Women Prisoners, Cavan Gaol, and Transportation
Recently, while reading about convicts sentenced to transportation, I discovered an organisation called the Female Convicts Research Centre which investigates and publishes research into female prisoners sent to Van Diemen’s Land, now modern day Tasmania. While looking at the Centre’s website I discovered very interesting research by Colleen Arulappu on ‘The Women from County Cavan Gaols. Chapters of her published work appears on the convict website and in chapter four she investigates the forgotten women who were held in Cavan County Gaol, Bailieborough Bridewell, Ballyconnell Bridewell and Cootehill Bridewell. The word Gaol, itself, originates from the Medieval Latin word ‘gabiola’ which came from the late Latin caveola meaning a cave or an enclosure. The modern form of gaol is ‘jail.’ While the term bridewell was derived from an early 16th century palace built in London by Henry VIII on the site of an ancient holy place known as St. Bride’s Well. Later, in 1653, Edward VI handed over this palace to the City of London to be re-purposed as a ‘house of correction’ and hence the word ‘bridewell’ came into use, meaning a local jail or police barracks. I would like to acknowledge the research of Colleen Arulappu for information featured in this week’s column.
To begin with, in 1843, ten Cavan women sentenced to transportation had spent time in Cavan Gaol before being moved to Grangegorman Penitentiary (formerly known as Richmond General Penitentiary) where they awaited ‘embarkation.’ A prison ship known as the East London was prepared for the journey across the oceans to Van Diemen’s Land. The ten women convicts gave their profession as servants and when transported it would have allowed them to seek work in the new country.
Sadly, poverty had driven many of these women to commit crimes to feed themselves, or their families. Hardship was everywhere. According to Colleen Arulappu, Fr Brady of Knockbride, informed the Poor Law Commissioners of how smaller farmers and labouring classes ‘had everyday declined by poverty and wretchedness.’ Thomas C. Foster, writing a letter from Cavan town, pointed out that most of the labourers were out of work for nine months of the year, aside from springtime and the harvest when up to fifty men might assemble ‘at the market cross every morning.’
In 1842, Alice Fitzsimmons and her sister-in-law Catherine Cahill were tried at Bailieborough Courthouse for a robbery and the sale of stolen goods. Alice and her husband Owen Brady broke into the home of an auctioneer named Samuel Jones from Lisball, Bailieborough. They stole a couple of items of clothing. Possibly, because of panic, Alice and Owen took their four children and travelled to Athboy, Co. Meath where her husband’s sister Catherine Cahill lived. The family then stayed at the Cahill’s. Catherine assisted her sister-in-law in selling a stolen shawl taken from Jones’s house. In Navan, an attempt to pawn Jones’s coat failed. Alice and her husband and Catherine were arrested and brought to Bailieborough where they were tried and sentenced to transportation. Alice and Owen were handed each a ten year sentence. Catherine got seven years, but her husband went free because he had been working on the day on which the stolen goods were sold. Alice, who was expecting had a baby while in jail.
Alice and Catherine were moved to Grangegorman until the boat arrived. Owen was allowed to bring the eldest child to Van Diemen’s Land where he was placed in an orphanage.
Alice and Catherine later sailed. Alice took her four remaining children and Catherine brought her youngest. Sadly, disease was rife on these ships and Alice became ill and died at sea.
OTHER TRANSPORTEES
There are many other examples of transportation cases in Cavan. One account published in the Salisbury and Winchester Journal on 5 April 1851 tells of a man named McKay left ‘lying in Cavan Gaol.’ His wife, ‘a poor woman named Bridget McKay’ who after ‘paying her last visit to her husband … under sentence of transportation, sat down on the roadside and died of a broken heart.’
On 23 October 1852, the sentencing of James Percy to ten years transportation appeared in the Newry Telegraph. Percy had been held on three separate occasions in Cavan Gaol before his final crime of stealing two waistcoats, a pair of shoes, handkerchiefs, neck ties, and coins from the home of James Ward, Ballymacanallen. There were also cases where women under sentence of death were granted a reprieve to live. One such case was that of Honora Brien, convicted at the Summer Assizes of 1856 for the murder of her husband. A sentence of death was recorded, and she was sent to Cavan Gaol to await her fate, but her sentence was amended to allow her to serve life in penal servitude. She was then removed from Cavan Gaol and brought to an unspecified prison.
In May 1871, Edward Williamson, a ‘respectable’ farmer living near Bailieborough, had received a visit from the police who arrested him, ‘on coroner’s warrant’, accused of poisoning his wife. According to the Bucks Herald, he was taken away to Cavan Gaol.
PRISON SUPPLIES
An interesting advertisement calling for proposals to supply articles to Cavan Gaol made interesting reading in the Cavan Weekly News in October 1871. Foodstuffs requested included, best oatmeal, wholemeal bread, white bread, buttermilk, sweet milk, tea, clean picked potatoes, sugar, and salt. Material items wanted were woollen rugs, six-quarter frieze, and calico, thread, pairs of men’s and women’s clogs in three sizes, Butt and Slitter leather and ‘Shoemaker’s Findings.’ Other articles listed included whitewash, dusting and paint brushes (per dozen), linseed oil, train oil, turpentine, white lead, and white roach lime per barrel. The advertisement was signed off by Theophilus Thompson, Local Inspector, Cavan Gaol.
To read more accounts of the women who were transported to Van Diemen’s Land I highly recommend Colleen Arulappu research which is featured on the website for the Female Convicts Research Centre here.
‘All convict life is cut off from the world, but in Van Diemen’s Land even the freest of men out on ticket-of-leave—free sometimes so long that the renewal of their licence at its expiration became the merest form—was separated from the land of his birth, even from the mainland of Australia, by a barrier for him almost as impassable as the atmosphere that lies between us and the visible land of the moon.’
- William De Morgan
YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY