People Australia

Bernard ‘Barney’ Carr, labourer, was born in the early 1780s in Drogheda, Ireland.[1] In the first decade of the 1800s he migrated to England, joining the five-thousand-strong Irish population in Liverpool.[2] There he married Jane Flinn on the 3 July 1809 at St Thomas and between March 1811 and February 1814 had three children: Maria, Thomas, and Jane.[3] However their lives were far from idyllic as the Irish were the most marginalised migrant class in Liverpool’s socio-economic standings.[4]

It is perhaps due to these circumstances that on the 1 February 1819 Carr appeared at the Lancaster assizes and was convicted of feloniously receiving stolen goods from Barney Cassidy and Robert Myers.[5] The goods comprised of an assortment of clothing items, a basket, and six pounds of butter.[6] The received goods were part of a larger haul from a string of daring robberies carried out in November 1818 by Thomas Hall, Robert Myers, James Harrington, and Barney Cassidy, members of a gang who frequented a cellar in Kent Street.[7]Myers, Cassidy, and Harrington were each sentenced to seven years transportation while Carr was sentenced to fourteen.[8]

Four weeks later Carr was transferred from Lancaster to the prison hulk Retribution, moored on the Thames at Woolwich.[9] Living conditions on the Retribution were atrocious, with up to six hundred men all shackled in irons and chains.[10] During the day prisoners were taken ashore and placed in small gangs of up to twenty men who laboured along the dockyards.[11] After spending seven weeks on the hulk, Carr was transferred on 21 April 1819 to the Grenadatransport ship, destined for New South Wales.[12] The ship departed with 159 male convicts on a journey that took six months, with a stop in Rio de Janeiro.[13] The convicts were allowed on deck once a day if weather permitted and rostered on a daily schedule of cleaning, scraping, drying, and ventilation of the prison, berths, beds, and decks.[14] On four occasions, water leaks lead to wet beds and sleeping berths.[15] There was no specific mention of Carr being ill during the journey.[16]

Following the transport ship’s arrival in Sydney Cove, on disembarkation day the convicts were provided with new clothing and allowed to take their bedding and personal effects into the yard of Sydney gaol, where they were sorted and allocated.[17] Carr was sent to the Emu Plains government agricultural settlement.[18] Established in 1819, Emu Plains was managed by a former convict, Richard Fitzgerald, with the aim of not only utilising the surplus of male convicts in the colony but supplementing the growing demand for grains as a result of free settler supply shortages and a growing population.[19]

The convicts at Emu Plains were employed in building huts and cottages, timber cutting, land clearing, and the cultivation of wheat and maize.[20] Those on timber cutting were expected to meet a weekly requirement of an acre of timber felling or ten rods daily per person.[21] A number of the convicts at the settlement preferred to build their own separate hut with an attached garden which was probably tended for personal use or trade.[22] Whilst Richard Fitzgerald was superintendent payments in goods and spirits to convicts in lieu of services rendered were a regular occurrence.[23] As no records were made on the movement and allocation of convicts at Emu Plains it is unclear how Carr spent his time there.[24]

Carr secured his ticket of leave on the 31 January 1824.[25] It stated that he was ‘assigned’ to his wife, Jane Carr, in Kent Street.[26] She had been tried at the Lancaster assizes on 21 March 1818 and convicted of receiving stolen gloves from the shop of J. Danson in Liverpool.[27] On 27 April 1819 she departed England on the transport ship Lord Wellington on a nine month journey to New South Wales to serve a fourteen year sentence.[28] In the general muster of 1822, Jane was recorded as being at the government factory in Parramatta along with two of her children aged four and one.[29] Her eldest daughter, Maria, aged eleven, was a servant in the household of J. Edwards in Sydney.[30]

Following Barney Carr’s departure from Emu Plains, the family seem to have established a home base in Sydney by 1825.[31] Although he was still a government employee , relocating to Sydney allowed him to see his daughter Maria along with his wife Jane and his two young sons.[32] Throughout the years 1827 to 1831 Jane returned to the female factory in Parramatta to serve time for being illegally at large, drunkenness and prostitution, and keeping a disorderly house.[33] She attained her certificate of freedom on 22 March 1833.[34] At fifty years of age Barney Carr received his certificate of freedom on 11 December 1834.[35] From there he disappears in the historical record.

[1] Barney Carr, Grenada, 1834, Certificate of Freedom, State Records of New South Wales, NRS 12210, in New South Wales, Australia, Certificates of Freedom, 1810-1814, 1827-1867, Ancestry.com.

[2] Ibid.; Michael Macilwee, ‘The Scum of Ireland’, in The Liverpool Underworld: Crime in the City, 1750-1900 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2011, 58.

[3] Marriage of Barney Carr and Jane Flinn, married 3 July 1809, in Liverpool, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1659-1812, Ancestry.com; Baptism of Maria, baptised 10 March 1811, St Mary Highfield Street Parish in Liverpool, England, Catholic Baptisms, 1741-1919, Ancestry.com; Baptism of Thomas, baptised 30 August 1812, St Mary Highfield Street Parish in Liverpool, England, Catholic Baptisms, 1741-1919, Ancestry.com; Baptism of Jane, baptised 6 February 1814, St Mary Highfield Street Parish in Liverpool, England, Catholic Baptisms, 1741-1919, Ancestry.com.

[4] John Belchem, ‘Poor Paddy: The Irish in the Liverpool Labour Market’, in Irish, Catholic and Scouse: The History of the Liverpool-Irish, 1800-1939, (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007, 27.

[5] Trial sentencing for Barney Carr, Lancashire Order Books, in Lancashire, England, Quarter Session Records and Petitions, 1648-1908, Ancestry.com.

[6] Ibid.

[7] ‘Daring Offenders’, Chester Chronicle, 4 December 1818, 3.

[8] ‘County Sessions’, Lancaster Gazetter, 13 February 1819, 4.

[9] Barney Carr, Retribution, in UK, Prison Hulk Registers and Letter Books, 1802-1849, The National Archives (UK), HO 9/7, Ancestry.com.

[10] James Hardy Vaux, ‘Chapter IX’, in Memoirs of James Hardy Vaux Written by Himself in Two Volumes, Volume II (London, 1819), 109,

[11] Ibid., 110.

[12] Journal of His Majesty’s Grenada Convict Ship, 1819 15 Mar-1819 18 Nov, in UK, Royal Navy Medical Journals, 1817-1856, The National Archives Kew, ADM 101, Ancestry.com; Barney Carr, Grenada, 1819, List of Convicts, State Records Authority of New South Wales, CGS 1155, Reels 2417-2428, in New South Wales, Australia Convict Ship Muster Rolls and Related Records, 1790-1849, Ancestry.com.

[13] Journal of His Majesty’s Grenada Convict Ship, 1819 15 Mar-1819 18 Nov; Barney Carr, Grenada, in Australian Convict Transportation Registers – Other Fleets & Ships, 1791-1868, The National Archives (UK), HO 11/3, Ancestry.com.

[14] Journal of His Majesty’s Grenada Convict Ship.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid.

[17] Bigge, Report on State of the Colony of New South Wales, 24.

[18] Barney Carr, Grenada, 1819, annotated printed indent, State Archives New South Wales, NRS 12188, pp 410-411, in New South Wales, Australia, Convict Indents, 1788-1842, Ancestry.com; Bernard Kerr [Bernard Carr], Grenada, 1819, List of convicts, State Archives New South Wales, NRS 937, in New South Wales, Australia, Colonial Secretary’s Papers, 1788-1856, Ancestry.com; Bigge, Report on State of the Colony of New South Wales, 22.

[19] Lorraine Stacker, ‘Emu Plains Convict Farm’, Penrith City Local History, 8 January 2015, https://penrithhistory.com/places/emu-plains-convict-farm/, accessed 17 May 2024; Lorraine Stacker, ‘2010 Conference - Emu Plains’, Penrith City Local History, 6 March 2010, https://penrithhistory.com/home/makings-of-a-city-history-conference/the-makings-of-a-city-history-conference-2010/2010-conference-emu-plains/, accessed 17 May 2024.

[20] Bigge, Report on State of the Colony of New South Wales, 37.

[21] Ibid., 42.

[22] Ibid., 37.

[23] Ibid., 56.

[24] Ibid., 72.

[25] Bernard Carr [Barney Carr], Grenada, 1824, List of Prisoners assigned, State Records New South Wales, NRS 898, in New South Wales, Australia, Colonial Secretary’s Papers, 1788-1856, Ancestry.com, accessed 1 May 2024; Bigge, Report on State of the Colony of New South Wales, 48.

[26] Bernard Carr [Barney Carr]. List of prisoners assigned.

[27] ‘Lancaster Assizes’, Lancaster Gazetter, 21 March 1818, 3.

[28] Diary of the Lord Wellington Female Convict Ship, 1819 27 Apr-1820 27 Jan, in UK, Royal Navy Medical Journals, 1817-1856, The National Archives Kew, ADM 101, Ancestry.com; Jane Carr, Lord Wellington, 1820-1821, annotated printed indent, New South Wales State Archives, NRS 12188, pp 28-29, in New South Wales, Australia, Convict Indents, 1788-1842, Ancestry.com.

[29] Convict record for Jane Carr, Lord Wellington, 1822, The National Archives Kew, HO 10/36, in New South Wales and Tasmania, Australia Convict Musters, 1806-1849, Ancestry.com.

[30] Muster record for Maria Carr, 1822, The National Archives Kew, HO 10/36, in New South Wales and Tasmania, Australia Convict Musters, 1806-1849, Ancestry.com.

[31] Convict record for Barney Carr, Grenada, 1825, The National Archives Kew, HO 10/19, in New South Wales and Tasmania, Australia Convict Musters, 1806-1849, Ancestry.com.

[32] Convict record for Barney Carr, 1825 New South Wales and Tasmania Australia Convict Musters.

[33] Gaol entry record for Jane Carr, Entrance Book, 23 July 1827, State Archives NSW, Series: 2514, Item: 4/6430 in New South Wales, Australia, Gaol Description and Entrance Books, 1818-1930, Ancestry.com; Gaol entry record for Jane Carr, Entrance Book, 30 October 1827, State Archives NSW, Series: 2514, Item: 4/6430 in New South Wales, Australia, Gaol Description and Entrance Books, 1818-1930, Ancestry.com; Gaol entry record for Jane Carr, Entrance Book, 2 August 1830, State Archives NSW, Series: 2514, Item: 4/6430 in New South Wales, Australia, Gaol Description and Entrance Books, 1818-1930, Ancestry.com.

[34] Jane Carr, Lord Wellington, 1833, Certificate of Freedom, State Records of New South Wales, NRS 12210, in New South Wales, Australia, Certificates of Freedom, 1810-1814, 1827-1867, Ancestry.com.

[35] Barney Carr, Certificate of Freedom; Alexander M’Leay, ‘Colonial Secretary’s Office, Sydney, 22d Dec., 1834. Certificates of Freedom.’, Sydney Herald, 29 December 1834, 4; ‘Advertising’, Colonist (NSW), 1 January 1835, 7.