Young Irelanders in Tasmania Part 2
Between 1849 and 1850, 15 Irish rebels were exiled to Tasmania on various charges, from sedition to treason, following a failed uprising against British rule in Tipperary on 29 July 1848. The stories of Young Irelanders William Smith O’Brien, Thomas Francis Meagher, John Mitchel, Kevin Izod O’Doherty and Terence Bellew MacManus, who were exiled from their homes as political prisoners on the other side of the planet, are fascinating and hold an important place in Tasmania’s history. To refresh your memory, read part one of this story in Traces Volume 5.
In Church Street, the main thoroughfare of the historic Tasmanian town of Ross, stands Fernleigh, a sandstone house dating from the 1840s. Fernleigh was the onetime home of Dr Edward Swarbreck Hall. In February 1850, Hall moved to Ross with his wife and five children (a sixth child was born the following year) from Oatlands, 36 kilometres south of Ross, taking up the position of superintendent of the town’s ‘convict establishments’, including the Female Factory, the site of which remains today.
The Yorkshire-born doctor immigrated to Hobart in 1833, and while living in Oatlands befriended Irish rebel Kevin Izod O’Doherty. O’Doherty (1823–1905) was studying medicine in Dublin when – said to be ‘vehement in denunciations of Saxon tyranny’ – he was charged and sentenced to 10 years transportation for treason-felony, and arrived in Hobart in October 1849.
