Oceans of Consolation: Personal Accounts of Irish Migration to Australia 9781501734588

Citation preview

OCEANS

OF

CONSOLATION

DAVID FITZPATRICK

Oceans of Consolation Personal Accounts of Irish Migration to Australia

CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA

AND

LONDON

Copyright © 1994 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 1994 by Cornell University Press.

Printed in the United States of America © The paper in this book meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences— Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Oceans of Consolation : personal accounts of Irish migration to Australia / [edited by] David Fitzpatrick, p.

cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8014-2606-5 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 0-8014-8230-5 (paper: alk. paper) 1. Irish—Australia—Biography. 2. Australia—Emigration and immigration—History. 3. Ireland—Emigration and immigration—History. 4. Immigrants—Australia—Biography. I. Fitzpatrick, David. DU122.I7025 994'.oo49i62—dc2o

1994 94-21662

Contents

Preface Abbreviations

Vl1 xm INTRODUCTION

1

Representations: Letters and Migration NEWS

2 3 4

FROM

AUSTRALIA

‘Whistling a Jig to a Milestone’: Michael Normile, 1854-65 ‘These Golden Shores’: Isabella Wyly, 1856-77 ‘Queensland for Ever, augus un Ballybug go Braugh’: Biddy Burke, 1882-84 VICTORIAN

5

7 8 9

39

96 T39

VOICES

‘A Happy Home for You and Myself’: Michael Hogan, 1853-57

6

3

161

‘Jack Is as Good as His Master’: Edward O’Sullivan, 1857-72 ‘We Are Not Living in a Wilderness’: The McCance Circle, 1856-63 ‘An Outside Part of the World’: Patrick and Edward Comber, 1862-92 ‘A Friendly Chat’: Philip Mahony, 1882-90

v

T74

23° 249

vi

NEWS

Contents

FROM

HOME

10

‘Facing the Wild Ocean’: William and Eliza Dalton,

11

1851-59 ‘Always Be Submessive to Your Superiors’: The Dunne

12

Circle, 1864-77 ‘It Takes Me Tow Days to Rite a Letter’: The Doorley Circle, 1877-1906 ULSTER

13 14 15

2-71

334

ACCENTS

‘Comming Down the Hill of Life’: The Hammond Circle, 1843-64 ‘We Will Meet in Ireland Yet’: The Brennan Circle, 1865-76 ‘Farewell Farewell My Children’: William Fife, 1860-81

361 39°

412

THEMES

16 17 18 19 20 21

Correspondence: Ceremonies of Communication Reciprocity: The Politics of Kinship Negotiation: The Process of Migration Origins: Images of Ireland Outcomes: Images of Australia Reflections: Culture, Identity, Home

467 503 516 535 561 609

Sources Thematic Index

629 643

Preface

O

ceans of Consolation: reverberant phrase OF A Clareman in rural New South Wales, thanking his father for writing him a letter and so bridging the gap created by migration. Migration: expected episode in the life-cycle of most men and women reared in nineteenth-century Ire¬ land. Australia: remote colonies in the British Empire, notorious for their penal origins, yet a major destination for Irish emigrants in the second half of the century. Personal accounts: the words through which emigrants and their connections at home strove to maintain contact, influence each other, and find solace in their separation. This book explores the personal correspondence of a few of those emi¬ grants. It reproduces fourteen sequences of letters in both directions, mainly composed by writers with little education and less property. These hi letters have been selected from a thousand or so that survive, out of the millions exchanged between Ireland and Australia in the nineteenth cen¬ tury. Each sequence has intrinsic interest as personal testimony, often ex¬ pressed in popular idiom with scant regard for conventional spelling, grammar, or syntax. Every letter has been transcribed in full, without al¬ teration except for the introduction of sentence and paragraph breaks. Clarifications are indicated [thus]; authentic oddities are represented thuss; elements lost through mutilation appear th[u]s. The sequences, otherwise unadorned, make fascinating reading. Yet they cannot truly ‘speak for themselves’. In order to understand how an emigrant in Maitland or Rochester might have interpreted messages from Clare or Down, we must explore that emigrant’s personal journey. We need to discover the relationships of those mentioned by name, the events to which allusions are made, the social and economic contexts in

Vll

viii

Preface

both worlds. We need also to be alert to awkward silences and evasions, and to seek clues to their origins. Therefore, I have used the sources of genealogy, biography, and local history to reconstitute fourteen personal stories. The commentaries, shaped by the letters, should enable the reader to identify more confidently the private and semi-public spaces within which correspondence occurred. They invite you to overhear more than the words alone. The letters in this book convey ‘facts’ and impressions on every imagi¬ nable subject (except sex), giving insight into the daily preoccupations of obscure men and women in both Ireland and Australia. These themes are analysed in chapters covering family politics, the organisation of migration, Irish origins, Australian outcomes, and cultural differences. Though four¬ teen sets of correspondents cannot ‘represent’ the interests and views of the lost thousands, they bring us closer to the experience of migration than any aggregate statistics could do. They also indicate certain common prob¬ lems of discourse between separated kith and kin, from which elements of a common rhetoric emerge. The forms in which Irish-Australian corre¬ spondents sought or offered consolation and advice would repay linguistic analysis: here, I make only a beginning. My strategy—combining full transcriptions and detailed commentaries with thematic analysis—is contentious. Some may be perplexed to find so elaborate an edifice built upon so few documents. Indeed, as the introduc¬ tion indicates, no previous editor of emigrant correspondence has shared my approach. While increasing attention has been paid to fidelity of tran¬ scription and provision of background, editors have ignored the forms and functions of this discourse of the unlettered. Today, students of literature are losing faith in the ‘canon’, and identifying less familiar forms of rhetoric through sources such as popular fiction, balladry, and unpublished auto¬ biography. Oddly, the personal letter is only now being recognised as a sub-literary form worth investigation in its own right. This book is a contribution to the study of popular culture, as well as the history of mi¬ gration. Oceans of Consolation is not the work of a team. I am directly respon¬ sible for every element of its composition, from the transcriptions to the thematic index. In the course of transcription and reiterated correction, I learned to recite each letter in my version of a regional accent until long passages lodged in my memory. When labouring over a microfilm reader in pursuit of family or local background, I shared the obsession of countless ‘roots hunters’ whose aim, like mine, was to reconstruct a living past from its desiccated fragments. When visiting a ‘site’ or selecting a picture, I re¬ inforced that construction with visual imagery. When instructing my com¬ puter to sort and deliver extracts on innumerable themes, I found my impressions and generalisations undermined with disconcerting frequency.

Preface

ix

My sense of what is possible, and justifiable, in the writing of history has been altered in the course of preparation—the excitement remains. I hope that I have found words for sharing that excitement with you. 1 am indebted to the custodians of the following institutions for permitting me to reproduce documents and illustrations, as specified in the footnotes and captions: Bolton Museum and Art Gallery, Irish Architectural Archive, Liverpool Central Library (Record Office), National Library of Australia, National Library of Ireland, Newcastle Region Public Library, State Library of New South Wales (General Reference Library and Mitchell Collection), State Library of South Australia (Mortlock Collection), State Library of Tasmania (Launceston), State Library of Victoria (La Trobe Collection), and University of Melbourne Archives. I likewise thank Heron and Dobson (Solicitors, Banbridge, Co. Down), the Deputy Keeper of the Records, Pub¬ lic Record Office of Northern Ireland, the Board of Trinity College, Dublin, and the trustees of the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum. Many other institutions have given me access to relevant books and doc¬ uments, including the following: Australian National University Library, Armagh Central Library, Belfast Public Library, British Library and British Newspaper Library, Bolton Central Library (Archives), City of Adelaide Archives, Department of Irish Folklore Archives (UCD), Gilbert Library (Dublin), Irish Valuation Office (Dublin), Maitland City Library, Mallow Heritage Centre, Meath Heritage Centre (Trim), National Archives (Dub¬ lin), Offaly Historical and Archaeological Society (Tullamore), Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland (Belfast), Public Record Office (London), Pub¬ lic Record Office of South Australia, Public Record Office of Victoria, Queensland State Archives, Representative Church Body Library (Dublin), Royal Irish Academy (Dublin), Society of Australian Genealogists (Sydney), Society of Friends Library (Dublin), State Archives of New South Wales, State Library of Queensland (Oxley Collection), and University College Archives (Dublin). I am also grateful to the bishop of Maitland, and the parish priests of Aghada, Cappawhite, Golden, and Liscannor, for allowing me to examine Roman Catholic registers in their custody. Sr. Marie Therese Malone (Jamberoo, NSW), Sr. M. Callista Neagle (Adelaide), and Sr. Paul (Dublin) kindly consulted the archives of the Benedictine, Josephite, and Presentation orders on my behalf, as did the Victorian archivists of the Society of Jesus and the Loyal Orange Institution. This book could not have been written without the generosity of those descended from the correspondents in this book. In addition to authorising me to reproduce private collections and associated documents, many rela¬ tives read drafts, sent painstaking comments, answered queries, and showed hospitality to an inquisitive outsider. I am grateful to Winifred Allen (Grovedale, Victoria), Jeanette Bakker (Greenvale, Victoria), the late Henry

x

Preface

Comber (Lahinch, Co. Clare), Michael Comber (Ennistymon, Co. Clare), Tom Comber (Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny), Gloria Creighton (Newtown, Co. Mayo), Margaret Dillon (Annaghdown, Co. Galway), Mavis Down (Warrnambool, Victoria), Tom Dunne (Navan, Co. Meath), Hon. Wallace Fife (Wagga Wagga, NSW), Bryan Hurley (Roma, Queensland), Terry Liggins (Hobart), Nancy Lynch and Joe Lynch (Tuam, Co. Galway), Joan McKay (Ottawa), Mary K. Normoyle (Derry, Co. Clare), A. D. Patton (Donaghadee, Co. Down), the late Maurice Quirk (Crocane, Co. Cork), Robin Wyly (Tasmania), and, most of all, Meta Truscott (Brisbane). My indebtedness extends far beyond this list, embracing all those who re¬ sponded to my appeals by offering letters and documents that could not be included in this volume. I have benefited from the specialist knowledge of various experts and fellow-scholars, including Marcus Bourke (Dublin), Tony Claffey (Tuam, Co. Galway), Eddie Dalton (Golden, Co. Tipperary), Robin Haines (Ade¬ laide), Andrew Hassam (Wales), Harry Hughes (Miltown Malbay, Co. Clare), Elizabeth Kirwan (NLI), Bruce Knox (Melbourne), Don Liggins (Auckland, New Zealand), Noel McLachlan (Melbourne), Mavis Newcombe (Maitland, NSW), Chris O’Mahony (Limerick), Trevor Parkhill (PRONI), Graeme Powell (NLA), Mark Staniforth (Sydney), Esma Turner (Huntly, Victoria), and Susan Woodburn (Adelaide). Don Akenson (Queen’s University, Ontario), Ruth-Ann Mellish Harris (Boston), Bob Reece (Mur¬ doch University, Perth), and Paul de Serville (Melbourne) all offered valuable suggestions. For their courteous but often challenging comments on draft chapters and their strategic advice, I thank three outstanding interpreters of emigrant correspondence: Charlotte Erickson (Cambridge), Kerby Miller (University of Missouri, Columbia), and Patrick O’Farrell (University of NSW). Despite our differences of approach, I have been inspired by their ex¬ amples and stimulated by their responses. Equally important has been the generosity of colleagues in the two uni¬ versities that enabled this book to be written. Trinity College Dublin pro¬ vided excellent research facilities and a peaceful background, mysteriously unruffled by the bitter winds of ‘enterprise’ and ‘review’. There I received support and advice from Louis Cullen, David Dickson, Jim Livesey, and Aidan Clarke. The Arts and Social Sciences Benefaction Fund helped pay for the illustrations. Trinity also allowed me extended leave, which I was fortunate enough to spend as a Fellow of the Research School of Social Sciences, at the Australian National University. I owe particular gratitude to Paul Bourke and the staff of the History Programme, with whom I passed two fruitful years. Ken Inglis, Allan Martin, and Barry Smith gave erudite comments on several draft chapters, inspiring me to follow tangents that were never blind alleys. Pat Jalland, Jim Jupp, and Iain McCalman were among those who offered encouragement at crucial stages. Many of

Preface

xi

my ideas were forged in three workshops on Australian immigration, held in Canberra in 1989, 1990, and 1992, from which the series Visible Im¬ migrants emerged. I thank Anthea Bundock for her careful handling of those volumes, and Marion Stell for transcribing or listing several sequences that have yet to be analysed. Richard Reid, then completing an important thesis at the ANU on secondment from the Australian War Memorial, was extraordinarily generous with documentary leads and abstruse information. I have learned much from his irresistible enthusiasm for the specific expe¬ rience. There are others whose support gave me the courage to complete what sometimes seemed an impossible assignment. Cormac O Grada of UCD made sagacious comments on numerous chapters, providing salutary warn¬ ings as I lurched into excessive ‘empathy’. Joanna Bourke of Birkbeck Col¬ lege (London) read my drafts, charted my drift from ‘fact’ to ‘discourse’, demanded overt discussion of gender, and provoked me to think beyond the limits that I had set myself. Eric Richards of Flinders University, with whom I have spent many happy hours on and off tennis courts in Adelaide, Sydney, and Canberra, somehow induced me to embark on this project. He has remained an appreciative but sceptical critic, gently undermining all my attempts to define and isolate ‘Irishness’. Roger Haydon, my tolerant editor at Cornell University Press and himself an expert on emigrant cor¬ respondence, made authorship a pleasure. Sheila Fitzpatrick (Chicago) of¬ fered probing comments, parallels with other histories, and hospitality in the last days of revision. As always, the critical voice of my mother, Do¬ rothy Fitzpatrick, was audible to me even when she was silent. Brian and Meg Fitzpatrick stoically endured their objectification as Irish-Australian migrants, and the consequent disruption of their schooling. Georgina Fitz¬ patrick tolerated my years of obsession with letters, commented on almost every chapter, and suggested the title. This book invokes the memory of two historians who bequeathed me some¬ thing of their passion—but, alas, only shadows of their conviction. Charles Manning Hope Clark (1915-91) Brian Charles Fitzpatrick (1905-65) David Fitzpatrick

Dublin

Abbreviations

ADB

Australian Dictionary of Biography

AJCP

Australian Joint Copying Project (mic.)

ANU

Australian National University, Canberra

cc

Catholic curate

DED

District Electoral Division Her Majesty’s Commission of Inquiry into the State of the Law and

Devon Commission

Practice in Respect to the Occupation of Land in Ireland: Report, Evidence, and Appendices, in HCP, 1845, xix-xxii

HCP

House of Commons, Papers

IVO

Irish Valuation Office, Dublin

mic.

microform

NAD

National Archives, Dublin

NLA

National Library of Australia, Canberra

NLI

National Library of Ireland, Dublin

NSW

New South Wales auction documents printed for courts of Incumbered Estates in Ire¬

O’Brien Rentals

land, Landed Estates, and Chancery Division, Land Judges—sets in NAD and NLI

OED Poor Inquiry

Oxford English Dictionary His Majesty’s Commissioners for Inquiring into the Condition of the Poorer Classes in Ireland: Reports and Appendices, in HCP, 1835, xxxii, Part I; 1836, xxx-xxxiv; 1837, li; 1837-38, xxxviii; 1845, xliii (index)

PRO

parish priest Public Record Office, London

PRONI

Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast

PP

xm

xiv

Abbreviations

PROSA

Public Record Office of South Australia, Adelaide

PROV

Public Record Office of Victoria, Melbourne

Q

question number, in Minutes of Evidence, HCP

QSA

Queensland State Archives, Brisbane

RIC

[Royal] Irish Constabulary

SANSW

State Archives of NSW, Sydney

TCD

Trinity College, Dublin

UCD

University College, Dublin

Note: After each extract from a letter, the source is indicated by a reference such as (No 3a), signifying the sequence (Normile), position in that sequence (third let¬ ter), and location within the letter (first paragraph). In commentaries, references to the corresponding sequences take the abbreviated form (3a). A reference such as (No 3a: 5t) indicates that a comparable passage may be found in Normile’s fifth letter.

Figure

i. Fireside Reflections (Illustrated Sydney News, 28 March 1874: NLA).

CHAPTER

I

Representations: Letters and Migration

M

igration is a universal human experience, so vast and complex

that it defies satisfactory representation. Most human migrations, such as crossing a room or a street, are unrecorded and therefore tend to escape the historian’s eye. Others leave a blurred imprint in the birthplace returns of a census or civil register. Certain movements, such as passing through an immigration check, are often enumerated with sufficient con¬ sistency to permit aggregate analysis. The surviving documents irresistibly invite the manufacture of composite profiles, showing the proportion of movers of each sex, age-group, occupation, educational level, religion, or any other attribute recorded by official enumerators. Comparison of those profiles with others characterising the populations of origin, or settlement, may generate models explaining migration in terms of the economic inter¬ ests of vulnerable sub-groups. Aggregate representations were until recently dominant in the analysis of migration. Human movement was pictured as a flow, subject to ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors governing its dynamics. The individual human mover was invisible, except in the shape of an identikit figure, conforming to some general model of motivation.1 Reliance on aggregate profiles drawn from official records has obvious, often crippling, disadvantages. Being of little interest to enumerators in most modern states, short-distance movement within countries is resistant to statistical analysis, notwithstanding the heroic attempts of geographers and historians to reconstruct local flows from census and registration data. Reverse migration is also poorly recorded, being primarily a movement of

1 For an example of this approach, see David Fitzpatrick, ‘Irish Emigration in the Later Nine¬ teenth Century’, in Irish Historical Studies, xxii, no. 86 (1980), pp. 126—43.

3

4

Introduction

citizens entitled to re-enter their country of origin without inquisition. Ag¬ gregate studies of international migration from the British Isles have there¬ fore dealt almost exclusively with outward movement, sometimes offering the implausible justification that reverse migration was negligible.2 Repre¬ senting migration through composite profiles has a still more fundamental flaw. However methodical the official registers may be, they provide at best a few snapshots of individuals whose movements beforehand and after¬ wards are unmarked. The lifelong trajectories of personal migration (for¬ wards, backwards, sideways) remain indistinct, although nominal collation of certain unusually rich sources of official data may mitigate this defect.3 The continuum of movement is thus represented only by fragments, whose significance within the continuum is unknown. Uncontaminated by academic obsession with aggregate statistics, count¬ less family chroniclers have preferred another representation of human migration: the story of their ancestors’ movements, converging in the prop¬ agation of the chronicler. The Irish connection has been of particular in¬ terest to Australian roots-hunters, who are now well supplied with indices and finding-aids to official registers and records. In some cases, painstaking collation of genealogical and local records with family memorabilia has generated detailed chronicles of individual movements to, from, and within Australia. A happy by-product of this upsurge in family history has been widespread acknowledgement of the importance of old photographs, dia¬ ries, and letters, which owners and archivists until quite recently regarded as private documents without public significance. Academic historians have begun to discover the power of these techniques and sources, as a tool not only for biography but for the study of mobility.4 As historians pursue their relentless invasion of the private domain, the materials of family history assume central importance. The skeleton is clattering out of the cupboard. The statistical tabulation and the family chronicle are polar representa¬ tions of human movement. The tabulation says very little about a great many movements, whereas the chronicle may say a great deal about very few. One resolution of this dual imbalance is to mesh aggregate profiles with individual chronicles, an eclectic approach that has been imaginatively

2 See, however, Eric Richards, ‘Return Migration and Migrant Strategies in Colonial Austra¬ lia’, and Ken Inglis, ‘Going Home: Australians in England, 1870-1900’, in David Fitzpatrick (ed.), Home or Away? Immigrants in Colonial Australia (Canberra, 1992), pp. 64-104, 10530. 3 An outstanding exercise in the manipulation of nominal records in Richard Reid’s ‘Aspects of Irish Assisted Immigration to New South Wales, 1848-70’ (PhD thesis, Australian National University, 1992). 4 See especially Sid Ingham, Enterprising Migrants: An Irish Family in Australia (Melbourne, 1975); Patrick O’Farrell, Vanished Kingdoms: Irish in Australia and New Zealand, a Personal Excursion (Sydney, 1990).

Representations

5

applied to Anglo-American migration by Bailyn.5 Eclecticism allows the historian to deploy one sort of evidence as compensation for omissions or distortions in another. It also creates formidable problems of organisation, which are difficult to resolve without sacrifice of rigour. Illustrations show¬ ing personal trajectories of migration may enrich a threadbare model, yet the typicality of those trajectories cannot be assessed. A model based on aggregate statistics may be used to illuminate individual motivation, yet its applicability to a particular migrant remains conjectural. However skilfully the historian may weave general and particular into a seamless narrative, the underlying tension between these disparate forms of representation will endure. This book is concerned with a few individual experiences of migration, as represented in the correspondence of Irish settlers in Australia.6 The writers of the fourteen chosen sequences of letters are drawn primarily from the groups most heavily engaged in Irish-Australian migration, giving ap¬ propriate emphasis to those with little education and of poor background. Yet they cannot be presented as a ‘representative’ or ‘stratified’ sample, whether of letter-writers or of those involved in migration. Even if they were so in terms of personal attributes, there would be no reason to expect their constructions of experience to be characteristic of all letter-writers, or of all emigrants. My central purpose is to explore each group of construc¬ tions in the immediate setting of a personal chronicle, as reassembled from local and family records. By matching the text with relevant personal con¬ texts, I hope to offer persuasive readings of each set of ‘representations’. These individual responses are then synthesised in thematic chapters, which relate the construction of experience to the general discourse and functions of emigrant correspondence. Although this approach diminishes the risk of ‘cheating’ through cunning juxtaposition of incompatible representations, it cannot dispense altogether with generalisations. Instead, general infer¬ ences based on aggregate analysis provide a counterpoint to particular read¬ ings, pointing to exceptions without proving rules. The dialogue begins in this introduction. First, I survey what seems to be known about the aggre¬ gate profile of Irish-Australian movement, in order to allow the reader to place this rather obscure episode in the broader context of world migration. 5 Bernard Bailyn, Voyagers to the West (New York, 1986). In the fields of Irish and of Aus¬ tralian migration, the outstanding eclectic studies are Kerby A. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America (New York, 1985); and Patrick O Farrell, The Irish in Australia (Sydney, 1986). 6 The name ‘Australia’, though long in common use, had no official reference until 1901, when the five mainland colonies and Tasmania (henceforth termed ‘states ) were federated into an Australian Commonwealth with dominion status in the British Empire. During the preceding half-century, the constituent colonies had been granted devolved administrations, with elected legislatures under a governor.

6

Introduction

Second, I discuss previous exploitation of letters as a source for the history of migration, and the interpretations which various scholars have applied to them. Last, I set out the principles by which this enterprise has been designed.

MIGRATION

Between 1840 and 1914, about a third of a million Irish people emigrated to the Australian colonies.7 They were greatly outnumbered by their fellowexpatriates in both Britain and the United States, and census returns suggest that no more than one Irish emigrant in twelve was ever to be found in Australia.8 Though a mere rivulet if compared with the torrent directed elsewhere, migration from Ireland was a major source for Australia’s small but fast-growing population. Until after the First World War, the Irish were second only to the English as a component of Australia’s immigrant pop¬ ulation. In 1891, when the number of Irish immigrants peaked at almost 230,000, they accounted for nearly a quarter of Australia’s foreign-born people. One in three was living in New South Wales, the first colony to be established, in 1788. Rather more were in Victoria, which since its sepa¬ ration in 1851 had experienced abnormal population growth in response to the discovery of gold, and later to the development of Melbourne as the country’s major commercial centre. Less than a fifth were in Queensland, which achieved its mineral boom a decade or so later than Victoria’s. One Irish settler in fifteen was in moribund South Australia, with a mere sprin¬ kling elsewhere.9 Throughout eastern Australia, there was little variation in the Irish proportion of the immigrant population.10 As Figure 2 indicates, the Irish component became less significant after the turn of the century, as a result of heavier immigration from other countries. Yet comparative analysis shows that no other regions of settlement apart from some of

7 For general accounts of Australian immigration, see R. B. Madgwick, Immigration into Eastern Australia, 1788-1851 (Sydney, 1969; 1st edn. 1937); Geoffrey Sherington, Australia’s Immigrants, 1788-1978 (Sydney, 1982); and especially James Jupp (ed.), The Australian Peo¬ ple: An Encyclopedia of the Nation, Its People, and Their Origins (Sydney, 1988). 8 Collation of census returns giving the number of Irish natives resident in Australia, Canada, the USA, and Britain shows that the proportion of the total resident in Australia was about 3.5% (in 1851), 6.2% (1861), 7.0% (1871), 7.1% (1881), 7.9% (1891), 7.3% (1901), 6.6% (1911), and 6.0% (1921). See also David Fitzpatrick, Irish Emigration, 1801-1921 (Dublin, 1984), p. 6. 9 The proportion of Australia’s Irish-born population resident in each colony in 1891 was as follows: 37.6% (Victoria), 33.1% (NSW), 19.0% (Queensland), 6.3% (South Australia), 2.5% (Tasmania), and 1.5% (Western Australia). 10 The Irish component of Australia’s foreign-born population in 1901 was 21.6%, being 24.2% (in Victoria), 22.0% (NSW), 21.9% (Queensland), 17.3% (Western Australia), 16.3% (Tasmania), and 16.2% (South Australia).

Representations

7

,

5 000,000 4,500,000 4,000,000 3,500,000 3,000,000 2,500,000 2,000,000

1,500,000 1,000,000

500,000 0

Figure 2. Population of Australia by birthplace, 1851-1921, indicating Irish-born in black, other foreign-born in white, and Australian-born in grey (based on Charles A. Price et ah, ‘Birthplaces of the Australian Population, 1861-1981’: Working Papers in Demography, xiii [Canberra, 1984], pp. 2-4, 40-2).

Canada’s eastern provinces drew so heavily upon Irish settlers.11 If Australia was a minor destination for the Irish, Ireland was a major source for the Australians. The Irish factor, though always conspicuous in the peopling of Australia, was not unchanging. The rivulet was sometimes a trickle, sometimes a mi¬ nor flood. By comparison with the immense emigration elsewhere during the years of the Great Famine (circa 1846—50), there was rather little move¬ ment to Australia, where demand for immigrant labour was sluggish until the discovery of gold in 1851. Nearly 100,000 Irish immigrants came dur¬ ing the 1850s, more than double the number who had arrived between 1836 and 1850. An equally intense Irish influx followed in the early 1860s, helped by the temporary unattractiveness of the United States in the first phase of the Civil War. The last great immigration from Ireland began during the American depression in the mid-18 70s and continued for more 11 For comparative statistics showing the regional concentration of Irish settlers in various countries, circa 1871, see Fitzpatrick, ‘Irish Emigration’, p. 140.

8

Introduction

Figure 3. Annual number of Irish-born passengers leaving the UK, 1846-1915,

indicating those bound for Australasia in black and for North America in white (based on annual returns by Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners, and from 1875 by Board of Trade). Notes: The scope and criteria of the returns were altered repeatedly. American figures for 1846-52 are estimates.

than a decade, before retracting to a modest but regular annual flow.12 The immediate background of most Irish settlers in Australia was therefore one of gradual recovery and social reorganisation, rather than disaster and im¬ poverishment. The ebbs and flows of Irish movement to Australia did not coincide with those of the greater transatlantic migration (see Figure 3). For many of those contemplating emigration, the costly, unfamiliar, and always unusual option of Australia was probably their last resort, when war or recession elsewhere made foreign labour markets unreceptive to newcomers.13 When recession occurred in Australia (as in 1867, 1878-79, or 1885-86), it usually prompted slackening of the intake from all sources 12 The returns of passenger movement to Australasia (including New Zealand), from which Figure 3 is compiled, give the following number of Irish emigrants in thousands per decade: 102 (1850s), 83 (1860s), 62 (1870s), 55 (1880s), 11 (1890s), 12 (1900s). 13 During periods of low emigration to the United States, the Irish movement from the United Kingdom to Australasia occasionally exceeded three-tenths of the transatlantic figure. The ratio of Australasian to American passengers reached 30% in 1858, 37% in 1862, 43% in 1876, 53% in 1877, and 46% in 1878.

Representations

9

including Ireland.14 Yet the effect of economic cycles upon movement to Australia was blurred and indirect. Few Irish immigrants could afford the full fare of about £17 at the best of times, being reliant upon assistance from governments whose readiness to invest in immigration was affected by political as well as economic calculation. More than any other stream of Irish settlers, those choosing Australia were subject to the guidance, and often caprice, of politicians and administrators. Every Australian colony offered financial encouragement for emigration, under schemes that were often cumbersome, restrictive, and liable to sud¬ den amendment or termination. Inducements ranged from land guarantees to free passages, with many intermediate varieties of partial funding from the state, usually supplemented by contributions from those already in the colonies. These included arrangements for ‘nomination’ by purchasers of colonial land, ‘remittance regulations’ allowing any resident to bring out a named friend or relative on payment of part of the fare, ‘bounty’ contracts whereby shippers or other sponsors could recover the cost of passage upon inspection and acceptance of an immigrant, and ‘indenture’ schemes for particular categories of employment.15 Assistance was normally paid out of colonial land funds, although certain special schemes such as the removal of ‘female orphans’ (1848-50) received supplementary imperial funding. An earlier source of free passages at central expense was convict transpor¬ tation, under which some 36,000 Irish offenders were removed to the Aus¬ tralian colonies between 1788 and 1868.16 Despite ceaseless fluctuation in the amount and forms of assistance offered by each colony, the canny would-be emigrant was seldom at a loss for help from some quarter. While Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania offered little encouragement after the 18 60s, New South Wales and especially Queensland continued to invest heavily if intermittently in immigration. Western Australia’s most vigorous campaign was delayed until just before the First World War, with the re¬ sumption of assistance under Commonwealth aegis. These contrasts in co¬ lonial provision naturally affected the emigrant’s choice of immediate destination, without preventing subsequent migration to other colonies with greater demand for immigrant labour. The aggregate impact of state assistance was immense, affecting over half of all emigrants from the United 14 See Allen C. Kelley, ‘International Migration and Economic Growth: Australia, 18651935’, in Journal of Economic History, xxv, no. 3 (1965), pp. 3 3 3—5415 The most comprehensive survey of the convoluted history of state assistance to all six colonies is by Robin F. Haines, ‘Government-Assisted Emigration from the United Kingdom to Australia, 1831-1860’ (PhD thesis. Flinders University of South Australia, 1992). 16 Most of these convicts were transported before 1840, when shipment ceased to New South Wales. Transportation continued to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) until 1853, and to West¬ ern Australia until 1868. For an econometric study treating convicts as migrants supplying valuable ‘human capital’ in a managed economy, see Stephen Nicholas (ed.), Convict Workers: Reinterpreting Australia’s Past (Cambridge, 1988).

io

Introduction

Kingdom to Australia between 1821 and 1880. Only Tasmania and Vic¬ toria attracted a majority of unassisted settlers.17 Responsibility for the selection of emigrants with free or state-subsidised passages gradually shifted from the Emigration Commissioners to the co¬ lonial agents or agents-general in London. Emigrants nominated in the colonies were primarily selected by their friends, but efforts were made to impose ‘quality controls’ by varying the state’s contribution according to sex, age, or occupation. Assistance was not, of course, confined to Irish emigrants. Indeed colonial agents often worked hard to recruit the ‘better sort’ of settler in England or Scotland rather than the despised peasantry of Ireland, and to attract Protestants rather than Catholics. Yet the com¬ bination of British recalcitrance, Irish eagerness, and colonial demand for unskilled labour ensured that the Irish were consistently over-represented among assisted immigrants. There was considerable variation, however, in the Irish component of all immigrants from the United Kingdom who re¬ ceived any form of official subsidy (1836-1919). In New South Wales, the Irish proportion of assisted immigrants was about two-fifths overall, with peaks of three-quarters in the 1860s and two-thirds during the period of bounty emigration just before the Great Famine. In Victoria, the Irish com¬ ponent rose from a third before i860 to half thereafter. In Queensland, which became a separate colony only in 1859, the Irish proportion was about a quarter; in South Australia it was probably only a fifth. All told, assisted immigrants from Britain outnumbered the Irish by about two to one. Whereas this ratio faithfully reflected the balance of the Irish and British populations before the Great Famine, it became increasingly anom¬ alous in the prolonged period of Irish depopulation that followed.18 Ireland’s persistent poverty ensured that the Irish were substantially un¬ der-represented among those wealthy enough to pay their own way. Al¬ though little official attention was paid to the characteristics of unassisted passengers, Victorian returns for 1852-54 indicate that, even in the first heady rush for gold, only a quarter of Irish arrivals were unassisted com-

17 The estimated proportion of immigrants receiving any form of state subvention between 1821 and 1880 (excluding convicts) was 55%, being 89% in Queensland, 75% in New South Wales and South Australia, 74% in Western Australia, 50% in Tasmania, and only 33% in Victoria. These proportions, which exclude aliens, are derived from revised annual estimates summarised in Robin Haines and Ralph Shlomowitz, ‘Nineteenth Century GovernmentAssisted and Total Immigration from the United Kingdom to Australia’, in Journal of the Australian Population Association, viii, no. 1 (1991), pp. 50-61. 18 These rough estimates are drawn from a wide range of official sources covering the period 1836-60, supplemented by tabulations in Frank Crowley, ‘The British Contribution to the Australian People, 1860-1919’, in University Studies in History and Economics, ii, no. 2 (1954), pp. 55-88. Irish ‘over-representation’ must be assessed against a rapidly changing distribution of population in the British Isles, where the proportion of residents born in Ireland fell from 32% (in 1841) to 26% (1851), 22% (1861), 19% (1871), 17% (1881), 14% (1891), 12% (1901), and 11% (1911).

Representations

11

100,000 90,000 80,000 70,000 60,000 50,000 40,000 30,000 20,000 10,000

0 so

so

H

T*

LO

10

OO

OO

i-H

r-H

OO

SO OO

SO SO OO

Os OO

H

1-H

t-H

t-H

r-H

r-H

SO

H

00

OO OO

1“H

r-H

so

r-H

OO OO

Os OO

rH

i-h

so

1-H

Os OO

O Os

SO O Os

ON

1-H

1-H

1-H

1"H

r-H r-H

Figure 4. Annual number of passengers leaving the UK for Australasia, 1846-

1915, indicating Irish-born in black and British-born in white (sources as for Figure

pared with three-quarters of those from Britain.19 Between 1846 and 1855, well over four Irish settlers in five were assisted by the Emigration Com¬ missioners, the subsequent decline in this proportion being due to increas¬ ing use of nomination schemes involving private contractors. Only towards the turn of the century, when assistance from all colonies except Queens¬ land had petered out, did most of the few remaining immigrants from Ire¬ land fund their passages from private sources alone. The withdrawal of assistance was a major factor in reducing the ratio of Irish to Brtish im¬ migrants, as illustrated by Figure 4. Over the entire period 1836-1919, subventions were provided for nearly a quarter of a million Irish immi¬ grants, about a third of whom were brought out by the Emigration Com¬ missioners. State funding was supplemented by private benefactors as well as the 19 Nearly half of all Irish male arrivals were unassisted, but only one-ninth in the case of females. The gross Anglo-Irish disparity is further illustrated by the contrast between the Irish component of unassisted immigration (5%) and of assisted immigration (29%). The corre¬ sponding proportions for the Sydney district (1848-50) were 8% (unassisted) and 40% (as¬ sisted). These and other colonial statistics cited in this section are drawn from the annual reports of immigration agents and statistical registers, published in the Votes and Proceedings of the various colonial parliaments.

12

Introduction

immigrants themselves. Irish settlement in eastern Australia was facilitated by agencies such as the Donegal Relief Committee (1858), Bishop Quinn s Queensland Immigration Society (1862), and the Irish Emigration Com¬ mittee (1864). A few Irish landlords encouraged the ‘surplus’ population of their estates to move to Australia, sometimes arranging passages with the Emigration Commissioners while themselves offering ‘landing money’ or other supplements. But the main sources of private funding were those already in the colonies who contributed towards further immigration under the various ‘nomination’ and ‘remittance’ schemes. Irish settlers, every¬ where adept at forging ‘chains’ of migration from their localities of origin, made far more intensive use of these facilities than did British settlers. They also drew upon a wider range of relatives and friends as nominees. The Irish people nominated for assisted passages to Victoria were more likely than their British counterparts to be brothers and particularly sisters of their benefactors, less likely to be wives or children. Many were merely ‘cousins’ or ‘friends’, who seldom managed to excite the generosity of Eng¬ lish or Scottish settlers in Victoria.20 The increasing preference of colonial governments for nomination schemes devolved most of the selection proc¬ ess to previous immigrants, encouraging reiterated self-replication in terms of background. Political concern about the quality of assisted immigrants ensured that remarkably detailed statistics were compiled, providing the basis for those composite profiles whose attractions and defects have already been dis¬ cussed. Over two-thirds of Irish assisted immigrants arriving in New South Wales between 1848 and 1870 were young adults, aged between 15 and 29 years. About two-fifths travelled in family groups, reflecting the colonial preference for young married couples rather than unmarried men.21 In at least one respect, Irish immigrants should have been more readily exploit¬ able in the colonial workforces than those brought out from Britain. In a country chronically starved of women, the Irish were unique in their level of response to the inducements for female immigration. The most spectac¬ ular importation of Irish girls as servants and potential wives occurred during the Great Famine, with the removal of over 4,000 ‘female orphans’ from Irish workhouses. As Table 1 indicates, women greatly outnumbered men among Irish assisted immigrants to both Victoria and New South Wales, at least until the mid-i850S. This applied even more strongly to the 20 In both Ireland and Britain, women were far more often nominated than men, reflecting the more generous state contributions provided for unmarried females. For statistics showing the relationship of nominator to nominee in the Geelong district (1856-58) and Victoria overall (1861), see David Fitzpatrick, ‘Emigration, 1801-70’, in W. E. Vaughan (ed.), A New History of Ireland, vol. v (Oxford, 1989), p. 616. 21 Reid, ‘Assisted Immigration’, ch. 4. In Victoria (1852-59), no less than 64% of Irish male assisted immigrants were married, compared with 30% of Irish female immigrants (excluding minors).

Representations

13

Irish assisted emigrants to New South Wales and Victoria, 1844-69, showing percentage with certain characteristics

Table i.

Number

Labourers

Servants

26.9

81.1

89.5

2,163

New South Wales (excluding Port Phillip district) 13.9 41.6a 70.2a 69.4 1848-50

86.3

17.5 11.5 9.7 8.9

91.4 85.9 87.0

98.la 96.7 96.5 95.2 90.5

6,566 12,062 12,219 11,400 2,059

90.8 90.1 92.7

98.8a 93.7 97.5

3,628 16,272 10,573

Period

Female

Catholic

Literate

Children

New South Wales (including Port Phillip district)

1844-45

1853-55 1856-60 1861-65 1866-69

53.6

65.3 47.7 48.6 51.3

54.5

78.0 80.5 81.4 83.4

52.1

44.8 48.4 58.9 67.4

Victoria (Port Phillip district until 1851) 41.6a 65.3a 69.1 1848-50

1852-55 1856-59

71.6 67.2

80.9 79.9

43.7 47.7

16.1 18.6

11.0

86.8

Sources: Papers Relative to the Australian Colonies, in HCP, 1846 (418), xxix; 1850 [Cd. 1163], xl; 1851 (347), xl; 1852 [Cd. 1489], xxxiv (variant titles); annual Report of the Im¬ migration Agent for NSW (1853-69) and Victoria (1852-59), supplemented by annual Sta¬ tistical Registers, in Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly (NSW) and Legislative Council (Victoria). aData are available only for 1848. Notes: Statistics refer to Irish natives arriving as bounty emigrants (1844 to August 1845), or thereafter with any form of state assistance. Literacy figures indicate the proportion able to read and write, excluding children. Children are those not counted as statute adults , the limit being lowered from 14 to 12 years from 1859 onwards and in certain earlier years. Labourers (including herdsmen, etc.) are given as a percentage of adult males; servants are returned as a percentage of unmarried adult females. Criteria vary slightly between reports.

later movement from Ireland to Queensland, which counterbalanced excess male migration from Britain and from the other Australasian colonies. With men predominating among unassisted immigrants, Irishmen and Irish¬ women settled in Australia in virtually equal numbers.22 Whereas every other immigrant stream was dominated by men, the Irish in Australia as elsewhere comprised a singularly symmetrical ethnic group. The identikit Irish assisted immigrant embodied ‘human capital’ in the form of vigour rather than skill. The vast majority of men described them¬ selves as plain ‘labourers’ or ‘agricultural labourers’, and the women as ‘domestic servants’. These descriptions may often have been statements of convenience or intention rather than experience, and did not imply any previous paid employment. The man returned as an ‘agricultural labourer in fulfilment of the requirements of the Emigration Commissioners would usually have been a farmer’s son who had assisted his father; the servant might never have served outside her mother’s household. The fact that 22 In 1891, the female component of Australia’s Irish-born population was 49%, compared with 48% in 1861 and 50% in both 1871 and 1901. The Irish female proportions for each colony in 1891 were 55% (South Australia), 51% (Tasmania), 50% (Victoria), 48 ^ (Queens¬ land), 47% (NSW), and 41% (Western Australia).

14

Introduction

many Irish immigrants had worked only within the family unit did not detract from their capital value, in a primitive economy with insatiable demand for unskilled manual labour. A more serious impediment to success in Australia was illiteracy. Until the 1860s, only a minority of Irish immi¬ grants were reportedly able to read and write. Subsequently there was a rapid improvement in basic literacy, among both immigrants and the pop¬ ulation of origin. Though Irish settlers remained disadvantaged by com¬ parison with their British competitors, they were slightly more likely to be literate than their peer-groups in the Irish counties of origin.23 The most controversial attribute of Irish immigration was the predomi¬ nance of Catholics, who usually accounted for about four-fifths of the total. This slightly exceeded the Catholic component in the regions of Ireland most inclined to provide Irish Australians. Only in the pre-Famine bounty emigration were colonists successful in securing a large intake of Irish Prot¬ estants. The predominance of Protestants among unassisted immigrants probably explains the surprisingly large non-Catholic component of Aus¬ tralia’s Irish-born population in 19n, the first census for which birthplace was cross-tabulated with religion. Only 71 percent of Irish Australians re¬ turned themselves as Catholics, with little variation among the eastern states.24 Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Methodists accounted for 14 percent, 9 percent, and 3 percent respectively. Even in Victoria Anglicans outnum¬ bered Presbyterians, reflecting the rather modest contribution of north-east Ulster to Australia’s population. The Protestant element in Australia’s Irish population was less important than in New Zealand or Canada, but pre¬ sumably greater than in Britain or the United States.25 No study of the Irish in Australia should ignore the experience of Protestant settlers, including those of humble background whose performance in Australia probably dif¬ fered little from that of Irish Catholics.26 The regional origins of the Australian Irish were quite distinctive, sug¬ gesting peculiarities of social background not directly recorded in official statistics. The prevalence of chain migration ensured that the distribution of county origins changed remarkably little between the later 1840s and the end of the century, as immigrants encouraged friends and neighbours

23 See Fitzpatrick, ‘Irish Emigration’, p. 132 (note 12); Reid, ‘Assisted Immigration’, ch. 4. 24 Among Irish-born males and females in 1911, the Catholic components were 70% and 72% respectively. The overall proportions in the various colonies were 78% (South Australia), 73% (Western Australia), 72% (Queensland), 71% (NSW), and 70% (Victoria and Tas¬ mania). 25 No census data on religious affiliation were compiled for either Britain or the United States. 26 For a penetrating refutation of the supposed gulf in socio-economic capability between Irish Protestants and Catholics, using Australia and New Zealand as ‘clean laboratories’ for testing Irish emigrant performance, see Donald Harman Akenson, Small Differences: Irish Catholics and, Irish Protestants, 1815-1922: An International Perspective (Kingston and Montreal, 1988), ch. 3.

Representations

15

Figure 5. Intensity of emigration from each county, circa 1841-1914, indicating emigrants to Australia in black and emigrants from Irish ports to all overseas des¬ tinations in white (based on adjusted annual returns of emigration by RegistrarGeneral

for

Ireland,

1851-1914,

and

various

colonial

returns

of

assisted

immigration). Notes: Relative intensity is indicated by dividing the number of emigrants by the county population in 1861. Since the Australian returns cover about half of all Irish immigrants in the period (169,881 souls), these ratios have been doubled to allow rough comparison with the overall outflow from each county. The Australian fig¬ ures cover assisted immigration to NSW (1841-70), Victoria (1841-56), Tasmania and Western Australia (1846-50), and South Australia (1846-50, 1854-55, 185760), together with total emigration from Irish ports to Australia (1876-1914).

to follow them from the same localities.27 Figure 5 depicts the county ori¬ gins of about half of all emigrants from Ireland to Australia. As the back¬ ground display indicates, there was little correlation between the counties with heaviest emigration overall and those feeding Australia. Two regions were particularly inclined to send settlers to Australia, neither being par¬ ticularly poor but both being overwhelmingly rural. The primary source was a cluster of south-midland counties stretching from Clare and Limerick eastwards to Tipperary, King’s County, and Kilkenny—a region marked by rapid transition from labour-intensive tillage to livestock production in response to price changes favouring pasturage. Clare and Tipperary were almost invariably the two counties sending most assisted immigrants to 27 Correlation of the 32 county rates of assisted immigration to NSW (1853-55) with those for emigration from Ireland to Australia (1876-85) gives r = +0.79. The pattern was main¬ tained for the decade 1886-95, but radically changed in the following two decades in response to the cancellation of remittance arrangements.

16

Introduction

Australia. The secondary cluster centred upon Fermanagh, Cavan, and Ar¬ magh in south Ulster. Whereas Connaught was a major source for the Irish in Britain and the United States, Galway was the only Connaught county to supply an appreciable number of emigrants to Australia. Yet Australia s Irish were drawn to some extent from all counties and from scattered lo¬ calities within counties: there were no localities supplying emigrants only to Australia, and few without any Australian connection. Certain districts, such as Quin in Clare, and Castlecomer in Kilkenny, gained the justified reputation of favouring Australia more than their neighbours. In a few parishes, including Clonoulty in Tipperary, movement to Australia was at times a major element in local depopulation.28 In general, however, Aus¬ tralia was an option taken up by only a small minority of emigrants. Once arrived in Australia, the Irish dispersed throughout the settled dis¬ tricts with striking uniformity. Irish settlers were evenly distributed not only between the colonies but within them. In contrast with their compatriots in the United States, they were no more inclined to cluster together than were other immigrant groups. Supposedly ‘Irish’ localities such as Kiama in New South Wales, Shepparton in Victoria, and Darling Downs in Queensland had less than one Irish-born resident out of every four in 1871. Even in Kiama only the bare majority of those born outside the colony were Irish. At the other extreme, not a single census district in Australia, however remote and sparsely populated, was bereft of Irish settlers.29 Nod¬ ules of fairly intense Irish settlement were typically found in the hinterland of major towns, and seldom in the outback. The Irish showed no tendency to avoid agricultural districts, but were rather thinly represented in Victo¬ ria’s mining districts by 1861, just after the great gold rushes. Nor did the Irish in Australia conform to stereotype by congregating in cities, being slightly over-represented in urban New South Wales but under-represented in urban Victoria. Indeed census returns between 1861 and 1901 show that English settlers were invariably more ‘urbanised’ than the Irish. Irish im¬ migrants were also widely dispersed among city wards, though discernible clusters developed in Sydney south of the harbour and in Melbourne’s inner suburbs to the north and south-east of the centre. These residential choices reflected the predominance of unskilled labourers and servants requiring cheap housing and easy access to their workplaces. After 1871, even those residential clusters were dispersed as a result of urban growth, development of public transport, and perhaps upward social mobility of Irish immi¬ grants. Although Irish immigrants penetrated every trade and profession, their

28 Reid, ‘Assisted Immigration’, chs. 4, 5. 29 For coefficients of variation indicating the relative dispersal of Irish settlers within various countries including each Australian colony, see Fitzpatrick, ‘Irish Emigration’, p. 140.

Representations

17

aggregate occupational status remained low throughout the nineteenth cen¬ tury. As late as in 1887, the majority of Irish-born bridegrooms in Sydney were unskilled or semi-skilled, at least double the proportion for those born in either Britain or Australia.30 Catholic marriage registers for Melbourne as well as Sydney in 1861 reveal similar patterns of occupation even when Catholics born outside Ireland are included, although the occupational bal¬ ance shifted from unskilled towards semi-skilled work and shopkeeping over the next three decades.31 The first comprehensive occupational census for different religious groups was conducted in New South Wales in 1901. The male occupations most heavily colonised by Irish immigrants were (in descending order) religion, ‘independent means’, refuse disposal, and road construction: a rich mix. The Irish were fairly represented in secure occu¬ pations such as farming and the civil service, though still excessively con¬ centrated in most unskilled sectors, by comparison with British immigrants as well as the native-born.32 It is noteworthy that building construction, a trade often regarded as quintessentially ‘Irish’, attracted few Irish workers in New South Wales.33 The Catholic population, most of which was of Irish descent but Australian-born, showed much less variation in its con¬ tribution to the fifty major occupations. Even so, Catholic access to clerical and professional positions remained restricted. The same census indicated that Irishwomen were even more cosily en¬ trenched than Irishmen in the occupational hierarchy. They were propor¬ tionately most conspicuous as agriculturists, grocers, proprietors, and nuns; rather less prominent in nursing, teaching, and the hotel trade; and notable for their absence among the lowly sorority of dressmakers. By 1901, the admittedly ageing population of Irish-born women was no longer over¬ represented in domestic service.34 For most women, however, paid employ¬ ment was only a secondary indicator of status, since the majority entered the workforce only as a prelude or sequel to housewifery. Marriage prob¬ ably offered better chances of upward mobility than employment, partic¬ ularly in mid-century Australia when women were greatly outnumbered by men. The extent to which Irishwomen enhanced their status by judicious matches is difficult to assess from the available studies showing the religion 30 Shirley Fitzgerald, Rising Damp: Sydney, 1870-90 (Melbourne, 1987), p. 120. 31 See Chris McConville, ‘Emigrant Irish and Suburban Catholics: Faith and Nation in Mel¬ bourne and Sydney, 1851-1933’ (PhD thesis, University of Melbourne, 1984), pp. 60-1. 32 All statistics are based on comparison between the Irish component of a particular work¬ force and the Irish proportion of the entire workforce, from which indices of over¬ representation have been computed. For detailed analysis, see Akenson, Small Differences, pp. 7I-3> 185-8. 33 Of men working in building construction, 4.2% were Irish-born, compared with 6.2% of all occupied males, 6.5% in pastoral pursuits, and 6.0% in agriculture. 34 A decade later, as shown in the census of 1911, no less than 52.6% of Australia’s Irishborn population were aged 55 or more, the proportions being 48.2% for males and 57.1% for females.

18

Introduction

and birthplace of marriage partners. Ethnic exogamy was fairly widespread in 1911, when the majority of both Irish husbands and Irish wives were married to persons born elsewhere.35 Nevertheless, those Irishwomen who married outside the circle of Irish-born men often married within their own religious denomination and their own class. Marriages outside the group of professed Catholics were far more unusual, although many partners in ‘mixed marriages’ no doubt altered their religious identification in pursuit of family unity. In 19n, three Catholic wives in four were living with Catholic husbands, while over four-fifths of Catholic husbands had wives of the same religion.36 Despite considerable ‘leakage’, ethnic and religious networks continued to colour the marriage choices of most Irishwomen, and Irishmen, in Australia. The statistics indicate a marriage market that was neither fully open nor firmly closed, so permitting alternative strategies for social mobility through marriage. For many immigrant women, social success was probably measured not by selection of a superior husband, but by the achievement of marriage itself and by the bearing of children who could look forward to a more comfortable life than their parents. According to these criteria, the sub¬ stantial minority of Irish female immigrants who never married might be deemed ‘failures’. In 1911 one Irish-born woman in six was unmarried, even though only a fortieth of the group was then under 25 years of age. This was a slightly higher ‘failure’ rate than for a comparable national population with the same age-distribution, though the disparity was far greater for Irishmen than for Irishwomen. British-born women were less likely to remain unmarried, partly because many had married before emi¬ gration and partly because they were surrounded by a much larger number of British-born men. Those Irishwomen who did marry were not conspic¬ uous for the number of their children, mainly because as immigrants they tended to marry at a later age than their Australian-born rivals. Yet once embarked upon child-bearing, Irish-born wives in New South Wales at the turn of the century reproduced fairly rapidly, having higher fertility rates at most age-groups than either Australian or British-born wives. Although Australia’s belated ‘demographic transition’ was reflected in gradually de-

35 Tabulations of co-resident couples in the Commonwealth census for 1911 indicate that 47.5% of Irish-born wives had Irish-born husbands, while only 43.6% of Irish husbands had Irish wives. These proportions varied little among the eastern mainland states, but were only 39.1% and 35.1% respectively in Western Australia, and as little as 30.9% and 21.8% in Tasmania. Exogamous Irish wives were equally likely to have Australian and immigrant part¬ ners (26.2% and 26.3% respectively); whereas the corresponding figures for exogamous Irish husbands were 44.8% with Australian partners but only 11.7% with immigrant partners. 36 The proportions were 74.3% and 82.3% respectively. Marriage outside the denominational group was most prevalent in Tasmania, but varied little among eastern states. These statistics exclude marriages involving aborigines, persons of indeterminate birthplace or religion, and those without a spouse on census night.

Representations

19

dining fertility rates for both Catholic and Irish-born wives, those who had reached middle age by 1911 had typically mothered five or six children— only about one child fewer than their contemporaries in Ireland. Despite the frequent incidence of out-marriage and non-marriage, the little Irish mothers’ of Australia acted fairly efficiently to propagate further genera¬ tions of Irish Australians. We might surmise on the basis of these aggregate findings that most Irish men and women made fairly effective use of their opportunities in Austra¬ lia. Being ‘nation builders’, rather than late arrivals competing against an entrenched population for living space, jobs, and spouses, the Irish were able to choose between a wide range of locations for settlement, find work in farming and even clerical occupations as well as unskilled labour, and stray outside their primary ethnic and religious networks in marriage. The Australian Irish in aggregate remained somewhat disadvantaged and selfenclosed; yet the degree of their exclusion from coveted benefits was less pronounced than in most countries of settlement. So much for the lessons of statistical analysis. It should be painfully clear that many of the inferences resting upon social arithmetic are hazardous, and external to the individual experience. The term ‘somewhat disadvan¬ taged’ has meaning for a comparative analyst but would be incomprehen¬ sible to the actual immigrant—either content or unhappy according to disposition and experience. The concept of being ‘self-enclosed’ is equally subjective, being dependent on a sense of freedom or constriction of choice which has little to do with comparative statistics. For the individual rep¬ resentation of migration, for the personal construction of success or fail¬ ure’, ‘opportunity’ or ‘exclusion’, we must search elsewhere.

LETTERS

My dear Father I am to inform you that I received you welcomed letter on the 25th. March dated January the 1st. 55 which gave me and my Sister an ocean of consolation to hear that you my Stepmother Brothers and Sisters are in good health thank God. As for my uncles and Aunts [erased: you never mentioned a word about them but] I hope they are in good health too—at Same time, this leaves us in a perfect State of health thanks be to our Blessed Redeemer for his goodness towards us. (No 3a) The phrase ‘an ocean of consolation’ drops richly but oddly from the lips of a small farmer’s son from Co. Clare in the wake of the Great Famine. Michael Normile had left for New South Wales as an assisted emigrant

20

Introduction

from Birkenhead just a year before writing this letter to his father, who farmed 30 acres near Ennistymon. Most of his neighbours in that rugged and impoverished coastal region of Clare were still bilingual in Irish and English, and many were unable to read or write in either language. His written language had the rolling rhythm of Clare speech, and his mis¬ spellings reflected the Clare accent. The periods and phrases of a natural orator emerged from a strange blend of imagination with imitation of ser¬ mons, speeches, and provincial journalism. The reality of his longing for ‘consolation’ was undiminished by the formality of the phrase. Expressions like these provide a key to the functions not merely of Normile’s letters home from Australia to Ireland, but of emigrant correspondence in general. The letter from a distant relative, whether received in Ireland, Britain, America, or Australia, was a token of solidarity and an instrument of re¬ assurance, confirming the durability of long-established familial groups. The likelihood that many correspondents were whistling in the dark gave further urgency to their desire to offer and solicit ‘consolation’. The consolatory function of emigrant letters has been largely ignored by previous editors in the field. It is instructive to speculate on the likely fate of the phrase ‘an ocean of consolation’ if submitted to their editorial scru¬ tiny. Blegen, in his seminal edition of Norwegian letters from America, would have dumped it as a ‘salutation’ without indicating the omission. Had the phrase survived this routine, Blegen might well have revised ‘the wording where I could make it simple and still retain the meaning of the original’, in his determination to eliminate expression that seemed to him ‘overly formal and stilted, bearing the marks of inexperience in writing’.37 Conway’s collection of letters from the Welsh in America, published by the same press with due acknowledgement to Blegen, likewise excluded ‘dross’ such as ‘personal inquiries, condolences, salutations, and endearments’ as well as the ‘flowery passages of those who seemed unable to refrain from demonstrating their bardic potentialities’.38 Barton applied similar princi¬ ples to his edition of Swedish correspondence, not hesitating ‘to make de¬ letions’ and ‘even slightly modify wording in the interests of clarity’.39 Wtulich, though less cavalier in her rendering of Polish letters from Brazil and the USA, still cut out ‘certain passages . . . such as greetings and rosters

37 Theodore C. Blegen (ed.), Land of Their Choice: The Immigrants Write Home (Minneapolis, 195 5), p. xii. In this and the works discussed below, the editor’s task was of course compli¬ cated by the need for translation. 38 Alan Conway (ed.), The Welsh in America: Letters from the Immigrants (Minneapolis, 1961), pp. v-vi. 39 H. Arnold Barton, Letters from the Promised Land: Swedes in America, 1840-1914 (Min¬ neapolis, 1975), P- 5- Barton considered that ‘most immigrant letters’ had ‘little of interest to relate. They are often filled with cliches, concerned with mundane matters and local news from the old home parish’, and crammed with ‘religious platitudes, hearsay information, . . . news of family affairs, and greetings to long lists of relatives and friends at home’ (p. 4).

Representations

21

of names’; Erickson, in her splendid edition of correspondence from British emigrants, often ‘omitted references to letters, to health, and messages from other immigrants and to other persons’.40 Even Kamphoefner and his col¬ leagues reluctantly excluded such admittedly ‘important constituents of the truly authentic immigrant letter’, preferring ‘careful abridgment’ to the loss of entire sequences. The authors of this otherwise exemplary work shared the widespread impatience of editors with material deemed ‘tedious for the nonspecialist’, including ‘ritualized pious reflections’ and ‘endless lists of persons to whom the letter-writer wishes to send his or her best regards’.41 In short, most previous editors have found the form, language, and personal detail of emigrant letters uninteresting and irrelevant. An outstanding exception is provided by Thomas and Znaniecki, pio¬ neering analysts of letters from and especially to Polish settlers in America. For these students of the disintegration of the ‘peasant’ family under the impact of migration and other influences, ‘all the peasant letters can be considered as variations of one fundamental type, whose form results from its function and remains always essentially the same, even if it eventually degenerates. We call this type the “bowing letter”.’ Letters served ‘to man¬ ifest the persistence of familial solidarity in spite of the separation’, using ‘socially fixed ways of speaking or writing’ in order to signify divergence from traditional attitudes as well as their acceptance.42 The use of cere¬ monious yet vernacular phrases and forms also interested Schrier, the first student of the Irish in America seriously to examine emigrant letters. He observed that many displayed ‘an air of unlettered eloquence and to their grammar and spelling belong “only the praises of bare originality”. Beyond the standard opening sentence which seemed to characterize a great ma¬ jority of the letters and gave to them a note of stilted formality, they were almost conversational in tone.’43 Yet even these scholars, having acknowl¬ edged the importance of language for the interpretation of letters, were content to reproduce what they deemed ‘typical’ examples without explor¬ ing variations between writers. 40 Josephine Wtulich (ed.), Writing Home: Immigrants in Brazil and the United States, 18901891 (Boulder, Colo., 1986; 1st Polish edn. 1972, ed. by Witold Kula et al.), p. xi; Charlotte Erickson, Invisible Immigrants: The Adaptation of English and Scottish Immigrants in Nine¬ teenth-Century America (Leicester, 1972), p. 9. 41 Walter D. Kamphoefner, Wolfgang Herbich, and Ulrike Sommer, News from the Land of Freedom: German Immigrants Write Home (Ithaca, N.Y., 1992-; ist German edn. 1988), pp. 46-7. Brief summaries of excised matter are, however, provided, as also by Samuel L. Baily and Franco Ramella in their fascinating edition of Argentinian-Italian letters, One Family, Two Worlds: An Italian Family’s Correspondence across the Atlantic, 1901-1922 (New Bruns¬ wick, N.J., 1988). 42 William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America (New York, 1958; ist edn. 1918-20), vol. i, p. 303. 43 Arnold Schrier, Ireland and the American Emigration, 1850-1900 (Minneapolis, 1958), pp. 23-4.

22

Introduction

It seems inappropriate to observe, as Erickson does of British letters from America, that ‘few of these letters may be said to have literary merit . within their own established forms, many achieve merit in the sense of commu¬ nicating facts, thoughts, or desires in a controlled manner.44 The letter whose opening sentence introduced this section may serve as an example of popular ‘epistolary discourse’ at its most eloquent. Normile adopted the common sandwich format, with formal salutations and farewells enclosing passages of observation, commentary, and advice. The final roster was separated from the substantive section by a renewed greeting to his father. The significance of these epistolary forms is dual. Spelling, syntax, and design obviously reflected the cultural and educational background of the writers, but they were also instrumental in conveying messages to readers with a view to influencing their responses. Elaborate salutations did not merely express the courtesy appropriate to family correspondence: they also reassured the reader that familial solidarity was intact and so encouraged a positive response to the writer’s subsequent attempts at persuasion. Nor¬ mile used descriptive passages to prepare his father’s mind for the absence of a remittance with the letter, in place of which he wished ‘them all an ocean of happiness’ (No 3q). The design is subtle: first, the general obser¬ vation that ‘a man cant make a fortune here so very quick if he minds his Duty to God and keeps convenient to Chappel’; next, news of neighbours in the colonies; then, the recitation of names warmly remembered; finally, the abrupt and detailed enumeration of the costs of passage and clothing which made a remittance impracticable (No 3I, 30, 3q, 3r). Taken as a whole, Normile’s letter is a work of craft as well as art. If few of the writers in this book were as ingenious as Normile, their use of language and ar¬ rangement of statements also provide valuable clues to their hopes and intentions. Literary scholars, their attention fixed until recently upon the ‘canon’ of significant texts, have paid little attention to the forms of rhetoric employed in the letters of the unlettered. Stephen Fender’s study of ‘the rhetoric for and against American emigration’ includes a welcome application of dis¬ course analysis to letters written by British emigrants, full of illuminating dissections of selected passages. Fender delineates a ‘dominant discourse’ embracing private correspondence as well as ‘canonical’ literature, which portrayed emigration as a ‘success’ and drew favourable comparisons with life in the Old World. Like most reductions of diverse material to a simple model, this claim resists verification. How can we know that ‘by far the greater proportion of the personal accounts now extant testify to the suc¬ cess of the venture’, when the vast body of emigrant correspondence has yet to be listed, let alone analysed? Can the reader be confident that even

44

Erickson, Invisible Immigrants, p. 1.

Representations

23

the texts examined by Fender subscribe to the dominant discourse, when only excerpts are quoted with negligible personal context?45 Assessment of the significance of form and language, as well as content, is impossible in the absence of faithful and uncondensed transcriptions of letters. It seems regrettable that few editors or publishers of emigrant correspondence have so far been prepared to reproduce sequences without abridgement. For un¬ doctored texts one must turn to editions of family letters, such as Alexandra Hasluck’s meticulous rendition of the ‘Toodyay’ letters to a convict in Western Australia from his wife in Yorkshire. These laborious transcrip¬ tions by family chroniclers and local historians offer raw material for an analysis of emigrant discourse that has scarcely begun, requiring methods that have yet to be formulated.46 The design and likely impact of letters cannot be interpreted from textual analysis alone. The emigrant letter was also a cultural institution, involving conventional procedures of composition and receipt. These conventions were subject to a multitude of influences, ranging from prayers and edito¬ rials to letter-writing manuals and composition exercises. The distinctive idiom of Irish emigrant letters invites analysis as an expression of popular culture, extending the innovative research of French historians such as Roger Chartier.47 For many nineteenth-century writers, the inscription of a letter was laborious and its transmission expensive, facts adding gravity to the act of communication. The importance of letters in nineteenth-century lives is indicated by the innumerable complaints of failure or delay on the part of correspondents. The editor of emigrant correspondence should not ignore the high priority given to writing and receiving letters by comparison with other concerns: letters, so ‘folklore’ suggests, mattered.48 Personal letters mattered to writers and readers because they were po¬ tentially an effective instrument for defining and modifying human rela¬ tionships. The often painful exercise of composition was not undertaken 45 Stephen Fender, Sea Changes: British Emigration and American Literature (Cambridge, 1992), pp. xv, 205. Reliance upon extracts, unavoidable in most historical studies, raises unusually acute problems when applied to the analysis of rhetoric. 46 Alexandra Fiasluck, Unwilling Emigrants: A Study of the Convict Period in Western Aus¬ tralia (Melbourne, 1978; 1st edn. 1959), PP- 113-29. Other evidently faithful editions relating to Australia include David Adams, The Letters of Rachel Henning (Sydney, 1963); Edgar Beale (ed.), The Earth between Them: Joseph Beale s Letters Home to Ireland from Victoria, 187253 (Sydney, 1975); Nancy Bonnin, Katie Hume on the Darling Downs, a Colonial Marriage. Letters of a Colonial Lady, 1866—1871 (Toowoomba, 1985); Peter Cowan (ed.), A Faithful Picture: The Letters of Eliza and Thomas Brown at York in the Swan River Colony, 18411852 (Fremantle, 1977)3 J- M. D. Fiardwick (ed.), Emigrant in Motley: The Journey of Charles and Ellen Kean in Quest of a Theatrical Fortune in Australia and America, as Told in Their Hitherto Unpublished Letters (London, 1954); Valerie Ross (ed.), The Everingham Letterbook: Letters of a First Fleet Convict (Wamberal, NSW, 1985); Pamela Statham (ed.), The Tanner Letters: A Pioneer Saga of Swan River and Tasmania, 1831—1843 (Perth, 1981). 47 Roger Chartier (ed.), La correspondance: Les usages de la lettre au XIXCsiecle (Paris, 1991). 48 Schrier, American Emigration, pp. 40-2.

24

Introduction

merely to express intimacy or satisfy curiosity: it was designed to influence and sometimes manipulate readers. Writers often selected facts and ex¬ pressed sentiments purposefully rather than sentimentally, knowing the probable consequences of their advice for recipients. The functional signif¬ icance of emigrant letters has been treated cursorily by most editors, more concerned with letters as sources of ‘fact’ than as human testimony. It is true that the role of letters in influencing selection of future emigrants has been widely discussed, sometimes with unexpected outcomes. As Erickson remarks, ‘in contrast to published letters these private letters rarely en¬ couraged migration’; indeed, both Erickson and O’Farrell have noted cases in which emigrants sought rather than offered financial support.49 Yet few editors since Thomas and Znaniecki have addressed the broader functions of emigrant letters in influencing problems of family organisation and the ‘politics’ of the kinship group.50 Their fifty sequences are intended to typify a range of responses to the menace of familial disintegration. Introductions to each sequence hint at a relationship between the rapidity of disintegra¬ tion under the impact of migration and the extent of exposure to other fragmenting influences; but insufficient family background is assembled to confirm that supposition.51 For writers such as O’Farrell and Miller, emigrant letters are significant above all as a source of psychological revelation. Both writers have inter¬ preted emigrant correspondence as an expression of alienation and cultural fragmentation among those transplanted from a ‘traditional’ and largely ‘static’ society to a land of strangers. Miller detects echoes of the ‘exile’ motif, a rhetoric admittedly fostered by nationalist propagandists, in emi¬ grant expressions of homesickness and passivity. 0‘Farrell writes that ‘the Irish, as these letters make clear, brought their kinship mentality to Aus¬ tralia, where it gradually crumbled and fell apart, declining into a residual social atomism marked by separation, isolation, loneliness and eventual alienation of society’s individual parts’.52 Fender also applies the evidence 49 Erickson, Invisible Immigrants, p. 5; Patrick O’Farrell, Letters from Irish Australia, 18251929 (Sydney, 1984), p. 13350 This is also a major theme for Baily and Ramella in One Family, another work that uses letters in both directions to illuminate the process of exchange within family groups. 51 Since letters are cited as illustrations rather than proof of an externally derived model of familial disorganisation, demonstration of the impact of background on emigrant alienation is deemed redundant. For a penetrating critique of their use of ‘human documents’ in soci¬ ology, with suggestions for a more ‘trustworthy’ dialogue between theory and illustration, see Herbert Blumer, An Appraisal of Thomas and Znaniecki’s ‘The Polish Peasant in Europe and America’ (New Brunswick, N.J., 1979; 1st edn. 1939). 52 Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, chs. 7, 8; Kerby A. Miller et al., ‘Emigrants and Exiles: Irish Cultures and Irish Emigration to North America, 1790-1922’, in Irish Historical Studies, xxii, no. 86 (1980), pp. 99-100; O’Farrell, Letters, p. 6. For a useful discussion of the interpretation of letters by both writers, see D. H. Akenson, ‘Reading the Texts of Rural Immigrants: Letters from the Irish in Australia, New Zealand, and North America’, in Canadian Papers in Rural History, vii (1990), pp. 387-406.

Representations

25

of letters to a psychological model, detecting a ‘rhetoric of renunciation’ on the part of emigrants anxious to justify their breaking of ‘ties to a sustaining community’ by proclaiming the advantages of the New World.53 These psychological interpretations, though intriguing, need to be vindi¬ cated through careful readings of particular letters. For every ‘exile’, there was an adventurer; for every alien, a settler. If many editors have paid little heed to the rhetoric and personal func¬ tions of correspondence, this may be ascribed to the richness and freshness of the information contained in letters. Emigrant letters supply facts, as¬ sertions, and responses to experience which cannot easily be found else¬ where, and which often provide a salutary corrective to glib generalisations from statistical aggregates. The letters of Normile and most other writers in this book are not merely exercises in rhetoric, but detailed and absorbing commentaries on life in Australia or in Ireland. Moreover, their ‘private’ character seems to promise a more reliable report than the travelogue or newspaper article. 0‘Farrell maintains that ‘of their nature they are an intimate insight into what the migrant actually thought and felt, expressed without constraint, and with the honesty and candour appropriate to close family situations’.54 Subtleties of mentality should therefore be more often revealed in private correspondence within families than in more guarded public communications. Though it might be objected that privacy fosters its own strategies of dissimulation and manipulation, there is no doubt that the private and semi-public domain of personal correspondence encom¬ passed a far wider range of questions and answers than the public discourse of the emigrant handbook. Provided that the ‘facts’ asserted in letters are interpreted in context, they may become a valuable source of information about migration. The enterprise of Erickson and more recently Kamphoefner’s team dem¬ onstrates triumphantly that the methods and materials formerly restricted to local or family histories may be used to illuminate broader problems when linked with letters. We can no longer accept Blegen’s complacent statement that ‘a precise identification of names and the elaboration of details on many other matters seem to me unessential to the understanding and appreciation of the basic content of the letters’.55 Nor can we shrug with Conway that ‘the identification of any one John Jones is virtually impossible and so, with a few exceptions, this remains the story of the forgotten men and women who left Wales in search of the White Moun¬ tain’.56 Clearly it is impracticable to provide personal contexts for hundreds of isolated letters, such as the material edited by Blegen, Conway, Barton, 53 54 55 56

Fender, Sea Changes, pp. 64, 353. O’Farrell, Letters, p. 3. Blegen, Land of Their Choice, p. xiv. Conway, Welsh in America, p. viii.

26

Introduction

Wtulich, or Wyman. This does not, however, apply to sequences of letters, which naturally carry far more clues to location and identity. The use of sequences has the further advantage that migration is represented as a proc¬ ess, whose course may be traced from letter to letter. The process of migration affected those who stayed as well as those who left, challenging home certainties and inviting reflections from both sides on the competing attractions of new and old worlds. It is curious that scarcely any editors have followed the example of Thomas and Znaniecki by assembling letters in both directions. This omission reflects the rarity of surviving bilateral sequences, since very few writers not in public life kept copies of their own letters. Even so, no study aiming to analyse the dis¬ course of letters can afford to ignore the patterns of response, which in turn dictated much of the content and rhetoric of further letters. In the absence of specific replies, we may nevertheless attempt to reconstruct the exchange by collecting information on the recipient, exploring hints in the surviving letters, and examining other sequences of letters to emigrants. These meditations on previous editions of emigrant letters prompt a com¬ posite approach to the editing of Irish-Australian correspondence. Instead of restricting analysis to factual content or revelation of mentality, literary form, cultural significance, or familial function, this book applies all of these perspectives to the letters selected. Since neither content nor function may be interpreted safely without textual analysis, I provide the full text of all surviving letters in each chosen sequence, retaining blemishes of spell¬ ing, grammar, and syntax. The format has, however, been altered in order to render letters intelligible at first reading. Sentence breaks have been in¬ troduced, causing changes to capitalisation and punctuation. More impor¬ tant, each letter has been split into paragraphs according to topic, so laying bare at least one reading of the sequential logic of that letter. This division also facilitates the indexing and citation of extracts, enabling the reader to find any relevant passage without delay. Letters to and from emigrants are reproduced in almost equal numbers, enabling us to assess the impact of migration upon those in Ireland as well as in Australia. I follow Erickson’s precedent by excluding letters published in newspapers, since the function of these letters was fundamentally changed by their removal to the public domain, and editorial excisions render textual analysis unfeasible.57 Published letters contributed to the marketing of migration and diffusion of information; but as a genre they

s" Erickson, Invisible Immigrants, pp. 3-4. As Erickson notes, many previous editors, includ¬ ing Blegen, Conway, and also Walker D. Wyman in California Emigrant Letters (New York, 1952), had chosen to rely largely on published letters. For a valuable collection of authenticseeming letters mainly published in newspapers, see Emilio Franzina (ed.), Merica! Merica! Emigrazione e colonizzanione nelle lettere dei contadini veneti in America-Latina, i8y6-i^02 (Milan, 1979).

Representations

27

are distinct from personal letters even when (perhaps in pursuit of fraudulent verisimilitude) they exhibit an intimate or personal tone. Another familiar but excluded class of correspondence is the shipboard diary, often written in letter form by instalments and reworked later in fair copy. The functions and conventions of shipboard diaries had little in common with those of reg¬ ular correspondence and deserve close attention in their own right.58 Each sequence is introduced by a commentary based on a wide range of genealogical and local sources relating to both countries. An important function of the commentary is to compensate for the one-sided character of surviving correspondence, by assembling a detailed profile of the oth¬ erwise inaudible recipients. Equal attention is therefore given to the contexts of receipt and composition. Even those notorious ‘rosters’ of neighbours and kinsfolk may be transformed into worthwhile evidence of an emigrant’s ‘social field’, as the Normile commentary seeks to demon¬ strate. In many cases, passages in the letters have required radical reinter¬ pretation after the discovery of facts to which the writers made no direct allusion. Revelations such as Michael Hogan’s convict background, or Mary Brennan’s ‘mixed marriage’ to Joseph McKee, enable us to peer be¬ hind the veil of shared intimacy by which the privacy of correspondence is sustained. One is uncomfortably aware that a further discovery might in¬ validate a vital interpretation, and that the laborious accumulation of per¬ sonal background may raise more questions than it resolves. Even so, the richness of nominal sources in both Ireland and Australia is often sufficient to give the historian of private life the privileged position of, say, a sub¬ postmistress—conversant with background and career, alert to gossip, but often shaky on detail. In the few cases in which key elements of an emi¬ grant’s career defied reconstruction, I have omitted the sequences concerned regardless of their intrinsic appeal. The commentaries offer readings of each sequence in personal context and reflect the preoccupations of each writer as indicated by a topical breakdown of the text. I have allowed the writer to shape the commentary, working outwards from text through context to interpretation. In the the¬ matic chapters, an attempt is made to distance the analysis from individual preoccupations. The arrangement of material is here dictated by a topical analysis of the entire set of letters, collating readings which may already have appeared in a commentary. In many cases, the same phrase is assigned several interpretations at different points, reflecting my conviction that words in letters carried multiple meanings for an informed reader. Although comparative statements about the relative frequency of various themes are 58 See Don Charlwood, The Long Farewell (Melbourne, 1981); Bryce Moore, Helen Garwood, and Nancy Lutton, The Voyage Out: 100 Years of Sea Travel to Australia (Fremantle, 1991). The discourse of shipboard diaries to Australia is analysed in Andrew Hassam, Sailing to Australia (Manchester, 1994).

28

Introduction

based on comprehensive extraction, arithmetical ‘content analysis’ is usu¬ ally avoided because of its spurious precision in a study not based on a representative sample. When statistical breakdowns are provided, the pur¬ pose is to show the range of connotations of a chosen word or variations of a specified form. The thematic chapters aim to define certain general functions of correspondence, and problems raised by migration, which ap¬ ply to a substantial number of the chosen sequences. I have refrained from adding illustrations from the hundreds of letters analysed but not included, since these would distort the synthesis and undermine the attempt to in¬ tegrate text, context and interpretation. Though many choice ‘examples’ have been lost through this self-denying ordinance, the richness of the sur¬ viving letters offers adequate compensation.

SELECTIONS

Private correspondence is among the most ephemeral of historical sources. Of the uncounted millions of letters exchanged between Ireland and Aus¬ tralia before the First World War, only a few thousand are known to exist. In order to survive, a letter has had to escape the recurring menaces of being thrown away, burnt, lost, or even sold to a dealer for the sake of a stamp or postmark. Since letters seldom retain their sentimental appeal after the recipient’s death, they are customarily destroyed as part of the obsequies. Those still in existence have either endured by accident, con¬ cealed in a trunk or an outhouse, or else been preserved in conscious rec¬ ognition of their genealogical or historical importance. As Fender observes, the process by which letters have survived is a form of ‘vernacular publi¬ cation’, almost as selective and purposive as the creation of ‘a canon of literature’.59 It is therefore most unlikely that the residue are representative in style, content, or genesis of those that have disappeared. It follows that any attempt to assemble a representative sample of all correspondence from surviving letters would be futile, since the underlying ‘population’ is defined by preservers rather than writers or readers. The finest editions of emigrant correspondence have adopted other criteria of selection, such as novelty, survival in original form, membership of a sequence, richness of detail, and quality of narration.60 The letters in this book rate highly by all of these tests. Indeed, even among the numerous available sequences that were re¬ jected, few lacked intrinsic interest in both content and style. Unlike an anthologist, the historian of migration cannot afford to select the most exciting sequences without further discrimination. If letters are to 59 Fender, Sea Changes, pp. 18-19. 60 These are five of the six criteria applied by Kamphoefner and associates: see News from the Land of Freedom, pp. 45-6.

Representations

29

be linked with the broader patterns of human movement, then their writers or readers must in some sense ‘represent’ the broader population of movers. Kamphoefner’s team made ‘the attempt to provide a representative sample of German immigrants as a whole’, having ‘taken into account’ both socio¬ economic class and geographical distribution. Their intention was to em¬ phasise responses to migration by ‘the lower class, the common people’.61 Less ambitiously, Erickson ‘tried to dig deeper into the social structure of the migrant population than has been customary in publishing collections of emigrant letters’, while admitting that ‘ordinary labourers from both town and country are clearly under-represented’.62 This book likewise at¬ tempts to embrace all the major elements of Irish-Australian migration, account having been taken of the regions of origin and settlement, religion, sex, occupation, mode of passage, and date of arrival. In negative terms, the aspiration to give voice to the voiceless majority of migrants is easily fulfilled, by ignoring the vast majority of surviving letters—those written by what might be termed the ‘letter-writing classes’. The responses to mi¬ gration of younger sons of the gentry, politicians, journalists, merchants, clergymen, nuns, and governesses could generate a fascinating study of Irish-Australian cabin-class migration as reflected in educated discourse. Such a study would join an already groaning shelf of collections in the same genre.63 The focus of this book, however, is upon the forgotten ver¬ nacular of the steerage classes. In positive terms, the selection of a ‘representative sample’ is less easily accomplished. No statistician would be impressed by a ‘sample’ of fourteen sequences purporting to ‘represent’ a third of a million migrations.64 It would be still more ludicrous to portray these sequences as a ‘stratified sample’, in which the selection of those fourteen elements takes into ‘ac¬ count’ no fewer than seven variables! The reader has no reason to suppose that the responses of Michael Normile ‘represent’ those of all Australian emigrants from Clare, or from small farms, or travelling with state assis¬ tance to New South Wales. Strictly speaking, this selection should therefore be regarded as an unrepresentative non-sample comprising fourteen indi¬ vidual representations of migration. Nevertheless, those individuals have been chosen so as to avoid complete non-representation of any major

61 Kamphoefner, News from the Land of Freedom, pp. 45-6. 62 Erickson, Invisible Immigrants, pp. 6-7. 63 In addition to most of the family collections cited above (note 46), educated voices pre¬ dominate in anthologies such as Patricia Clarke and Dale Spender (eds.), Life Lines: Australian Women’s Letters and Diaries, 1788-1840 (Sydney, 1992.); Patricia Clarke, The Governesses: Letters from the Colonies, 1862-1882 (Sydney, 1985); and Helen Heney, Dear Fanny: Wom¬ en’s Letters to and from New South Wales, 1788-18J7 (Sydney, 1985). One notes with interest the absence of corresponding anthologies of male letters. 64 The same applies to the 50, 25, and 20 sequences analysed by Thomas and Znaniecki, Erickson, and Kamphoefner respectively.

30

Introduction

element. As a result of public appeals, private generosity, and the increasing flow of ‘common’ correspondence into archives, I have been able to assem¬ ble sequences of high quality illuminating the migration of steerage pas¬ sengers, Catholics, poor Protestants, women, labourers, and people of rudimentary education. I have therefore not been obliged to follow the example of Patrick O’Farrell, whose stimulating edition of extracts from Irish-Australian correspondence was virtually restricted to Ulster Protes¬ tants of means, a group accounting for at most a tenth of Irish settlers in Australia.65 This book is based on in letters, of which 55 were sent to Australia and 56 to Ireland.66 The letters range in length from a single line to twelve pages, the mean length being about 800 words (enough to fill the four sides of a folded sheet). The sequences vary from two to fifteen letters, only occasionally including correspondence in both directions.67 They were sent between 1843 and 1906, with a heavy concentration in the 1850s and 1860s. Despite the rarity of surviving letters by Irishwomen of humble station, 36 of those chosen were written by women. Most of the letters were exchanged within families, but I have included two sequences ad¬ dressed to former neighbours of different social rank.68 The Dalton letters, sent by a prosperous farmer and his wife to their former servants, are as intimate in tone as many exchanges within families. John McCance’s letters from Victoria to a neighbour in Co. Down convey the emigrant’s sense of his own social and educational inferiority, while also demonstrating that the two were closely linked through several networks. None of the writers in this book had literary pretensions, although there is considerable vari¬ ation in literacy and articulacy. The letters of the expatriate Doorleys in Lancashire are barely comprehensible, and have required considerable an¬ notation. At the other extreme, Isabella Wyly’s spidery missives from Ade¬ laide had genteel touches, and Philip Mahony in Victoria sometimes employed the phrases of a stump orator. Almost every sequence was written

65 For O’Farrell, this ‘imbalance is easily explained. Though there were far more immigrants from the Catholic South, they were not so well educated. . . . The social structures governing the massive emigration from the South and South-west of Ireland were often such that not only whole families but whole districts emigrated: there was no one to write back to. . . . In the North, a greater locational stability and the fact that some family members more often remained, favoured more likely preservation’: O’Farrell, Letters, p. 5. 66 Of the 5 6 letters to Ireland, 4 were sent from an English port of embarkation; 9 of the 55 letters to Australia were also sent from England as a result of the migration of the Doorleys to Bolton. 67 Exchanges may be found only in the Dunne and Hammond sequences, both primarily from Ireland. Eight sequences are restricted to letters from emigrants, and four to letters from relatives in the British Isles. (lS Regrettably, I failed to locate any worthwhile sequences of plebeian love letters, or letters between boon companions, which might have illuminated extra-familial relationships.

Representations

31

largely in the vernacular of the Irish region of origin, the idiomatic quality usually being enhanced by idiosyncrasies of spelling, grammar, syntax, and vocabulary. The dominant tone is thus unmistakably plebeian. In order to place these sequences in the general framework of IrishAustralian migration, it is obviously necessary to categorise the background of the emigrants who occasioned the correspondence, rather than that of the writers per se.69 Of the emigrants at the centre of each sequence, nine were male and five female. Ten were Catholics; the remainder not only covered all major Protestant denominations but moved freely among them. Ten emigrants were reared on farms, and the fathers of the remainder had followed the occupations of army pensioner, shopkeeper, baker, and ac¬ countant.70 The inclusion of an accountant’s daughter is less anomalous than it might appear, since Isabella Wyly had been orphaned and impov¬ erished as a young child and reached South Australia as an assisted im¬ migrant and ‘servant’. The ten children of farmers came mainly from small or medium holdings, with a median annual valuation of only £12 and a median area of 22 acres.71 Even the largest farm of origin was less than 100 acres, smaller than any of the British farms spawning Erickson’s letterwriters.72 Six emigrants came from Munster, including two each from Clare and Tipperary, the dominant counties of origin for Irish Australians. Four were from Ulster, three from Leinster, and the other from Galway. All but three of the emigrants left counties whose overall emigration rate to Aus¬ tralia was above the median (see Figure 5). The composite profile of these fourteen emigrants, as returned at the time of their movement to Australia, roughly corresponds to that set out in the first section of this chapter. Apart from 14-year-old Maria Doorley, all were young adults aged between 18 and 29 years, with median ages of 26 for men and 19 for women. Five were already married to spouses from their 69 The selection of the principal emigrant involved in each correspondence is problematic, since in many cases several emigrants appear as either writers or recipients. In four sequences from Ireland, an arbitrary choice has been made between two recipients of equal importance. Johanna Hogan and Nixon Fife have been preferred to their siblings Ned and Faithy; Mary McKee and Joseph Hammond have been included rather than their spouses Joseph McKee and Mary Hammond. The remaining principal emigrants are Michael Normile, Isabella Wyly, Biddy Burke, Michael Hogan, Ned O’Sullivan, John McCance, Patrick Comber, Phil Mahony, Christy Dunne, and Maria Doorley. 70 Two emigrants were also associated, through their spouses, with weaving households. 71 These figures normally refer to the value of family holdings in mid-century, changes over time being chronicled in the commentaries. Radical variations in the quality of land render valuation preferable to acreage as a comparative standard. In ascending order of annual val¬ uation (excluding the half acre that seems to have been occupied by Michael Hogan s widowed mother), the family holdings were worth about £2 (Johanna Hogan), £6 (O Sullivan), £11 (Burke and Brennan), £12 (Fife), £23 (Normile), £25 (Doorley), £51 (Mahony), and £84 (Dunne). 72 Erickson, Invisible Immigrants, p. 17.

32

Introduction

LONDONDERRY

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Normile

47

by name to about half of the households in Derry, but to only three in Carrowduff including that of uncle Edward. Even Ned seems to have suf¬ fered from his location, for Michael junior complained twice that his uncle was ignored in his father’s letters (3a, 5j). Up the mountain lay a wasteland of forgotten or resented strangers, as un-neighbourly and potentially men¬ acing as bushrangers. A scattering of acquaintances lived further afield, in the vicinity of Ennistymon, Kilshanny, and Kilfenora as well as the Normile homeland outside Doonbeg. Even though the letters are unmistakably those of a zealous Catholic, well versed in the language and precepts of his religion, they suggest that the parish was less important as a social unit than the townland. The priest in Liscannor was never mentioned, whereas fulsome thanks were offered to the Protestant rector in Kilfenora for his help in arranging the move to Australia (ic, 3q). The visible church, when mentioned, was the old chapel in Derry where Michael chatted with friends in his dreams (cjh). Even this locus of Catholicism had moved half a mile to the west by 1862, causing Michael to write that ‘I was verry sorry to hear of you to let your old chapel to be chifted to (Ballyfadeen). O poor Derry is gone and to let them crow over yea’ (i2e). Chapels were meeting points and symbols of com¬ munity, not yet factories of piety. The prissiness of the ‘devotional revo¬ lution’ had evidently failed to permeate the wilds of North Clare, perhaps because the district lay within the ecclesiastical province of the reactionary John MacHale, Archbishop of Tuam.25 MacHale’s influence also helps explain the scarcity of national schools in the region, and the anomalous survival of hedge schoolmasters like Mi¬ chael O’Donohue of the Derry Magazine. The educational census of 25 June 1868 shows that his school had no connection with either the Board of National Education or any religious body, and that his class consisted of 34 Catholic children of both sexes.26 No doubt Michael Normile was educated, and learned to value education, in a similar context. His letters were laced with reminders of the utility of knowledge, particularly for those contemplating life abroad: ‘Dont forget in sending the children to shool and I will find a better place for them than to stop in Derry’ (31: 5k, 3n).

in 1851, while that of Caheraderry fell from 243 to 152. This suggests a major resettlement of the local population, but may merely reflect inconsistency in the definition of townland boundaries. 25 The parish of Liscannor (otherwise Touheran, or Caher) lay within the tiny papal diocese of Kilfenora, for which the Bishop of Galway (province of Tuam) acted as Apostolical Ad¬ ministrator. Since Liscannor was itself designated as a Bishop’s parish, its priest was admin¬ istrator for an administrator. 26 Powis Commission, vol. vi, Educational Census, pp. 158-9, in HCP, 1870 [C. 6-V], xxviii, part V. The schoolmaster at Caheraderry was not named. His school was among those de¬ scribed by the Constabulary as ‘hedge schools’, which accounted for 9 of the 33 establishments in the Ennistimon Constabulary District (as against 17 national schools).

48

News from Australia

Michael’s hedge-schooling and home-training gave him a clear, flowing, and rather decorative hand; a wide vocabulary and the power to use it effectively if not always grammatically; and an unmistakable fascination with words. He had little of the grandiloquence of the fictitious ‘Grattan’ in the Derry Magazine, but much of the untamed lucidity of a sharp and articulate observer. Normile’s letters make no direct use of the Irish lan¬ guage, which remained vernacular in the district, yet the musicality and balance of his prose distinguish it from the mundane manner of standard English via school reader. Normile could compose a stately salutation, sharpen a description with a colourful proverb, half-conceal his innuendoes with an imperfect erasure, and roll out a polysyllable to add weight to his words. Proverbs such as to ‘whistle a gig [jig] to a milestone’ (3f), express¬ ing the plight of many an Irishman faced with the unresponsiveness of man and beast in Australia, were probably translations from the Irish.27 But the ‘ocean of consolation’ that Normile derived from his father’s letters (3 a, 4a) was redolent of clerical rather than vernacular speech.28 ‘The old saying self praise is no prais’ was scarcely Irish in flavour, but the gymnastic im¬ agery preceding it had the elements of an Irish Bull: ‘If a person done a good turn for them [they] would go and cut your throat to others behind your Back’ (9c). Normile’s language was neither insular nor provincial, but ‘Hiberno-English’ in its diversity and idiosyncrasy. By the 1850s, Irish insularity had been shattered by the universal con¬ sciousness of emigration and of the wider world that encompassed it. Nor¬ mile had at least two sisters in America, one of whom he unavailingly tried to bring out to New South Wales. Honora Normile, working in a Westfield shop, was anxious to leave America and her neglectful married sister to join Michael: ‘My brother sead that he would send for me. I will go to hem If will send for me I hope he will send for me I will happy to go to hem to my Dear brothe and sisters I would be happy to be gon to hem and to my sisters.’29 Michael hoped that his sister could be shipped without charge direct from America to New South Wales, and sought unsuccessfully to arrange this by getting a ‘Lawyer to write for me’ to ‘the head Com2 This vibrant if perplexing metaphor suggests the frustration of an eloquent speaker con¬ fronted by stolid incomprehension. It appears in Sean Gaffney and Seamus Cashman, Proverbs and Sayings of Ireland (Dublin, 1974), no. 404; Michael MacDonagh, Irish Life and Character (London, 1898), p. 333; and William Kelly, Life in Victoria (Kilmore, 1977; 1st edn. 1859), vol. ii, p. 340. Kelly, a Sligo man who published this travelogue in 1859, heard the phrase from a fellow-passenger of unrevealed ethnicity on a coach between Melbourne and the Beechworth goldfield. 2S No precise model appears in the most popular contemporary manual of Catholic devotion; but the Litany of the Sacred Heart employs the phrase ‘ocean of goodness’, and the Blessed Virgin was ‘Consolatrix afflictorum’ as well as ‘maris Stella’. See The Garden of the Soul (Dublin, ‘Diamond’ edn., circa 1880), pp. 146, 78, 194. A. Honora Normile to her father, circa 1855, in Normile Papers. Her address may have been the Westfield in either Massachusetts or New Jersey.

Normile

49

missioner of the Emigration buisiness in this Colloney’.30 In token of the solemnity of this transaction, he intoned that ‘they have no Communication in the way of Emigration’ (5b). He was much worried in 1861 by the public and private effects of the American Civil War: ‘I expect it will do great deal of harm to Ireland for there was a good deal of money coming from there to Ireland. . . . Let me know as soon as you can if you heard from America or did Mary & Husband come out of it’ (nd: 15f). Michael junior was also in contact with neighbours as far afield as China (9c), and ex¬ pressed keen interest in international affairs. His soldier-friends the Mc¬ Mahon brothers had been sent from the East Indies to New Zealand ‘to quell the rebels or (Mourees) that made ware with the British authorities’. He remarked admiringly that ‘they are natives of N. Zealand & very strong & neumorous race of people’ (11c). Yet Normile’s focus remained Ireland and the Irish: as he wrote in 1863, ‘their is great rumours of war between Rusia France &c England—which I hope there will if it does any good for Farmers In Ireland’ (14a). When war raised food prices, he applauded; when it cut remittances, he lamented. Clare was among the counties most affected by emigration, and the Derry Magazine of 1870 contains a magnificent, if stereotyped, depiction of the ‘living wake’ before a departure. The night’s ‘jollity, gaiety, and innocent amusement by a large circle of sorrowing friends and neighbours’ would give place at dawn to ‘a scene of the most heart-rending and emo¬ tional character’. ‘Grattan’ pictured the ‘wrinkled face and feeble aspect’ of ‘the poor mother’, and the blessing of the ‘venerable octogenerian’ of a father, as their son prepared for America.31 When the Normiles emigrated, however, Australia was an almost equally popular destination for young people in the Derry neighbourhood.32 Nearly all of the households sur¬ rounding the Normiles had sent members to Australia who were mentioned in Michael’s letters. As Figure 11 indicates, these holdings formed virtually a solid block occupying most of the townland’s western half. The Clare countryman or countrywoman of the 1850s faced several possible futures with courage and curiosity. For Michael and Bridget Normile, the future lay in the towns of northern New South Wales. 30 Assistance for immigrants from the USA became available only under the regulations of September 1876, which enabled 934 residents of the eastern states (more than half of whom were natives of the UK) to move to NSW in 1877-78. See Select Committee on Assisted Immigration, Second Progress Report, appendix, p. 13, in NSW Legislative Assembly, Votes and Proceedings (1880-81), iii, no. 262. 31 Few emigrants indeed would have left fathers aged 80, since the median age at emigration was about zo. 32 This seems to have been a local peculiarity, since between 1848 and 1870 the entire barony of Corcomroe sent only 23 assisted emigrants to NSW per thousand of the baronial population in 1851. The corresponding figure for Co. Clare as a whole was 29: Richard Reid, ‘Aspects of Irish Assisted Immigration to New South Wales, 1848-70’ (PhD thesis, ANU, 1992), table

50

Figure

ii.

News from Australia

Townlands of Caheraderry and Carrowduff, marking holdings occu¬

pied by Michael Normile in dots, by ‘Australian’ households in horizontal stripes, and by ‘neighbours’ in vertical stripes (based on Valuation Revision Books and annotated Ordnance Survey maps in IVO). Notes: ‘Australian’ households are those with members in Australia mentioned in the Normile letters; ‘neighbours’ are households with members remembered in the letters. Households in unshaded holdings are not known to have included persons so mentioned.

Normile

51

II

Michael Normile and his sister Bridget left Liverpool for Sydney in April 1854, on the Araminta. They were among 324 emigrants attended by nearly 40 crewmen, slightly more than the number estimated by Michael in his first letter (ib). They received state assistance upon depositing one pound, but under a short-lived and unviable statute part of the cost of passage had to be paid by their employer after arrival. The amount repay¬ able was £12 for men and £6 for women, though in the Normiles’ case the debt was probably never cleared.33 The travel arrangements had been un¬ dertaken by their ‘good friend’ the Protestant rector of Kilfenora, who ‘wrote to a friend of his to London to speak to the head Commisioners about us and so he did and got us off’ (ic). Even before embarkation from Birkenhead, Michael was writing home excitedly about his imperviousness to seasickness and also to homesickness, which was alleviated by the mul¬ titude of familiar faces at the depot. With characteristic finality, he ‘bid adiu to Ireland for ever more’ (id: nh, i4i). No account of their experience of the voyage survives, although the Im¬ migration Board in Sydney reported that both Normiles arrived in ‘good’ health without registering complaint. This was perhaps surprising, since the voyage was marred by a vicious dispute between the captain and the sur¬ geon superintendent (who were depicted by each other as lecherous drunk¬ ard and sanctimonious pederast respectively). The surgeon was disgusted to find pigs wandering about the decks and crewmen consorting with fe¬ male emigrants; the captain denounced the surgeon for attempting to se¬ duce his sailor boys and for trespassing into his own territory. As he told a bemused commission of inquiry: ‘The weather side of the Poop Deck is my inherent right if the owner or the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland were on board and disputed that right—or even the would be great man Doctor Low I would be justified in ordering him to leeward so long as I considered it my duty to walk there.’ There were five deaths and several illnesses during the voyage, and after an outbreak of measles the vessel was placed in quar¬ antine against the captain’s urging. Sick passengers had been treated with at least 14 gallons of whiskey ‘as hospital comforts’. The surgeon reported that ‘the immigrants . . . were an useful body of people. The Single females were however much inferior to the class usually selected but from the

33 Letters from the Immigration Agent in Sydney (H. H. Browne) to the Police Magistrate in Maitland, dated 21 September and 19 October 1855, confirm that the Normiles first em¬ ployer, Alexander Brown, failed to honour his promissory note for the unpaid moiety (£12, amended to £6) as a result of his insolvency. Upon engaging each emigrant, Brown would have paid £6; the further £6 due a year later for Michael was forgiven upon amendment of the regulations (3r). See Agent’s Letterbook, folios 22 and 47, in SANSW, A 4^32 (kindly brought to my attention by Dr. Richard Reid).

52

News from Australia

scarcity of female domestic Servants, these people found ready employment at highly remunerative wages.’ The Normiles and thirty others were promptly forwarded to Maitland, north of Sydney on the Hunter River.34 They would have travelled by steamer round the coast to Newcastle before zigzagging up-stream, for the Sydney-Newcastle railway was not extended to Maitland until 1857.35 Michael and Bridget Normile found work at Lochinvar, a few miles in¬ land from Maitland. Michael was delighted with his occupation as a storeman and carter, collecting and distributing goods using ‘a first rate team of horses’, and ‘Measuring all kinds of Liquir’ (2c). He reported that his employer, Alexander Brown, was ‘a fine young man and I licked him very well’, and expressed much regret when Brown became insolvent six months after Michael’s arrival in Lochinvar (4c).36 His work had taken him every few days to Maitland, the twin town whose eastern section, with its im¬ posing gaol and government buildings, had long since been overtaken by the market centre of West Maitland. By 1850 West Maitland was a sub¬ stantial town, with 288 stone or brick houses as well as 364 weatherboard buildings.37 Soon after the disappearance of his first employer, Michael found T similar post there at £2 5s per week, with Solomon, Vindin and Co.: ‘I do be at work hard sometimes loading Teams for up the Country such as the diggings sheep & cattle stations sends out all kinds of Goods’ (4g). His firm, though not the largest business in the town, had the dis¬ tinction of transmitting the first telegraph message from Maitland to New¬ castle in i860.38 By late 1856 he had a free house and two pounds a week, and found his work so congenial that he could never quite bring himself to leave (5c, 6j, 7b, 9d, nf, 12c, 13c, i4g). His responsibilities gradually increased while his workload diminished, and in 1861 he could boast that ‘my work is not so heavy as I youst have one time. I can call on one or two men when I want them for Loading drays & &’ (iod). He was to die, as he had lived, a porter. Though Michael and Bridget Normile were returned as single and un-

34 Report on Araminta by Immigration Agent to Colonial Secretary, with Minutes of Evi¬ dence: files 54/306, 54/2670, and 54/2671, in SANSW, 4/1881.3. The enquiry found against the captain (‘evidently a very unfit person to be again employed in the Service of the Com¬ missioners’) and called for stricter segregation of the single females from the crew. 35 This tortuous route accounts for Normile’s statement that Maitland was 170 miles from Sydney ^d), nearly twice the direct distance. The railway reached West Maitland in i860, three years after its extension to East Maitland. 36 Brown absconded from his creditors on 20 March 1855. His stock was auctioned on 25 June 1855, and notice was given on 19 April 1856 of an initial repayment of 10s in the £: NSW Government Gazette. 37 John Turner, The Rise of High Street, Maitland (Maitland, 1988), p. 138. 38 Sydney Morning Herald, 18 January i860. For references to these merchants, see Lionel Fredman, A History of Maitland (Maitland, 1983), pp. 21, 29; John Lee and Co/s Book Almanac for 1885, Presented to Their Customers (West Maitland, 1885), p. 12.

Normile

53

accompanied emigrants, they adhered from the start to a large network of ‘neighbours’. Before departure, as already mentioned, they had been reu¬ nited ecstatically with their ‘comerades’ at the depot: ‘You might think it was out of the heavens we Came to them. Michl. Gready Patt McGrath and Bridget Neylon were as glad as if we Gave them a thousand pound for we being along with them’ (ic). Bridget Neylon’s father Martin lived next door to the Normiles in Derry, but the other two ‘neighbours’ had parents in other parishes and had presumably come to the district as la¬ bourers.39 The group was consolidated after Michael’s arrival in Lochinvar: ‘I have more of my old Neighbours here along with me than what I thought. Patt McGrath Mcl. Gready Bridget Neylon Ellen Ford Honra McDonough I and my Sister is Convenient together. I got a place for the two last girls that came out’ (2b). After Michael moved on to Maitland the connection remained operative, for he found Honora McDonough a job with his own employer (ji). Moreover, the Derry network was replenished by ‘chain’ migration under the Remittance Regulations, which allowed set¬ tlers to nominate further recipients of state assistance upon paying part of the fare.40 Honora McDonough brought out her brother and her next-door neighbour from Derry; and Ellen Ford nominated her widowed father as well as a brother.41 A third chain was formed when Ellen Fitzpatrick from Derry (who had married Thomas Murray just before departure) sponsored her married brother Austin, who in turn would bring out brother Michael. These transactions brought delight to Michael Normile: ‘Thomas Murry &£ Austin Fitzpatrick are the twoo onely Neighbours I care for in this Town.’ He reflected that ‘it would be hard to speake an angry word to a Co. Clare man in this Town’ (ni). In 1867, at least seven of the Clare neighbours mentioned by Normile seem still to have been resident in Maitland.42 He and his friends never lost their sense of wonder upon meeting each other in their new world. In Maitland, as at Birkenhead, a rediscovered neighbour could take the form of an angelic apparition: ‘She did not know me for a good while. You might think I fell from the heavens to her when she knew me’ (4i). The reconstruction of Derry in New South Wales was crowned on 21 39 Michael Grady alone had a direct connection with their benefactor, Revd. John Armstrong, his father evidently being the rector’s neighbour and tenant in Fanta Glebe, Kilfenora. The McGrath household lived at Ballytarsna near Kilshanny, between Derry and Kilfenora. 40 ‘Chain’ migration involving settlers named in the Normile letters has been reconstituted from passenger lists and the Immigration Deposit Journals. 41 In November i860 Ellen Ford recovered her deposit of £8, when her father stayed put. Her brother Patcy continued to offer him support, using as an intermediary Michael Normile (with his superior writing skills) when sending home £3 some two years later (14b- Ellen, Patcy, and his wife were all returned as illiterate on arrival in Sydney. 42 A. Fitzpatrick, M. Foley, T. Foley, J. Ford, M. McMahon, T. Murray, and P. Naylan were listed in Walter Sampson & Co. ’s New South Wales National Directory for 1867—68 (Sydney, 1867). Thomas Murray was still in Maitland at his death in 1894.

54

News from Australia

April 1855 by the marriage of Michael Normile and Bridget Neylon in St. John’s church, West Maitland, immediately after their departure from Lochinvar.43 Bridget Normile acted as a witness. It is odd that all three emi¬ grants were represented by marks rather than signatures in the church register, despite abundant evidence that Michael at least was literate.44 Bridget bore eight children between 1856 and 1875, all of whom survived their childhood. Her mating with Michael would have seemed a fine ‘match’ to readers in Clare, for Michael senior and Martin Neylon not only shared a boundary but also occupied comfortable farms of similar size.45 The marriage consolidated an already warm attraction between the two families: as Michael wrote to his father, ‘I hope you & Martin Neylon will be good neighbours as usal & a little better now’ (5j). Predictably, but to Michael’s lingering regret, his union also helped brother and sister to drift apart. Within a few months Bridget had joined their married sister in Moreton Bay (Brisbane), and Michael’s letters over the next few years charted her movements between Brisbane, Sydney, and rural New South Wales (4b, 4e, 6j, 12d). Michael remarked mysteriously that ‘I cant tell you the reason she left me’ (5d), and was curiously vague in his subsequent references to Bridget’s marriage (11b, i4f). Though no such marriage is recorded in the official index, it seems that Bridget had set up a family with a Lochinvar teacher named Capon.46 We may surmise that this conjunction, unlike her brother’s, would scarcely have met the criteria for an Irish match. Michael Normile was further shielded from isolation by the presence of other relatives in the colonies. He remained in close touch with his married sister Susan in Moreton Bay (Brisbane), who had arrived there with her husband Michael Carrigg and their three children only a fortnight after the

Araminta reached Sydney. Michael hoped to have them ‘here along with me plase God’ (30), but the Carriggs remained and eventually prospered in Queensland. At first they were dogged by illness, receiving assistance as well as sympathy from Michael in Maitland (5c, 6b, 6f, yd). By the 1860s, however, the family was ‘doing first rate’. Mary Carrigg, an illiterate 11year-old on arrival in the Monsoon, had become a tall assistant teacher 43 The third letter was sent from Lochinvar on 1 April 1855. It conveyed a veiled hint of what was to come, stating that Bridget Neylon and the other Derry girls ‘swear they must get Married since the heard of these that got Married at home so I must look out for them’ (30). 44 The passenger lists indicate that all three could read and write. It seems likely that the priest, that busy and opinionated Dubliner John T. Lynch (see note 68), acted on the con¬ descending assumption that emigrants from Clare would be illiterate. I am grateful to the Bishop of Maitland for allowing me to consult registers in the diocesan office, St. John’s Cathedral, West Maitland. 45 Neylon had about 40 acres valued at £27 10s, whereas Normile occupied 30 acres worth £23. 46 The NSW index of births records six children born to Charles F. and Bridget Capon be¬ tween 1858 and 1874. The mother’s identification as Bridget Normile was kindly provided by Mrs. Mavis Newcombe of East Maitland, citing an enquiry from Mrs. Meryl Mifsud.

Normile

55

and a choir-singer who was ‘well licked by the Bishop & Priests of that Town’ (10b, nb). Her parents were ‘keeping a large Hotell in Brisbane and I belive doing very well’ (15c). The directories confirm that Michael Carrigg was occupier of the Terrace Hotel in Petrie Terrace in 1868, though six years later he seems to have been reduced to running a boarding-house in Tambo. Michael also attempted to keep contact with Hannah and Tho¬ mas Doolan, whose sister Mary was his stepmother. The Doolans were particularly eager to rebuild North Clare in New South Wales. Hannah had sent initially for Thomas, and after one failed attempt induced another Normile sister (her niece Margaret) to join them (izd, 15c).47 Thomas sponsored the passages of at least five relatives and neighbours, including the Kilfenora connections of Mary Davoren, whom he married in Bathurst in 1864.48 The letters indicate that the Doolans were less zealous in main¬ taining their connection with the Normiles in New South Wales, partly perhaps because they were barely literate.49 Thomas’s letter of 1859 gives an informative if clumsy account of his varied employment as a farmer and fencer outside Kiama (8b, 8c). He had already acquired land on the south coast at Shoalhaven, and subsequently settled nearby as a farmer at Jerrawanglo. He may also have worked on the goldfields (9c, nb), and his early roving habits provided Michael Normile with a counterpoint to his own strategy of settlement and immobility. The demands of blood as well as neighbourhood contributed further links and side-loops to the tangled chain of Clare migration to Australia. Among those sponsored by Thomas Doolan were John Lenane and his sister from Carrowduff, whose father’s sister was the mother of Michael’s stepmother. Marriage with Bridget Neylon also entailed a still closer con¬ nection with the McMahons of Carrowduff, since her sister Mary had mar¬ ried Richard McMahon just before their passage to Moreton Bay with the Carriggs. An even more convoluted grid of kinship governed the migration of the Healys of Ballynagun and their Doonbeg connections, including a Matthew Normile who settled in West Maitland.50 We should not, how¬ ever, suppose that every proposal for further emigration was greeted with approval and delight by those called upon to maintain the chain. Indeed, Michael Normile himself was usually discouraging to those who solicited his help under the remittance schemes. Two years after arrival he expressed 47 The Immigration Deposit Journals show that Hannah Doolan deposited £3 for Margaret ‘Normoyle’ (of ‘Ennistymon Co. Derry’) in October 1861, and £4 for Margaret ‘Normill in August 1863. The first deposit was refunded in September 1862, two years before Margaret’s arrival. 48 Thomas Doolan nominated his cousins John and Mary Lenane, his wife’s brothers John and Michael Davoren, and Mary Leary from Derry. The last two failed to take up their tickets. 49 The passenger lists indicate that Hannah was able only to read, but Thomas was illiterate. Thomas’s surviving letter, which he ‘wrot ... in a hurry’, leaves the matter in doubt. 50 See note 54.

56

News from Australia

misgivings about assisting his wife’s brother, since ‘he might blame me here after’ (5f). Eventually, he did deposit £5 to bring out Patrick Neylon, who also worked in Maitland between gold rushes. The letters record Michael’s growing approval of Patrick’s performance, culminating in his marriage to ‘a good strong Healthy woman’ from Tipperary (i4g).51 Yet Patrick’s suc¬ cess seems not to have increased Michael’s enthusiasm for chain migration, for in 1858 Normile wrote that ‘I have sceen too many of that after People Paying money here for their Pasage and coming out here the curse them and scould them for bringing them here’ (7c). Michael Normile’s problem with his connections from home was not so much isolation as invasion. At times his defensive arguments became almost desperate, though still elo¬ quent enough: ‘I suppose my uncle John will Blame me for not Scending for him. . . . There is many men that has to cook there own rations and wash their own cloths that I know John would not like’ (7c). Thus the beleaguered emigrant tried to stem the flood from home. Ambivalence towards ‘neighbours’ survived the journey to Australia. Mi¬ chael’s references to his old comrades, as they reassembled in Maitland and beyond, were overwhelmingly joyous and positive. But he was also capable of bitter recrimination against neighbours who had betrayed their trust, like Honora McDonough. Although the Normiles had found ‘a place for her at same Place as I work as House maid’, she had ‘turned out the greatest tattler in this Town the Mean Slut. ... I let you know more in my next letter’ (j{). In that sequel, he reflected that ‘it is the poisoneess bite you will get at long last from them, like the black Snake. I will drop speaking about that affair’ (9e). In his misogynist mood at least, Normile’s prose resembled that of the Derry Magazine, in which the master denounces a female ca¬ lumniator as ‘that poison-tongued hyena,—that worm of malignity’, whose ‘habits of vilification may stand out to her disgrace, till it rots and decays in the nostrils of posterity’. Michael’s indignation was probably sharpened by recollection of Honora McDonough’s origins in Clare. During the Fam¬ ine she had evidently lived with her widowed mother in the dreaded Carrowduff, their household being one of the few recipients of relief to be deemed poor even by the official spy.52 By 1855 the McDonoughs were living in a small house on the land of Martin Neylon, who had doubtless exhorted his daughter to help Honora settle in Australia. By contrast, their other protegee, Ellen Ford, had shown gratitude and sound judgement: ‘El-

51 The registers at St. John’s Cathedral, West Maitland, show that Patrick Naylon married Catherine Coleman (an illiterate servant whose father was a Tipperary farmer) in February 1861. The witnesses were Michael and Bridget Normile. 52 Wynne Committee, evidence of Daniel Neylan, Q 72.46. The Widow McDonough had previously held a little land and owned a cow, but had divided most of her holding.

Normile

57

len got Married of late to a decent young man.53 She is a lucky girl and a decent girl. She was not like a good many more of the neighbours’ (c>e). Table 2 summarises the chain of migration recorded in the letters of Michael Normile. Omitting about four named settlers whose arrival in Aus¬ tralia has evaded detection, it provides a basic profile of twenty-seven mem¬ bers of the Normile circle in Australia. Details are also appended for eight further emigrants, not named by Normile, whose passages were sponsored by members of the circle. Of the twenty-seven central characters only twelve were female, five of them wives as yet unencumbered with children (except for Susan Carrigg). Over half of the group (ten men and six women) were aged 20 to 24, the women being slightly younger overall. Four emi¬ grants of each sex were returned as illiterate, though as we have seen, one of these (Thomas Doolan) succeeded in writing out a letter two years after arrival. Ten men and five women could read and write, and three women could read but not write. Every emigrant with a designated occupation was listed as either a labourer or a servant, the gradations of service ranging from farm servant to nursemaid. Most of the assisted emigrants arriving before 1856 were unable to name connections already in the colonies, though one sequence of settlers was seeded by a former convict.54 All but one of the nine emigrants sponsored under the Remittance Regulations from 1856 onwards were brought out by women, in five cases sisters. By comparison with the entire group of Irish assisted emigrants to New South Wales, the Normile chain had an excess of men and married couples; but in its literacy, occupational range, and age-distribution it was fairly rep¬ resentative.55 No doubt, thousands of other settlers followed similarly in¬ tricate trails of neighbourhood and affection, leading from Ireland to • Australia. Study of their surviving letters home helps us to reconstruct those trails, and the social and familial environments within which individual migration was accomplished. If ‘home’ sometimes seemed uncomfortably close in distant New South Wales, it was more often a positive and comforting notion. Loneliness and regret at separation suffuse the Normile correspondence, and the ‘ocean of consolation’ conjured by his father’s lost letters was no merely conventional phrase. Letters were a substitute for speech and nearness: ‘Actualy my Dear Lather I fancy I am speaking to you verbaly while I am writing this scroll to you but my grife I am not’ (nh). His father’s letters served to complete 53 Ellen Ford and John Krow were married in i860. 54 The Doonbeg chain (Markham, Healy, and Matthew Normile) may be traced to Nicholas Healy, a storekeeper in West Maitland (1838, 1845) who had been transported for life after the Clare summer assizes of 1818. In 1856 his nephew Martin Markham married Bridget Healy from Ballynagun (4i, yd, nf); on arrival in Sydney, Matthew Normile named Nicholas’s daughters Bridget and Eliza Healy as cousins. Many elements of this chain settled in Maitland and Raymond Terrace, also on the Hunter. 55 See Reid, ‘Irish Assisted Immigration’, ch. 4.

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News from Australia

the family conversation: ‘Belive me dear Father I feel meself at home when I am reading your valuable letters & newspapers, I read them over &; over’ (12a). The letters are littered with requests for exchange of newspapers, and Normile reported lending Irish papers to 20 and even 60 eager emi¬ grant readers: ‘I had to conceal that Paper from many peopel until I read it over’ (ng: ioe). Michael was particularly keen to receive ‘good catholic’ and ‘home catholic papers’, offering bargain deals such as two Australian newspapers for every Irish journal (9F, ioe, 15a). The written word, public as well as private, was the most tangible declaration of the emigrant’s bond with home. The affection overflowing from Normile’s pen was fuelled by niggling guilt, at having somehow betrayed those left behind on what he once termed ‘the old Shammerick Shore’ (3m). Michael’s guilt centred upon his father, and his letters repeatedly sought reassurance that he had not be¬ trayed the old man. With tactless clarity, he ‘wished to God you came to this Country when you was young and able to work as you were a good while ago’ (3s). He took solace from the knowledge that his father’s second family was growing to the age of productive unpaid household service: ‘My dear Father you have a large Family and I expect you will soon have good healp of your own’ (ng: 5), 6i, i2g, iqd). But other passages indicate his shame at having failed to send enough money home to compensate for his own withdrawn services: ‘I have been a bad son to you dear Father but I could not help it’ (14c). The fact was that his earnings as a storeman and carter left little margin for remittances. In his last surviving letter, of 18 April 1865, Normile regretted that ‘it takes all my earning to support ourselfs and little family’ (15d). We cannot know if the warmth of these letters made up for the lack of cash. Coupled with guilt was fear: fear of death, and fear of deception. News of the death of a neighbour could wrench Michael’s heart and propel his pen: ‘She was a good neighbour & an old neighbour and woman I licked well may her Soul rest in peace’ (iof). The fact of death brought not only regret but resignation: ‘It is all our fate to dye’ (3