Free Kerry Girls by Kay Moloney Caball Page B

drop the initiative. They had got rid of just over 4,000 workhouse inmates, who would have been a continuing cost on their local ratepayers, without any cost to the Treasury.
    Mary Ann Connor
    Bev Cook tells us Mary Ann’s story:

    Mary Anne Connor was my great-great-grandmother, through her youngest daughter Eliza Jane Smith.
    Mary Ann was baptised in Kenmare on 21 March 1832, the daughter of Edmund (Edward) Fitzgerald and Mary O’Connor at the Church of the Holy Cross. Her parents may not have been married as she was baptised as Mary Fitzgerald but then went by her mother’s name of Connor. Her Sponsor was Mary Fitzgerald, who was perhaps a relative of her father. Their residence seems to have been at No. 14 Downing’s Lane Kenmare.
    After both her parents died during the Famine she was admitted into one of the workhouses in Kenmare and then selected to emigrate to Australia under the Earl Grey Scheme.
    The girls were sent to Cork on the 27 October 1849 under the supervision of the schoolmaster. £30 was supplied for their journey, maintenance in Cork and passage to Plymouth. They were transported to Cork city by Jeremiah Lynch for two shillings and six pence each plus one shilling and six pence per box. He supplied four good horses and cars with tarpaulin and straw for the emigrants and one horse and car with tarpaulin for the boxes.
    Mary Ann left from Penrose Quay, Cork and travelled to Plymouth where she boarded the John Knox and then sailed via the Cape of Good Hope, arriving in Sydney on 29 April 1850. She was aged eighteen [arrival record says 17] and an orphan and ‘bodily health, strength and probable usefulness to the colony – GOOD. No complaints requiring treatment on the ship’.
    There was an attempt to ‘educate’ the girls on board and schoolmaster J.J. Jones was employed to teach the girls to read and write, but he seems to have encountered a lot of opposition especially from the ‘Cashel and Cork girls who refused to attend their studies on deck’.
    Mary Ann was initially housed in Hyde Park Barracks, the Immigration Depot for single females. She found a placement with the well-to-do family of Captain John Scarvell and his wife Sarah at Clare House, Windsor in the Hawkesbury Region of New South Wales. She was probably employed as a domestic servant. The uneducated Mary Ann seems to have had difficulty with her employers who applied during August 1850 to the Magistrates Court in Sydney to terminate her indentures. Mary Ann was then obliged to return to the Hyde Park Barracks.
    The Sydney Morning Herald of 26 August 1850 reported the following:

    Irish Orphan Girls – Mary Connor, a girl of apparently 17 to 18 years of age, appeared on the complaint of Mr Sydney Scavell, on behalf of his father and mother, Captain and Mrs Scavell, to answer the charge of neglect of work, laziness, and insolence. In answer to the charge, she made a long rambling statement, but as she spoke with her teeth closed, we could only catch a word here and there; indeed, their Worships, although she was purposely brought close to them, could scarcely understand a word she said. The Bench, however, listened with great patience, and having gathered something of alleged ill-usage, proposed putting her upon oath; but previous to doing so, Mr Fitzgerald (who had come into the Court a short time before, asked if she knew the nature of an oath? To which she replied in the negative. Did she know what an oath was? ‘NO’. The Bench finding that 10s odd were due her for wages, suggested that Mr Scavell should contribute that sum towards her to the place from whence she came, at the same time telling the girl that they could not compel Mr Scavell to do so, but it was a mere suggestion. This was most cheerfully agreed to by Mr Scavell. The indentures were, of course, cancelled. Mr Fitzgerald remarked, that during his whole career in his capacity as a magistrate, he had never met with such a lamentable case. It was truly lamentable to