View from the Green Room: Tears from Tasmania
Roses from the Heart exhibition at Reginald's Tower, Waterford city.
We tend to forget that Waterford is Ireland’s oldest city and also that Reginald’s Tower is Ireland’s oldest civic building.
Reginald’s Tower is as distinctive a building as it comes. It was the first building in Ireland to be constructed with mortar, which was then made with a mixture of fur, blood, lime and sea mud. The first tower was built by the Vikings some time after 914 AD – probably 1003 – and was replaced by the Normans with an impregnable stone tower in 1171.
Once described as "a massive hinge of stone connecting the two outstretched wings of the city", this fortified tower has never fallen into ruin and has been in continuous use for over 800 years.
It was also the location of one of the most famous episodes in Irish history. Strongbow married Diarmuid McMurrough’s daughter Aoife here, allowing him a claim as heir to the ‘Kingdom of Leinster’ that established foreign rule in Ireland for the next 700 years.
Later it was utilised as a mint under King John, before serving various functions under many English monarchs.
Weapons, gunpowder and cannons have all been stored here reflecting various periods of Waterford’s turbulent history.
It is also Ireland’s oldest civic building still in use today. It has been used for over a thousand years as a fortress, an arsenal, a prison, a mint and a home. Today it houses Waterford’s Civic Museum.
It is to the prison that Waterford Heritage directs our attention with its “Roses from the Heart” exhibition, that showcases the lives of Waterford women who were transported to Australia as convicts.
In 1819, Waterford Corporation converted Reginald’s Tower into a lock-up prison to confine those convicted of petty crimes. Approximately 27 prisoners were housed in the tower per week in appallingly cramped conditions for the next three decades before the Tower closed as a prison on January 1, 1851.
Seven years' transportation was the normal sentence for such petty offences.
Convict no. 8182 Mary Callaghan for theft of clothes, Convict 6983 Johanna Condon for theft of a shawl, Convict 499 Mary Crowley from Tallow got 15 years for arson, Convict 5751 Mary Fennelly from Waterford received 10 years for theft of money, Convict 171 Catherine Fogarty, aged 14, got seven years for stealing clothes, Convict 507 Brigid Scanlon from Waterford got 15 years for arson, Convict 8213 Brigid Veale from Waterford received seven years for theft of potatoes and wheat.
The case of Convict No. 8213 Mary Walsh from Clonmel is particularly harrowing. Mary – like all the other women – could neither read nor write and so was at a huge disadvantage in court. She was accused of aiding and abetting two other women who stole a piece of cashmere wool from a local shop. She strenuously denied the charges but was sentenced to seven years' transportation to Tasmania. She was married with three young children. Mary took her youngest with her. However, on arrival, the little girl was taken from her and placed in an orphanage where she died some 18 months later.
A heartfelt and deeply moving letter from her husband James, expressing the love they both shared, was sent to Tasmania. Mary never received James’s letter. The letter is now shown in the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. However, a copy of her husband’s letter is exhibited here and is deeply moving:
… ”it would be the only wish of my heart to go to you but I have not the means… you are my thoughts by day and night and will always be so ‘till it pleases God to restore you once more to my arms… this is a broken-hearted letter I send you as I cannot bring it myself… may your rest be calm and your dreams sweet always thinking of him who always thinks of you… James.”
“Roses from the Heart” is a unique memorial to the 25,566 convict women who were transported to Australia from Britain and Ireland between 1788 to 1853. The free exhibition in Reginald's Tower formed part of the OPW’s calendar marking National Heritage Week 2024, which took place from August 17-25.
