The History Council of South Australia Wakefield Press Essay Prize is awarded to the author of an essay that deals substantially with some aspect of South Australian history. This year’s prize was awarded to Susan Arthure, for her essay ‘Rage and Resistance: Remembering the Women of Baker’s Flat’.
The judges of the prize note that the essay is a ‘powerful and thoroughly researched revelation of the Irish women who fiercely defended their homes at Baker’s Flat in the late 1800s. This original research provides a refreshing new insight into the names, lives and circumstances of these often anonymous women, as they successfully contested the power of the dominant male establishment figures. An important new perspective on property rights, gender and the Irish diaspora in South Australian history.’
Susan Arthure is no stranger to the winner’s podium: she won the History Council of South Australia’s Wakefield Press Essay Prize in 2020, for her essay titled ‘Kapunda’s Irish Connections’. This essay was an excerpt from Irish South Australia: New histories and insights, a collection which Susan also edited, along with Fidelma Breen, Stephanie James, and Dymphna Lonergan.
This new essay will be published in an upcoming title from Wakefield Press – Irish Women in the Antipodes: Foregrounded. It is one of 16 essays focusing on the lives, adventures and achievements of Irish women across Australasia, also edited by Susan, Fidelma, Stephanie and Dymphna.
Read Susan’s winning essay below.
Rage and Resistance: Remembering the Women of Baker’s Flat
In 1842, when the colony of South Australia was still in its infancy but already facing bankruptcy,[1] a young Anglo-Irish boy and a youngish English pastoralist found copper on Ngadjuri Country, about 75 km north of Adelaide.[2] This place, soon to be named Kapunda, became the site of Australia’s first successful metal mine. Its high-grade copper helped to save the colony from ruin and drew about 5000 people to live and work there over the following years.[3]
Many of the men associated with Kapunda found wealth and renown and are remembered as such. Charles Harvey Bagot, father of the boy who found copper, and Francis Stacker Dutton, the English pastoralist, are remembered for establishing the mine.[4] Bagot and Dutton both went on to become influential members of the South Australian government in the Legislative Council (the colony’s governing body), with Dutton being Premier for two short periods in 1863 and 1865.[5] The Anglo-Irish Matthew Henry Smyth Blood, who emigrated from County Clare, became Kapunda’s first mine doctor, private medical doctor and mayor.[6] Other men remembered in Kapunda are the Cornish miners who, during the nineteenth century, were world-renowned for their mining skills. They were the first workers at the Kapunda copper mine, invited by Dutton and Bagot,[7] and their legacy continues to influence Kapunda’s historical narrative. A seven-metre statue representing a nineteenth-century Cornish miner is the first landmark for visitors driving in from Adelaide (Figure 1). Overall, Kapunda’s landscape and histories are dominated by landowners, pastoralists and miners, and one could be forgiven for assuming that these were the only groups that made up Kapunda’s past, and that they were all men.
Figure 1
Map Kernow (Son of Cornwall), a sculpture by Ben Van Zetten, stands at the edge of Kapunda on the Adelaide Road. Photo: Cherrie De Leiuen.
In fact, there was another significant group at Kapunda: the Irish men and women who lived at Baker’s Flat, an Irish enclave on the outskirts of town near the mine (Figure 2). The Irish had little economic or social influence, being predominantly poor and Catholic, but they provided much of the labour for the mine. Historical and archaeological research at Baker’s Flat has found evidence of a long-lived and close-knit community, inhabited from at least 1854 until the last person died on the site in 1948.[8] The settlement was located on contested land, however, with the Irish residents proclaiming their rights to it as vehemently as the legal landowners. In the late nineteenth century, it was the scene of a long-lasting conflict, where the women of Baker’s Flat resisted attempts by the legal owners to take control of the land. Until now, those women have been remembered essentially as a footnote, unnamed in the official histories and recorded only by family historians. If they are remembered at all, it is in general terms as feisty and rebellious, agitating for their rights to the land through direct action using domestic implements and pots of boiling water to repel bailiffs (Figure 3).[9] Their names are rarely used, and their individual stories and lives are missing. This chapter redresses the absence of these women in the printed histories of South Australia. The names of activists, their struggles, their relationships and the context of their everyday lives are brought to light using newspaper accounts, genealogical data and historical evidence.
Figure 2
Location of Baker’s Flat near Kapunda. Map: Vanessa Keast-Pizzino.
Figure 3
Part of a mural at Kapunda (now in storage) depicting the women of Baker’s Flat repelling bailiffs and legal officers using brooms, sticks and boiling water. Photo: Susan Arthure.
Rage and resistance by the women of Baker’s Flat
The histories record that the Irish came to Baker’s Flat in significant numbers during 1854, to fill an increased demand for mine labour following the introduction of steam technology which enabled deeper workings and required more workers.[10] Although this date is generally accepted as the starting point for Baker’s Flat, it is possible that the Irish had arrived even earlier, possibly from the late 1840s, again in response to a demand for labour.[11] Either way, by the 1850s the Irish had found a rent-free place to live near the mine, an area of unused flat land known as Baker’s Flat. They settled in and built a ‘close, fiercely Irish community’.[12]
The first sign of trouble was in 1875 when James White, one of the Baker’s Flat landowners, decided to assert his legal right to the land. His shepherd and nephew were persuaded to take a flock of sheep to graze on Baker’s Flat where they ‘received a welcome more warm than affectionate at the hands of a band of females well-armed with sticks and stones’.[13] Things became heated, the police were called, and the sheep had to be driven off the Flat, with the women loudly resolved ‘not to allow the “people’s grass” to be eaten by Mr White’s sheep’.[14] Two years later, in 1877, a similar issue arose when, once again, James White attempted to move cattle onto the land to graze and, once again, ‘a mob of ladies’ drove them off; he described in court how they ‘called him names, and told him he should never have the place, that it was theirs’.[15] Five of these women were sued for unlawfully driving off the cattle, although none of them are named in the report of the case.[16]
Rob Charlton, in his 1971 history of Kapunda, remarks that a ‘noticeable feature of the Baker’s Flat confrontations was that the women were the vanguard of the defending force’.[17] This is also remarked on by an elderly Kapunda resident reminiscing about his boyhood, who noted that the women of Baker’s Flat stuck together to defend their land against all-comers, whether that was young boys on an escapade, strangers looking for a local resident, or workmen trying to erect a fence.[18] Noting that ‘there was a time when no one, only those who lived there, were supposed to cross the property, and if they did they would have to give a satisfactory account of themselves when bailed up’ by the women, he recalled being chased by several women with sticks and stones after inadvertently disturbing a herd of goats.[19]
To understand this resistance, it is worth looking back to the Land War taking place in Ireland at this time, the events of which were widely covered by the South Australian press.[20] Between 1879 and 1882, an organisation called the Irish National Land League became a strong political movement agitating for the rights of Irish tenant farmers. It was one of the largest agrarian movements in nineteenth-century Europe, and Janet TeBrake argues that it was the Irish peasantry (both men and women) who provided the driving force behind it, motivated primarily by economic considerations.[21] The Land League aimed to rid Ireland of its landlords and enable tenant farmers to own the land they worked. Specifically, it agitated for Irish farmers to have the Three Fs—fair rent, fixity of tenure, free sale. It led to a period known as the Land War where the Irish peasantry actively resisted evictions, boycotted those deemed to be doing the wrong thing, and paid reduced rents. Although women took active roles in ‘repossession and reinstatement’ (when tenant farmers retook their land and property following eviction by landlords), their most significant contributions were in their roles as protesters.[22] This was a strategy also shared by other women involved in popular protest movements during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.[23]
TeBrake cites three incidents to illustrate the roles played by peasant women in the Land War, all of which took place in 1880.[24] At Carraroe, County Galway, attempts to serve eviction notices were thwarted by a crowd of more than 400 people, mainly women and boys, who prevented the serving of 116 out of 120 orders. Near Claremorris, also in County Galway, a crowd of 800 attempted to prevent eviction notices being served; approximately half of the protestors were women. Near Lough Mask, County Mayo, after eviction orders were served on three households, the woman in the fourth cabin, a Mrs Fitzmorris, refused to accept the order and waved a red flag to warn other women in nearby dwellings of what was happening, thereby preventing any further notices from being served. The women commonly took the lead in these protests, shouting verbal threats and insults and throwing mud, stones and manure at officials. At Carraroe, for example, the men remained as onlookers while the women and boys met the police head on. At Claremorris, the men were spectators who encouraged the women. TeBrake gives two probable explanations for these behaviours.[25] Firstly, preservation of the home was traditionally seen as a female responsibility and, therefore, direct action by women was both condoned and expected by the community. At a land meeting in 1881, for example, the local priest stated that it was ‘the duty of women not only to attend to their domestic responsibilities but also to fight for their households’.[26] Secondly, there was an assumption that women were less likely than men to be arrested or severely punished, and that even if the women were imprisoned it would not deprive their families of the head of the household and main income earner. These protests during the Irish Land War are echoed in the actions undertaken by the women of Baker’s Flat at the same time for similar reasons—avoiding eviction and protecting the family home. This is most clearly shown in a dispute over fencing that took place in 1880.
In the autumn of 1880, three years after the incident associated with James White and his attempts to graze animals on Baker’s Flat, there was a further attempt to assert ownership by fencing the land. Three men, on the instructions of the legal owners, set out to build a fence. They were met by about a hundred women described as having a strong martial and patriotic spirit, and ‘equipped with brooms and other articles of domestic use’.[27] The women marched on the three fencers who, according to the newspaper report, were rather perplexed by this turn of events. However, ‘they determined manfully to do their duty’ and began digging a hole for the first fencepost.[28] To begin with, they were able to withstand the jeers and taunts of the onlookers, but when one of the women struck one of the fencers on the head, things changed. This woman then ‘sat in the partially sunk hole and declared that if any further excavation was made it would have to be through her body’.[29] After what was almost certainly a tense discussion, the unfortunate fencers admitted defeat, and ‘accordingly retreated, leaving the fair army in triumphant possession of the field’.[30]
This fracas led to the charging of six women and a well-attended court case. The women were named as Catherine Driscoll, Mary Lacey, Mary Jose, Ann Hoare, Ann Slattery and Mary Callaghan.[31] Several other women were named in witness statements including Honora Driscoll and the 10-year-old Amelia Hoare.[32] The case was a complicated one with varying reports from the women, fencers and witnesses. However, it was generally agreed that all the women said they were willing to spill their last drop of blood before they would let the ground be fenced, that they were armed with sticks and other implements, that almost everybody living on Baker’s Flat turned out to witness the adventure, and that both women and children were involved in the resistance. Further, the women were in three different groups numbering between 12 and 20, and possibly more than 40, which meant they could control each access point and communicate by shouting from one group to the other, rather like Mrs Fitzmorris and her red flag in County Mayo. The six defendants were committed for trial at the next sitting of the Supreme Court, with bail set at £25 each. The outcome of the fencing dispute was not reported in the newspapers, but it appears that the determined resistance by these women resulted in the task being abandoned since the Baker’s Flat community lived in relative peace for some years afterwards.[33]
The court case indicates that many of the women living on Baker’s Flat were prepared to protest to defend their land and homes, and that six of them were troublesome enough to be charged. We cannot know if these six named women were concerned or defiant about their court appearance, if they were worried about the outcome, or ready to lead more protests. But data gleaned from family notices, family histories and newspaper reports does help to shed light on other parts of their lives and some of the connections between families.
Catherine Driscoll, Mary Lacey
Two of the women (and one of the witnesses) were directly connected through the Driscoll family, major players in the Baker’s Flat community. The Driscolls had arrived in South Australia over the course of several years—on Omega in1857, Castle Eden in1862, Tarquin in1864—and had maintained a presence on Baker’s Flat since that first arrival.[34] Daniel Driscoll was the de facto spokesperson and leader of the settlement.[35] Catherine Driscoll (née Berth) was married to Patrick, Daniel’s cousin, and was 36 years of age at the time of the court case.[36] Over the course of her life, she would have eleven children; at least six were born on Baker’s Flat and the others during a 13-year sojourn at Eudunda.[37] Her name made the papers on one other occasion when Margaret Simpson, another Baker’s Flat resident, was obliged to apologise to her for statements made that were ‘injurious to [her] character’ (Figure 4).[38] A photograph of Catherine in her later years (Figure 5) shows her in profile. Family folklore alleges that she took this position deliberately to hide a disfigurement—apparently, she lost an eye when she stopped to talk to a boy on the way home from Mass, and he then threw a stone at her.[39] Mary Lacey (née Driscoll) was Catherine’s sister-in-law. Mary was married to Martin Lacey, and based on her children’s birth records she would have been about 30 years of age in 1880. Between 1867 and 1887, she had seven daughters and two sons at Baker’s Flat, followed by another daughter at Broken Hill in 1892 and two more daughters at an unknown location.[40] Honora Driscoll (witness) was Catherine’s mother-in-law and Mary’s mother. The three women had sailed to South Australia on the same vessel, Tarquin (1864), and sisters-in-law Mary Lacey and Catherine Driscoll were close in age.
Figure 4
Notice by Margaret Simpson in the Kapunda Herald (1881) apologising to Catherine Driscoll for statements made against her.
Mary Jose
Mary Jose’s family name before marriage was McInerney, another family with many connections on Baker’s Flat. She married William Jose in 1861 at St John’s Church, the local parish church at that time.[41] Her age at marriage is recorded as 32 years (William, 33 years), so by the time of the 1880 dispute she would have been 51. She lived on Baker’s Flat until her death in 1908 when her death notice describes her as a colonist of 58 years, aged 87,[42] and the death certificate records that she was the widow of William Jose.[43] There is a discrepancy between the ages recorded at her marriage and her death, which would make her either 32 or 40 years at the time of her marriage and either 51 or 59 years at the time of the court case. There is no evidence of any children in the church or state records. And the only other occasion that Mary is featured in the papers is in 1885 when Owen Harrison was charged with wilfully damaging her house, for which he was sentenced to two months’ hard labour.[44]
Ann Hoare
Ann Hoare (née Hogan), 55 years at the time of the court case, was married to Patrick Hoare. In 1864, the Hoares had tragically lost their daughter Amelia when her dress caught fire on a candle.[45] Amelia was at home with her six siblings while their parents went out to visit relatives nearby. Four of the children were in bed, the remaining three were reading around the table. As Amelia turned round, the candle caught her dress and she received terrible burns, succumbing to her injuries within 12 hours. The 10-year-old Amelia who was a witness in this case must have been born in 1870 and possibly named for her dead sister. There is a photograph of Ann (Figure 5) from around this time. Ann and her family continued to live on Baker’s Flat until her sudden death in 1892 when she was 67 years of age. While sitting with Patrick at the door of their house, ‘she suddenly fell forward, apparently dying, and all efforts failed to rally her’.[46] A year later, her daughter Mary Catherine Fleet placed a notice in the paper in loving remembrance of her mother (Figure 6).[47]
Figure 5
L: Catherine Driscoll, unknown date. R: Ann Hoare, c.1870.[48]
Figure 6
In Memoriam notice by M.C. Fleet in the Express and Telegraph (1893).
Ann Slattery, Mary Callaghan
There is little information available about Ann Slattery except that she was 54 years old at the time of the court case and had been widowed for nine years.[49] Sadly, she would die suddenly the following year on a wintry Sunday morning, after complaining of a pain in her side.[50] The court reports place her with Mary Callaghan and it was Mary, allegedly, who had sat in the hole and declared that further excavations would have to be through her body; Mary was also reported to be carrying a ‘good-sized’ stick.[51] It is probable that Mary (née Fudge) was the 19-year-old wife of James Callaghan. They were married at St Rose of Lima Church, Kapunda on 5 October 1877 when she was 16 and he was 22.[52] In 1882, they had a son, Joseph Henry, born at Baker’s Flat.[53] Mary then went on to have six further children with Michael John Colbert, all listed as being born at Kapunda. Based on the death record for James Callaghan, he may have left Mary and their child. The assumption by the family historian researching these families is that Mary could not marry Michael Colbert as she was still married to James, and as a result, her children from this relationship would have been classed as illegitimate. All the children are listed on separate registers, one for Colbert, one for Callaghan, with four daughters and two sons being born between 1893 and 1901.[54]
Men of capital and influence
Having names for the six women charged in the 1880 case enables a fuller picture to be painted of their lives, a privilege that the five unnamed women in the 1877 case do not have. They had all married, some had children, some had already survived tragedy or would go on to face further challenges. The fact that three of the six were related through birth or marriage hints that the Driscoll family’s power and influence may have played a part in the protest. The Driscoll influence was local and social, focused on the people living at Baker’s Flat and distinct from the economic and political influence held by the legal landowners. By the late 1880s, the Baker’s Flat land was legally owned by a consortium which comprised some of the wealthiest and most well-connected men in the colony.
The consortium who held legal title to the Baker’s Flat land was determined to gain possession and addressed this task with renewed vigour in the late 1880s, with strategies that included attempts to serve eviction orders on the occupiers and to sell the land.[55] Their attempts were unsuccessful, and their efforts culminated in the Supreme Court of South Australia case, Forster et al. v. Fisher, that began in 1892 and continued for a decade.[56] In the consortium[57] were several men who held great influence in the colony including Sir Thomas Elder, Robert Barr Smith, Allan McFarlane, Sir William Milne, Sir Samuel Davenport and Anthony Forster. Summarised below are some of their achievements which illustrate the power, wealth and influence of the men ranged against the economically poor Irish.
Thomas Elder was born in Scotland into a wealthy family of merchants and ship owners.[58] He migrated to Adelaide in 1854 to join his brothers who had been building a strong merchant base there since 1839, most visibly through the mercantile and pastoral company of Elder and Co.[59] In addition to his business and pastoral interests, he was a respected politician who served on the Legislative Council in the 1860s and 1870s.[60] Robert Barr Smith, also Scottish-born, migrated to Melbourne in 1854, and moved to Adelaide the following year. After marrying Thomas’s sister Joanna in 1856, he and Elder became sole partners in Elder Smith and Co. in 1863. The company established vast pastoral properties in outback South Australia and became one of the largest wool traders in the world.[61] At the time of his death in 1915, Barr Smith’s estate was the largest in South Australia.[62]
Allan McFarlane arrived in South Australia from Scotland with his young family in 1839. After first taking up land at Mount Barker, he moved further south-east to Lake Alexandrina where he established Wellington Lodge Station, an estate of 43,000 acres.[63] Like McFarlane, the Scottish-born William Milne also came to Adelaide in 1839. In 1845, he set up a wine and spirits dealership which he sold in 1857 before entering politics.[64] He was president of the Legislative Council from 1873 to 1881.[65]
Englishman Samuel Davenport arrived in South Australia in 1843. His father was a director of the South Australian Banking Company and agent for the South Australian Company.[66] With family money supporting him, Samuel was able to establish large horse and cattle holdings across the colony.[67] From 1846 to 1866 he was heavily involved in politics, and was a member of the Legislative Council for much of this time.[68] Another Englishman, Anthony Forster, first came to Adelaide in 1841 as agent and attorney for George Fife Angas, a key player in the foundation of South Australia.[69] He returned to England in 1844 but by 1846 was back to take up sheep farming near Greenock.[70] This is less than 15 km from Kapunda and in 1850 Forster became a director of the South Kapunda Copper Mine. In 1852 he was a member of the syndicate that bought the South Australian Register. He edited that newspaper and the Adelaide Observer until the end of 1864, during which he was also a member of the Legislative Council.[71] He retired to England in 1864 and is described in the Forster et al v. Fisher court documents as living in ‘parts beyond the seas’.[72]
Three of these men — Elder, Milne and Davenport — held knighthoods by the time they were associated with Baker’s Flat. Four of them — Elder, Milne, Davenport and Forster — had been involved in politics. All were wealthy. It is likely that none of them were prepared for the intransigence of the Irish during the Forster et al v. Fisher case. Over a period of ten years, there were several eviction attempts which failed, an unsuccessful auction with no bids, and just two successful sales of portions of the land — one in 1893 of a small lot and another in 1894 of 143 acres to the Irish Conolan brothers who had been occupying it for some years.[73] Even the land that was sold in 1893 remained problematic, however, as the Irish refused to leave. Chief amongst them was a woman named Ann Bolton.
Ann Bolton, a woman of action and resolve
In June 1893, a series of affidavits were taken for the Forster et al. v Fisher case. One was from the widowed Ann Bolton (the only woman amongst several men), who lived with her son in ‘a hut and about nine and a half acres’.[74] When a Kapunda solicitor and his clerk spoke to her, on their third attempt, they cautioned her that ‘if she did not give up possession of the said hut and land or make some satisfactory arrangement with the claimants in this matter she would be summoned to appear before His Honor the Chief Justice’.[75] In response, she cursed them, swore at them, told them to go to hell and said that if any more of their sort came calling, she would douse them with scalding water.[76] A fortnight later, the solicitor tried again, telling Ann that the legal landowners had no wish to act harshly and were willing to sell her the land on reasonable terms. This time, she told him it was none of his business and to stop interfering. She then requested that he leave her premises. Although he does not record her exact words in the affidavit, she may well have been just as explicit as on the first occasion. Shortly afterwards, she was served with an eviction order to leave the land where she had been living for 32 years, which she duly ignored.[77]
Note that from 1887, the legal owners of Baker’s Flat had ceased paying rates ‘as the people would not clear off and paid no rent’.[78] Effectively, the owners had no access to what they believed was their own land and considered the Baker’s Flat residents to be trespassers. The following year, from 1 July 1888, Ann began to pay rates for her dwelling and surrounding land.[79] This was one element of a strategy operated collectively by the Baker’s Flat occupiers to establish possession. Ann lived at the northern edge of the site, which was surveyed in August 1893 for the court case (Figure 7). Although a surveyor had been employed to survey the entire section and the occupiers’ holdings, Ann’s was the only holding to be completely surveyed before he had to cease work for fear of a breach of the peace.[80]
Figure 7
Ann Bolton’s piece of land, surveyed for the Forster et al. v. Fisher court case. State Records of South Australia GRG 36/54/1892/47.
Since the 1893 orders to vacate the land had been ignored by the Irish, the landowners’ next strategy to rid Baker’s Flat of the Irish trespassers was to impound their cattle. In December 1893, a notice appeared in the Kapunda Herald and the Government Gazette to the effect that all cattle trespassing on Baker’s Flat would be impounded.[81] Two months later, in February 1894, a representative of the Kapunda District Council and two men from Adelaide proceeded to Baker’s Flat where they mustered thirty head of cattle and headed for the Kapunda pound. They had to pass by Ann Bolton’s yard and as they did so, she appeared and ‘by a dexterous interception of the cattle, ran two cows and two calves into her yard’.[82] At this point, others intervened, the cattle scattered and made their escape. A court case was initiated against Ann Bolton. Her solicitor stated at one point that ‘it was most unfair that some of the richest men in South Australia should put forward a dummy’.[83] The case was dismissed, to loud cheering by the ‘very many of those in the court’.[84]
These incidents may have been Ann’s greatest moments in the spotlight. Originally from Dublin, she (née Hickey) had married Michael Bolton at St John’s near Kapunda in 1862 when she was aged 23 years, and they had made their home at Baker’s Flat.[85] The year 1868 is the first time that a Bolton is mentioned in the papers, and this was the tragic death of her husband Michael, 31 years, killed as the result of a rockfall at the mine, where he had been working for only a few days.[86] Just two years later, she was on the sidelines of another tragedy. On this occasion, one of her young sons Patsy (Patrick) was walking to catechism class (Sunday school) with some of the Callaghan children. On the way they met ten-year-old Murty Daley who had been sent by his brother to retrieve a shotgun. In a case of catastrophic hijinks, Murty threatened to shoot Patsy who ran away. Murty then pointed the gun at three-year-old Johanna Callaghan, shooting her in the back of the head. She died within the half-hour. At the inquest, the jury found that the shot was not fired with ‘any malicious intention’ and the coroner reprimanded Murty for excessive carelessness.[87]
The next time Ann Bolton is named in the newspapers is in 1877, when the three Bolton boys — Patrick (14), John (12) and Michael (10) — appeared in court charged with beating and assaulting two women, Mary Keal and Honora Neville.[88] Mary Keal, a widow, stated that her home was a short distance from the boys and their mother, where she lived ‘in dread of her life’.[89] Honora Neville also lived close to the Boltons, in a ‘tumbledown hut’ with her bedridden husband.[90] The two women accused the boys of throwing stones at them and their dwellings. Their mother, Ann Bolton, defended them saying they had been chasing a rabbit and had not thrown any stones. A friend, Mary Ann Woods, stood as witness and stated that neither Mrs Keal nor Mrs Neville were sober. The magistrate acknowledged the ill feeling between the parties, reminded Ann of her place to keep the boys from ‘bad behaviour’ and imposed no punishment as long as there were no further complaints.[91]
So, Ann Bolton was widowed at 27 years, raised her family, managed her house and yard, defended her sons in court, and took on the might of the Adelaide establishment. She died on Baker’s Flat on 9 January 1896, aged 55 years.[92]
Conclusion
What do these stories tell us about the women of Baker’s Flat? That they were brave and prepared to stand up for their rights? That they weren’t cowed by authority? That they were clever, strategic, able to manage their own affairs and defend their families and community? These Irish women living in a rural corner of South Australia employed the same tactics as were used in the Irish Land War, in common with female protestors across Ireland and Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.[93] Given the family correspondence that went back and forth between Australia and Ireland[94] and the news from Ireland available in South Australian newspapers,[95] it is likely that the residents of Baker’s Flat were well aware of the battle for land rights back home in Ireland and were able to adapt those strategies to their own needs. Overall, the Baker’s Flat community was strong and sure of its rights to the land, even when this was not proven legally.
In this chapter, Catherine Driscoll, Mary Lacey, Mary Jose, Ann Hoare, Ann Slattery, Mary Callaghan and Ann Bolton are named and remembered, as is the intense resistance demonstrated by the greater group of Baker’s Flat women. These women were up against some of the richest men in the colony whose power and influence were irrevocably intertwined with the women and their actions. The women had probably already experienced or witnessed injustice and the abuse of power by men with money and status; they knew that a thing being lawful didn’t necessarily mean that it was right. They were prepared to rage and resist as they saw fit. Naming the women and telling their stories looks to redress some of the power imbalance. Naming brings its own power and brings the women to the fore.[96]
End notes
[1] Douglas Pike, Paradise of Dissent: South Australia 1829-1857, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1967, pp.190-195; Paul Sendziuk and Robert Foster, A History of South Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2018, pp.32-35.
[2] The term ‘Anglo-Irish’ refers to those Irish who were born or lived in Ireland and were of English descent. Typically, it was a privileged social class that was part of the so-called Protestant Ascendancy which made up the ruling class in Ireland from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century. Charles H. Bagot, A Holograph Memoir of Capt. Charles Hervey Bagot of the 87th Regiment, The Pioneers’ Association of South Australia, Adelaide, 1942, pp.24-25; Rob Charlton, The History of Kapunda, The Hawthorn Press, Melbourne, 1971, pp.8-9; Francis S. Dutton, South Australia and its Mines, With an Historical Sketch of the Colony, Under its Several Administrations, to the Period of Captain Grey’s Departure, T. and W. Boone, London, 1846, pp.266-267.
[3] Charlton, History of Kapunda, p.11.
[4] Susan Arthure, ‘Kapunda’s Irish Connections’, in Susan Arthure, Fidelma Breen, Stephanie James and Dymphna Lonergan (eds), Irish South Australia: New Histories and Insights, Wakefield Press, Adelaide, 2019, pp.58-73.
[5] Bagot, A Holograph Memoir, p.29; Geoffrey Dutton, ‘Dutton, Francis Stacker (1818-1877)’, in Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, Canberra, 1966.
[6] Charlton, History of Kapunda, pp.15, 96, 101.
[7] Dutton, South Australia and its Mines, p.269.
[8] Susan Arthure, ‘Being Irish: The Nineteenth Century South Australian Community of Baker’s Flat’, Archaeologies, vol. 11 no. 2, 2015, pp.169-188; Susan Arthure, ‘Australia’s First Clachan: Identifying a Traditional Irish Settlement System in Nineteenth Century South Australia’, Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia, vol. 45, 2017, pp.19-30; Arthure, ‘Kapunda’s Irish Connections’; Heather Burke, Susan Arthure, Cherrie De Leiuen, Janine McEgan and Alice C. Gorman, ‘In Search of the Hidden Irish: Historical Archaeology, Identity and “Irishness” in Nineteenth Century South Australia’, Historical Archaeology, vol. 52 no. 4, 2018, pp.798-823; Kelsey M. Lowe, Susan Arthure, Lynley A. Wallis and Josh Feinberg, ‘Geophysical and Archaeological Investigations of Baker’s Flat, a Nineteenth Century Historic Irish Site in South Australia’, Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, vol. 12 no. 1, 2020, article 33.
[9] See Charlton, History of Kapunda, pp.42-43; Rob Nicol, ‘Racial Minorities and the Settlement of Kapunda, Part 1’, Historical Society of South Australia Newsletter, vol. 48, 1983, pp.13-14; Leslie N. Tilbrook (ed.), Memories of Kapunda and District by A Circle of Friends, Kapunda Herald Print, Kapunda, 1929, p.31.
[9] Kapunda Herald (KH), 18 July 1902, p.3.
[10] Charlton, History of Kapunda, pp.18, 64; Greg Drew, Captain Bagot’s Mine: Kapunda Mine 1844-1916, Greg Drew, Adelaide, 2017, p.38; Nicol, ‘Racial Minorities’, p.13.
[11] Drew, Captain Bagot’s Mine, p.38.
[12] Nicol, ‘Racial Minorities’, p.13. See also Arthure, ‘Kapunda’s Irish Connections’, pp.62-63 for a discussion about the possible connections between Charles Harvey Bagot, the Baker’s Flat land, and the Irish selecting this particular area to settle in.
[13] Kapunda Herald and Northern Intelligencer (KHNI), 21 September 1875, p.2.
[14] KHNI, 21 September 1875, p.2.
[15] KHNI, 3 July 1877, p.3.
[16] KHNI, 3 July 1877, p.3.
[17] Charlton, History of Kapunda, p.43.
[18] Kapunda Herald (KH), 18 July 1902, p.3.
[19] KH, 18 July 1902, p.3.
[20] Fidelma Breen, ‘Yet we are told that Australians do not sympathise with Ireland’: A study of South Australian support for Irish Home Rule, 1883 to 1912’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Adelaide, 2013, pp.68-69. See Breen’s work for further discussion about the South Australian Land League, its activities and branches, including at Kapunda.
[21] Janet K. TeBrake, ‘Irish Peasant Women in Revolt: The Land League Years’, Irish Historical Studies, vol.28 no. 109, 1992, pp.63-80.
[22] TeBrake, ‘Irish Peasant Women’, pp.67-73.
[23] See, for example, Rudolf M. Dekker, ‘Women in Revolt: Popular Protest and its Social Basis in Holland in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, Theory and Society, vol. 16, 1987, pp.337-362; Malcolm I. Thomis and Jennifer Grimmett, Women in Protest, 1800-1850, Croom Helm, London, 1982.
[24] TeBrake, ‘Irish Peasant Women’, pp.74-75.
[25] TeBrake, ‘Irish Peasant Women’, p.76.
[26] TeBrake, ‘Irish Peasant Women’, p.76.
[27] KH, 7 May 1880, p.2.
[28] KH, 7 May 1880, p.2.
[29] KH, 7 May 1880, p.2.
[30] KH, 7 May 1880, p.2.
[31] KH, 4 June 1880, p.4.
[32] Women named in witness statements were Catherine McKeen, Honora Driscoll, Mrs Cairn, Mrs Byrnes, Mrs Sullivan, Mrs Geraghty and the child Amelia Hoare.
[33] KH, 3 April 1894, p.2.
[34] Pers. comm. L. Heath, family historian, 2020; H. Mullen, family historian 2014, 2017; KH, 12 September 1902, p.3; KH, 22 October 1920, p.2.
[35] KH, 3 April 1894, p.3.
[36] KH, 22 October 1920, p.2.
[37] Pers. comm. H. Mullen, family historian 2014, 2017; KH, 22 October 1920, p.2.
[38] KH, 2 December 1881, p.2.
[39] Pers. comm. H. Mullen, family historian 2014, 2017.
[40] Pers. comm. S. Black, family historian 2019; birth certificate of Bridget Lacey, born 1 February 1871, Kapunda District Birth Register 92/58; birth certificate of Catherine Lacey, born 17 June 1873, Kapunda District Birth Register 122/342; birth certificate of Francis Lacey, born 1 November 1877, Kapunda District Birth Register 192/391; death certificate of Jane Lacey, died 21 August 1880 aged three months, Kapunda District Death Register 105/138; birth certificate of Annie Lacey, born 25 July 1881, Kapunda District Birth Register 266/346; birth certificate of Dora Lacey, born 11 February 1884, Kapunda District Birth Register 321/375; birth certificate of Martin James Lacey, born 24 July 1885, Kapunda District Birth Register 357/474; birth certificate of Eveleen Gertrude Lacey, born 19 September 1887, Kapunda District Birth Register 404/426.
[41] Marriage certificate of William Jose and Mary McInerney, married 12 November 1861 at St John nr Kapunda, Kapunda District Marriage Register 48/192.
[42] Chronicle, 7 March 1908, p.33.
[43] Death certificate of Mary Jose, died 29 February 1908, Kapunda District Death Register 331/439.
[44] South Australian Register (SAR), 10 July 1885, p.7.
[45] South Australian Advertiser, 14 January 1864, p.3; SAR, 13 January 1864, p.3.
[46] Death certificate of Ann Hoare, died 7 March 1892, Kapunda District Death Register 201/5; KH, 11 March 1892, p.2.
[47] Express and Telegraph, 8 March 1893, p.2.
[48] Photos provided by Driscoll and Hoare descendants.
[49] Death certificate of Patrick Slattery, died 6 November 1871, Kapunda District Death Register 44/299.
[50] KH, 9 August 1881, p.2.
[51] KH, 4 June 1880, p.4.
[52] Marriage certificate of James Callaghan and Mary Jane Fudge, married 5 October 1877 at St Rose of Lima Church, Kapunda, Kapunda District Marriage Register 113/20.
[53] Birth certificate of Joseph Henry Callaghan, born 5 October 1877, Kapunda District Birth Register 285/108.
[54] Pers. comm. S. Taheny, family historian, 2013.
[55] KH, 9 March 1888, p.3.
[56] ‘Forster et al. v. Fisher, Records of the Supreme Court of South Australia’, GRG36/54 File 47/1892, State Records of South Australia, Adelaide.
[57] The landowners are cited as: Anthony Forster, of parts beyond the seas, esquire; Allan McFarlane, of Wellington Lodge, esquire; Robert Barr Smith, of Adelaide, merchant; Thomas Elder, of Adelaide, merchant; John Brodie Spence, and George Young, both of Adelaide, esquires; Charles James Henthorn Merton Todd, of Adelaide, esquire; and Emily Lavinia Hart, of Glanville Hall, near Port Adelaide, widow; Charles Hawkes Todd Hart, late of Brisbane, merchant, but now of Adelaide, gentleman; Samuel Davenport, of Beaumont, near Adelaide, esquire; and William Milne, of Sunnyside, near Adelaide, formerly president of the Legislative Council; John Charles Marshall Taylor, of Pinbrook, near Dorking in the County of Surrey, gentleman; and Francis Joseph Fisher, of Adelaide, solicitor (Supreme Court of South Australia 1892).
[58] Carol Fort, ‘Elder Family’, in Wilfrid Prest (ed.), The Wakefield Companion to South Australian History, Wakefield Press, Adelaide, 2001, pp.163-164.
[59] Fayette Gosse, ‘Elder, Sir Thomas (1818-1897)’, in Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, Canberra, 1972; Dirk Van Dissel, ‘Barr Smith, Robert (1824-1915)’, in Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, Canberra, 1976.
[60] Gosse, ‘Elder, Sir Thomas’.
[61] Carol Fort, ‘Barr Smith Family’, in Wilfrid Prest (ed.), The Wakefield Companion to South Australian History, Wakefield Press, Adelaide, 2001, p.69; Gosse, ‘Elder, Sir Thomas’.
[62] Fort, ‘Barr Smith Family’, pp.69-70; Van Dissel, ‘Barr Smith, Robert’.
[63] Observer, 14 March 1908, p.38.
[64] Dirk Van Dissel, ‘Milne, Sir William (1822-1895)’, in Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, Canberra, 1974.
[65] Van Dissel, ‘Milne, Sir William’.
[66] Beverley A. Nicks, ‘Davenport, Sir Samuel (1818-1906)’, in Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, Canberra, 1972.
[67] Nicks, ‘Davenport, Sir Samuel’.
[68] Nicks, ‘Davenport, Sir Samuel’.
[69] N.S. Lynravn, ‘Forster, Anthony (1813-1897)’, in Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, Canberra, 1972.
[70] Lynravn, ‘Forster, Anthony’.
[71] Lynravn, ‘Forster, Anthony’.
[72] ‘Forster et al. v. Fisher’.
[73] KH, 20 May 1893, p.2; ‘Forster et al v. Fisher’.
[74] KH, 3 April 1894, p.3; ‘Forster et al. v. Fisher’.
[75] ‘Forster et al v. Fisher’.
[76] ‘Forster et al v. Fisher’.
[77] KH, 3 April 1894, p.2; KH, 3 April 1894, p.3.
[78] South Australian Chronicle, 7 April 1894, p.4.
[79] ‘Forster et al v. Fisher’.
[80] ‘Forster et al v. Fisher’.
[81] KH, 3 April 1894, p.2.
[82] KH, 3 April 1894, p.2.
[83] KH, 3 April 1894, p.3. The term ‘dummy’ indicates that McMahon Glynn believed this to be a sham case.
[84] KH, 3 April 1894, p.2.
[85] Drew, Captain Bagot’s Mine, p.111; marriage certificate of Michael Bolton and Anne Hickey, married 23 December 1862 at St John near Kapunda, Kapunda District Marriage Register 52/318.
[86] Death certificate of Michael Bolton, died 8 September 1868, Kapunda District Death Register 33/114; KHNI, 11 September 1868, p.3.
[87] SAR, 27 July 1870, p.3.
[88] KHNI, 30 November 1877, p.3.
[89] KHNI, 30 November 1877, p.3.
[90] KHNI, 30 November 1877, p.3.
[91] KHNI, 30 November 1877, p.3.
[92] Death certificate of Ann Bolton, died 9 January 1896, Kapunda District Death Register 232/203.
[93] TeBrake, ‘Irish Peasant Women’; Dekker, ‘Women in Revolt’; Thomis and Grimmett, Women in Protest.
[94] See, for example, David Fitzpatrick, Oceans of Consolation: Personal Accounts of Irish Migration to Australia, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1994; Patrick O’Farrell, Letters from Irish Australia 1825-1929, New South Wales University Press, Sydney, 1994.
[95] South Australian newspapers focusing on the Irish Catholic population included the Irish Harp and Farmers’ Herald (1869-1873), Harp and Southern Cross (1873-1875), Southern Cross (from 1889). The Irish Catholic lawyer Patrick McMahon Glynn was editor and lead writer for the local newspaper, the Kapunda Herald from 1883 to 1891, where his articles were often pro-Irish and pro-land rights; Gerald O’Collins, Patrick McMahon Glynn: A Founder of Australian Federation, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1965; Breen, ‘Yet we are told’.
[96] Thank you to the following women who took the time to review this chapter at various stages, offering careful and constructive feedback and making it so much better: Marie Boland, Viv Szekeres, Margy Holland, Sue McKone, Dymphna Lonergan, Fidelma McCorry, Stephanie James.