later of the Landsdowne Estate assisted emigration scheme to migrate 3,500 ‘paupers’ from these estates to America. His attitude to any emigration was that it would be ‘the active, the healthy and the industrious’ who would go while ‘the drones would be left behind’.
5

In all, 117 girls aged from 14 to 20 years old left Kerry between 28 October 1849 and 8 April 1850 from workhouses in Dingle (20), Kenmare (25), Killarney (35) and Listowel (37). We have no idea of the views or attitudes of the orphans themselves to their proposed emigration to Australia. The Emigration Commissioners, when deciding to send only females, also stressed that the scheme was to be voluntary. It is not certain how many of the girls volunteered totally of their own accord or if there was an element of being pushed to go. Maybe it was only those with the courage to go, echoing Fr Sullivan’s view that it would be ‘the active, the healthy and the industrious’ who could see a brighter future ahead. We will see from the later lives of those who went, that in the main they had all these attributes allied to strong survival instincts.

With a very poor educational background – some were unable to read or write, and in the main they spoke Irish as their first tongue – the girls who were selected for the Earl Grey Scheme were being offered a leap into the unknown. Australia as a destination would have been beyond their limited imagination. They would have little or no concept of where it was, what their lives there would be like or importantly how far away it was from their communities in Kerry. While some of them were genuine orphans with no known kith or kin, at least half of the Kerry orphans had one or more parent and perhaps sisters or brothers living either in the workhouse or in the locality.

Did they realise that they would never again see their families? Emigration at this time was for life. Did they understand that after arrival, they could be separated from their workhouse companions by huge distances? Even with these unknowns ahead of them, the evidence we have is that considerable numbers of girls within the workhouses were anxious to be ‘selected’. One has to assume that most of the girls saw an opportunity that was worth taking, a way of leaving the miserable conditions in the dreaded poorhouse, no matter what the future would bring.

One of the biggest challenges facing the Poor Law Commissioners in 1848 was how to cope with the huge numbers arriving at the workhouses. Females would have a very poor chance of ever being discharged from the workhouse as there was little or no employment available for them. Neither were there apprenticeships available for females. Their ‘workhouse’ status would militate against them ever getting whatever paid work might become obtainable. Once they entered the workhouse they were regarded as inferior beings, and if they had been there for a number of years they became institutionalised and were regarded as difficult and troublesome. This was another reason for the Guardians to encourage volunteers to the scheme and to move them on at a young age.

The rules adopted by the Poor Law Commissioners
6
for the selection of ‘suitable applicants’ included that the orphans should be between the ages of 14 and 18, be of ‘industrious habits and good character’, free from all disease and vaccinated against smallpox. It was important that they should be unmarried so that there would be no impediments to marrying Australian settlers. They were also required to have a sufficient knowledge of reading, writing and arithmetic, and the principles of the Christian religion. An ‘orphan’ was defined as having lost at least one parent to death or abandonment. In order to prevent people from entering the workhouse for the sole purpose of obtaining assisted migration, the offer was limited to those who had previously been resident in the workhouse for at least one year.

The records we have from the Board of Guardian Minutes are excellent from some Unions and poor from others. Records had to be returned to the Poor Law Commissioners in Dublin on a weekly basis to a set format. They were mostly concerned with finances, the weekly costs incurred, the rates collected or not, the ordering of supplies of food and reports from the Master and officers, the medical doctor and, importantly, ‘orders from the Poor Law Commissioners’. There was also a weekly sheet to be filled in giving the numbers in the workhouse, the numbers receiving outdoor relief, the number that had entered, and the numbers that had been born, discharged and/or had died. There are no documents surviving showing names of inmates admitted or those who died or left.

All of the Unions recorded the correspondence received from the Poor Law Commissioners in Dublin, dated 7 March 1848, forwarding to them several copies of a communication made to Earl Grey by the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners on the subject of ‘young persons at present inmates of Irish workhouses who may be eligible for emigration to South Australia’. The Commissioners were ‘most anxious that advantage should be taken of this proposal of the Government’. They also reminded the Unions that ‘you will ascertain from the Board of Guardians, distinctly, their willingness to bear the cost of outfit and the expense of conveyance to the place of embarkation’.
7

Just one month after receiving the letter from the Poor Law Commissioners, on 29 April 1848 the Minutes of the Killarney Board of Guardians record:

It was resolved ‘that in reference to the Letter of the Commissioners of Colonial Lands and Emigration to the Under Secretary for the Colonial Department … the Master having reported after due inquiry that there are about 150 Paupers in the House of the age of 14 to 18 years willing to emigrate to the Colonies this Board beg to call the attention of the Poor Law Commissioners to this Report.’

Furthermore, it was resolved ‘that this Board are willing to convey such persons as shall be selected for emigration to Plymouth at the expense of the Board and also to furnish them with such outfit as the Commissioners require in the Memorandum attached to the letter of the 17th February’.
8

It is no great surprise that ‘150 Paupers’ were willing to emigrate when the numbers of women in the workhouse that week comprised 371 girls (aged 9 to 15 years) and 261 ‘able bodied females’ with a total complement of 1259 inmates including children. The Board was also responsible for 346 patients in the fever hospital.

However, matters in Killarney moved slowly after this. On 20 May 1848 while the Guardians were submitting their list to the board, they also enquired if it would be possible ‘whether the Ships in which it is proposed to send out these orphans could call at Cork for them which arrangement would save the expense of sending them to Plymouth.’ When this request was turned down, the clerk reported to the Guardians on 24 June 1848 ‘that Major Bolton attended at the Workhouse on Saturday 24 inst instant and inspected the female orphans returned on a list for Emigration to Australia by the Board of Guardians …’ Importantly the clerk also noted on these minutes that:

It was resolved that the Master having stated to this Board that there are at present in this Workhouse several young females between the ages of 14 and 18 years not Orphans but who in every other respect come within the regulation of the Emigration Commissioner’s Letter of 17th February last most anxious to emigrate to Australia, this Board therefore request the Commissioners for administering the Laws for Relief of the Poor in Ireland to forward if in their power the desire which these young females have individually expressed and which is also that of their respective parents, including such of them as may on examination be found eligible for Emigration with those already selected by Major Bolton which this Board consider will tend to their future welfare and should the Commissioners accede to this request, this Board will supply the funds necessary to convey these young persons to Plymouth and also the Outfit required in the Memorandum attached to the above mentioned Letter of the 17th February.