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Towards the end of 1903 she is reported to have performed menial domestic duties or
housework for one of the hospital doctors for many months. She was said to have been very
clean and tidy in her habits and anxious to please. She was described as being 5'1" and
weighing 114 lbs. She had a fair complexion and blue eyes; her hair was dark, going grey.
In the end it was one of her sisters or a brother who came to take her away. They brought her
south, to Sydney, and thence to Nowra - taking her back to her mother and the remnants of the
Irish, Catholic Casey family in New South Wales.
After all her tribulations in Queensland, Mary went quietly home.
239
3Q Mary Goes Home
It is time to fill in what is known of Mary's background and to say something about who she
was and where she came from - to try to explain why after her release from Goodna she
decided or agreed (or was compelled), not to return to Charters Towers, but to spend the rest
of her life near her mother in New South Wales.
Her parents, Patrick and Winifred Casey, were born in the west of Ireland in County Clare,
which is bounded to the north by Galway Bay and by the Shannon estuary to the south. The
county derives its present name from the English lord, Thomas de Clare, who subdued its
people and seized their land in the time of Elizabeth I. A wild, irregular land, streaked with little
rivers and shadowed lakes, it had suffered and continued to suffer from the repressive acts of its
Protestant English masters for hundreds of years. Each uprising and bloody rebellion was
followed by savage reprisals. Cromwell's troops slaughtered every priest they could find.
Marlborough's men in 1690 were less murderous, but the English parliament of that time was
assiduous in continuing to deny the Irish Catholics any rights of citizenship and property
ownership. Thousands emigrated, most fleeing to the continent, joining those who already
served foreign Catholic kings in Catholic courts, churches and armies.
The last national uprising in Ireland in 1798 followed the French Revolution. Only union with
England, Scotland and Wales would, it seemed, end the anarchy; and the Act of Union passed
in 1800 made the centuries-old overlordship of Ireland at last, as it were, official. However, it
was not until 1829 that Roman Catholics were permitted to sit in the House of Commons. In
that year, or soon thereafter, Patrick Casey was born.
He was probably born in what was then called a 'cabin', a one-room cottage, with a thatched
roof, an earth floor, and a turf fire that burned all year. The meagre furniture would have been
made of wood and wickerwork, and the beds, made of straw and rushes, would each have
slept three or four. This dark and smoky place was shared by the peasant family's animals: hens,
a cow, and perhaps a pig. Their woollen clothes were spartan but colourful: the women's
cloaks, stockings, petticoats and skirts in contrasting blues, reds, browns and greens; the men's
clothing was more sober: dark blue, black or grey. Shoes were seldom worn, hardly ever by the
children. Adults of both sexes let their hair grow long and loose, and both smoked pipes.
Potatoes and sour milk formed the basis of their diet, padded out with skimmed milk, oatcakes,
cheese, cabbages and onions, and in coastal villages seaweed.
Even a schoolmaster ate frugally. One such in Killarney noted in his diary in July 1830: This is
what we eat, my family and me: we have a hot meal, oatmeal porridge with milk in the morning,
then wheaten bread and milk at one o'clock. This mid-day meal is a cold one. Then potatoes
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