I made a solemn vow 12 months ago. I held a personal AGM in the conference room (the end of the couch) with the board of directors (me and the neighbour’s cat, who was only there because the radiator was on). I had a hard word with myself. I had to stop taking on extra projects when my plate was as full as a dad who’s determined to get his money’s worth at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
This would be the year I would slow down. Even if it was to do things for good people for good causes, I could politely turn down requests. This would be the year I would stop spreading myself too thin. This would be the year I would say no.
How is that going? Thank you for that question, I’m so glad you asked. I’ve been signed up to give a speech in Sydney commemorating the lives of 4,000 Irish orphan girls sent to Australia in the 1800s. This would not be my specialist subject if I was a contestant on Mastermind. You see, I am a big thick. My brain is a mish mash of wine-drunk rich women screaming at each other (Real Housewives) and amusing videos from the internet (the man slipping over in ice on the RTÉ News).
The other speakers on the Great Famine memorial programme are academics who have spent their lives dedicated to researching this cruel and pivotal point of Irish history. An event that shaped the nation, population numbers, our culture and, as some research suggests, our epigenetics.
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So while it is an honour to be asked to speak, I had an understandable freak out. I grew up in the Australian school system learning about how bad colonialism was here, instead of how bad it was in Ireland. So I don’t even have the rudimentary knowledge of the average Irish school kid. In fact, as a child I famously asked my poor Irish mother, “Why didn’t they just eat something other than potatoes?”. In public. Bringing intergenerational shame on the family, and learning the word “amadán” in the process.
Luckily, a kind woman helped me trace the lives some of the women sent to Australia between 1848 and 1850. The point of the Earl Grey Scheme was simple. The colonies in Australia had a gender imbalance – there were more men who either emigrated as free settlers or were forced there as convicts.
Australia needed more women. Ireland had overcrowded workhouses. Food was scarce and so were the options of thousands of young women.
So, 4,114 left. Or were sent. In desperation. On government-funded vessels with government-issued clothes on a long and dangerous sea journey to the other side of the world. With no family or guarantee they would be alive by the time they hit dry land again.
The girls were picked “to be imbued with religion and morally pure”. They had to be obedient, free of disease and single. They were not seen as people, but were instead only to fill a purpose. The youngest was 14.
[ Apartments with fewer windows sound okay, until you live in oneOpens in new window ]
Patrick Freyne once wrote the saddest sentence in Ireland is “it was a different time”. I cannot imagine the terror of some of these girls. Landing up all alone in Sydney, some speaking only Irish in a country run by people who didn’t recognise them as equals. Historians say they were treated as “human parcels”.
Despite the horrifying circumstances, these women achieved what the successive generations of Irish emigrants continue to do. They found work. They had families. They beat the odds. Not only by surviving but thriving in an unforgiving environment defined by prejudice.
The prominent Protestant community feared being overrun by a Catholic and Irish majority. Reports swirled that the Irish girls were lazy and inferior workers. They drank. They would not learn, and some had “a morose and ungovernable temper”. One army officer said the “general complaint at the time was that they were treated with more consideration than they were entitled to and rather unduly encouraged to remain”.
Reading these accounts, from the comfort of our laptops decades later, it’s easy to spot how these girls were treated unfairly and unkindly. They were forced to leave their country to even glimpse a hope of a future, only to be viewed with suspicion by the locals whose economy they came to contribute to. It was assumed their arrival would only mean things would get worse for the existing population. They were problems, not people.
I will try to do justice to the descendants of these brave women as we tell their story this weekend. But the question that I can’t answer is, how will we view the violent backlash against immigration in Ireland decades on from today? Will we just shake our heads and say, “it was a different time”?
