An Irish orphan

In Ireland, the period between 1845 – 1852 was the time of the Irish Potato Famine.

potato blight

Potatoes were the only food that the poor could afford, and their crops were destroyed by an outbreak of phytophthera infestans, or Potato Blight. The Irish called it an Gorta Mor – the Great Hunger. You can read more about it here.

During the famine, over 1 million people died from starvation and disease. Even today, over 150 years later, people still argue about the famine, it’s causes and effects. Some call it genocide. Everyone agrees on two facts:

      1. Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, under the administration of the British Government.

             2. The Government response to the crisis was so inadequate that over 1 million people died.

deserted famine village

Many of those who escaped death were forced to live in overcrowded Workhouses, places of harsh discipline and inadequate food. Thousands died in the workhouses too.

Another million survivors of the famine emigrated to the Americas and Australia.

During the Famine there were more than twice as many able-bodied females as males in Irish workhouses. These girls had very limited employment and marriage prospects and local ratepayers who supported the workhouse foresaw years of expensive payments for their support and those of the children they might produce.

In Australia, on the other hand, white males outnumbered white females by at least two to one and by eight to one in some districts. Earl Grey, the British Secretary of State for the colonies (a member of Lord John Russell's Whig government) thought he could solve Australia's problems of a shortage of labour and an imbalance of the sexes, by alleviating the overcrowding in Ireland's famine filled workhouses. As part of Earl Grey's Pauper Immigration Scheme, over 4,000 female orphans arrived in Australia from Irish workhouses between October 1848 and August 1850. You can read more about the Irish Orphan Girls here.

In theory, girls aged 14 to 18 would volunteer to emigrate to Australia on an organised and supervised scheme. In practice, they didn’t have much choice.

The girls were inspected by a Government official, who selected those he considered healthy-looking and well-behaved. The Poor Law Union had to supply each chosen girl with a large box containing a generous set of requirements for the long voyage.

The girls, with their new possessions, set off under supervision in horse transport for the nearest Irish port from where they sailed to Plymouth on the south coast of England, and thence to Australia - a voyage of several weeks by sailing ship.

Twenty ships arrived between 1848-50, most went to Sydney, six to Melbourne, and three to Adelaide. The girls were soon recruited as domestic servants and snapped up as wives.

On board the New Liverpool, which arrived in Melbourne on August 9^th, 1849, were two sisters, Biddy and Mary McDermott. Biddy was 19, Mary 18. Both claimed to be able to read and write. The girls had come from the workhouse in Clonmel, Co. Tipperary, and were described as orphans. They would have had plenty of familiar faces on the voyage out – 24 other girls from Clonmel were on the same ship.

Mary was employed by Edward Fannonsey(?) of Melbourne, and Biddy went to work for John Wright of Goulburn, her wages to be $10 for 6 months. (it seems likely that Biddy went, not to the town of Golbourn, in NSW, but to a property on the Goulburn river, near Yea in Victoria.)

On December 27^th, 1849, Biddy married Thomas Hannigan junior at St. Francis church, Melbourne. St. Francis was the first Catholic church built in Victoria, and the only place for Catholics to be married at that time. The young couple would have had to travel to Melbourne from the Goulburn, a journey of several days by wagon. Did Biddy have a chance to see her sister Mary while she was in Melbourne.?

King Parrot Creek

Thomas and Biddy spent their married life in the Yea district, at least some of it at King Parrot Creek. They had twelve children –

 1. Mary Ann b.1 October 1850 - 30 August 1932, born at Yea
2. Thomas b.1851 - 20 March 1875 aged 23 died at Alexandra
3. Catherine b. 1853 - 1 April 1860 aged 7 years died of Diptheria
4. Bridget b. 1855 - 1935
5. Margaret b. 1856 - 18 April 1860 aged 4 years died of Diptheria
6. Joseph b. 1858 - 17 April 1860 aged 2 years died of Diptheria
7. Elizabeth b. 4 May 1860
8. Josephine b. 31 January 1862 born at King Parrot Creek
9. Catherine b.4 January 1864 born at Muddy Creek, Yea
10. John b. 2 June 1866
11. Elisha (Lena/Eleanor) b.1869 - 1902 aged 33
12. Frances b.1872

Their first child, Mary Ann, was my great-grandmother, and family legend is that she was the first white child born in the district. This birth was never registered, so there was no birth certificate for her.

 Another family story, however, was not passed down – the story of Thomas’s convict parents. He may have told Biddy, but I doubt if their children knew, and certainly my mother and grandmother had no idea of their convict heritage. It was only in the 1990s that family research by a descendant, Brian Sullivan, uncovered the secret.

Did Biddy remember her lost homeland with sadness, or was she simply grateful that she and her sister had escaped the horrors of the famine, and were able to build a new life in Australia? There was tragedy even here, when the three little ones died of diptheria – perhaps the birth of Elizabeth just a few weeks later gave her some solace?

Tom Hannigan died in 1874, aged 48. The youngest child was only 2 years old then, so how did Biddy manage alone? I have not been able to find a record of Biddy’s death, so it is possible that she remarried after Tom died, and thus her death is recorded under a different name. If she lived to old age, there may not have been anyone in the family who knew her birthplace, or her maiden name.

Several of Tom and Biddy’s daughters married, and there are now many descendants from this couple. Their family names, for anyone who is researching, are – Sullivan, Gardner, Jones, Nickle, and Grimwood.