Hall Dianne - A New History of the Irish in Australia

A NEW HISTORY OF THE IRISH IN AUSTRALIA

ELIZABETH MALCOLM is an honorary professorial fellow and was formerly Gerry Higgins Professor of Irish Studies at the University of Melbourne. She has published on policing, mental health, gender and popular culture in Ireland, as well as on the Irish diaspora in both Britain and Australia.

DIANNE HALL is an associate professor at Victoria University, Melbourne. She has published widely on the Irish in 19th-century Australia, as well as on gender, religion and violence in Ireland.

A NewSouth book

Published by

NewSouth Publishing

University of New South Wales Press Ltd

University of New South Wales

Sydney NSW 2052

AUSTRALIA

newsouthpublishing.com

Elizabeth Malcolm and Dianne Hall 2018

First published 2018

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act , no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher.

ISBN: 9781742235530 (paperback)

9781742244396 (ebook)

9781742248837 (ePDF)

Cover design Peter Long

Cover images Background by Dmytro Shvetsov and Celtic cross by VitAnGen, Shutterstock

All reasonable efforts were taken to obtain permission to use copyright material reproduced in this book, but in some cases copyright could not be traced. The authors welcome information in this regard.

This book is printed on paper using fibre supplied from plantation or sustainably managed forests.

Contents

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the Australian Research Council for funding the research on which this book is based. Additional data was collected by Dianne Hall during a project funded by the Leverhulme Trust (UK) and led by Lindsay Proudfoot, then of Queens University, Belfast. We are grateful to Dr Proudfoot for his continuing support and for allowing us access to his unpublished research materials. Our universities Victoria University, Melbourne, and the University of Melbourne provided us with facilities and support throughout the project. In addition, Victoria University contributed funding, teaching relief and research leave for Dianne Hall.

We were fortunate to work with a dedicated and gifted group of research assistants at different times over the course of the project. Sarah Pinto collected large numbers of cartoons from newspapers before they were digitised. Liam Byrne, Catie Gilchrist, Antoine Guillemette, Molly Lukin, Lee-Ann Monk and Brett Wright helped us to locate further sources and to manage our research data.

Colleagues have also been generous with their time and expertise in giving advice, sharing research, answering questions and reading drafts. We particularly want to thank: Philip Bull, Liz Conor, Phillip Deery, Frances Devlin-Glass, Charles Fahey, Mark Finnane, the late Angela Gehrig, Stephanie James, John Lack, Marilyn Lake, Barry McCarron, Chris McConville, Rnn McDonald, Val Noone, Eunan OHalpin, Robert Pascoe, Robin Sullivan, Rodney Sullivan, Roger Swift, Christina Twomey and Ciarn Walsh. Thanks also to Rachel URen for giving Dianne the library of Australian history journals that her mother, Nancy, had collected.

The encouraging responses received from interested audiences when we presented our research have also been appreciated. We would especially like to thank those attending conferences organised in conjunction with the Irish Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand (ISAANZ) and participants in the Melbourne Irish Studies Seminars (MISS) at Newman College, University of Melbourne.

Elizabeth Malcolm would like to thank Hartley and Robert for making the trials of book production easier. She also wishes to dedicate her work to her three Irish women ancestors who made the long voyage from Ireland to Australia: Margaret Cooke, a Famine orphan, who left County Kildare in 1848; Ellen Byrne, who left Dublin city in 1875; and Letitia Storey Johnston, who left County Fermanagh with her family in 1925.

Dianne Hall would like to thank the Hynds OFlanagan family, who have welcomed her to their home in Dublin over many years. Mary McGee sparked Diannes early interest in history, as did Leila Halls stories of relatives who had left Ireland for Queensland during the 19th century. She also wishes to thank Louise, Rowan and Jack for patiently putting up with her pre-occupations when writing this book and always being ready to show her that there is more to life.

Introduction: The Irish in Australia

St Patricks Day in Brisbane in March 2018 saw a joyous and colourful celebration of Irish identity and its popular symbols. A large parade through city streets featured the Queensland Irish Association pipe band, enthusiastic Irish dancers and an agile child on a unicycle wearing a large green leprechaun-style hat all cheered on by laughing crowds waving shamrock-shaped balloons. In similar scenes that day in many Australian cities and towns, there were also family events, concerts of Irish music and outdoor tables at Irish-themed pubs, crowded with patrons drinking beer coloured green to mark the occasion.

The celebratory atmosphere of Brisbanes St Patricks Day parade presented Irishness as a happy and positive aspect of Australias modern culture. But not only do large numbers of Irish Australians and many non-Irish Australians as well enjoy the festivities held on 17 March each year, in recent decades Irish immigrants achievements have been rewarded with some of the countrys highest official accolades. The 2010 Australian of the Year was Irish-born Melbourne-based psychiatrist, Professor Patrick McGorry, a leading campaigner for improved mental health services for young people. Twenty years earlier, Sister Angela Mary Doyle RSM, a hospital administrator and outspoken advocate for people with HIV/AIDS, was named the 1989 Queenslander of the Year. Listing influential Irish-born Australians could fill many pages, while a similar listing of notable Australians of Irish ancestry would be far longer and would include thousands of women and men representing all aspects of Australian life.

Yet this story of success and celebration is in stark contrast to how earlier generations of Australians, especially those of British birth or descent, understood Ireland and the Irish. Exactly 170 years ago, the arrival of Catholic Irish immigrants people from backgrounds similar to those of McGorry or Doyle provoked a Melbourne newspaper to warn against an influx of hordes of useless and lawless savages, who threatened to transform the colony into a Province of Popedom. Another Melbourne paper was at the same time characterising Aboriginal people in similar terms, describing them too as lawless savages. The transformation of Irish-born immigrants from useless savages into honoured citizens highlights the vast distance that they and their children travelled during the course of the 19th and 20th centuries in the public consciousness of most Australians. From being widely perceived as alien and menacing, today the Irish are included alongside the English, Scots and Welsh as founding peoples of modern Australia, even if they often disappear into broader categories like British and Anglo-Celtic in histories of Australian colonisation and settlement.