Kerry Girls Read Free

of enabling the Board to carry out the provisions of the several Poor Law Acts for the Emigration and the subject will be brought forward for the consideration of the Board on Monday 3 February next.’ 9 Like a number of other Unions at this time, the Killarney Union was undoubtedly suffering from cash problems and the actual arrangements for emigration of the orphans had become something of a challenge. The offer of a £2,000 loan from Lord Kenmare and Henry A. Herbert was turned down by the Board on the 13 February 1949. 10 We are not told what the reason for this decision was, but they had probably little prospect of repaying what would now equal around €20,000 and could possibly be surcharged personally if all the paperwork was not correct.
    Fully one year after the first decision to accede to the request to send the orphans from Killarney, we finally learn from the Minute Book of the 2 May 1849 that the Commissioners in Dublin are complaining to the Board in Killarney:

    Adverting to the Commissioner’s letter of 19th ult, relating to the Female Orphans’ proposed as Emigrants to South Australia and stating that the Commissioners have not as yet received the names of the individuals selected but presume that a list of the names has been left at the workhouse by Lieut. Henry to whom any certificate of character required, but which may not already have been forwarded, should be sent and requesting that the Guardians will make the necessary arrangements without delay if not already made. 11

    The Killarney orphans finally left from Penrose Quay in Cork by a steam vessel for Plymouth on 24 May 1849. Mystery surrounds the ‘list of names’ of individuals selected, as mentioned in the Minutes on 2 May 1849 and previously on 20 May 1848, as neither copy exists in the appropriate Minute Book records. The loss of these records has serious consequences for the identification of the thirty-seven girls who emigrated from Killarney, as we shall see later.
    Ellen Powell
    Ellen Powell from Scrahane, Killarney was one of the unluckier girls, in that she travelled on the Elgin to Adelaide, arriving on 12 September 1849. These girls were not looked after very well by those charged to oversee their welfare, and as a result, some fell foul of the law in the following years.
    The South Australian Register listed the full complement of passengers, including Government emigrants – a number of families and their children as well as ‘female orphans’. 12
    Unfortunately, while we have a full list of the girls on the Elgin , neither their home places nor the workhouses that they originated from, have been recorded. Because of the diligence of two of Ellen’s great-granddaughers – Gayle Dowling and Gabrielle Bartels – we have a record of Ellen’s subsequent life in Australia.
    Ellen was born to Catherine Flynn and John Powel (sic) in Scrahan, Killarney. Her parents were not married. Her father was not a Catholic and, unusually, allowed Ellen to have his family name when she was baptised 4 December 1826 in Killarney. He appears to have been an overseer or agent for Lord Kenmare, occupying land at Scrahan beside the Kenmare estate. There is no subsequent record of her mother Catherine Flynn marrying anyone else in the Kerry area, so she may have died before Ellen’s departure for Australia. Her father would have been an influential man with the Killarney Board of Guardians and he may have arranged that she would be part of the group selected to emigrate. He was still alive in Killarney at this time. He is recorded in Griffith’s Valuation of 1852 as occupying the land in question. The wider Powell family were well to-do in Killarney and the Castleisland area.
    While we have no record of Ellen’s apprenticeship or her time in South Australia, we know that by 1854 she had moved from South Australia and was established in Melbourne, Victoria, where on 7 January 1854 she married Richard Thomas Burke at St Francis Catholic