Returning to Ireland from Australia 1880-1925

ABSTRACT

This article analyses Irish migrants and their descendants who returned either permanently or temporarily to Ireland in the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century. Data for return of Irish-born migrants is uneven, so one of the best sources for those born in Australia and living in Ireland is in the Irish censuses of 1901 and 1911. In this analysis, we use Australian-born people present on the census nights as an approximate measure of those migrants who had previously left Ireland and then returned with Australian-born children, recognising that this is also an imprecise measure. We match data points from the census returns with demographic data to fill in the background of selected returnees. Key findings are that Australian-born women were disproportionately represented in census data. In order to capture a broader sample of Irish migrants who returned to Ireland, we also analyse visiting and temporary return through a case study of one migrant group from Limerick who settled in rural colonial Victoria.

KEYWORDS:

• Return migration
• Irish migration
• Australia
• women
• nineteenth century

Acknowledgments

We thank Elizabeth Malcolm, Val Noone, Louise Willis and Lesley Birch for their assistance with this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Dynan, ‘Forging an identity’.

2. Family history communicated to Loretta Dynan by Grace Maguire.

3. It is thought by the family that the land was sold to one of his brothers sometime around 1852, and accounts for the substantial amount of cash in his possession on arrival in Victoria.

4. Richards, ‘Return Migration’; Ward, “Return Migration’; Ward, ‘The Importance of Gender’.

5. The initial British colony on the Australian continent was New South Wales, founded in 1788. The second was Van Diemen’s Land (later renamed Tasmania), founded in 1825. Four additional self-governing British colonies were established during the nineteenth century: South Australia, Victoria, Queensland, and Western Australia. On 1 January 1901, these six colonies federated to form the Commonwealth of Australia, each of the colonies becoming a state. The term ‘Australian’ was in common usage prior to 1901 to describe the citizens of the six colonies. For example, there are more than 1 million uses of the term in digitalised Australian colonial newspapers in each of the decades from 1870 to 1900, see trove.nla.gov.au.

6. Gmelch, ‘Return migration’, 136. Ward, ‘Return migration’, 88.

7. Vital registration data: Robert born 1840, Broughshane, Co. Antrim, married Margaret Eliza Rodgers, 1876, Ballymena. Annie Florence Hester born 1877, Broughshane (birth registered Ballymena, vol. 16, p. 103); Elizabeth born, Woodford, Victoria, 1880, Victorian Birth Register, no. 5828.

8. For the breakdown in the sending counties see Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation, 15.

9. This has been also noted by Fitzpatrick in his analyses of the census data and place of birth. See The Americanisation of Ireland, 25.

10. 1901: Co. and City of Dublin = 27; Co. and City of Limerick = 1; 1911: Co. and City Dublin = 33; Co. and City of Limerick = 8.

11. Unlike the deliberate misreporting of age see Budd and Guinnane. ‘Intentional Age-Misreporting’, 497–518.

12. The standard overview of the Irish diaspora is Akenson, The Irish Diaspora, see 15–57. See also Fitzpatrick, ‘Irish Emigration in the Later Nineteenth Century’, 126–43.

13. Harper ed., Emigrant Homecomings. Dunnigan, ‘Irish Return Migration from America’. Abramitzky, Boustan and Eriksson. ‘To the New World and Back Again’. 300–22; Cinel, The National Integration.

14. Akenson estimated that less than 10% of Irish migrants to the USA returned in contrast to the 58% from Italy. However he acknowledged that this was a little studied aspect of Irish migration. Akenson, The Irish Diaspora, 3–14.

15. Fitzpatrick, The Americanisation of Ireland, 130–131.

16. Inglis, ‘Going Home’, 105.

17. Richards, ‘Return migration’, 71.

18. Inglis, ‘Going home’, 106–7.

19. Richards, ‘Return Migration’, 71.

20. Inglis, ‘Going Home’, 106–7.

21. Argus 18 January 1855; Age 1 May 1909.

22. British Australasian 23 November 1905 cited in Inglis, ‘Going Home’,120.

23. Inglis, ‘Going Home’, 117ff.

24. Ward, ‘Return migration’.

25. Abramitzky, Boustan, and Eriksson, To the New World and Back Again, 1.

26. Ward, ‘The Importance of Gender’.

27. Woollacott, To Try Her Fortune in London, 53–57

28. Malcolm and Hall, A New History of the Irish, 6; Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation, 6–12.

29. Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation, 6 and Reid, Farewell My Children, 14.

30. Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation, 15–16; Proudfoot and Hall, ‘Points of Departure’. 241–77.

31. The Indigenous populations of Australia were not accurately counted in the census data prior to Federation in 1901 and not counted at all between 1901 and 1971, see Griffiths, et al, ‘The Identification of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People’, 91–2; Attwood and Markus, The 1967 Referendum, 1–4.

32. Individual census returns were either accidentally destroyed or have not been kept for Commonwealth or Colonial Australian census. Hull, ‘The Strange History’, 1–22; McClaughlin, ‘Protestant Irish in Australia’, 88–98.

33. Atkenson, The Irish Diaspora, 42–3.

34. For analysis of return from a collection of letters see Fitzpatrick, “Ambiguities of ‘Home’, 32–3; and Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation, 530–4.

35. For discussion of letters between migrants to Australia and their families in Ireland see Fitzpatrick Oceans of Consolation, 4–5.

36. William Fife to Nixon and Faithy Fife, 8 August 1860, in Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation, 445.

37. Mary Devlin to Joseph Hammond, December 20, 1857, in Oceans of Consolation, 385.

38. Queensland Times, 15 November 1912.

39. Fitzpatrick, “Ambiguities of ‘Home’.

40. Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation, 533.

41. Biddy Burke, letter to parents, May, 1888, in Oceans of Consolation, 157.

42. All tables based on census data from National Archives of Ireland. Searches based on place of birth field = Australia. Additional figures for place of birth recorded as Australian places not including the word ‘Australia’ for Co and city of Dublin and Co and city of Limerick. Additional searches within place of birth returns for missing data in marital status and sex fields.

43. Foster, ‘Sir William Lee Plunket’.

44. McClaughlin, ‘Protestant Irish in Australia’.

45. Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation, 18, n. 35 and 36.

46. Parliamentary Gazetteer of Ireland, 1844–45, cxliv; Vaughan, Landlords and Tenants, 4.

47. Irish Times, 11 March 1875.

48. Blackall, ‘The Butlers of Co. Clare’, 122. South Australian Almanac and Directory 1872.

49. O’Brien, ‘Butler, Mary Ellen Lambert’.

50. For an overview of the Iveagh Trust scheme see King, “‘Guinness Is Good for You’ 133–60; Aalen, The Iveagh Trust.

51. The name of the scheme is not mentioned.

52. John Joseph Broderick and Mary Elizabeth nee Robinson travelled on the Chyebassa arriving in Brisbane in July 1888. See Queensland State Archives, Item Representation ID PR18485 ‘Register of passengers on immigrant ship’. Elizabeth Lucy Broderick was born 23^rd February 1891, see Queensland Births Deaths and Marriages index, Birth Registration number B047671, Joseph Laurence Broderick born 25^th November 1889, Queensland BDM, Reg. Number B044778

53. King, ‘Guinness is good for you’, 153.

54. Fitzpatrick, The Americanisation of Ireland, 151.

55. Family reconstruction based on the following: Marriage certificate for Harriette Smith and Alfred Douglas, 1889, registration no. 919; birth certificates for Lillian 1891, no. 34962, Marjorie no. 34963 and Dorothy, no. 10976. Death of Alfred William Douglas, reported Cootamundra Herald 29 August 1894. Marjorie Douglas, born 1891 in Cootamundra, NSW listed in 1911 English census working as a teacher in Newport at Merevale College. It is probable that Marjorie returned to Dublin in 1917 to marry D’Arcy Benson.

56. Shipping records of Roma docking in Brisbane in 1887, Mary J Tierney and her son Fred are listed as remittance migrants bound for Thursday Island.

57. Sydney Morning Herald, 26 October 1893.

58. Richards, ‘Running Home from Australia’.

59. Ward, ‘Return migration from nineteenth century Australia’, 89.

60. Robin, ‘Macartney, Hussey Burgh”. The Queenslander, 24 February 1917, 16.

61. Dynan, ‘Forging an identity’.

62. Malcolm and Hall, A New History of the Irish in Australia, 48 for attitudes of the Irish to Indigenous peoples in Australia.

63. ‘Obituary, Mr Nicholas Cooke’, Advocate, 17 September 1931; Personal conversation Grace Maguire to Mary Ryan, 1944.

64. Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation, 622–27.

65. Jamison, ‘Irish Protestant Colonialism’, 11.

66. It is thought by the family that the land was sold to one of his brothers sometime around 1852, and accounts for the substantial amount of cash in his possession on arrival in Victoria.

67. Kilmore Free Press, 11 October 1906; Ryan, Pyalong: A Brief History, 31.

68. Kilmore Free Press, 3 October 1935.

69. Fogarty, Diary 1925, 1–26.

70. Ward, ‘The Importance of Gender’, 283; Fitzpatrick, The Americanisation of Ireland, 57.