Rathdrum Workhouse 1840's

[tomtom2004]

That is helpful thank you.

Do you know if the book is still available ?

I assume the patient records for the Hospital would be difficult to access.

[giuliana]

Try emailing Wicklow Family History Centre <wfh[at]eircom.net> who should know. I did have a contact email for the author. If I can find it, I'll post it (it may have been his wife's email, from memory).

The book was written from records of the institution so it includes details of food rations, staff salaries, who died of what, maintenance costs, and a whole lot more. It's not a narrative style, more just groupings of selected facts into categories, plus a few pictures and drawings. Useful for research.  In the Acknowledgments, the author writes:

"This book is compiled from the Minutes Books of the Rathdrum Board of Guardians, The Wicklow Co. Health Board records and the various Committees involved in the development of St. Colman’s Hospital. It also contains articles derived from Wicklow People Newspaper reports and the Sisters of the Poor Servants of the Mother of God archives referred to as S.M.G. It has been very difficult to decide what should be included and excluded."

When I get a minute, I'll post some info from the Table of Contents that may be helpful, showing which of the ships that left for Australia contained Rathdrum orphans.     G

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[giuliana]

The staff of the Wicklow Family History Centre will do other, more detailed research on your behalf for a fee. See their website to learn about their service, sources and fees:

www.wicklow.ie/famillyhistorycentre

When I inquired they had quite a backlog of work and estimated it would be 3 months before they would get to my enquiry, but that probably changes with peaks and troughs from time to time.

G

[giuliana]

Kevin Byrne (elsewhere O'Byrne) lists in his book the emigrants from Rathdrum (of more than 4000 in total) who left for Australia on the following ships under the Irish Famine Orphan scheme:

the Thomas Arbuthnot          sailed 19 Oct 1849
the Jane Avery                    (no date obvious to me)
the Agenora                           sailed 10 Jun 1851
the New Brunswick                sailed 20 May 1854         
the William and Mary             arrived in the Colony 21 Nov 1849

I think these are identical to those in the 'Barefoot and Pregnant' books. Mostly it's just a list of paupers' names (with ages and name of workhouse), but for the William and Mary other details are provided (e.g. parents' names, religion and town of origin). I'm happy to do lookups for these if that's helpful to anyone (BUT SEE LATER POSTING - LISTS ARE ALL AVAILABLE ONLINE).

G

[giuliana]

In Australia there are several regular public commemorations of the arrival of the Irish Famine girls, organised by the Great Irish Famine Commemoration Committee.

In Sydney this occurs annually in August (usually the last weekend) at the Famine Orphan memorial in the grounds of Hyde Park Barracks (a wonderful memorial for anyone to visit!).

There is a function coming up in Melbourne next weekend, Sun 21 Nov, at 2.30pm at the Famine Rock on the Strand, Williamstown (the water's edge end, cnr Stevedore St). For further info, contact Debra at (*)

G

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[giuliana]

I've just had another look around the Irish Famine Memorial (Sydney) website and found that they've included lists of all the Irish Famine Orphan girls who came to Australia (taken from the 'Barefoot and Pregnant?' books) so I don't need to do lookups after all!

There are 3 separate links, depending on which State the orphans were sent to:

http://www.irishfaminememorial.org/orphans/ships_nsw.htm  (for New South Wales/Sydney)

http://www.irishfaminememorial.org/orphans/ships_vic.htm  (for Victoria/Melbourne)

http://www.irishfaminememorial.org/orphans/ships_sa.htm   (for South Australia/Adelaide)

Sorry I'd forgotten that these were available.   G

[corinne]

Some of the stuff that WIcklow Family History Centre can access for you (for a fee) is also on the rootsireland.ie website.  From what I remember the index searches are free, but you pay to download the full transcription.  I managed to extract an awful lot of starting  information from rootsireland by methodically going through the whole alphabet and searching.  That helped me to narrow down which I then paid for.

I have also had a big breakthrough on my irish relatives (Sennett/Sinnott), but it came by actually being able to go to Wicklow and Dublin.  First to the Wicklow family history centre where the woman there did an initial free search on the two children I was pretty sure were born there that I had approximate years for.  That came up trumps, and I then went and spent two days in the National Library in Dublin searching laboriously through microfilm.  The big thing that I only realised after I had left ireland (having not been able to go more than one generation back) was that I had assumed that my ancestors were catholic, when it would appear that the generation to leave ireland was the first generation of catholic males of that surname - it seems the male head of family probably converted when he married his catholic wife.  It was only after I came back and started checking rootsireland that I discovered his birth, and that of his brothers, in the Church of Ireland registers.  Oh well, if only I'd thought of that possibility then!  It will just mean another trip to Ireland!

[giuliana]

Any excuse for another trip to Ireland, I reckon!  G

[kevinboy]

I have jsut noticed a copy of Kevin Byrne's Book "Time did not stand still" the history of St Colman's Hospital Rathdrum Workhouse, Co Wicklow on eBay