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

Introduction

In 1887, Limerick-born, Patrick Cooke travelled alone from his prosperous farm in rural Victoria, back to Knockainy and the rural farm that he had left 33 years before. He had spent the previous years building a career as a successful farmer and hotelier in the rural district of Pyalong north of Melbourne.¹ His 18-month return visit was ostensibly to renew contact with his Knockainy family and to visit a dying brother.² However, he also tried, unsuccessfully, to regain control of the land that he had relinquished prior to emigration, suggesting that he was investigating a way to establish a more permanent return to Ireland for himself and his family.³ He and his wife, Mary, and their young children had migrated to Victoria in 1854, although Mary had not been impressed with the rough and ready gold rush town of Melbourne and had returned quickly after disembarking, taking most of the children with her. It was only after 3 years back home in Limerick that she agreed to try the sea voyage and settlement in Victoria again. Patrick and Mary Cooke both travelled, separately, from Victoria to Limerick for long periods, possibly as trial permanent returns, before deciding to return to Australia. Their stories point to a little studied aspect of Irish migration to Australia, that of returning, both temporarily and permanently. To date, return migration from Australia to Ireland has not attracted sustained scholarly attention, although return migration of UK migrants to England in particular, has been studied, most recently by Tony Ward, and previously by Eric Richards and Ken Inglis.⁴

Much of the research on returning to Ireland has concentrated on the much higher numbers who had previously migrated to North America. There were significant differences within Irish diasporic movement between Ireland and destination countries, so return from Australia needs separate investigation to analyse the effect of the destination country on the motivations and circumstances of return. One of the most obvious differences between return migration from North America and Australia was the distance and cost of the voyage, with the Australian voyages always more expensive and therefore less likely that poorer migrants would see the economic benefit of return compared with using their resources to stay in Australia.⁵ Another key difference was that Australia and Ireland were both part of the British Empire, so people within the broad Imperial workforce, such as army officers, soldiers, seamen, government officials and others, travelled around the empire for employment. Using these factors, we analysed the gendered, religious and class characteristics of Australian-born recorded in Ireland in the 1901 and 1911 censuses to determine the extent to which these Australians were returning to the country of birth of their parents or grandparents. Protestant females emerge as over represented among the Australians recorded in the census data compared with the proportion of Protestants who migrated to the Australian colonies from Ireland in the nineteenth century. Census data at these two points in time cannot represent the diversity of experiences of return, particularly of temporary migration. Return migration is defined by scholars such as Gmelch and Fitzpatrick as the return of previous migrants usually for more than 12 months, which implies permanent resettlement.⁶ As well as this intentional permanent return, we also include temporary return for visits in our analysis, by looking at the ‘visitor’ category in the censuses of 1901 and 1911. This captures only a very small number of ‘visitors’ and does not demonstrate motivation or emotional connections with ‘home’. For this level of subjective information we need to turn to family papers, diaries and recollection. So we complement our analysis of return, permanent, trial and temporary, through analysis of the extended Cooke family and their networks in rural Victoria.

Sources and methodology

Shipping records for arrivals from British empire ports do not provide precise information on Irish returnees in contrast to the mid-century records of passage from United States to British and Irish ports. The Irish censuses of 1901 and 1911 did not collect data on previous residence or time spent outside Ireland, so they cannot assist in determining the number of Irish who went to Australia and then returned. However, one approximate measure of returning migrants is the Australian-born present on the census nights. This measure assumes that many of the Australian-born on the two census nights were the children of migrants who returned with their parents or to live with extended family. One example of how the birthplaces of children show a migrant family’s return journey is the Cathcart family, of Broughshane, Co. Antrim. In the 1901 census, Antrim-born Robert and Margaret Cathcart are recorded living with their adult children, the eldest living at home. 20-year-old Annie had also been born in Co. Antrim; however, the three younger children, aged between 18 and 16, had been born in Australia. The records of their place of birth in the census return make it clear that Robert and Margaret migrated to Australia with a very young Annie, then had three more children before returning to farm in Broughshane, Co. Antrim.⁷ Further investigation in Australian vital registration data shows that the family lived in or near the small Victorian rural village of Woodford, as this is where all three children’s births were registered. It is the presence of the Australian-born children in the census returns that means that the Cathcart’s return migration is recoverable. We recognise that there are other Australians who were in Ireland at the time of the censuses who may not have had any family connection with Ireland. Whereas it is most probable that all Catholic Australians were of Irish descent, given that almost all Catholics in Australia before the first world war were descendants of Irish settlers, this is not the case for Protestants. We discuss Protestant Australian-born females below, however there were also Protestant Australian adult men in Ireland, including merchant seamen, students and business men. In 1911, these adult men comprised 15% of the total Australian born. It is likely that most of these would have no family connection with Ireland.

There are 922 hits in the online search engines for Australian-born in 1901 and 1004 in the 1911 census. The largest number were in county Dublin, including Dublin city, followed by the urban areas of counties Antrim, Down, and Cork. In order to analyse this data in more detail, we then individually listed all entries for Australian-born in counties Dublin and Limerick, including the urban areas, and then matched Australian-born individuals across both 1901 and 1911 census returns for these counties. County Dublin, including Dublin city, was chosen because it represented the largest dataset of Australian-born as well as the widest range of occupations, while County Limerick, including Limerick city, was chosen because it was one of the counties sending large numbers to Australia. Within these groups, we then added more information about individuals from colonial vital registrations, newspaper reports, biographies and private archives.⁸

There are some problems with place of birth data recoverable from the online census database. The first is that the digital search engine, hosted on the National Archives of Ireland website, only allows searching for place of birth from defined options, with no free text field. The options are the 32 Irish counties or 30 countries outside Ireland, of which Australia is one. However, there are over 266,000 entries in the 1911 census and 260,872 in the 1901 census where the place of birth recorded by the householder is not one of these options. This means that these entries are listed in the data set as ‘other’ and so are not searchable. Most places in this category in both censuses are Irish placenames other than county names, such as Belfast or town names. ⁹ However, the ‘other’ category includes Australian place names that do not include the word ‘Australia’, such as Queensland or Sydney. To mitigate this factor within our data set, we searched the 1901 and 1911 datasets for Counties Dublin and Limerick (including the cities of Dublin and Limerick) by reading all the returns in the ‘other’ category for Australian place names. This search resulted in the addition of 10% more Australian-born to the Dublin and Limerick data sets.¹⁰ Another problem with the data is that when individuals are matched between the 1901 and 1911 data sets, there are some people who indicate Australian birth in one census and not the other. While the reasons for this are not clear, it means that the final numbers are an approximation.¹¹

We also analysed the censuses for short-term visitors. The censuses provide some data on Australian-born visitors; however they cannot capture information on the large number of visitors from Australia to Ireland who visited outside of the census dates. We therefore analysed Pyalong in Victoria where a connected group of migrants born in county Limerick, including the Cooke family, settled. By using family archives and searching for newspaper reports using the online search engine, Trove, hosted at the National Library of Australia, we analyse the Irish migrants from this area who visited their homeland and then returned to their new home in Australia.

Returning

By 1900 at least eight million Irish people had left Ireland, so even in the most remote rural areas families would know of neighbours, cousins, brothers and sisters who had settled in North America, Australia, New Zealand or South Africa.¹² Most of the research on return migration to Ireland, as well as the rest of Europe, has been centred around the United States, one of the closer destinations as well as the most favoured by migrants.¹³ While initial estimates of return migration to Ireland from North America suggested that there were fewer returnees than for other countries, such as Italy, the numbers are still significant.¹⁴ In his recent study of return migration from North America, The Americanisation of Ireland, Fitzpatrick combined several data points to analyse return emigration to Ireland from North America around the turn of the twentieth century, including the 1901 and 1911 Irish census returns. He collected data on American-born from the census returns as a method of identifying returned families, including those with Irish-born parents. One of his findings was that across all social classes there was a significant number of widows and children among the returnees, often living with grandparents and extended family after return. On the basis of these findings, he concluded that Irish migrant families in North America included their Irish relatives in their plans for care of dependents.¹⁵

Examination of reverse migration flows from Australia by Ward, Inglis and Richards shows that settlers have been returning to the United Kingdom since the start of white settlement in the colonies in the late eighteenth century. Estimates vary but probably about half the people who arrived on the first convict ships in the late eighteenth century for example returned to the UK and Ireland, including between 15% and 30% of the convicts themselves.¹⁶ Until about 1870 the cost and length of the trip back via sail to the UK from the Australian colonies was a disincentive, although the rather uneven evidence from shipping records indicates that there was a steady stream of people travelling away from Australia, perhaps as many as 40% of those arriving into Australian colonial ports. It is, however, difficult to differentiate in the shipping data between those travelling temporarily for business or leisure and those returning permanently.¹⁷ From the 1870s onwards, passenger numbers travelling from Australia to UK ports increased exponentially with the introduction of steam-powered ships that markedly improved the speed and safety of the passage.¹⁸ By the end of the nineteenth century, reduced relative journey times from the Australian colonies meant that the journey to UK ports was more feasible than previously.¹⁹ Ken Inglis estimates that by 1890, the voyage by steamship from eastern Australian cities to English ports took about 4 weeks, in contrast to the previous time of two to 3 months by sail.²⁰ Between 1855 and 1914 fares from Australia to London however remained reasonably consistent. In 1855 a single fare in first-class accommodation was advertised at 65–80 guineas; single fares in third-class and steerage varied between 14 and 18 guineas. Single return fares to London in 1909 ranged between £65 and £110.²¹ It was assumed by contemporaries that only the wealthy could afford to return permanently or for a visit, as the London-based newspaper British Australasian in 1905 stated that ‘only people with money travel to and from Australia’.²² This perception was strengthened by frequent Australian newspaper reports of the departure of prominent, and wealthy, local elites on leisure and business trips ‘home’ to England.²³ Notwithstanding these perceptions, Ward’s analysis of shipping records and the 1911 census data for England and Wales suggests that about 20% of migrants to Australia returned, including 12% of semi- and unskilled working-class migrants.²⁴ These numbers are certainly less than for migrants who returned to Europe from the United States when, between 1850 and 1913, one in three emigrants returned to Europe.²⁵ However, they are a significant number of those who had initially migrated to Australia.

Although economic considerations were important for returnees of all occupations and religious denominations, Ward’s study of a random sample of 459 Australian-born returnees in the 1911 Census of England and Wales was an attempt to identify the key drivers behind the decision to return to the homeland. Ward used Australian-born people living in England and Wales as measures of return migration and found that there were more females born in Australia living in England and Wales in 1911 than males. While the numbers for females under 40 were around 56% of age cohorts, women over 40 constituted 64% of the total Australian-born in that age bracket. Ward notes that many of these were widows and suggests that reconnecting with social networks at ‘home’ was a significant factor in their decision to return. In another article, based on a collection of letters between members of the wealthy Wilson family, originally from Co. Antrim, he shows that several of the women returned to either Antrim or England after widowhood or when they had small children. Jane Hamill, nee Wilson, after enduring the deaths of two infants and her husband, returned to Antrim in 1855 after 5 years in Geelong. Her sister Anna returned to Belfast with her husband and young children in 1855 after even less time in the colony.²⁶

Other research into Australian women in England in this period however suggests that women travelled, either permanently or temporarily, for a wider range of reasons than reconnection with family. Angela Woollacott argues that at various points before 1914 Australian women outnumbered Australian men in England, particularly in London. She suggests that Australian women were in London for leisure, to take up educational or professional opportunities, as well as visiting relatives.²⁷ She argues that Australian-born women in the period between 1870 and 1914 had a reputation for travel and were keen to take up available opportunities that were not necessarily related to family concerns.

The number of Irish who settled in the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century was always much smaller than those who took the cheaper and shorter journey to either North America or England and Wales. About 400,000 Irish migrants settled in Australia between 1788 and 1920 in addition to the 1.6 million from England, Scotland and Wales.²⁸ These Irish people arrived in three very broad and overlapping waves: convicts, and their guards, between 1788 and 1868; free settlers who paid their own passage mostly from the 1830s; and finally those who arrived from Ireland through one of the many government assistance schemes operating between 1831 and 1922.²⁹ Irish migrants to Australia came from every county although some counties sent more than others. Fitzpatrick found that the Munster counties of Clare, Tipperary and Limerick supplied the largest number of mostly Catholic migrants to the Australian colonies, with a secondary grouping of mainly Protestants from the Ulster counties of Fermanagh, Cavan and Armagh.³⁰ The impact of these migration flows on the white population of Australia was much greater than the relatively low numbers might suggest. In 1901, when the Australian colonies federated, Catholic Irish-born settlers and their descendants comprised just under a quarter of the white population.³¹ Aggregate census data on place of birth and religion was not cross tabulated in the reports on the Australian census until 1911, and individual census returns were not retained, making precise analysis impossible. However, using data from earlier censuses and the 1911 census, historians estimate that around 25% of Irish-born settlers were Protestant.³² Unlike migrants from the rest of Europe and Britain, Irish women migrated to Australia in equal numbers to Irish men, and in some years, there was a majority of Irish women arriving.³³

Nineteenth-century emigrant letters between Ireland and settlers in Australia suggest that returning to be with family or to take up employment not available in the colonies, remained an aspiration for many, although only realised by a minority.³⁴ Indeed, return was usual enough among small farming families to be mentioned by some letter-writers as a common event. Although surviving letters cannot be considered representative of the large numbers of Irish who settled in the Australian colonies, they do provide insight into the world view of some migrants and their families.³⁵ In 1860 for example, when William Fife in Drumscullion, Co. Fermanagh wrote to his children in New South Wales he noted that two of their acquaintances had returned from the Australian colonies reporting that work for educated men was hard to find.³⁶ Irish migrants returning for short-term visits are also reported as common place in letters. Mary Devlin, for example, wrote to her son Joseph Hammond in Australia in 1857 of an acquaintance who had been visiting family in Armagh but had since returned to Australia. ³⁷ Australian colonial newspapers often reported when prominent local settlers were returning to Ireland, as well as England, either permanently or to visit. This was particularly the case for men who had succeeded in making their fortunes, such as the four Vaughan brothers who migrated to Queensland in 1862. Their successful investments in rural property ensured that they could sell up and return permanently to Co. Cork in 1912.³⁸

Newspapers were less inclined to note the departure of women who were travelling to Ireland either for visits or permanent residence. Even though contemporary newspapers suggested that it was mostly men returning ‘home’, David Fitzpatrick found that there was no significant difference between men and women letter writers in their reference to ‘home’ being in Ireland or with their Irish family, or to their writing about their desire to return, even if most did not do so.³⁹ Some letter writers distinguished between visiting to see family and permanent return. Biddy Burke wrote of her desire to return ‘home’ from Brisbane to Galway, but by 1884 she stated ‘I might … goe & see the old sod once more. But I don’t suppose I could live there now’.⁴⁰ The concept of returning home for these emigrants encompassed both the possibility of permanent remigration and visiting to reconnect with family.

Census findings

One of the key findings of our analysis of the Irish census data is that overall, there were more female Australian-born living in Ireland than males at the time of both the 1901 and 1911 censuses, and that there were more Protestant females than Catholic females, (Table 1, Table 2 and Table 3).⁴¹

Table 1. Australian-born in Irish censuses including additional census returns in County Dublin (inc. City of Dublin) and County Limerick (inc. City of Limerick).

Census date	Female		Male		Total
	n	%	n	%	n	%
1901	595	58.3	426	41.7	1021	100
1911	567	56.4	438	43.6	1005	100

% may not add up to 100% because of rounding.

Sources: 1901 and 1911 Irish census, online at http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie.

Table 2. Religious background of Australian-born in census data including additional census returns in County Dublin (inc. City of Dublin) and County Limerick (inc. City of Limerick.

Census date	Catholic Female		Catholic Male		Protestant Female		Protestant Male		Total
	n	%	n	%	n	%	n	%	n	%
1901	260	25.5	221	21.6	335	32.8	205	20	1021	100
1911	235	23.4	231	22.9	332	33	207	20.6	1005	100

% may not add up to 100% because of rounding.

Sources: 1901 and 1911 Irish census, online at http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie.

Table 3. 1901 Census - Age and gender breakdown by religion of Australian-born people in Co. Dublin, showing % by category of total Australian born (n = 1021).

	Protestant				Catholic				Total
	Male		Female		Male		Female
	n	%	n	%	n	%	n	%	n	%
*Children	80	7.8	111	10.9	111	11	125	12.2	427	41.8
* Single adults	60	5.9	70	6.9	57	5.6	60	5.9	247	24.2
Married adults	60	5.9	130	12.7	51	5	61	6	302	29.6
Widowed adults	5	0.5	24	2.4	2	0.2	14	1	45	4.4
Total	205	20.1	335	32.9	221	21.6	260	25.5	1021	100%

Children = under 20 years old [or up to.

Adults = 20 years old and over% may not add up to 100% because of rounding.Sources: 1901 and 1911 Irish census, online at http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie.

The high proportion of Australian-born females who were Protestant (33%) invites further analysis and so in order to explore this further we focussed on those Australian-born living in Dublin at the time of the 1911 census, (see Table 4).

Table 4. 1911 Census - Age and gender breakdown by religion of Australian-born people in Co. Dublin, showing % by category of total Australian born (n = 1005).

	Protestant				Catholic				Total
	Male		Female		Male		Female
	n	%	n	%	n	%	n	%	n	%
Children	56	5.6	61	6	74	7.4	82	8.2	273	27.2
Single adults	85	8.5	117	11.6	106	10.5	80	8	388	38.6
Married adults	60	6	131	13	50	5	59	5.9	300	29.9
Widowed adults	6	0.6	23	2.3	1	0.1	14	1.4	44	4.4
Total	207	20.6	332	33	231	23	235	23.4	1005	100%

Children = under 20 years old [or up to.

Adults = 20 years old and over.

% may not add up to 100% because of rounding.

Sources: 1901 and 1911 Irish census, online at http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie.

On the face of it, the fact that 43% of the Australian-born people in Dublin in 1911 were Protestants (See Table 5) is at odds with the make-up of the Irish migrant stream over the course of the nineteenth century, when between 20% and 25% of Irish-born migrants were Protestants. If descendants of Catholic and Protestant Irish migrants returned at the same rate, then we would expect fewer Protestants than Catholics among the Australian-born cohort. It is clear from the census returns that this was not the case. The main anomaly seems to be that there are far more Protestant Australian-born females living or staying in Dublin in 1911 than would be expected if the main source of Australian-born people was those returning to the country from which their parents or grandparents had left. To explore this further, we looked at the household returns for all the Australian-born females in the Dublin sample from the 1911 census (Table 6).

Table 5. Australian-born in Dublin – County and City in 1911. Australian-born in Co and City of Dublin in 1911.

	Children under 20	single adults	married adults	widowed	Total (n)	% of total
Male Protestants	6	18	15	1	40	16%
Female Protestants	6	28	25	9	68	27%
Male Catholics	18	47	10	1	76	30%
Female Catholics	17	29	16	8	70	27%
					254

Sources: 1901 and 1911 Irish census, online at http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie.

Table 6. Australian-born Protestant females 1911 census in Co. Dublin. n = 68.

	Children under 20	Single Adults	Married Adults	Widowed	n	%
Living with Irish born relatives	4	20	-	3	27	40
Living with Irish born husband	-	-	20	-	20	20
Living with husband not born in Ireland.	-	-	5	-	5	7
No obvious Irish connection	2	8	-	6	16	23
					68

Sources: 1901 and 1911 Irish census, online at http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie.

Of these Protestant Australian-born females, 40% were living with Irish-born relatives – parents, grandparents, aunts and cousins, indicating that they were of Irish parentage or grand parentage; 20% were living with their Irish-born husbands and 30% had no obvious Irish connection. Among these were women who were working in hospitals and asylums, as domestic servants, visiting or boarding. Catherine Mortimer for example was one of those servicing the needs of the British empire as a Protestant Australian-born nurse in the household of Sir William Plunket in 1911. She likely did not have previous connections with Ireland and had probably joined the household when Sir William was governor general of New Zealand to assist with care of the young children of the family.⁴² It is also probable that many of the Protestant Australian-born women who married Irish-born Protestant men were not of Irish descent themselves, given the majority of Protestants in Australia did not have Irish ancestry.⁴³ Even if we estimate that half of the 20% of the Australian-born Protestant women living with Irish-born husbands were of Irish heritage themselves, that leaves 50% Australian-born females who were not ‘returning’ to Ireland in any sense.

Comparing the Dublin-based Catholic Australian-born females with Australian-born Protestants brings up interesting differences, the most important of which is that the Australian-born Catholic population in the first decades of the twentieth century in Ireland were overwhelmingly descended from Irish migrants, which is compatible with the majority of Catholics in Australia by 1911 being of Irish birth or descent. (See Table 7). ⁴⁴

Table 7. Australian-born Catholic Females 1911 in Dublin (County and City).

	Children under 20	Single Adults	Married Adults	Widowed	Total
					n	%
Living with Irish-born relatives	11	13		4	28	40
Living with Irish-born husband			15		15	21.4
Living with husband/family not born in Ireland.	2	5	1		8	11.4
No obvious Irish connection		5		1	6	8.5
In institution (school, convent or other)	3	2		3	8	11.4
No family, with Irish name	1	4			5	7.1
	17	29	16	8	70

Sources: 1901 and 1911 Irish census, online at http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie.

Compared with Protestant Australian-born females, there were fewer Catholic females with no obvious Irish connections, while there was a similar number living with Irish-born husbands. Using the contextual familial information recorded in the census, there were also 18.5% of Catholic Australian-born women who had probable Irish parentage based on their names, including girls in school, nuns and servants. It is also probable that most of the Australian-born Catholic wives of Irish-born husbands also had Irish parents or grandparents who had migrated to Australia. Therefore approximately 80% of the 70 Catholic Australian-born females were in some sense returning to Ireland, the land of either their parents or grandparents.

Further information about the Australian-born people living in Dublin was gleaned through the markers of economic status recorded in the census itself. For example, a rough guide to the social and economic status of the Australian-born residents in Ireland is provided by the class of house recorded in the census.⁴⁵ A family living in an undivided first-class house was presumably prosperous. In the county and city of Dublin, there were 19 (11%) Australian-born Catholics living in first-class housing and 47 (53%) Protestants in 1911, showing the clear differential in wealth between Catholic and Protestants among the Australian-born. Protestant Australian-born Kate Augusta Henning for instance was living with her English-born husband and two of her children in 1911 in a first-class house with 11 rooms and a servant in the wealthy area of Rathmines. There are no obvious family connections to Ireland and the family presumably lived there for her husband’s employment as a brewer. Among the smaller number of prosperous Catholics was Margaret Ryan, the South Australian-born daughter of a Tipperary family who had done well in the colony. Margaret met Englishman Walter Strickland when he was visiting Adelaide and they married in Dublin in 1874. Walter went on to become director of the National Gallery of Ireland which gave the couple entry into Dublin’s elite social circle and attendance at balls held in Dublin Castle.⁴⁶ Margaret’s sister Mary-Anne married Irishman, Lambert Butler, a surgeon who was then living in South Australia and the younger son of a major landowning family in Co. Clare.⁴⁷ Lambert died in 1880, and his widow and daughters settled in Dublin. Like their aunt, Margaret’s daughters, Belinda and Mary Ellen, were part of the elite in Dublin society, both girls being presented to the Irish lord lieutenant at Dublin Castle.⁴⁸ Both the Ryan sisters were in a sense returning to the Ireland of their parents’ birth, although both were born in Australia.

Most Catholic families with Australian-born members were not however as wealthy as the Ryan sisters. The Irish censuses show that there were a number of working-class families who had spent time in Australia and were now living in crowded housing in central Dublin. It is likely that these particular families had cultural and financial resources from family or other networks to facilitate the expensive return trip. In 1901 one such family, the Brodericks, lived in one of the recently built two-roomed Guinness/Iveagh Trust dwellings in New Bride Street in the Liberties area of central Dublin.⁴⁹ Galway-born John and Mary Broderick had migrated as a young married couple to Brisbane in 1888 using one of the government-funded assisted migration schemes.⁵⁰ They had two children while in Queensland, Joseph Laurence and Elizabeth Lucy, in 1889 and 1891 respectively.⁵¹ While the fares from Australia to the UK had reduced over the course of the nineteenth century, fares for a family of four were still a substantial outlay in the 1890s. The Brodericks were able to either sell assets or to draw on Irish family resources to fund their return, as they were in Dublin by 1896. John was listed as a labourer in a bond warehouse, probably associated with the Guinness company, in the 1901 census. Most of the tenants in the Iveagh Trust buildings were workers with secure ongoing employment at the Guinness brewery.⁵² The Queensland-born son, Joseph, was absent from the family home at the time of the 1901 census and was probably the Joseph Laurence Broderick visiting the household of two priests in Marble Hill, Galway at the time. An Eleanor Broderick was the priests’ housekeeper and she may have been a relative. In 1911 the family seems even more secure and still at the same address, with Joseph Laurence now studying at university and John and Elizabeth Lucy working in warehouses for wine and spirits, presumably associated with the Guinness brewery. John and Mary spent less than 8 years in Queensland before returning to Dublin rather than their native Galway. John’s occupation and their living conditions in Dublin indicate that they were of the respectable working class and had probably gained skills in Queensland that enabled their return to stable urban employment. Their ability to travel back from Queensland suggests that the family had maintained contact with their Irish networks while in Queensland and could call upon considerable resources, possibly from family, which enabled them to re-establish themselves after their sojourn in the colonies.

Widows and children

Ward in his study of the UK censuses suggested that women returning to England after the death of their husbands was a significant factor in the numbers of Australian-born in the census. Fitzpatrick found that among the American-born living in Ireland there were a number of children living with relatives in what were obviously long-term care arrangements, presumably after the death of parents in America.⁵³ The cost of travel from Australia to Ireland was far greater than the costs involved with those travelling from North America. This in itself undoubtedly mitigated against large scale return of the Irish-born women and their children from Australia after domestic upheaval. Although the number of Australian-born widows was relatively modest in the Irish censuses analysis of Australian-born, these widows and children indicate the strong pull for those with sufficient resources to return to the security of family networks after widowhood or family fracture.

In 1911, 49-year-old Irish-born Protestant widow Harriette Douglas and two of her Australian-born daughters were living in a seven-room house in Skerries, a small seaside town north of Dublin city, with a servant. Harriette Smith had married English-born surgeon Alfred Douglas in Sydney in 1889, and they had settled in the small regional New South Wales town of Cootamundra and had three daughters. Alfred was killed in an accident in 1894, when their youngest daughter was an infant. By 1901, Harriette was back in Dublin, staying at a ‘rest home’ with her youngest daughter. It is possible that her older twin daughters were living in England either at school or with their father’s relatives as they do not appear in the 1901 Irish census. By 1911, older daughter Lillian, was back with her mother in Skerries, while her twin, Marjorie, was working as a governess in an English school.⁵⁴ Harriette’s story, as gleaned from the census and other nominal records, indicates that she probably did not have sufficient family networks in Australia to sustain her when she was widowed, forcing her to call on familial support networks in England and Ireland to re-establish herself and educate her daughters after the tragedy of her husband’s death. This is in line with Ward’s findings for Australian women living in England in the same period.

Harriette Douglas’ story shows she had economic resources as well as strong ties to Ireland, both of which facilitated her return. There are also poorer families, such as the Mobeck family of Co. Limerick, who managed return from Australia after domestic disaster. Mary Jane Tierney, daughter of a gardener in Limerick city, had married a Swedish sailor, Peter Mobeck, and in 1887 followed him to remote Thursday Island off the coast of far north Queensland with their two-year-old son.⁵⁵ In 1893, with two more children in tow, tragedy struck when Peter was killed in a fight with local indigenous men while fishing for beche de mer or trepang in the waters off Thursday Island.⁵⁶ Mary Jane must have returned to her parents shortly after his death as she was living with her three children in her parents’ home in Limerick city at the time of the 1901 census. How she raised the money for the family’s return is unknown, however she may have been assisted by local charities or her husband’s employer. By 1911 she too had died, and the children were still living with their grandparents, as well as an uncle and aunt and a cousin born in Liverpool. The Tierney family structure shows intergenerational care across transnational boundaries, with the grandparents caring for Mary Jane’s children and those of another child who had migrated to Liverpool. These arrangements are similar to many found by Fitzpatrick in his study.

This analysis of the censuses of 1901 and 1911 shows that there were proportionally more Protestant Australian-born females living in Ireland than would be expected if they were the descendants of the small Irish Protestant migrant stream. However, as our analysis shows, this anomaly is more apparent than real. More Protestant Australian-born women had left Australia as single adults or had married Protestant Irish or English husbands before settling in Ireland. These women were part of the prosperous elite of the British Empire, people who may have been equally at home in England or any one of the outposts of empire. Their residence in Ireland was not motivated by return to family but by either their own or their husband’s employment, or travel for leisure. This means that the higher proportion of Protestant Australian-born females is due not to more Protestant females returning to the families’ place of origin, but that Australian-born Protestant women of English or Scottish heritage had the means to travel independently, were themselves, or were wives of men, employed in jobs that took them to places within the British empire. These women had more in common with the Australian females who travelled to London in the early years of the twentieth century than the Catholic Australian-born females who were living in the Ireland that their own families had left in the generation or more earlier. Catholic Australian-born females were generally of a lower economic status than the Protestant females, with some exceptions, and generally settled back in Ireland with their children. For many their return was probably underwritten in some way by family resources in Ireland.

Visitors and temporary migrants

One of the ways that prosperous migrants and their children kept in touch with their family of origin was through visiting. However, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to disentangle visitors and returning migrants from the shipping records from Australia to the UK and Ireland before World War I.⁵⁷ Ward estimated that about 10% of arrivals of Australian-born into British ports in 1911 were short-term visitors, and it is likely that this figure was replicated for Ireland.⁵⁸ The Irish censuses of 1901 and 1911 did allow for a category of ‘visitor’ in the relationship column, however this category was not commonly used by the heads of household who completed the census forms, with only 27,128 (0.6%) in that category for the whole island in 1911 and 30,413 (0.68%) in 1901. Looking at the Australian-born people who were recorded as being ‘visitors’ in 1911 there were 32 throughout Ireland (3% of the total Australian-born) with 9 of those Protestant females visiting in Dublin, while in 1901 there were 24 (2.6% of the total Australian-born), with 17 females, of whom 15 were Protestant. These females were usually staying in hotels or with people to whom they were not related, suggesting that these Protestant women and their daughters were travelling for leisure. Overall, these visitor numbers were certainly an underestimation, as the return form asked for each person’s relationship with the head of the household. It is therefore probable that when family members were visiting, the head of the household recorded their relationship to themselves rather than to their visitor status. A visiting daughter or niece, would thus be recorded by her relationship to the head of the household rather than ‘visitor’. Jemima (known as Vans) Macartney for example was listed as ‘niece’ of William Watson in 1911, whereas a young man in the same household, 22-year-old Henry Read, was listed as a ‘visitor’. Sir William obviously saw his niece in a different category to Henry. She was the granddaughter of the Dublin-born Anglican Dean of Melbourne, Very Rev. Dr H.B. Macartney and had returned to Queensland by 1917.⁵⁹ It is possible that she and others like her were on extended visits or trial remigration, perhaps as part of strategies for providing international experiences for unmarried elite women. Wealthy Protestant widow Mildred Sandes housed grandchildren from Australia in the early years of the twentieth century. In 1901, Australian-born granddaughter 12-year-old Katie King, was listed at her address, while in 1911, Katie was no longer living with Mildred. In 1911, Mildred was living with more Australian-born grandchildren, 12-year-old Mariena Kiery and her brother in her large house in the comfortable bayside suburb of Clontarf. Mildred obviously had strong Australian connections with at least two separate families of Australian-born grandchildren. It seems the children were sent to live with her for part of their education or possibly for visits while their parents were travelling. It is clear from the higher numbers of prosperous Protestant females classified as visitors, and those living with relatives short term, that Dublin was one of the European destinations that elite Australian-born females favoured for leisure travel, family visits, or for education.

Motivation and mobility

The censuses record more Protestant Australian-born visiting than Catholics, which is line with the expectation that it was wealthy Australians who could afford to travel for leisure. However, there were Catholic Irish Australians who did return to Ireland, usually for extended visits that might have been always intended to be temporary or may also have been trial permanent returns. In order to analyse the motivations of those who returned to Ireland temporarily, we have concentrated on one Australian locality as a case study – the rural district of Pyalong in central Victoria. The farming district of Pyalong, north of Melbourne had a relatively high concentration of Limerick-born immigrants, some of whom made one or more return visits to Ireland.⁶⁰ Our analysis of this small case study highlights the value of using letters, diaries and family memories to determine motivations for return.

As mentioned earlier, Mary Cooke arrived in gold-rush era Melbourne in 1854, and her story shows some of the different reasons that propelled women to return to Ireland. After marrying into the prosperous Cooke family in Knockainy, Mary was living in comfortable circumstances in the solid, well-appointed two-story Cooke farmhouse. Her relative prosperity seems to have left Mary ill-prepared for the roughness of gold rush Melbourne when she and her husband, Patrick, decided to immigrate with their children. Family stories suggest that Mary’s hasty retreat to the security of Limerick so soon after arrival was due to her distress at the primitive living conditions in Melbourne, and the danger she perceived from the ‘treacherous’ Indigenous people.⁶¹ After a three-and-a-half-year stay in Ireland, Mary kept her promise to return to Victoria after Patrick had established himself as a farmer and had ‘built her a new home’ in Pyalong.⁶² It is not known now in the family if another part of that promise was that if Patrick did not succeed in building a life for the family in Victoria, he would also return to Ireland. Although Mary’s return to Limerick was premised on the perceived poor state of her living conditions in Melbourne (compounded by a difficult sea voyage, ill children and the birth of a baby only days after landing) her distress was not unusual. Australian emigrant letters suggest that women’s attachment to the home environment – whether positive or negative – was critical to their subsequent adjustment in the colony.⁶³ Return to Ireland by women therefore, was neither rare nor unexpected and was not necessarily a single one-way event but could involve multiple journeys. Irish Protestant writer and educator, Hannah Villiers Boyd, for example, travelled back and forth between Ireland and Australia several times in the 1850s while she pursued publishing avenues for her treatises.⁶⁴

For Mary’s husband, Patrick, the desire to return to his home and family was motivated by different concerns. It was only in retirement that he could turn to thoughts of the land he had sold years earlier, probably to fund his settlement in Australia. Although some of the details are unclear, he spent 18 months back in Limerick, partly visiting family but also launching unsuccessful legal action to try and recover the land he had sold prior to emigration.⁶⁵ His actions speak to strong connections with his family and home in Ireland and his long final visit may have been an opportunity to negotiate a way to retire back in Ireland. When his negotiations were not successful, he returned to the farm in Pyalong for the remainder of his life.

Colonial newspapers and commentators generally only took notice when prominent local men returned to the ‘home’ country. When women travelled, their journeys were not as often recorded in the media. This pattern is also seen among the Cooke family and their networks. Among the 19 Irish immigrant families who settled at Pyalong in the mid-nineteenth century, at least three men returned to Ireland for visits, unaccompanied by their Irish-born wives. Farmers, James McManus from Co. Cavan, and John Halpin, from Co. Limerick, each made two return trips to Ireland, having maintained close connections with their Irish network.⁶⁶ Unlike Patrick Cooke, John Halpin showed no desire to settle permanently back in Ireland, apparently he was ‘never happier than when mounted on a spirited horse’ in the Australian bush’.⁶⁷

Single women likely were more able to travel than those with the responsibilities of motherhood. Catherine ‘Kit’ Fogarty, an unmarried member of the extended Cooke family network, migrated to Victoria in 1895 at age 30.⁶⁸ She was one of fourteen siblings from Ballybricken, Co. Limerick, 11 of whom migrated progressively to Victoria with their mother. In 1925, 30 years after leaving, Kit made a nine-month visit to Ireland. Her daily diary, written during her visit, shows she had maintained strong links with her extended Limerick family after emigrating, and as time passed was keen to reconnect in person with her home community. While there, she also made her first and only visit to her estranged father’s grave in Co. Waterford. As mentioned earlier, kinship ties remained important for many migrants and these ties were maintained through letters over many years.⁶⁹ Letters fuelled the desire of many such as the Cooke families and Biddy Burke, to make return visits to relatives and familiar places, although only a small number of migrants ultimately returned for this reason.⁷⁰

Conclusion

Women have usually been obscured in historical newspaper reports of return visits and remigration from Australia to Ireland. The rich data in the 1901 and 1911 censuses in Ireland reveals a much more complex story. While a minority of both Catholic and Protestant widows and children returned to Ireland after family fracture and were supported by their Irish families, there were disproportionally high numbers of Protestant Australian-born women and girls living in Ireland because either they or their husbands or fathers were working in Dublin. Many Catholic women returned with their husbands and children, either Irish or Australian-born, and were absorbed into Irish life. A number of these families were living in lower class housing at the time of the censuses, indicating that they were not from affluent backgrounds but had been able to find the considerable financial resources required for the long journey home.

While permanent return was only possible for a small proportion of the hundreds of thousands of Irish who migrated to Australia, many more maintained their connection with Ireland through letters. A smaller number again were able to return, either for visits or as trial remigration, particularly after the journey became more manageable. This group is much harder to find in the shipping and census records, so we must turn to narrative records in contemporary newspapers and family papers. Contemporary Australian local newspapers proudly reported when well-to-do local men went on visits to the ‘home’ country or the ‘old sod’. However, analysis of both the census and of personal letters and diaries, demonstrates that return for lengthy visits or permanent residence was broader than the newspaper reports would suggest. The records of the extended Cooke family show that women returned at different points in their lives compared with their male relatives. Return after disruption such as death of spouses or when migration was not successful was more common among women. However, some women did return for short periods, either for renewed care from families or for leisure. Migration, for both women and men, was not always in one direction and was not always permanent. There was instead considerable traffic between Ireland and Australia.

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.