Rosanna Fleming's Orphan Emigration Scheme Travel Box

As conditions slowly began to improve following Ireland’s Great Famine of the 1840s, thirty-four young orphan girls who had been inmates of Athy’s workhouse were sent to Australia as part of the British Government’s Orphan Emigration Scheme.  The Scheme was intended to alleviate overcrowding in Irish Workhouses, while at the same time hopefully lessen the gender imbalance in the Australian population.  Amongst the young girls sent out from Athy Workhouse was Rosanna Fleming, 19 years old, from Ballyadams.  She was one of the oldest girls sent to Australia from Athy’s workhouse.

 

A few months ago I met Jeff Kildea, an Australian historian who was in Ireland for the launch of his most recent book ‘A Biography of Hugh Mahon’.  Jeff is the great great grandson of Rosanna Fleming and I was pleased to bring him to the former workhouse and afterwards to Ballyadams, visiting places associated with his ancestor.  Since then Jeff was invited to address  the 18^th annual gathering at the Irish Famine Monument at Sydney’s Hyde Park Barracks.  Of all the distinguished men and women who had addressed previous gatherings at the Irish Famine Monument, Jeff Kildea was the first descendent of a Famine orphan who landed in Sydney to do so.  He spoke of Rosanna Fleming, the former inmate of Athy Workhouse, who on 3^rd July 1849 arrived in Australia on the passenger ship ‘Lady Peel’ with 17 other young girls from Athy’s workhouse.  Author, Evelyn Conlon, whom I also met during Jeff Kildea’s visit to Athy in her novel ‘Not the same sky’ closely followed the known historical facts surrounding the Orphan Emigration Scheme girls.  Some of those girls did well, others did not.

Rosanna, who subsequently led a sad and tragic life in Australia, died at the age of 71 years.  She married James Clarke, a native of County Westmeath, just four months after landing in Australia and over the following 17 years they had 9 children. 

 

By a strange coincidence soon after Jeff Kildea’s visit to Athy I became aware of a joint venture between the Committee for the Commemoration of Irish Famine Victims and the Arbour Hill prison authorities.  They came together to undertake a project called ‘Famine Travel Boxes’.  Travel boxes or trunks were given to each of the young girls who participated in the Orphan Emigration Scheme.  In each trunk was clothing, a needle and thread, a Douay Bible, a Certificate of good character and a Certificate of good health.  The Famine Commemoration Committee engaged with the Arbour Hill authorities to have replica travel trunks made and some of those trunks have been presented to President Michael D. Higgins, the United Nations in New York and two museums in Australia. 

 

The two groups when approached by me generously agreed to make a travel trunk for presentation to Athy Heritage Centre.  The trunk bearing the name Rosanna Fleming will be formally presented to the Heritage Centre on Tuesday, 26^th September at 7.30 p.m.

 

It is fitting that Athy Heritage Centre is to be the recipient of a Famine travel trunk as here in Athy we have participated in the National Famine Day’s commemorations with a ceremony each year in St. Mary’s famine cemetery.  The National Famine Commemoration Day was first approved by the Irish government in 2015 following a campaign led by Michael Blanch who was responsible for the setting up of the committee for the Commemoration of Irish Famine Victims.  Michael Blanch will be at Athy Heritage Centre for the formal presentation on 26^th September.

 

The Rosanna Fleming travel box will form part of Athy’s permanent local history exhibition in the Heritage Centre to remind visitors of the terrible effect that the Great Famine of 1845-1849 had on the people of Ireland and especially on the people of this part of the country.  Everyone is invited to attend the presentation in the Heritage Centre commencing at 7.30 p.m. on Tuesday, 26^th September.

 

During the past week the formal establishment of a local history society in Athy was finalised and Athy Historical Society is now open for membership.  If you would like to engage with others in research, recording and learning local history, archaeology, folklife or folklore, why not join the society.  A membership fee of €10 per annum is all that is required to participate in the society’s activities which will start with a series of lectures, the first of which will take place in the Heritage Centre on Thursday 12^th October at 7.30 p.m.  Further details will issue shortly.  Contact Athy’s Heritage Centre on Ph. (059)8633075 or Seamus Hughes, the society’s honorary treasurer at shughes856@gmail.com if you would like to become a member of Athy’s Historical Society. 

                                   

Orphan Emigrant Scheme participant Rosanna Fleming of Ballyadams and Athy Workhouse

Jeff Kildea, an Australian historian, lecturer and author, will be in Ireland later this month for the launch of the first volume of his two-volume biography of ‘Hugh Mahon, Patriot, Pressman, Politician’.  Mahon was a native of County Offaly and who on emigrating to Australia became one of the most controversial politicians of his time.  A former Land League activist while in Ireland Hugh Mahon was imprisoned with Charles Stewart Parnell in 1881.  In Australia he served as Minister for External Affairs during World War 1 but was later expelled from parliament as a result of his aggressive campaigning for Irish independence.

 

The Irish novelist Evelyn Conlon contacted me through a mutual friend regarding Jeff Kildea’s Irish visit and his wish to visit Athy, and especially Ballyadams, where his great great grandmother was born in and around 1830.  The contact was fortuitous because I had written of Kildea’s relative who was one of the young girls sent out from the Athy Workhouse as part of the Orphan Emigration Scheme in 1849.  Indeed Jeff Kildea had picked up my article on the internet and included some references to it in an extensive article he wrote on his great great grandmother, Rosanna Flemming. 

 

Rosanna was 19 years old when she joined 17 other girls from Athy Workhouse on the ship ‘Lady Peel’ which arrived in Sydney on 3^rd July 1849.  A second group comprising 16 young female former inmates of the local workhouse would arrive in Sydney on the ship ‘Maria’ on 1^st August 1850.  The Athy Workhouse records indicated that Rosanna Flemming’s mother Mary was living in Ballyadams and that she came from a Catholic family.  Of the 35 young girls sent to Australia from the local Athy Workhouse under the Orphan Emigration Scheme all but one were Roman Catholics.

 

Jeff Kildea in his article which he titled ‘The Grim Life of Roseanna Clarke (nee Flemming)’ explained how Roseanna and her companions were each provided with a trunk by the workhouse authorities in which were clothing, needle and thread, a Douay Bible, a Certificate of good character and a Certificate of good health.  By happy coincidence, just weeks before I was contacted regarding Jeff’s visit, I had discovered that the Committee for the Commemoration of Irish Famine Victims and the Irish Prison Service came together to produce travel boxes or trunks replicating those provided for the young girls sent to Australia after the Great Famine.  One such trunk was recently presented to President O’Higgins, while another two trunks were sent to Perth, Australia for presentation to museums in Dardanup and Bunbury, two towns just outside Perth.  The Committee and the Prison Service have kindly agreed to make a similar trunk for presentation to Athy’s Heritage Centre.

 

Shortly after arriving in Sydney Rosanna Flemming was employed as a kitchen maid by Dr. John Dickson.  Her placement was for a period of 12 months but the arrangement was terminated on 26^th October 1849.  Three weeks later Rosanna married James Clarke, a native of County Westmeath, who had arrived in Australia shortly before Rosanna.  They were to have 9 children between 1852 and 1869, the last of whom, also named Rosanna, died in 1948  aged 90 years. 

 

Unfortunately Rosanna, the former workhouse inmate, had several brushes with Australian police and magistrates, usually resulting from being drunk in public places.  Rosanna, who could not read or write, served short periods of imprisonment for antisocial behaviour.  Her sad and tragic life ended on 29^th June 1901 when she died of natural causes.  Little is known of Rosanna’s children other than that of her eldest daughter Mary who at 17 years of age married Maurice Collins, a native of Clonakilty.  Mary and Maurice had 12 children, the second youngest of whom, born in 1895, was Jeff Kildea’s grandmother. 

 

The story of Rosanna Flemming, the young girl from Ballyadams, an inmate of Athy Workhouse who sailed to Australia as part of the Orphan Emigration Scheme of 1849, is a poignant reminder of the poverty and hardship experienced by many Irish families during a difficult time in our Irish history.  Rosanna passed out of our shared history as she embarked on the ‘Lady Peel’ just as former workhouse inmates did when disease and hunger brought their sad lives to an end.

 

The Workhouse cemetery at St. Mary’s Athy, for so long overlooked and forgotten, holds the remains of many young girls who unlike Rosanna Flemming had no opportunity to live a life outside the Workhouse walls.  Rosanna, despite her tragic and difficult life, had the opportunity, if not necessarily the means or the capability, of reordering her life after leaving Athy’s Workhouse.  She survived, living a somewhat precarious life at the other side of the world, while lying in unmarked plots in the shadow of the former Workhouse are the remains of those forgotten men, women, boys and girls whose last moments in this world were spend behind the grim walls of Athy’s workhouse.

 

Is it perhaps too much to expect that anyone would know where in Ballyadams the Flemming family, headed up by Patrick and Mary Flemming, lived in the 1830s and the 1840s?