15/09/2026
☘️ Echoes of the Irish — Week 4
A Blessing or a Curse?
What must it have felt like for a sixteen-year-old girl confined behind the austere and forbidding walls of a grossly overcrowded Irish workhouse? Parted from family if not by death, then by a strict regime of isolation where men, women, boys and girls were separated upon entering the confines of the workhouse. It was a harsh environment and a place of last resort when food and shelter could not be found elsewhere. Hunger, disease and death were constant companions along with the drudgery of picking oakum (unravelling old ropes used to repair ships), relentless cleaning and washing for hundreds of inmates crammed into dormitories far too small to allow any individual space. Bridget Davies from Scarriff in east Clare was one of these girls. Both her parents had died but she had at least one brother alive.
Then she was asked would she like to immigrate to Australia. We do not know how this proposal was presented to teenage girls in the workhouses, but we know that over four thousand volunteered to make the journey. A few had relatives in the colonies – perhaps a father who was transported, an uncle, an older sister or in Bridget’s case a cousin who immigrated but for most it was a step into the unknown.
Once selected she was outfitted with a complete wardrobe of new clothing and boarded a steamer from the North Wall in Dublin to cross the Irish Sea to the Emigration Depot in Plymouth. Here her paperwork was processed, and she boarded the Thomas Arbuthnot with dozens of other girls from workhouses from all over Ireland. The cramped quarters of the ship would be their home for about the next four months. The journey was overseen by the Surgeon Superintendent and experiences varied according to factors such as food and supplies, illnesses, the weather and the seaworthiness of the ship.
The ship eventually dropped anchor in Port Jackson, the immigration officials came on board to carry out their inspections and a day or two later the girls were rowed ashore. Their sea chests containing all their worldly possessions were loaded onto a cart and they set out on foot up Macquarie Street to the old Hyde Park convict barracks which has been recently refitted as the Female Immigration Depot. She was to remain there until she was hired.
While the girls were marvelling at the sunshine, the sights, smells and sounds of a new place onlookers were watching them closely, observing how they were behaving, what they were saying. Some may have made unpleasant or cruel comments loud enough for them to hear. When they reached the depot there were already several hundred girls from earlier ships, some had been there for many weeks, others had been hired but their indentures were cancelled and they were returned to the depot to await another prospective employer.
They told them of their experiences at the Water Police Court and the reluctance of employers to hire Irish girls, ill treatment of bad-tempered mistresses, not being allowed to attend mass, accusations of immoral conduct and endless ridicule that appeared in the newspapers. Their Roman Catholic religion was frequently raised by those who feared a ‘Popish Ascendancy’ in the colony. The talk would have made the girls feel anxious and unsure of the future.
For the girls who arrived on the Thomas Arbuthnot in February 1850 an alternative was available. They were offered a choice to stay in Sydney, or travel to Brisbane, or into the country to be hired by townsfolk and settlers. The Surgeon Superintendent that had cared for them since they left Plymouth offered to es**rt the group of girls on a ten day journey to Yass. Bridget must have been satisfied with how he had treated them during the long voyage because she and 130 other girls said they will go wherever he takes them. One hundred and two are selected to make the trip.
As they passed through Goulburn the reporting in the local newspaper the Goulburn Herald showed no mercy. It described the girls as “a freight of those useless beings, the orphan girls from the Irish parishes...It is hoped that a stop will shortly be put to this species of emigration. The specimens we have already had, have sufficed to show that the class is utterly useless to the colony, and in fact mischievous. The papers are full of the misdoings of these girls, and where they are not absolutely depraved they are so stupid that they are fit for nothing.”
They arrived in Yass and hiring began under the supervision of the Surgeon Superintendent, the local priest or minister and magistrates who required their employers to undertake that they would train them in your duties, pay them an agreed wage, provide board and lodging and allow them to attend mass. Here things were very different to Sydney and Goulburn. A week later the Goulburn Herald changed its tune praising the girls for ‘their orderly, cleanly and healthy appearance’ and continued in that vein as not one of the girls would ever come before the Yass bench. It seems that their presence here was regarded more a blessing than the implied curse elsewhere.
Sixteen-year-old Bridget Davies was hired by Mrs Howell of Arkstone Forest, Boorowa. Her wage was eight pounds with board and lodging for a year. She married at St Clement’s Anglican Church in Yass in September 1851 to a shepherd Amie Louis Huon and had six children. Her uncle Matthew Kennedy wrote in 1850 and again in 1852 from Gurtaveha, Clare, urging her to send for her brother Patrick. Early in January 1853 she most likely travelled into Yass and deposited four pounds with the local Clerk of Petty Sessions for transfer to the Immigration Office in Sydney. It gave Patrick a free passage and later that year he arrived in the colony on the Maidstone.
Bridget died in late December 1862.
Cheryl Mongan
This brings us another week closer to our seminar 𝙀𝙘𝙝𝙤𝙚𝙨 𝙤𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙃𝙖𝙧𝙥: 𝙚𝙭𝙥𝙡𝙤𝙧𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙄𝙧𝙞𝙨𝙝 𝙨𝙚𝙩𝙩𝙡𝙚𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙞𝙣 𝙨𝙤𝙪𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙧𝙣 𝙉𝙎𝙒 on Sunday, 1 November at the Yass Soldiers Club. To hear more about the Irish famine orphans and others who took the long sea voyage and then overlanded to Yass Valley, book online today: https://www.trybooking.com/1650637
This seminar is part of the 𝗗𝗜𝗚𝗚𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗨𝗣 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗣𝗔𝗦𝗧 program, a weekend of history, talks, tours and unique experiences, running from 30 October–1 November across multiple venues in the Yass Valley.
📷 See captions for details
