Projects
Girls After Grey: Workhouse Forced Emigration Project
Back in 2023, I was working at the Irish Family History Centre and, on occasion,
Eneclann helping people connect with their Irish heritage. During my time
there, I was invited to help Fiona Fitzsimons with her weekly Facebook Live.
She would answer questions that people had submitted beforehand as some
required some looking into. She assigned me a few questions to research, and
one of them has stuck with me ever since.
One of her followers had asked if we could look into whether the research
down by a volunteer society on a girl named Ellen Egan was correct. The
society called The Primrose Project was trying to trace girls who were sent
from the Mount Bellew workhouse in 1853 to Canada. They had found two
girls, and Ellen Egan was the one they highlighted the most.
However, after just a few minutes of researching, I found that the Ellen Egan
they traced in Canada was not the same one as the Ellen Egan who was in the
workhouse in Galway. After sharing this information with Fiona she told me
about the Earl Grey Scheme, which occurred during the Famine. However, that scheme ended in 1850. It seems that we had stumbled upon a continuation of sorts.
Ever since I have been intrigued by this forced emigration, and I've started a project that may take a while. I am documenting all the orphan girls who were sent from Irish workhouses after 1850 in large numbers. I began my search with 1853 since that is when Ellen Egan and the other 54 girls were sent from Mount Bellew. So far, I have found over 700 more girls sent from various workhouses in that same year. The number keeps growing.
Unfortunately, many workhouse records are lost to time, so many of the girls will remain nameless, but I hope to at least bring to life their experiences, both good and bad. Because of the lack of workhouse records, I am relying heavily on newspaper records, which often reported on the minutes of the workhouse guardian meetings. Names of girls were rarely reported, but they occasionally come through.
If you have ancestors who were transported to either Canada or Australia from a workhouse, please reach out and contribute to this
project. Even if the ancestor was not a young woman in one of these groups, I also appreciate having people to draw more information about the experience of emigration due to poverty.
I will update this on occasion as I find more and more information and in a few years I hope to have this published as a book. This is what I typically research when I have the time during our Dublin Research Tours. Check out our tours and join me!
Images:
Mount Bellew Poor Law Union Minute Book, November 5, 1852. Pg 358. Galway City Council Archives, Galway, Ireland. Digitized on Findmypast.ie. https://search.findmypast.ie/record?id=IRE%2FGALWAY%2FGPL4-05-5-NOV-1852-%2FGPL4-05-PARTF-0005.
The Cork Southern Reporter. “Cork Union- Yesterday: Emigration of Female Paupers to America.” February 17, 1853. British Newspaper Archive. https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/BL/0000876/18530217/021/0002?browse=False.