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Ethnic minorities in eighteenth-century Ireland

Published in 18th-19th Century Social Perspectives, 18th–19th - Century History, Issue 3 (May/June 2012), Letters, Volume 20

Sir,—The presence of ethnic minorities in eighteenth-century Ireland was seldom commented on, but they existed even in ‘less predictable locations … such as … Carrickmacross’, as Philip McEvansoneya pointed out (HI 20.2, March/April 2012, pp 26–8). The Carrickmacross individual steps out of the shadows a little, for she is mentioned in Denis Carolan Rushe’s History of Monaghan (1921, pp 71–2):

‘During the year 1768 a sensation was caused in Carrickmacross by the return home of Michael Carolan and his North American wife, who brought a black slave with her. Very few people in Carrickmacross had ever seen a coloured person and excitement was caused by the arrival, but the indignation of his family was very great, and on investigation it was found that the slave had been purchased while he lived at Newburn, near Charleston, Carolina, from a firm of slave dealers named Wilkinson and Parkinson for £65. James Carolan, the father of Michael, at first insisted on the slave being sold, and published the following advertisement in the Dublin Mercury of 14th August, 1768:

“A neat beautiful black negro girl just brought from Carolina, aged eleven or twelve years, who understands and speaks English, very fit to wait on a lady, to be disposed of; application to be made to James Carolan, Carrickmacross, or Mr. Gavan, Bridge-st., Dublin.”

However the negress was not disposed of, for her mistress appears to have coaxed her father-in-law to keep the girl, who passed the remainder of her life in Carrickmacross, and nursed the children and some of the grand-children of her mistress.’

Rushe’s account can be relied on in this instance, for the family concerned was his maternal one. The Carolans of Carrickmacross were typical of the rising eighteenth-century Catholic merchant class, and involved in nearly every national movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, James’s reaction suggests that the abolition of slavery was not one of them!—Yours etc.,

SEÁN BOYLE

London

On this Day

April 25

1922 Commandant O’Neill, 3rd Cork Brigade IRA, was shot dead at the home of a Protestant family in Bandon, Co. Cork. In a series of unattributed reprisals, thirteen Protestant civilians were shot dead in the surrounding area over the following four days.
1920 RIC Sergeant Cornelius Crean, brother of the explorer Tom Crean, was killed by the IRA in an ambush near Upton, Co. Cork.
1870 Daniel Maclise (64), history and portrait painter who worked for most of his life in London, died.
1719 The life and strange adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe was published.
1819 Vere Foster, philanthropist and educationist, born in Copenhagen, where his Irish-born father was British minister.
1987 Lord Justice Gibson and his wife were killed by an IRA bomb as they crossed the border south of Newry, Co. Down.
1917 Ella Fitzgerald, jazz singer, born in Newport News, Virginia.
1922 Commandant O’Neill of the third Cork Brigade IRA was shot dead at the home of a Protestant family in Bandon, Co. Cork. In a series of unattributed reprisals, thirteen Protestant civilians were shot dead in the surrounding area between 26 and 29 April.
1915 During the First World War, Allied troops landed on Turkey’s Gallipoli Peninsula. The disastrous Gallipoli campaign, ending in January 1916, cost 46,000 Allied lives, including over 2,295 Irishmen.

Ethnic minorities in eighteenth-century Ireland

Personal Histories

On this Day

April 25