Mary Breen, Brien, Gray
The Blackfriar arrived in Hobart on the 27th of
May 1851. This ship would be one of the last to bring a full ship load of female
convicts from Ireland, as transportation would be ended in a few short years
from 1851. One of these women on this ship was Mary Breen. By the 1850’s record
keeping for the convict population was much improved, but still it began with
the “mug shot” and the noting of crimes committed, family records and marital
status by the Muster Master.[i]
Linc Tasmanian Names Index
Mary with her dark complexion, dark brown hair and dark blue
eyes, reported she was the defacto of George Murphy, sister of Ann, who, she
had reported, had gone to America that year. Mary listed a sister, Biddy
also. Her ten-year-old daughter, Sarah Murphy, was named and accompanying her.
Mary was thirty, a country servant and had stolen a petticoat, some wheat and
was transported on her third offence of stealing a cloak. Some Irish women
stole continuously until they were transported with the lure of a fresh start
on the other side of the world and free passage being a strong drawcard.
Whether this was the case for Mary or not is a guess only. And what of her
ten-year-old daughter? Did she speculate on her life too, trusting she would
have to have a better future ahead of her in the new colony, possibly without a
mother than was their life in Ireland? At least they had escaped with their lives from what was Europe's worst ever famine.
Sarah was admitted to the Queen’s Orphanage at New Town by
the 3rd of June less than a week after arrival. [ii]
At
ten, she was old enough to understand what was becoming of her life, but its
incredibly difficult to imagine her interpretation of her life at this stage
and how both mother and daughter coped with this wrench of separation. Mary was
written up as quiet on her goal report but troublesome on the Surgeon’s report
on board ship.
On the 7th
of June, Mary was at New Town Farm. This was the farm where the Orphan School
stood and there was plenty of convict labour building and farming on the
precinct. I can’t help but wonder if Mary and Sarah had any contact. Each
Sunday church attendance was required for convicts and children. The children
sat on the balcony in the cavernous roof space of the church looking down on
the congregation below. The convicts sat in the opposite balcony. The
congregation below had no need to look up and remind themselves they were partaking
of the same spiritual food as their inferior-classed parishioners. Did Mary and
Sarah steal glances at each other or smile and share knowing eye contact?
Inside St Johns New Town
By the end of June, Mary was sent to serve at the property
of W Murray in Elizabeth Street. Nine days later she was out to Brickfields,
clearly her first posting was quickly deemed as unsatisfactory. Brickfields was
a depot to enable the hiring of convict servants. The North Hobart football
oval now covers the site where it once stood. In October it was off to the
House of Correction. This was the Female Factory at Cascades where strategies
could be implemented to correct a woman’s behaviour. In early January the next year she was back to
Brickfields, and one month later in service again to a M Stanley in Veterans
Row, Hobart. This service lasted four months. In June she was back to
Brickfields for one day only and then on to service again with W Boucher in
Melville Street. Twenty days later, it was back at Brickfields, and a week
later with a John Elliot of Elizabeth Street. Three weeks later, Brickfields
again, with another three weeks seeing her back at the Female Factory.
A trend in Mary’s conduct is beginning to form for the
researcher.
After four months of “correction:, Mary is on 28th
December back in Elizabeth Street in service of John Davis. This lasts two and
a half months until she is at the factory once again.
On the 8th of April 1853, Mary is assigned at
Pitt Water to G Marshall. After five months she is once again at the factory.
The pattern is continuously repeated this way for the next four years.
I can’t help but ponder Mary’s situation. She was now
approaching forty, she was a mature woman. What provoked this pattern in her
life? Was she a fiery, spirited Irishwoman, or was she a difficult one who
resented her circumstances? Were women like her treated appallingly by their middle-class
employers and discarded because of trivial offences?
What was once a solitary
confinement cell at Cascades. www.kidbucketlist.com.au
Punishment Books can shed a little light on Mary’s behavior. During
Mary’s first stint at Cascades it was recorded she was ‘not performing her work
in a proper manner’ by Mr Horan her overseer. She was put into solitary
confinement for three days. A couple of weeks later she was ‘disorderly at night’
and was separated for ten days and put on bread and water treatment for three
days by Miss McCullagh the Matron.
All’s quiet for a year until in 1853 she was charged with
refusing to work and insolence for a Mr Cooney. Six months hard labour and 9 days
in the factory was the punishment. Insolence again was the charge later that
year by John Davies, with seven days in the cells as punishment. A week later 6
months hard labour again for making a false statement. Once again this is a
pattern in her behavior, insolence, language and neglect of duty. The overseers
must have been quite unsurprised to see repeat customers like Mary back in
their prisons and centers. In 1853 it was recorded that Mary was not to enter
service in Hobart Town. This was common for more troublesome convicts as it was
hoped getting them on to a more remote location would slow down their
troublesome postings and keep them out of trouble in places like the streets,
the pubs and keep women ‘off the town’. This sort of behavior was common among
the convict women, but for our Mary this doesn’t seem to be the problem. You can readily read in the newspapers of the time about the exploits on
the streets of Hobart of plenty of women charged with prostitution,
drunkenness, stealing and unsavory behavior on the streets. This doesn’t seem
to be Mary. She was never listed as drunk, pregnant, in bed with a man or with
stealing. She just seems to have had a bit of an attitude problem.
Mary is indeed mentioned in the local papers on a couple of
occasions. On the 16th of June 1855, Mary was assigned to work for
D.C. John Smith. John Smith was a policeman.
D.C. John Smith was with the Water Police and spend his time
apprehending absconders, so he would have been used to dealing with criminals.
He charged a ticket of leave girl, Jane Hurley, with absconding. She was at
large for over two months until she was found aboard the Trition in Sydney. In
her defense she said had had gone on board to drink tea when the vessel sailed.[iii]
Prussian passholder Constantine Asquith was charged by Smith
when he was found concealed on board the steamer Tasmania with intent to leave
the colony. Asquith was an intelligent man and in his foreign accent pleaded
his case eloquently. Basically he was fed up with his colonial life and wanted
to get home to his old life, who could blame him?[iv]
Smith dealt with all the sort of crimes which you’d expect
to arise in the town of Hobart on and around the docks, riots, firearms,
ballast dumped in the harbor, illegal supply of rum, so presumably when Mary
Breen came as a domestic servant to his home in June of 1855, he would have
been pretty savvy with the criminal class and had heard every story before.
Battery Point is
the background for this 1878 photo of Hobart's docks: the 'new wharf',
warehouses, signal station, and, top right, dwellings (W.L. Crowther library,
SLT)
On the evening of the 6th of July, Mary had been ‘very
insolent to her mistress’ it was reported in Monday’s Hobarton Mercury. John
threatened Mary with punishment if she persisted with her conduct; she then 'took to the sulks and
would not get up the following day till Mr Smith made her do so'. Its amusing to
visualize, John Smith banging on her door, perhaps even pulling a recalcitrant
Mary from her bed. Not so amusing for Mary, charged with misconduct in lying in
bed until 12 o’clock and sent back for three months hard labour at the factory.
Four postings and not quite a year later and Mary hits the
newspapers again. Mary was serving the Reynolds. Mr Reynolds, a Bench Clerk,
brought Mary before Mr Fenwick because she had
been insolent and threatening Mr Reynolds’ sister. Mary then ‘poured
forth a stream of low vituperation on Mr Reynolds and his family, which was not
cut short even when the sitting magistrate ordered her to be sentenced to a
probation of six months. Mr Fenwick then became the object of the amiable
lady’s attack, the prisoner valiantly threatening that gentleman that she would
take care and have the case seen into. Her insolence was so vehement that Mr
Fenwick sentenced her to six months imprisonment with hard labour for her
contempt of the bench, the woman still uttering threats and impertinence.’[v]
Mary was to have one final posting after nearly a year at
the House of Correction. In April 1857 she was with Mrs Thomas in Macquarie
Street. In July 1857 she gained her Certificate of Freedom.
In these six years Mary was sent to the House of Correction
no less then twenty times, with punishments such as several months hard labour,
seven days in the cells, three days solitary confinement, three days bread and
water treatment and 48 hours bread and water in punishment dress.
St John’s, Franklin, St Mary’s
was demolished and St John’s built adjacent in 1863. ontheconvicttrail blogspot
Two years later in 1859, a Mary Brien marries a George Gray
at St Mary’s Church, Franklin. He is a farmer, she a widow, he is 50 and she is
44.[vi]
Her age is not right, her marital status is not right, and her name is not
right, but we never let little things like this get in the way of a researcher
on a roll. The one thing that does raise the antennas is that she married in
Franklin, a growing town on the Huon River south of Hobart. On Mary’s Female
Convict Research Center notes, it states she was also known as Mary Brien.
Surely with an Irish accent the name Brien and Breen would sound the same?
So, does Mary finally find a little happiness and peace with
freedom and married life? The descendant can’t help but look back through their
modern-day lenses and hope for such an outcome. But life isn’t that simple.
Three years later her daughter Sarah marries Martin Cupit in
Franklin. Did mother and daughter finally have a few years together again after
their forced separation? Is this how Sarah ended up in Franklin, mother and
daughter were together here? Was Mary at their wedding as a beaming mother of
the bride, happy to see her daughter grown up and making a good life for herself?
Did Mary get to enjoy her two grandchildren born in 1867 and 1870?
The clincher in the deal that this indeed is our Mary, comes
in the form of a Hobart Town Public Cemetery document. On the 1st of
May 1875 Mary Brien ex Gray (does this mean she is no longer with George?),
born in Wexford, Ireland, age 54 is buried in a pauper grave. The age, the
birth place and the religion (Roman Catholic) adds up. She dies of diarrhea and
debility in a residence on the corner of Molle and Golbourn Streets in Hobart.[vii]
It would seem Mary never got her happy ending. Perhaps she was a difficult
woman, perhaps she suffered from mental illness or perhaps she was crushed by a
system which intended to do just that, force conformity, suppress personal
freedom and ‘reform’ the wild ones. If Sarah and Mary were reunited, sadly it
wasn’t for long.
As I look back on these women’s lives I can’t help but
wonder. Were these convict women all wild, sinful, damned whores as the male
government authorities painted them? Were they all criminals, 1800’s versions
of a bogan or government handout dependent class? I’m sure nothing is that easily
definable and that individuals were as complex and varied then as they are
today
And what of Mary? She had left Ireland during the worst famine in European history. Charles
Smith, the ship’s surgeon on another female convict ship wrote in 1850 of the Irish
women on board:
‘About two thirds of the convicts were between the ages of
twenty and thirty…. Many of them had been driven to commit offences during the
famine of Ireland, who originally had a very good character…. being a highly susceptible
race they suffered much at first from grief and dispossession of spirits on
leaving their friends and mother country.’
‘but many of the females suffered occasionally from
hysterical fits who were not put on the sick lists as the paroxysms were of
short duration.’ In other words, many of these women suffered nervous
breakdowns, to use an outdated term.[viii]
As I read and
researched about Mary, I couldn’t help but relate to her, and think that she really did remind me of myself, and how I think I might have reacted if I were put in her shoes.
1850 ladies shoes Pintrest: whittakerauction.smugmug.com
[iii] 1852 'POLICE REPORT.', Hobarton Guardian, or, True
Friend of Tasmania (Hobart, Tas. : 1847 - 1854), 25 December, p. 3. ,
viewed 03 Jul 2018, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article173063230
[iv] 1854 'Police.', The Tasmanian Colonist (Hobart Town,
Tas. : 1851 - 1855), 24 April, p. 2. , viewed 03 Jul 2018,
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article226469261
[v] 1856
Courier trove.nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2503925
[vi] Linc
names search
[vii] Family
search Mary brien
[viii]
Surgeons Journal, AJCP Adm. 101/20 Duke of Cornwall
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