Even ‘Wilder Workhouse Girls’: The Problem of Institutionalisation among Irish Immigrants to New Zealand 1874

Abstract

Studies of the Irish in New Zealand tend to focus predominantly on sectarian issues and respective ‘identities’. While class is explored to a lesser extent, it is mainly through the lens of occupational status. Overall, migrant poverty and criminality in that colonial setting has received the least attention from historians, because the socio-economic profile of the majority of Irish immigrants was generally of a higher status. This article traces a group of poor assisted immigrants that departed Cork at very short notice in 1874 and examines how some of them achieved notoriety in New Zealand. Using a combination of poor law records, shipping records, newspapers, government reports and criminal statistics, this article traces the fortunes of the single Irish workhouse girls. Irish Poor Law registers can be notoriously tricky to negotiate and present many problems for historians. Periodically Poor Law Guardians invested in assisted immigration schemes and to that end they surrendered groups of migrants. In so doing, the guardians bound individuals by a range of similarities—marital status, social class, fiscal means, age, abilities and gender to mention but a few—and such groups lend themselves to case-study analysis. As prophesised by those who argued against its foundation, the poor law network in Ireland both created and exacerbated many social problems. In many respects, when over-crowding occurred, it offered little by way of training and thus created a stasis for poverty. Building on recent case studies of ‘wild workhouse girls’ undertaken by Anna Clark on the South Dublin Union and Virginia Crossman on a Wexford Union, this research explores the concept of ‘modulation’ used by Patrick Fitzgerald and Brian Lambkin in the context of migration, whereby migrants were at the mercy of the host community to decide whether they can be accepted or rejected.1 This article traces and links the ‘institutionalised’ behavioural patterns of these poor, unskilled, single, young women with indefinite periods of ‘modulation’ in a negotiated space between rejection, vice, incarceration and an existence on the ‘outside’.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dr Catherine Lawless, Dr Margaret Ó hÓgartaigh and Lorna Moloney for reading earlier drafts and making useful suggestions. I would also like to thank Dr Bronwyn Dalley, Chief Historian in the History Group of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, New Zealand and Katherine Milburn, Hocken Library, Dunedin who were both most helpful in providing advice and requisite data.

Notes

Clark, ‘Wild Workhouse Girls’; Crossman, ‘The New Ross Workhouse Riot 1887’; Fitzgerald and Lambkin, Migration in Irish History, 62–68.

In the grander scheme of Australasian immigration in the late nineteenth century the hierarchy was thus: those who could pay met with little resistance those who were nominated had at least related kin resident in the colony and by virtue of their investment showed a degree of commitment to the ‘host country’. In relative terms the assisted migrants occupied the lowest rung but were perceived as a necessary evil to reconcile demographic problems of under-population in the receiving country and over-population in the country of origin.

White Wings Vol I. Fifty Years of Sail in the New Zealand Trade, 1850 to 1900 on http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-Bre01Whit-t1-body-d214.html (accessed Jan. 2009). I am grateful to Katherine Doig, Archivist, Christchurch 8140, New Zealand for directing me to http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#r=5;p=allCollections (accessed April 2010).

Davis, Irish Issues, 38.

Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 135–70; 231–56.

McCarthy, Personal Narratives, 3.

Howe, ‘Minding the Gaps’, 137.

15 & 16 Vict. c. 72

For a further analysis of the early organisation of New Zealand, see Fox, The Six Colonies, David McIntyre and Garner, Speeches and Documents, and BL. Mss.Add. 35,261, Letters of EG Wakefield, 1815-1853, ff. 30.

Phillips and Hearn, Settlers, 23.

Cited in Phillips and Hearn, Settlers, 23 and on http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/history-of-immigration/3/4 which shows a range of NZC propaganda materials.

Hill, The History of Policing, 539.

Breathnach, ‘Recruiting Irish Migrants for Life in New Zealand’, 33–45.

Fraser, To Tara via Holyhead, 1997, 61.

McCarthy, Personal Narratives, 3.

Fraser, Castles of Gold, 112.

For numerous references to the Irish moving between Australia and New Zealand, see Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation; McCarthy, ‘Personal Letters’, 297–319; McCarthy, ‘Seas May Divide’.

1870 [C.83] Further papers relative to the affairs of New Zealand, enclosure no. 11, 41.

Provisions were not made for the poor until Auckland provincial council passed the Neglected and Criminal Children's Act 1867 and the Sick and Destitute Act 1868. For further information, see Sutch, The Quest for Security. For a history of legislation pertaining to children, see Mazengarb et al., Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency, 54–55.

Fraser, ‘To Tara via Holyhead’, 2002, 432.

Irish Times, 10 Jan. 1870. This is an accurate figure derived from New Zealand census returns.

MacDonald, A Woman of Good Character, 118.

Correspondence with New Zealand Coms. and Authorities on proposed Guaranteed Loan, [HC, 1870], C. 298, L.281

New Zealand Tablet, 16 Aug. 1873. For a fuller discussion see Breathnach, ‘Recruiting Irish Migrants for Life in New Zealand’, 33–45. The inquiry heard how a disproportionate percentage of local agents worked in Scotland, whose population was approximately 2 million less than that of Ireland; 78 agents were placed there and a mere 46 in Ireland (most of whom were sub-agents based in the north).

http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/DNZB/alt_essayBody.asp?essayID=1H35 (accessed Jan. 2009).

I am grateful to Professor Charlotte MacDonald for advice regarding the extent of the Howard archive.

Cork City and County Archives, BG/69/A57, report dated 24 Jan. 1874, 309.

Ibid.

Davis, Irish Issues, 38, Cork Examiner 6 Feb. 1874, cited in Davis but consulted for further data in this instance. Transcript of BG/69/A57 a variation this evidence is contained in a report dated 5 Feb. 1874, 327.

Cork Examiner, 6 Feb. 1874.

Ibid.

BG/69/A57 report dated 5 Feb. 1874, 327.

Fitzgerald and Lambkin, Migration in Irish History, 187.

MacDonald, A Woman of Good Character, 17.

BG/69/A57, report Saturday 15 Feb. 1874, 349.

BG/69/15 a Julia Curtin aged 11 entered the workhouse with an 80-year-old married shoemaker, admitted 7 April 1870 and left on 5 May. They gave an address at Coppinger's Lane; it is very likely that by 1874 her guardian may have been deceased, it is one of the names on the ship's register and the ages correlate.

Moran, Sending out Ireland's Poor, 126.

Burke, The People and the Poor Law, 199.

Gray, The Making of the Irish Poor Law, 119–21.

BG/69/CA/22, Sept. 1874 129. (BG/CA denotes General Ledgers).

BG/69/CA/22, March 1874, 69 on emigration in the Cork Electoral Division. People regularly applied directly to the Guardians for monies to send out family members to North America. These agreed sums were usually of a smaller value.

BG/69/G16 reference number 55,579.

BG/69/G16 reference number 55,582.

21st and 22nd Vic., cap. 103; 31st and 32nd Vic., cap. 59; and 81st Vic., cap. 25.

1871 [C.461] Ninth report of the inspector appointed to visit the reformatory and industrial schools of Ireland, 19.

Barnes, Irish Industrial Schools, 45.

1871 (242), Return of Orders of Detention under Industrial Schools (Ireland) Act, 1868.

1871 [C.461] Ninth report of the inspector appointed to visit the reformatory and industrial schools of Ireland, 20.

Unfortunately the index for register for this timeframe is missing, it was possible to conduct nominal searches in earlier years, for example reference to Julia Curtin BG/69/15 aged 11.

BG/69/16 ref 54,317.

BG/69/16 ref 52,999 address given Union Coach Street.

BG/69/16 ref 52,693 address given Soldier's Lane.

BG/69/16 ref 54,944.

BG/69/16 ref 53,470.

1873 [C.858] Eleventh report of the inspector appointed to visit the reformatory and industrial schools of Ireland, certified under the 21st and 22nd Vic., Cap. 103; 31st and 32nd Vic., Cap. 59; and 31st Vic., Cap. 25. Greenmount Industrial School for Boys, was certified on 14 March 1871 and some of its records are held at CCA.

National Archives of Ireland (NAI), CON/CIB/9-13.

NAI, Criminal Index Book 1871-4, CON/CIB/9 1872/ 24. (CS6/8).

Te Papa, National Archives of New Zealand, Wellington, MS-Papers-6194 [MS-Group-0703], typed facsimile copy of the diary of Joseph Allen, 1874, day 20, 16 Feb. (hereafter, Allen, date).

Allen, 17 Feb. 1874.

Allen 17 March 1874.

The Evening Star, signed AE, 16 May 1874, 2.

Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1874, D2, Immigration to NZ (letters to the Agent General, transmitting reports upon immigrant ships), Enclosure 3 in no. 53, 61.

Ibid.

Evening Star, 14 May 1874, 2.

Otago Witness, May 9 1874.

Otago Witness, May 9 1874.

Clark, ‘Wild Workhouse Girls’, 391.

Luddy, Women and Philanthropy, 49–50.

The Daily Southern Cross, 21 July 1874.

Evening Star, 2 May 1874.

On 6 April 1877, marriage record of an Alice McNamara to Harry Cosnon. www.familysearch.org (accessed 26 Jan. 2009).

Otago Police Gazette, 31 July, 1874.

Ibid.

http://otago-nominal-index.otago.ac.nz/details.php?recid=435876.2 (accessed 26 Jan. 2009).

Otage Police Gazette, 11 Jan. 1875.

Otago Police Gazette, 10 March 1875.

MacDonald, ‘Crime and Punishment in New Zealand’, 14.

Otage Police Gazette, 10 July 1875.

Otage Police Gazette, 11 Oct. 1875.

MacDonald, ‘Crime and Punishment in New Zealand’, 14-5 and Dalley, ‘Following the Rules?’, 310.

Hill, The History of Policing, p. 123, 134, 263, 480, 653 for some examples. I am grateful to Prof. David Dickson, Trinity College Dublin, for making this observation.

Luddy, Prostitution and Irish Society, 19–20.

Criminal And Judicial Statistics. 1870. Ireland. Part I. Police—criminal proceedings—prisons. Part II. Common law—equity—civil and canon law, [C.443], LXIV.231, 126.

1871 [C.408] [C.408-I] Report of Royal commission upon the administration and operation of the contagious diseases acts. Vol. I, p. lv.

Crossman, ‘The New Ross Workhouse Riot 1887’, 137.

BG/69/G16, March 1873–Sept. 1876 reference number 55,410.

Ignatieff, ‘Total Institutions’, 70.

Fitzgerald and Lambkin, Migration in Irish History, 63.

Phillips and Hearn, Settlers, 126–27.

Akenson, Half the World, 52–53.

Akyeampong, ‘Sexuality and Prostitution’, 144–73.

Dalley, ‘Following the Rules?’, 319.

Davis, Irish Issues, 39.

Otago Witness, 31 July 1875, 8.

Clark, ‘Wild Workhouse Girls’, 392.

Tablet, 18 Oct. 1873.

Breathnach, The Congested Districts Board of Ireland, 34–49.

McCarthy, Irish Migrants in New Zealand, 154.

Akenson, Half the World, 43.

Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation, 516–20.

Ibid., 517.

http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/DNZB/alt_essayBody.asp?essayID=1H35

Fraser, ‘To Tara via Holyhead’, 58.