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Authors: Kay Moloney Caball
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in 1892 and is buried in the Wagga Wagga cemetery.
I am a descendant of Mary’s son, Benjamin through my mother, Amy who was his 3rd daughter from his second marriage. She was a granddaughter of Mary Conway.
It seems that Mary’s life had its sad parts with the loss of so many of her children and meeting an untimely death herself. However, her descendants are many and her existence is commemorated on the Memorial which has been erected at the Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney. When I look back over the distance of time, I imagine her to be a strong, courageous young woman who was prepared to face the unknown in this distant, foreign place and make the very best of the conditions for herself and her family. I am very proud to be her descendant.
The negative press and comments started almost immediately after the arrival of the first of the Irish orphans. On Wednesday 13 March 1850, a month before the arrival of the Kenmare girls on the John Knox , both an editorial and a series of reports were carried in the South Australian Register quoting from other newspapers in the colony – Sydney Morning Herald , Melbourne Morning Herald, Goulbourn Herald and Melboure Argus – all containing negative and inflammatory comments on the Irish orphans. 3
The editorial prefaced its comments by saying that it had not stopped to enquire whether the immigration of the orphans was the work of Caroline Chisholm ‘as Dr. Lang alleges’, and went on to print in heavy ink:
We feel sure that we are expressing the universal voice of the public in declaring the present system of Irish female orphan immigration a serious injury to the community, and a wonton abuse of the funds intended by the colonists to procure the immigration of virtuous and reputable parties. 4
Then, over the rest of the page, it quoted similar articles in other Australian newspapers. The initial paragraphs were stories of unsatisfactory apprentices. In all cases the girls accused of the various misdemeanours denied the accusations. A Mrs Kennedy of Paramatta accused ‘Frances Tearnan, an Irish Orphan girl’ of being ‘impudent in the extreme, and had informed her [Mrs Kennedy] that she would not stand at the wash tub unless she was allowed to wear patent leather shoes’.
Another lady, a Mrs Bennett of Sydney, was quoted before a magistrate as accusing her apprentice of being ‘insolent, idle, used bad language, kept bad company and beat the children’ and she asked for her indenture to be cancelled. The report went on from there to describe in the most negative terms the structure of the scheme and worked up to a diatribe against Catholicism and its dangers:
We fear that time will prove that these girls are about the worst class of emigrants that could be sent to the colony … A gentleman of our acquaintance went yesterday to the Immigrant Barracks to engage an Irish Orphan, at the usual rate of wages, but not one of the whole lot could he procure, because he lived at Brighton [then an outlying country area outside Melbourne]. These girls seem to have got it into their heads that they have come here for the sole purpose of getting married, and that Melbourne consequently holds out greater inducements in that respect than Brighton. Really, we trust that the Government will interfere and bring these young ladies to their senses.
In a more sardonic tone ‘There is a kind of liberality which is very profitable – it is making a free gift to others of what has become burdensome to ourselves. England is very prodigal of such presents, her bounty scarcely knows a limit’. The article goes on to say of the Imperial Government: ‘If the colonies could only be brought to accept it, she would shift from her own shoulders the entire bulk of her convict and pauper population, and deposit them on the shores of New South Wales.’
But the longest and last contribution is devoted to religion and the perceived problems that will arise from the orphan scheme. The Melbourne
I am a descendant of Mary’s son, Benjamin through my mother, Amy who was his 3rd daughter from his second marriage. She was a granddaughter of Mary Conway.
It seems that Mary’s life had its sad parts with the loss of so many of her children and meeting an untimely death herself. However, her descendants are many and her existence is commemorated on the Memorial which has been erected at the Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney. When I look back over the distance of time, I imagine her to be a strong, courageous young woman who was prepared to face the unknown in this distant, foreign place and make the very best of the conditions for herself and her family. I am very proud to be her descendant.
The negative press and comments started almost immediately after the arrival of the first of the Irish orphans. On Wednesday 13 March 1850, a month before the arrival of the Kenmare girls on the John Knox , both an editorial and a series of reports were carried in the South Australian Register quoting from other newspapers in the colony – Sydney Morning Herald , Melbourne Morning Herald, Goulbourn Herald and Melboure Argus – all containing negative and inflammatory comments on the Irish orphans. 3
The editorial prefaced its comments by saying that it had not stopped to enquire whether the immigration of the orphans was the work of Caroline Chisholm ‘as Dr. Lang alleges’, and went on to print in heavy ink:
We feel sure that we are expressing the universal voice of the public in declaring the present system of Irish female orphan immigration a serious injury to the community, and a wonton abuse of the funds intended by the colonists to procure the immigration of virtuous and reputable parties. 4
Then, over the rest of the page, it quoted similar articles in other Australian newspapers. The initial paragraphs were stories of unsatisfactory apprentices. In all cases the girls accused of the various misdemeanours denied the accusations. A Mrs Kennedy of Paramatta accused ‘Frances Tearnan, an Irish Orphan girl’ of being ‘impudent in the extreme, and had informed her [Mrs Kennedy] that she would not stand at the wash tub unless she was allowed to wear patent leather shoes’.
Another lady, a Mrs Bennett of Sydney, was quoted before a magistrate as accusing her apprentice of being ‘insolent, idle, used bad language, kept bad company and beat the children’ and she asked for her indenture to be cancelled. The report went on from there to describe in the most negative terms the structure of the scheme and worked up to a diatribe against Catholicism and its dangers:
We fear that time will prove that these girls are about the worst class of emigrants that could be sent to the colony … A gentleman of our acquaintance went yesterday to the Immigrant Barracks to engage an Irish Orphan, at the usual rate of wages, but not one of the whole lot could he procure, because he lived at Brighton [then an outlying country area outside Melbourne]. These girls seem to have got it into their heads that they have come here for the sole purpose of getting married, and that Melbourne consequently holds out greater inducements in that respect than Brighton. Really, we trust that the Government will interfere and bring these young ladies to their senses.
In a more sardonic tone ‘There is a kind of liberality which is very profitable – it is making a free gift to others of what has become burdensome to ourselves. England is very prodigal of such presents, her bounty scarcely knows a limit’. The article goes on to say of the Imperial Government: ‘If the colonies could only be brought to accept it, she would shift from her own shoulders the entire bulk of her convict and pauper population, and deposit them on the shores of New South Wales.’
But the longest and last contribution is devoted to religion and the perceived problems that will arise from the orphan scheme. The Melbourne
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