Irish women in the Antipodes: Foregrounded
This is the second of two volumes to emerge from ISAANZ24 (Irish studies in Australia and New Zealand conference series)… This volume aims to ‘shed new light on the women among the Irish Australian diaspora, a group whose stories are often more difficult to locate in archives and public documents’ (p. x). It is basically a form of ‘rescue’ history, saving individual lives from the ‘condescension of history’…
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IRISH WOMEN IN THE ANTIPODES: FOREGROUNDED
EDITed by Susan Arthure, Stephanie James, Dymphna Lonergan and Fidelma McCorry | 2024
The great 19th-century historian Thomas Carlyle wrote that ‘history is the essence of innumerable biographies’ and this book certainly seems to live up to that claim. It is a collection of articles, most of which are narratives about individuals that explore various aspects of female Irish migration and settlement in Australia.
This is the second of two volumes to emerge from ISAANZ24 (Irish studies in Australia and New Zealand conference series). The first, which was published in 2019 also by Wakefield Press, Irish South Australia: New Histories and Insights, aimed to correct the historiographical focus on the Irish who migrated to the eastern seaboard of Australia. This volume aims to ‘shed new light on the women among the Irish Australian diaspora, a group whose stories are often more difficult to locate in archives and public documents’ (p. x). It is basically a form of ‘rescue’ history, saving individual lives from the ‘condescension of history’, to paraphrase E P Thompson. These articles draw on a range of both traditional state and newspaper sources, but also non-traditional, particularly genealogical sources, as sometimes the only way of exploring individual biographies in the antipodes beyond the immigration entry registers. This book is a useful source for the many historians now becoming aware of the potential of genealogical records to reveal how women lived and what happened to them after they migrated.
Of all the migrant groups who have graced Australian shores, none seemed to have garnered as much attention as the Irish, partly because their arrivals span the 18th to the 21st centuries, and so many of their descendants have ferreted out their stories. But it is also because when scholars in the 1960s and 1970s belatedly discovered that the category of ‘migrant’ was not inherently male, it was Irish single women of the 19th century who became the focus of the work done in this field. In this book, Perry McIntyre outlines both her own and other extensive previous research done on a scheme whereby 4,114 young, single women came to NSW, Victoria and South Australia between 1848-9 as the ‘face of famine emigration’ to Australia. McIntyre reminds us carefully that there was certainly a mismatch between the colonial desire to even up the sexes in an overwhelming male environment to promote greater stability on the one hand, and British aims to rid itself of Irish workhouse poor on the other. However, despite visibility and negative first impressions, McIntyre shows that this did not mean that the scheme was unsuccessful. Through the ongoing process of finding each woman and their descendants in various state and genealogical records, she is slowly helping to erase those much-publicised 19th century hostile colonial responses.
Moreover, this book builds on previous research to confirm that there was much more to Irish women’s migration than the Orphan Scheme. Indeed, single women outnumbered men migrating from Ireland to various countries across the 19th century, and as Kevin Molloy notes, also the 20th century. His study of post-war Irish migration from 1946-71, drawing on oral histories, is a useful corrective to the 19th century focus of much research, even though Irish men outnumbered women migrating to Australia at that time.
One of the great strengths of this collection is the interlinking of both Australian and Irish authors and research sources across the two countries. Migration scholars have always had to bridge the gap between those who leave one country and come to another, needing knowledge of both to understand the process and motivation (which often means travel and immersion in other cultures). It is exemplary to find a broad knowledge of the dual histories of Ireland and Australia informing the work in this volume.
Some of the contributors are notable for their inventive use of sources. Rory Hope draws on court records to chart the civil trial where Irish born Mary Geary, a live-in housekeeper and lover, sued her employer, a wealthy pastoralist, for unpaid wages. Susan Arthure draws on court records and archaeological evidence, amongst other sources, to tell the fascinating story of the Irish women of Bakers Flat near Kapunda copper mine in South Australia, who used tactics from the Irish land war agrarian movement to protest and assert ownership of the land. Readers can only be impressed by the range of sources drawn on by Stelmach and James to chart the downfall of Bridget Fitzgerald O’Hara into prostitution and alcoholism, through hospital admissions, prison records and newspapers. These and many of the other authors draw on a wide range of evidence to build up a picture that brings these and other women to life.
Nonetheless, like all edited collections they vary in depth and analytical strength. Rodney and Robyn Sullivan’s essay on the role of women in the Queensland Irish Association history is outstanding for its analysis using feminist scholar Joan Scott’s understanding of gender as relational, and for their nuanced discussion of Irish masculinity, which underpins much gender blindness in the Association. It seems quite shocking that the all-male St Patrick’s Day dinner (‘a major event in Brisbane’s social calendar’ p. 218) persisted for so long, attended by Prime Minister John Howard in 2000, along with other senior worthies. In addition, Jeff Kildea’s important research about the involvement of Irish women in the conscription and anti-conscription campaigns of 1916-17 should change the standard narrative of those historiographical debates.
How is this book useful to public historians? Firstly, because professional historians are contributors to the book, and it is good to see their work recognised by the Professional Historians Association. Almost all the contributors have doctorates and are a mixture of public historians, academics, teachers and librarians, demonstrating the careful accrual of knowledge about Irish forebears, mainly from South Australia with a nod to Queensland, NSW, Victoria and Queensland. Secondly, because this book reveals what can be done to enlarge and reimagine histories when these diverse sources are utilised. They don’t just ‘humanise’ histories by focusing on individuals, they change the way we think about the whole of the Irish diaspora experience in Australia.
Irish women in the Antipodes: Foregrounded is published by Wakefield Press.
Guest Reviewer: Professor Paula Hamilton, Australian Centre for Public History, University of Technology Sydney