Important account and record of survivors of the Irish Famine sent to Australia between 1848-1851. Introduced and compiled by Trevor McClaughlin. First published in 1991.

Its capital is named after German-born Queen Adelaide, its main street after her English husband, King William IV, so it is not surprising that little is known about South Australia's Irish background. However, the first European to discover Adelaide's River Torrens in 1836 was Cork-born and educated George Kingston, who was deputy surveyor to Colonel Light; the river was named in turn for Derryman Colonel Torrens, Chairman of the South Australian Colonisation Commission. Adelaide's first judge and first police commissioner were immigrants from Kerry and Limerick. Irish South Australia charts Irish settlement from as far north as Pekina, to the state's south-east and Mount Gambier. It follows the diverse fortunes of the Irish-born elite such as George Kingston and Charles Harvey Bagot, as well as doctors, farmers, lawyers, orphans, parliamentarians, pastoralists and publicans who made South Australia their home, with various shades of political and religious beliefs: Anglicans, Catholics, Dissenters, Federationalists, Freemasons, Home Rulers, nationalists, and Orangemen. Irish markers can be found in South Australian archaeology, architecture, geography and history. Some of these are visible in the hundreds of Irish place names that dot the South Australian landscape, such as Clare, Donnybrook, Dublin, Kilkenny, Navan, Rostrevor, Tipperary, and Tralee (as Tarlee). The book's editors are twentieth-century Irish immigrants from Dublin (Dymphna Lonergan), Portadown (Fidelma Breen), Trim (Susan Arthure), and by descent from eight Irish-born (Stephanie James).

"Single & Free is about the scheme administered by the London Emigration Committee to assist free women to migrate to Australia from Great Britain and IreIand. In the 1830s, approximately 3,000 women took advantage of this scheme, representing an enormous influx to the population of the two eastern colonies of Australia. The book analyses the women's motivations and life-experiences, challenging contemporary criticisms that they were the 'sweepings of the gutters'. Many women migrated in family groups, or were joining family and friends in the colonies. They came from a wide cross-section of nineteenth-century society. They were bold and enterprising, and made ideal workers and wives in the new colonies."--author's website.

A fascinating trip into colonial history, the result of collaboration between family historians, genealogists and social historians

Marie Steiner's SERVANTS DEPOTS IN COLONIAL SOUTH AUSTRALIA is a fascinating account of a little-known period in South Australian history. In 1855 the colony of South Australia experienced 'excessive female immigration', with large numbers of single females arriving from the British Isles to work as servants. When an economic downturn led to a shortage of domestic help positions, the Colonial Government was moved to establish servants' depots around South Australia to house them. The book details the day-to-day running of these depots, and reveals much about the attitudes towards women in colonial South Australia.

The true story of the Kerry girls who were shipped to Australia from the four Kerry Workhouses of Dingle/Kenmare/Killarney and Listowel in 1849/1850, as part of the Earl Grey Scheme. From scenes of destitution and misery, the girls, some of whom spoke only Irish, set off to the other side of the world without any idea of what lay ahead. This book tells of their 'selection' and shipping to New South Wales and Adelaide, their subsequent apprenticeship, marriage and life in the colony.

The Great Irish Famine is the most pivotal event in modern Irish history, with implications that cannot be underestimated. Over a million people perished between 1845-1852, and well over a million others fled to other locales within Europe and America. By 1850, the Irish made up a quarter of the population in Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. The 2000 US census had 41 million people claim Irish ancestry, or one in five white Americans. This book considers how such a near total decimation of a country by natural causes could take place in industrialized, 19th century Europe and situates the Great Famine alongside other world famines for a more globally informed approach. It seeks to try and bear witness to the thousands and thousands of people who died and are buried in mass Famine pits or in fields and ditches, with little or nothing to remind us of their going. The centrality of the Famine workhouse as a place of destitution is also examined in depth. Likewise the atlas represents and documents the conditions and experiences of the many thousands who emigrated from Ireland in those desperate years, with case studies of famine emigrants in cities such as Liverpool, Glasgow, New York and Toronto. The Atlas places the devastating Irish Famine in greater historic context than has been attempted before, by including over 150 original maps of population decline, analysis and examples of poetry, contemporary art, written and oral accounts, numerous illustrations, and photography, all of which help to paint a fuller picture of the event and to trace its impact and legacy. In this comprehensive and stunningly illustrated volume, over fifty chapters on history, politics, geography, art, population, and folklore provide readers with a broad range of perspectives and insights into this event. -- Publisher description.