The Fate of Mary Allingham--Further Clues

It is with a sense of heartfelt gratitude to a small number of people in Ireland, Australia and Canada, that "A Home Page with an Irish Flavour" is able to place on the Internet a list of four hundred names of Irish Famine female orphans inscribed on a monument unveiled in Sydney, Australia, commemorating their arrival there in the late 1840s under what was known as the Earl Grey scheme. This was a scheme whereby 4,114 young girls in Irish workhouses were selected for transportation to Australia, where there was a desperate need for their services both as domestic workers and prospective wives.
In 1997 this Home Page published two articles titled "Workhouse Famine Records", which were compiled by a local history group in the town of Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal, under the guidance of local historian Mr. Anthony Begley. The second article stated that some 16 orphan girls, aged between 14 and 16 years, were picked from among the inmates of the Ballyshannon Workhouse, and in the company of 148 orphan girls from other Irish workhouses, sailed on October 30, 1847, from Plymouth, England.

The article continued:

"They landed in Sydney on the 13th January 1849, but what became of them has not been recorded. Did they view their arrival in Australia as a great adventure? Did they feel disorientated?"

Thanks to painstaking research by Dr.Trevor McClaughlin, Modern History Department, Macquarie University, Sydney, whose book "Barefoot and Pregnant" is widely embracing in scope, we now know that what became of some of them has been recorded. For many, instead of great adventures they faced great hardships.

That second article under "Workhouse Famine Records" gave the names of the sixteen orphans from Ballyshannon Workhouse who were transported to Australia as follows:

ALLINGHAM Mary
CARBERRY Jane
CARLETON Jane
FEELY Margaret
LENNON Sally
MAGUIRE Mary
McBRIDE ANN
McBRIDE Margaret
McCREA Letty
McCREA Mary
McDERMOTT Mary Anne
McDERMOTT Sally
REID Rose
ROONEY Anne
SMITH Biddy
SWEENEY Margaret

It concluded with this paragraph:

"Among the many intriguing questions raised by the list of orphan girls transported from Ballyshannon to Australia is one connected with the name Mary Allingham. Why was this orphan girl not reclaimed by the poet Allingham's family? To what branch did she belong? Mayhap a clue will be found by some Australian reader of this Home Page."

Almost three years later a kind Australian reader did find a clue. On July 2, 2000, Joan Robinson of Australia sent an e-mail in which she stated that she read the workhouse articles with great interest. After giving some background to research already done on the fate of the Irish orphan girls, she revealed that at the end of their voyage they were taken Hyde Park Barracks, "the old convict barracks", in Macquarie Street, Sydney, which was used as a female refuge and a labour exchange, cryptically adding, "The girls were indentured as domestic servants."

Jo Robinson continued to delve into the fate of Mary Allingham, and in August forwarded the following details from the book by Dr. McClaughlin:

"Mary Allingham. 16. Billig. Fermanagh. Parents Robert and Fanny both dead. Religion C of E. Relations in colony...William Allingham."

She included two marriage records for a Mary Allingham, and one for a Mary Martha Allingham.

Mary was coming into focus. While she may have been an inmate of Ballyshannon Workhouse, her birthplace "Billig. Fermanagh" was undoubtedy Belleek, Fermanagh, some four miles from Ballyshannon, site of the world famous Belleek pottery.

On July 19, Dr. McClaughlin provided further details. Mary, apparently, had been indentured to Brisbane Water, a location just outside Sydney. He added that "there are two references to Immigration Correspondence where she is mentioned as having police protection for her return to Sydney from Brisbane."

As Jo Robinson had written earlier, "her story might be quite a sad one".

Further research by Soinbhe Lally has yielded the latest clue to the Allingham family connection with New South Wales. The following extract is from the Fermanagh Millennium web page:

----- ALLINGHAM, CHRISTOPHER (1829-1876), explorer and pastoralist, was born at Hillgrove, County Fermanagh, Ireland, the youngest son of William Allingham, farmer, and his wife, Elizabeth, nee MARTIN. He was a near relative of the poet, William Allingham (1824-1889), and came of a Protestant Hampshire family who had settled in Ulster in the sixteenth century. His brother Edward emigrated to Armidale, New South Wales, in 1841, and was followed, probably in 1846, by Christopher and two other brothers.
"It adds a little more to the picture," writes Soinbhe
Another correspondent, Jon Martin of the University of Melbourne, Australia, reveals that the above mentioned William Allingham, Mary's relative, was an innkeeper at Carlisle's Gully in New South Wales.

As other details emerge they will be added to "A Home Page with an Irish Flavour."

For the present that appears to be the end of the story of Mary Allingham, but if readers will persist to the end of the table of names, a more recent connection with the Allingham family of Ballyshannon has come to light.

The Australian monument at Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney is the work of Adelaide artists Angela and Hossein Valmanesh. It is a bronze-cast table, complete with a meal setting, intersecting a museum wall. Two glass panels bear sandblasted inscriptions of 400 girls' names, and as described by Courtney Kidd, "it is compelling art, starring important history."

The following table, received from the authorities at Hyde Park museum, lists not only the names of the girl orphans but in most cases the towns and counties in Ireland from which they were transported. Even though there are obvious inaccuracies in the spelling of some place names, they are retained as given in the original documents of the era. The importance of the research undertaken by Dr. McClaughlin cannot be overly emphasised.

When I was in my teens, there were still Allingham descendants living in the family house on The Mall in Ballyshannon. They were two spinster ladies, and beyond that fact I knew nothing of their lives. But, going into Belleek pottery records available on the Internet, lo and behold there appeared the following entry:


ALLINGHAM. LOUISE and MAUDE. Daughters of William Allingham (half brother of the poet Allingham). They lived in Ballyshannon, only four miles from the Pottery, and earned a little money painting on porcelain which they would bring to the Pottery to be fired. They also painted on Belleek blanks. Their work was mostly signed.
Thanks to Soinbhe Lally of Rossnowlagh, who had the foresight to enable the Ballyshannon Workhouse Records to be placed on the Internet, sparking an interest in them which has grown with each passing year, it can now be disclosed that a gift of a full table service of Belleek ware was made to Father Connolly of St. Joseph's on the Rock by the two Miss Allinghams. What was the occasion or reason for their gift is unrecorded, but it was a truly unique presentation. Incidentally, it was Father Connolly who presided at the nuptials of my brother Charlie and his bride, Mary Connolly, and the same Father Connolly who appears in the tale "Of processions and celebrations" in "The Kindly Spot" series.
Those who have contributed in making this information available on the World Wide Web through the medium of "A Home Page with an Irish Flavour" include the aforementioned Joan Robinson and Professor McClaughlin, Australia; Soinbhe Lally, Ireland; and Mark Ward, Australian High Commission, Ottawa, Canada.