Ornament

Maker & role
Unknown, Maker
 Production date
circa 1860s
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Object detail

Production place
Ireland
Collection
Hyde Park Barracks
Measurements
0 - Whole, H: 8.5 x W: 4.9 x D: 1.5cm (H: 85 x W: 49 x D: 15mm)
Credit line
Gift, Blackstock and Stuart-Robertson families, 2009
Hyde Park Barracks Collection, Museums of History New South Wales
Caption
Handcarved cross with floral relief decoration, circa 1860s
Description
This cross, 8.5cm long, made of vulcanite in an ornate moulded floral design, belonged to Catherine Eleanor Joyce who was born around 1832 in Cong in County Mayo, Ireland, and died in 1893 in Bourke in outback New South Wales. Catherine arrived in Sydney in January 1850 on a ship called the Panama, along with 156 other young women and girls who came to New South Wales as assisted migrants in the wake of the Great Irish Famine of 1843-1848. On arrival in Sydney, Catherine and the other girls were accommodated at the newly established Female Immigration Depot at Hyde Park Barracks, where they awaited employment as domestic servants. They were among 4114 single and orphaned young women selected from Irish workhouses and offered the opportunity of work and wifehood in a new land. Catherine Joyce found wifehood less than two years after her arrival, although her husband turned out to be a rogue and a bigamist. After they parted company she lived with her children in Bourke where her youngest son, Robert Stuart Robertson, joined the Australian Labor Party. He was later elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, described by party leader Jack Lang as a “strait-laced reformer”.
Accession number
HPB2009/1-1

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