Australia and Irish settlement: Gold

Word that gold had been found in Australia in mid-1851 spread quickly as it had done in California three years earlier. The result was a massive movement of people from Britain, Europe, China and America but also within Australia and Victoria’s ports bustled with new arrivals. In just four months in 1852, 619 ships arrived in Hobson’s Bay carrying 55,057 passengers; 1853 saw the arrival of 2,594 ships. In March 1851, Victoria’s population was 80,000, not including its indigenous population; by 1854, it had tripled to 237,000 and doubled again to 540,000 by 1861. [1] The population of the Victorian gold fields was 20,000 in 1851; 34,000 the following year; 100,000 in 1855 peaking at 150,000 in 1858. The majority of migrants came from the United Kingdom; [2] between 1852 and 1860, 290,000 people came to Victoria from the British Isles. Of the other migrants, less than 15,000 came from other European countries and 6,000 including some Irish Americans migrated from America. In December 1851, E.E. Griggs wrote from Sacramento City, California to the Rev. J. Orr in Portaferry

It appears that her majesty’s dominions are not destitute of gold; and if the reports from Australia are true, a great rush will be the result; in fact many have already left this [California], for that land of promise.[3]

The NSW gold fields were poorer but the state’s population increased from 200,000 in 1851 to 357,000 ten years later. By 1861, 29% of the population was Australian born, 60% were from the United Kingdom and 11% were from other parts of the world. [4]

Irish immigration increased with the discovery of gold. Between 1851 and 1860 roughly 101,540 of them had arrived in Australia with the vast majority finding their way to the goldfields.[5] John Sherer, commenting on the inhabitants of the goldfields, observed that

...many of these were the offspring of the teeming soil of Ireland, which seems to throw off its population with the same degree of prolific spontaneity that it shoots forth the riches of its vegetation.[6]

Unlike their Welsh, Scottish and English neighbours, most of the Irish lacked mining skills. Initially this was not a problem since alluvial mining required little expertise. However, as surface deposits of gold were exhausted and alluvial mining gave way to deep, shaft mining, mining skills became essential. Lacking these, the numerous Irish on the goldfields became a ready source of unskilled labour for large-scale mining. A few miners did strike it rich on the goldfields but for most, their experience was similar to that of Hugh Maguire of Strabane, Co. Tyrone

As far as my own success upon the diggings I must candidly say that up to the present time it has fell far short of what I expected. I was fourteen months in the diggings … yet I have been only able to come to Melbourne with about sixty-five pounds sterling.[7]

For the vast majority a short, fruitless stint as a miner soon gave way to more profitable occupations as grocers, publicans, cartage operators, brewers, domestic workers, policemen and general labourers and the wealth of available work meant that many of the Irish enjoyed a standard of living far exceeding their experience in Ireland. The abundance of available work, fuelled by the needs of the diggers, meant that many of the Irish enjoyed a standard of living well beyond that they had left behind in Ireland. Reporting on the Daisy Hill diggings near Castlemaine, the Cork Examiner informed readers that

Young Irish Orphan girls who scarcely knew the luxury of a shoe until they put their feet on the soil of Victoria lavish money on white satin at 10/- or 12/- a yard for their bridal dresses and flout out of the shop slamming the door because the unfortunate shop keeper does not have the real shawls at ten guineas a piece.

The Irish had a large impact on the goldfields communities that sprang up quickly earning a reputation for their colour and flamboyance on the diggings. The rapid rise in population caused by the influx of gold seekers and their followers was still insufficient to populate the vast ranges of Australia, which still had a dearth of general and domestic labour. Miners were too preoccupied with digging for gold, and besides, they were mostly male, exacerbating the gender imbalance

Women are the only scarce people that is here, in a city of some 10,000 Inhabitants, you will not see more than twelve or twenty women in a day there are only about 300 in the whole city.[8]

The familiar Irish brogue could be heard issuing forth from hotels with iconic names such as Brian Boru, Harp of Erin and Shamrock. The legacy of the Irish immigrants who came to the Victorian goldfields is diverse ranging from the leading role they played in the Catholic institutions of the major gold rush towns to the iconic Queensland beer, XXXX, originally brewed by two Irish brothers in the early days of the Castlemaine diggings. However, a perception persists that few of the Irish had the skills or inclination, or would risk their money by setting up manufacturing plants.[9] In fact, immigrants from practically every Irish county and culture established a wide range of manufacturing businesses in Victoria during the nineteenth century. Although not all were successful, many Irish-owned businesses not only survived, but prospered. The number of Irish-born manufacturers was not proportional to the Irish population in Victoria, but the individual and collective contribution and legacy of these industrial pioneers to the colony’s social, civic, and industrial life deserve recognition.

Nonetheless, political discontent was never far from the surface and of the diggers that took part in the 1854 Eureka rebellion,[10] one witness at the Gold Fields Commission claimed that, ‘quite half of them were Irishmen’.[11] Withers stated:

There were among the insurgents men who hated British rule with a hereditary hatred. There were Irishman who felt that feeling, and there were foreigners who had no special sympathy, if any at all, with British Government’ and reported that one of the Eureka leaders later said ‘Most of our men were Irishmen. [12]

It was estimated by one witness, Mr G. C. Levey, that about 863 men had actually taken up arms and that about half of them were Irish. [13] H. R. Nicholls stated, regarding the Stockade on the morning of the day before the battle that ‘the movement at that time seemed to have become almost an Irish one’. [14] There is, however, no evidence that the Irish diggers had a republican design; they may have used the rhetoric of rebellion but they produced no republican political statement. In 1940, H.V. Evatt claimed ‘A democracy was born at Eureka’, and credited the Irish with fathering it. The initially reluctant leader of the Eureka protest was Peter Lalor, the brother of James Fintan Lalor, the Irish patriot and the list of the dead featured a great many Irish names.[15]

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[1] Knott, J. W., ‘Arrival and Settlement 1851-1880’, in ibid, Jupp, James, (ed.), The Australian people: an encyclopedia of the nation, its people and their origins, pp. 367-370; Broome, R., The Victorians: arriving, (Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates), 1984, and Goodman, D., Gold seeking: Victoria and California in the 1850s, (Allen & Unwin), 1994. See also, ibid, Brown, Richard, Three Rebellions, pp. 346-363.

[2] Jupp, James, The English in Australia, (Cambridge University Press), 2004, pp. 52-86, especially pp. 71-74.

[3] Ulster American Folk Park, serial no: 9701195, copyright John McCleery, Belfast.

[4] Beever, A., ‘From a Place of “Horrible Destitution” to a Paradise of the Working class: The Transformation of British Working class Attitudes to Australia 1841-1851’, Labour History, no. 40, (1981), pp. 1-15, examines how and why Australia became the place where British workers wanted to emigrate.

[5] Coughlan, Neil, ‘The Coming of the Irish to Victoria’, Historical Studies, Australia and New Zealand, Vol. 12, (1965), pp. 64-86, MacDonagh, Oliver, ‘The Irish in Victoria, 1851-91: a demographic essay’, Irish Historical Studies, Vol. 8, (1971), pp. 67-92 and McConville, C., ’The Victorian Irish: emigrants and families 1851-91’, in Grimshaw, P. et al. (eds.), Families in Colonial Australia, (Allen & Unwin), 1985, pp. 3-7.

[6] Sherer, John, The Gold-finder of Australia: how he went, how he fared, how he made his fortune, (Clarke, Beeton), 1853, p. 254.

[7] Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, D1420/2.

[8] Ulster American Folk Park, serial no: 9701190, copyright John McCleery, Belfast.

[9] Pescod, K., The Emerald Strand: Nineteenth-century Irish-born Manufacturers in Victoria, (Australian Scholarly Publications), 2007.

[10] Of the many studies of Eureka, Gold, Geoffrey, (ed.), Eureka: Rebellion beneath the Southern Cross, (Rigby Limited), 1977 and Molony, John, Eureka, (Melbourne University Press), 1984, 2^nd ed., 2001, are the most useful. Of the earlier studies, Turner, Henry Gyles, Our Own Little Rebellion: The Story of the Eureka Stockade, Melbourne, (Whitcombe & Tombs Limited), 1913, retains its vigour. Ibid, Brown, Richard, Three Rebellions examines the rebellion, its causes and consequences in detail.

[11] Anderson, Hugh, (ed.), Report from the Commission appointed to inquire into the Condition of the Goldfields, first published 1855, (Red Rooster Press), 1978, p. 45.

[12] Withers, W. B., History of Ballarat from the First Pastoral Settlement to the Present Time, 1^st ed., Ballarat, 1870, 2^nd ed., Ballarat, 1887, p. 159.

[13] Ibid, Withers, W. B., History of Ballarat, p. 109.

[14] Nicholls, H. R., ‘Reminiscences of the Eureka Stockade’, The Centennial Magazine: An Australian Monthly, (May 1890), in an annual compilation, Vol. II: August, 1889 to July, 1890, p. 749.

[15] Turner, Ian, ‘Peter Lalor (1827-1889)’, ADB, Vol. 5, 1974, pp. 50-54 provides a concise biography. Berry, A., From tent to parliament: The life of Peter Lalor and his coadjutors: history of the Eureka Stockade, (Berry, Anderson & Co), 1934; Turnbull, Clive, Eureka: The Story of Peter Lalor, (The Hawthorn Press), 1946, and Blake, Les, Peter Lalor: The Man From Eureka, (Neptune Press), 1979, are more detailed. See also, Currey, C. H., The Irish at Eureka, (Angus and Robertson), 1954.

Australia and Irish settlement: women and the Famine years

One of the biggest problems facing the guardians was how to cope with ‘the permanent dead-weight’, a phrase applied to those young people who were likely to remain in the workhouse for a long time. Normally designated orphans, many still had one, and sometimes both, parents still alive, but once they entered the workhouse they were regarded as the wards of the Poor Law guardians, to be disposed of as the guardians saw fit. The result was an Orphan Emigration Scheme.[1]

Early in 1848 the Colonial Office under Earl Grey began its carefully organised emigration of young females from Irish workhouses. Irish Poor Law Commissioners circularized the Boards of Guardians of Irish Poor Law Unions asking if there were any young women ‘between the ages of fourteen and eighteen’ in their workhouses willing and eligible for a passage to Australia. By May 1848, 68 unions had provided the Poor Law Commissioners with lists of children suitable for emigration. 4,175 female orphans and 967 males had been nominated. However, in order to prevent people from entering the workhouse for the sole purpose of obtaining assisted migration, the offer was limited to those who had previously been resident in the workhouse for at least one year. Young female orphans were considered the most suitable candidates for emigration to Australia. [2] They would help redress the gender imbalance and, in the long term, normalise the social composition of the populace. In the short term, they would fulfil the need for domestic servants.

Medical examinations were arranged and the chosen young women were inspected on behalf of the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners in London by Lieutenant Henry, a semi-retired Royal Navy officer. In return the CLEC chartered ships to carry ‘our’ Irish famine orphans to Australia, arranged their berth, the food they ate and their supervision by a government appointed Surgeon Superintendent. The first vessels the Earl Grey and the Roman Emperor with young women chosen from workhouses in Ulster left Portsmouth in June and July 1848. Isabella McDougall, aged 16, sailed on the first orphan ship, landing at Sydney in 1848. Transferred to the Maitland depot, she found work as a nursery maid until she married ex-convict Edward Spicer in 1849 and had 13 children. Fifteen year old Mary Kenny sailed from Plymouth on the Lismoyne, landing at Sydney in November 1849. Both her parents were dead at the time she left County Kilkenny. Quick to find work in the colony, she married Hornby Lighthouse keeper Henry Johnson in 1852 and lived at South Head.

Gender balance was a defining characteristic of Irish migration to Australia throughout the nineteenth century and Irish women made a major contribution to Australian society.[3] About one third of convict women were Irish. For example, on 20 January 1849, Lord Auckland arrived at Hobart from Dublin with 211 female convicts. More than 1,000 young women came to Sydney and Hobart in the 1830s from Foundling Hospitals in Dublin and Cork. Approximately 18-19,000 Irish bounty and government assisted migrants arrived in Melbourne and Sydney between 1839 and 1842 of whom about half were female. In 1855-1856 over 4,000 single Irish women arrived in Adelaide. Such infusions of Irish female blood had a powerful influence on the development of colonial society. The ‘Earl Grey’ female orphans sit within that tradition. Most workhouse girls found positions within a few weeks and disappeared into colonial life. Others were sent to makeshift depots in outlying settlements, where servants and wives were in more demand. The difference is that these ‘orphans’ stand as symbolic refugees from Famine and came from among the genuinely destitute sections of Irish society.

Although the young girls from the workhouses were sent out to take up domestic service, very few had any experience of the work. This did not please the Australians: they had been led to believe they were getting proficient labour cheaply, not realising that the profession ascribed to each girl was what the guardians considered her fit for, and not for any previously acquired skill. This led to problems and the Irish orphan ‘girls’ were soon maligned in the Australian metropolitan press as immoral dregs of the workhouse, ignorant of the skills required of domestic servants. Although all the workhouse girls from the first three ships to arrive in Australia had been hired almost as soon as they came ashore, a report to the Children’s Apprenticeship Board claimed that in Adelaide in 1849 ‘there are 21 of the Irish Orphans upon the Streets’ and ‘indeed there appears to be a greater number of orphans than any other class of females’.[4] While some of the ‘girls’ were neither as young nor as innocent as was inferred, it was also the case that many of the employers came from humble backgrounds themselves and often had no idea of how to treat or train a servant. Nor did the training the girls received in the workhouse prove useful in a domestic setting. When the immigrant girl failed to provide the level of service expected, she was frequently returned to the depot, or turned out of doors and left to her own devices. Having no other means of support, some of the discarded servants turned to prostitution. As protests grew more vocal, and as the famine in Ireland appeared to have abated, the British Government agreed to the scheme being terminated. The final group of Irish workhouse orphans left for Australia in April 1850. Altogether, 4,175 girls were sent overseas during this period; 2,253 to Sydney, 1,255 to Port Phillip, 606 to Adelaide and the remaining 61 went to the Cape of Good Hope.

Colonial government sanctioned free immigration to Australia at the end of the 1820s, having relied on British convict labour until labour supply constraints made it difficult to exploit the European boom for wool exports, created in part by declining transport costs between pastoral source and industrial market. About half of the 19^th century mass migration to Australia and New Zealand of almost three-quarters of a million individuals was achieved by subsidy. The share subsidised was even greater during the transition decades between 1832 and 1851 when three-quarters of the immigrants to NSW and South Australia were assisted, but a little lower for Victoria. For the assisted migrants, subsidies were essential not only for the steerage cost, but also

...money was needed to get to the port of embarkation and to the ultimate destination after arrival in Australia; money was required for clothes for the journey...and [there was] the loss of earnings in transit.[5]

Australia was simply an impossible destination for the unassisted poor. Even though the cheapest fare had fallen dramatically from £30 to £18 in the eight years up to 1836, £18 in 1836 still amounted to about 60 percent of the male farm labourer’s annual earnings in England and was well beyond his means. If that worker wanted to leave England, the options were to take the cheaper route to North America (one sixth the cost of the fare to Australia), successfully apply for a government subsidy for the Australian move, or stay. The problem would have been greater for Irish male labourers since their wages were half their English counterpart and the Irish were about half of the assisted Australian immigrants in 1839-1851.[6]

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[1] McClaughlin, Trevor, ‘Barefoot and Pregnant? Female Orphans who emigrated from Irish Workhouses to Australia, 1848-1850’, Familia, Vol.2, (3), (1987), pp. 31-36; see also McClaughlin, Trevor, Barefoot & Pregnant? Irish Famine orphans in Australia, 2 Vols. (Genealogical Society of Victoria), 1991, 2001 and Strauss, Valda, ‘Irish famine orphans in Australia’, Mallow Field Club Journal, Vol. 11, (1993), pp. 132-157.

[2] ‘Young’ was a very elastic term when applied to single females.

[3] See, McLaughlin, Trevor, (ed.), Irish Women in Colonial Australia, (Allen & Unwin), 1998, pp. 64-81, 105-122.

[4] Cit, Report to the children’s apprenticeship board, Poor Law Commission Office, Dublin, 27 November 1850.

[5] Richards, Eric, ‘How Did Poor People Emigrate from the British Isles to Australia in the Nineteenth Century?’ Journal of British Studies, Vol. 32, (1993), pp. 250-279, at p. 253

[6] Ibid, Madgwick, R.B., Immigration into Eastern Australia 1788-1851, p. 234. Moran, Gerard. ‘‘Shovelling out the poor’: assisted emigration from Ireland from the great famine to the fall of Parnell’, in ibid, Duffy, Patrick J. and Moran, Gerard, (eds.), To and from Ireland: planned migration schemes c.1600-2000, pp. 137-154.