Many people tend to romanticise transportation to Australia as offering better opportunities and as a way to escape poverty. I regard that as a myth peddled by the English to offset their collective guilt.
Many Irish convicts like Ann Sheridan were sent to Tasmania (Van Diemen's Land; VDL) where the conditions for women were harsh, unrelenting, and unjust. Convicts lived under extremely brutal conditions, and a visit to the male and female prisons is recommended for anyone who might romanticise about the fates of Irish prisoners into VDL. Ann's daughter Ellen (Nellie, aged 8) was removed upon arrival in VDL and institutionalised with all other children of female convicts. Her 3 year old cousin died in Grangegorman prison awaiting her mother's transportation. The only way women convicts could get their children back after arriving in VDL was to marry, and often they agreed to any marriage to achieve reunification. The new husbands were generally convicts, and not always upstanding in character.
Many Irish convicts were illiterate, and Irish Catholic children often went from institutions into servitude by age 12 still being illiterate. A visit to Queen's Orphan School at Newtown, Hobart provides heartbreaking clarity around what these children experienced, and especially the Catholic children. Nellie married a much older English convict when she was only aged 13 or 14, and she had her first child at 15. Life with her husband was not easy as he was an alcoholic bigamist who received more convictions in VDL. Nellie took up with another man when deserted by her husband, as illiterate unskilled women had no means of support. This man of Irish descent died young due to his poor life circumstances. Many of Nellie's children ended up being institutionalised in orphanages as she was too impoverished to care for them. When Nellie died at an institution for the destitute at age 53 she looked much older, and her age was estimated by witnesses as being in the 70's. Her convict mother Ann also spent time in an institution for the destitute, and her fate remains unknown.
Ann's conviction for receiving two stolen fowl during the Irish famine began a cycle of disadvantage, with children separated from their mothers, that extended over multiple generations. Nellie's first child, my ancestor, managed to move to mainland Australia but lived a very hardworking and impoverished life. His wife died young of typhus (a disease associated with poor living conditions), leaving four small children. He boarded them out while he worked as a labourer on sheep stations, and the children were beaten and abused by the woman he paid to care for them. This family line generally did not see much improvement in their life circumstances for another 3 generations (my generation). The contrasts against other family lines show the true impact of transportation for Irish people, and particularly for Irish women.
So the next time you might ponder the "better lives" for Irish convicts, maybe pause and consider the cold hard realities as told by their descendants.
