Free Kerry Girls by Kay Moloney Caball

Argus , always the most negative, states that the time has come to stop this type of emigration before it is ‘productive of very serious results’.

    In a nutshell, spending our own money, we have a right to expect the very best class of immigrants that can be induced to venture to this happy land, and it is downright robbery to withhold our funds from decent, eligible, well brought up girls, who would make good servants to-day and virtuous intelligent wives to-morrow, than lavish it upon a set of ignorant creatures, whose whole knowledge of household duty, barely reaches to distinguishing the inside from the outside of a potato, and whose chief employment hitherto, has consisted of some such intellectual occupation as occasionally trotting across a bog to fetch back a runaway pig.

    Finally:

    These women, all Roman Catholics, will naturally wed with our shepherds, hutkeepers, stockmen etc., who as a body we blush to say, are little better than heathens … The result of such a match, is if the children have any religion at all, they will be Roman Catholics; to an individual; the mother will dictate the religion and some day every one of these girls will be the centre of a Roman Catholic centre. 5
    We stand upon no ceremony when we assert that we should look with very deep grief and dread upon the probability of the majority of our community ever being composed of Roman Catholics. 6

    The most suitable emigrants, from the colonists’ point of view, would have been English females, free settlers, not out of orphanages, workhouses or convicts. This expectation was unrealistic, as these types of girls had no wish to travel halfway across the world to a place they regarded as only just above savage. ‘But the vision of an Anglo-Saxon Protestant Australia was powerful indeed, and each boatload of Irish was further reminder that this dream was receding, that the mixture was being further diluted.’ 7 Charles Trevelyan’s warning to Lord Clarendon in 1848 proved correct. 8
    Four years after the last of the ‘orphan’ ships, in a more thoughtful article on the Labour Question, the South Australian Register said:

    They did not want Irish orphans. They wanted shepherds. Some persons might want housemaids, but the great want of labour in the colony was the want of shepherds. But he (the Attorney-General) had ascertained that from the hon. member’s district of Moreton Bay, where the best of the Irish orphans had not been sent, that they had all turned out well ; that in life, and that the others had conducted themselves in a creditable manner. He knew that when they first came into the colony the nature of the work might be for awhile strange to them; but scattered as they now were throughout the colony, he could assert, as a class, the Irish orphans had turned out well. 9

    The newspaper and court reports from Moreton Bay reflect different types of accusations and offences to those of Sydney or Adelaide. They were mostly either the employer or the employee requesting that their Indenture be cancelled and both sides giving evidence of why this request should be granted. The girls were mainly accused of ‘impertinence’ or ‘insolence’ to their employers and in extreme cases of absconding without notice. On the girls’ part, they cited cases of excessive hard work, religious discrimination and impropriety on the part of the employers. The evidence of the girls and their presentation of this evidence shows that there were well able to defend their rights and their characters and did not intend to be subservient to anyone. Margaret Stack was accused by her employer of ‘repeated insolence and neglect of duty’. Charles Windmell, her employer, giving evidence, swore:

    I ordered the girl to clean the knives and boots and shoes – it is a general rule in my house to have this done Saturday. I took my boots to her. On Sunday morning I found the knives and boots were not cleaned. I asked her the reason – and she wanted to