Now that my latest book, Probing Deaths, Saving Lives, a biography of John Birt Davies, Birmingham’s Victorian coroner, is with the publishers, I’ve started to research the next one. The plan is to focus on the extraordinary life of a privileged 19th century Irishwoman, Letitia Logan, who left her comfortable life in Sligo to spend five years in a remote penal colony in eastern Australia.
Sligo
Born Letitia Anne O’Beirne, she was descended from Irish landed gentry. Her father was Connell O’Beirne, a barrister from Sligo in the west of Ireland and her mother was Letitia Bingham, daughter of Henry Bingham of Newbrook in County Mayo and sister of Lord Clanmorris.
She met Scottish army officer Captain Patrick Logan when his regiment, the 57th Foot, was stationed in Galway. Letitia’s father had died when she was just ten years old so Patrick had to ask her uncle, William O’Beirne, for permission to marry his niece. This was eventually granted and they married on 5th Sept 1823 at the Anglican church of St John’s in Sligo. She was 24 and he was 31.
Their first child, Robert Abraham, was born one year later. When the baby was just five months old Patrick received orders to proceed with his family to Australia. Letitia invited her sister, Hannah Charlotte O’Beirne to accompany them on the long arduous journey. They departed from the Cove of Cork on 5th Jan 1825 on 460-ton merchant ship, the Hooghly, travelling via Rio de Janeiro before arriving at Port Jackson, New South Wales on 22nd April. Requisitioned as a convict ship, the Hooghly was carrying 195 male convicts guarded by 35 soldiers under Patrick’s command.
Moreton Bay
The Logan family spent eleven months in Sydney before Patrick was ordered to move north to Moreton Bay (modern-day Brisbane) to take charge of a newly developed penal colony. The convicts’ quarters and farm were in dire need of effective leadership to knock them into shape before a planned expansion could take place. The remote base, inaccessible except by sea, housed the most difficult prisoners and re-offenders. The Logans lived in a wooden single-storey cottage, a complete contrast to Letitia’s comfortable home in Sligo.
Their second child, a girl named Letitia Bingham, was born at the commandant’s cottage on 23rd July 1826. There the family remained until the tragic day in October 1830 when Patrick’s body was discovered in the bush a few miles from the colony. He had been brutally murdered. His devastated widow, her sister and the two small children proceeded by boat to Sydney for his funeral, a grand affair organised by the Governor of New South Wales, before embarking on their long sad journey back to Ireland.
Very little is known about Letitia’s character or how she coped with the distressing situation she found herself in. Occasional visitors who spent time at the Logan’s cottage in Moreton Bay gave favourable reports – Letitia was said to be friendly, kind, intelligent and good company. We know she was left short of funds after Patrick’s murder, but was required to pay her own passage home because the British government had refused her request for a pension. She continued to lobby for a widow’s pension after her return home and was eventually granted the paltry sum of £70 a year.
She returned to Sligo with her children where they lived with her mother for a while. She also visited her husband’s relatives at Duns in the Scottish Borders, who took charge of her son Robert’s education. Some time after her mother’s death in 1850, she moved to Dun Laoghaire near Dublin. Letitia seems to have suffered from ill-health for many years – both in Australia and after she returned home – but she lived until 1872 when she died at Corrig Avenue, Dun Laoghaire, aged 73 .
The challenging task I’ve set myself is to fill the gaps in these bare bones of Letitia’s story. Patrick Logan’s history – how he developed the colony, his treatment of the convicts, and his explorations in the hinterland – has been recounted before, but very little is known about Letitia. She is a principal subject in Jessica Anderson’s novel, The Commandant, but that’s a work of fiction and unlikely to be a true account of her character.
I’d be really pleased to hear from anyone who can help shed light on Letitia’s history, or on what life for women like her would have been like in 19th century Ireland or Australia.
