Authors: Kay Moloney Caball
Kerry Girls (5 page)
1
Jeremiah King,
County Kerry, Past and Present
, a handbook to the local and family history of the county, (Cork 1986), p. 111.
2
Kerry Census figures
http://www.kerrycdb.ie/kerryanalysis/population.pdf
accessed 10 December 2012.
3
Devon Commission Report, Part 11, p. 1,152.
4
Cormac Ó Gráda,
Ireland’s Great Famine, An Overview
(University College Dublin, Centre for Economic Research, Working Paper Series, 2004).
5
Ibid.
6
Arthur Young,
A Tour in Ireland
(Dublin 1780), Vol. 2, p. 43.
7
John Pierse
, Teampall B
á
n
(Listowel 2013).
8
Joel Mokyr,
Why Ireland Starved
(London 1983), p. 87.
9
Ibid., p. 202.
10
Gaughan, J. Anthony,
Listowel and its Vicinity
(Leinster Leader Naas, 1974), p. 146.
11
William J. Smyth,
Atlas of the Great Irish Famine, Variations in Vulnerability
(Cork University Press 2012), p. 187.
12
Gustave de Beaumont,
Ireland: Social, Political, and Religious
, W.C. Taylor (ed.)(London: Richard Bentley, 1839), 2 vols, Vol. 1, p. 266.
13
Bertie O’Connor-Kerry
, Slieveadara School, 150 Years of Official Education
(Ballyduff Magazine 1994), p. 5.
14
Ibid.
15
De Moleyns to Relief Commission, 25 May 1846, as quoted Kieran Foley
, ‘
The Famine in the Dingle Peninsula’ in
Atlas of Great Irish Famine
(Cork 2012), p. 398.
16
De Moleyns to Relief Commission, 25 May 1846, as quoted Kieran Foley
,
‘The Famine in the Dingle Peninsula’ in Atlas of Great Irish Famine (Cork 2012), p. 398.
17
The Times
, 6 January 1849.
18
http://landedestates.nuigalway.ie/LandedEstates/jsp/estate-show.jsp?id=1859
, accessed 25 February 2013.
19
Shane Lehane, ‘Matthew Trant Moriarty and the Famine in Ventry’,
The Famine in Kerry
, Michael Costello (ed.) (KAHS Tralee 1997), p. 59.
20
Ibid., p.61.
21
Kerry Examiner
,
8 February 1847.
22
Kerry Evening Post
, 30 January 1847; ‘The Great Famine’, cited in Shane Lehane MA Thesis, 2005.
23
Landed Estates Database, NUI Galway.
24
Gerard J. Lyne
, The Landsdowne Estate in Kerry under W.S. Trench 1849–1872
(Dublin 2001), p. 3.
25
Devon Comm.Ev., ii, p.143, q.2686 quoted in Lyne,
The Landsdowne Estate in Kerry under W.S. Trench 1849-1872
(Dublin 2001).
26
Famine Account as described on plaque in Old Kenmare Cemetery.
27
W.S. Trench,
Realities of Irish Life
(London 1869), p. 113.
28
Landed Estates Database, NUI Galway (Estate Browne Kenmare).
29
Rental of Earl of Kenmare Estate, 1830–1850 (
PRONI
accessed 21 June 2013).
30
Ibid.
31
Tralee Chronicle
, July 1848.
32
Slaters Commercial Directory
, 1846.
33
Limerick Chronicle
, Wednesday 12 July 1837 (Vol. 71).
34
Kieran O’Shea,
The Diocese of Kerry
, Formerly Ardfert (Strasbourg 2005), p. 97.
35
http://www.slsa.sa.gov.au/fh/passengerlists/1849elgin.htm
.
36
Death certificate in 1902 states ‘3 years in SA and 47 years in Vic’.
37
John Pierse,
Teampall Bán
(Listowel 2013).
38
Tim P. O’Neill,
Famine, Land and Culture in Ireland
, Carla King (ed.) (UCD Press Dublin, 2000).
39
The Journals of Sir John Benn Walsh
, James S. Donnelly Jnr (ed.);
Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society
, Jul–Dec 1974, Jan–Jun 1975.
40
Fr Matthias McMahon letter to
The Nation
, 28 April 1850.
41
Ibid.
42
M.G. Moyle and de Brún, P., ‘Charles O’Brien’s Agriculture Survey of Kerry, 1800’
, Journal of the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society
, No. 1, pp. 73-100, No. 2, pp. 108–132, 1968–69.
43
Cecil Woodham-Smith,
The Great Hunger Ireland 1845–1849
(London 1991), p. 75.
LIFE IN THE WORKHOUSE
W
ORKHOUSES CAME TO
Ireland as a result of the 1838 Poor Law enacted in the British Parliament. In 1800, Ireland, under the Act of Union, became part of Great Britain with the English Parliament responsible for governing the country. While the government recognised that there was widespread and dire poverty in the country, their numerous but feeble attempts to address the problem failed. A number of Parliamentary Select Committees as well as 114 Royal Commissions and sixty-one Special Committees of Enquiry which investigated conditions in Ireland between 1800 and 1840, produced no practical results.
1
In 1834 the Poor Law Amendment Act was passed for England and Wales where the only form of poor relief was to be via the workhouse. This was to stop any malingerers or work-shy people from looking for relief – their only option to get any sort of help was to enter the workhouse and get food and shelter there. While the same system was considered initially for Ireland, it was turned down almost immediately because it was recognised that there actually was no work available in Ireland – it wasn’t a choice of working or not working that was the problem.
While a number of proposals were considered and abandoned, it wasn’t until 1836 that George Nicholls, an English Poor Law Commissioner, was sent to Ireland to investigate if the English system, funded by a local poor rate, would work in Ireland. This system would depend on a workhouse provision only. After a quick six-week tour of Ireland, he recommended that a similar system to the English one should be adopted. He did not seem to recognise that the causes for the level and depth of poverty in Ireland were totally different to those in England. Daniel O’Connell ridiculed his conclusions, saying, ‘He calculated everything and was accurate in nothing’.
2
The Act proposed was met with dissatisfaction on all sides. The landlords opposed it because of their fears of the costs associated, which would be levied on the poor rate, and the tenants, who had a pathological dread of ‘ending up in the workhouse’, without any possibility of out-relief in any form, were equally incensed. No provision was made for ‘outdoor relief’ and there was no ‘right’ to relief; ‘it was to be discretionary and dependent on the availability of workhouse places. If a workhouse was full there was no obligation on the Poor Law to provide alternative relief.’
3
An architect, George Wilkinson, was immediately employed to draw up plans for workhouses capable of keeping up to 800 inmates. The designs of the buildings were all similar. There were to be separate male and female sides.
By 1845, 123 workhouses had been built. The entire country was divided into Poor Law Unions. The Dingle Peninsula was a very poor area and because of its isolated location had suffered greatly until a decision was taken on 22 February 1848 to establish its own Poor Law Union and to erect a temporary workhouse in the town. The new permanent Dingle Union Workhouse did not open until 1852. Distances involved in the peninsula and the difficulty with communications caused untold distress. Captain Hotham, who had been sent by the Poor Law Commissioners firstly to Tralee and then to Dingle to look into the situation there, reported on these difficulties:
For instance take the relieving officer of Ventry, which is 33 miles from Tralee. He travels to Tralee on Monday to pass his accounts, Tuesday, he awaits the orders of the Board, Wednesday he returns, Thursday, distributes relief, Friday, attends Committee of Guardians at Dingle, Saturday, received applications, visits houses of applicants, and investigates their cases.
4
Workhouses were smelly, noisy, unpleasant and unhealthy, trying to cope with too many people, many sharing a bed. Large numbers of the inmates had nothing to do but exist in these demoralising conditions.
Ellen Galvin Dingle
Ellen Galvin was one of the Dingle Workhouse girls who travelled on the
Thomas Arbuthnot
, arriving in Port Jackson on 5 February 1850. Her arrival records tell us that she was 18 years of age, Roman Catholic, ‘reads only’ and her parents John and Mary were both dead.
Unfortunately, if Ellen’s age is correct, it is not possible to get her copy baptismal certificate currently, as all entries in the Dingle Baptismal Registers from 1828 to 1834 are illegible or faded.
We also know that Presentation Sisters arrived in Dingle in 1829 to teach. If Ellen lived within walking distance of the town, she would certainly have got an education and her ‘reads only’ note on arrival probably signifies that her native townland was in a rural area, where schooling was not available. Dingle Union Workhouse looked after nineteen different townlands from Dunquin in the West to Ballinacourty the East, From Brandon to Inch.
Ellen’s descendants, Liz Bonner and Leonie Bedford, have researched her story and relate it here. Ellen was Liz’s great-great-grandmother descended through her eldest child, William George Castles, and Leonie was a great-great-grandniece of Ellen.
Ellen was housed at Hyde Park Barracks prior to her departure for Yass on 18 February 1850. Together with 107 other girls, they left by dray in the care of Dr Charles Strutt, who had been the Surgeon Superintendent on the
Thomas Arbuthno
t
’s voyage from England. The girls walked on the difficult rough sections and travelled on the drays, where possible, to Yass and then to Gundagai. They were housed in the Yass police horse stables, prior to getting employment in the district. Ellen obtained employment as a house servant for Mr J.C. Welman, in Barwang and was paid £8 a year.
Mr John Cameron Welman, who owned the property of 16,000 acres at Barwang, Galong, New South Wales, was one of three Crown Commissioners of Crown Land for the Lachlan district, which included the districts of Boorowa, Young (Lambing Flat), Galong, and Binalong and was thus a quite important person in the area.
Less than one year after arriving in Australia, Ellen met William Castles and they were married by Fr Patrick Magennis of Yass. They married at Barwang on 16 January 1851 and their abode at the time of the marriage was Mr Welman’s Barwang property. William signed his name; Ellen wrote an X. John and Bridget Somers were witnesses to the marriage.
In the following seven years, Ellen had six children and she died on 8 September 1859 while giving birth to her last child, Thomas, who survived. On the death certificate, it states she was 26 years of age, married at 19, had four sons and two daughters living when she died and was born in County Clare, Ireland and had been in New South Wales for seven years. (William Castles, who would have supplied the necessary information for the death certificate, obviously got the ‘County Clare’ native place incorrect). Ellen was buried at Galong Pioneer Cemetery, ‘with no priest or minister present’. No headstone exists there for her, nor is there a mention of her in the Galong Cemetery book. The plot has not been found.
As for William Castles, he had been transported on the
Asia
(departed from Portsmouth, England under Captain Stead on 16 October 1831 arrived Sydney on 13 February 1832) when he was 21. His crime was housebreaking, and he was tried at Oxford Assizes in 13 July 1831 and sentenced to transportation for life. The ship’s record states he was a groom from Banbury and born in 1811. He was charged with a companion William Hall that on 7 June 1831 ‘having burglariously [
sic
] broken and entered the dwelling house of Isaac Smith, at Shetford [
sic
] East. [Shutford] and stolen therefrom a gold watch, a silver watch, a pistol, 20 shillings in money, 4 silver spoons and other articles, his property.’
His pardon, signed by Sir Charles Augustus Fitzroy, was dated 18 February 1849. He is listed as obtaining a licence from the Colonial Treasurer for Depasturing Stock beyond the boundaries of the colony near Yass on 18 January 1837.
In 1855, four years before Ellen died, William Castles purchased 16 acres of land located to the left of the main road the Harden. His property adjoined the Binalong police horse paddock, and runs down the hill towards Balgalai Creek. He seems to have a poor relationship with drink as he was charged with being drunk and disorderly and assaulting Constable William Costello at Yass on 12 April 1853 and fined £1 or seven days in gaol in default.
On or about June 1862 William, aged 45 years, accidentally drowned in a creek (he was drunk coming back to home during a flood. The
Yass Courier
of 21 June 1862 had a small article:
FOUND DROWNED. The body of a man named Castles has been found drowned in the creek at Binalong, near the bridge. Castles had been missing for eight days and it is supposed he got into the creek while under the influence of drink.
Most people arrived at the workhouse in rags and barefooted. Having gained admittance, the ‘pauper’ and his family were washed, disinfected and examined by the workhouse doctor for disease, and then ‘clothed in a workhouse dress’, and the clothes which he wore at the time of his admission ‘purified and deposited in a place appropriated for that purpose, with the pauper’s name affixed thereto’. Following this procedure was the part most dreaded by all the inmates – families were separated. There were different classifications for different age groups outlined clearly on the rules. Male and female adults were lodged in separate dormitories and children under the age of 2, over the age of 2 and up to 15 years were all separated into their own areas of the workhouse. From there on they were not supposed to communicate with each other. They ‘shall respectively remain in the apartment assigned to them, without communication with any other class or subdivision of a class.’
