Digital Exhibition: Waterford’s Transported Convict Women

An online exhibition ‘Waterford’s Transported Convict Women’, developed in collaboration with Waterford’s Transported Women, A Herstory, Grangegorman Histories, The Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI), the South East Technological University (SETU) Library and the Royal Irish Academy’s IT team.

This digital exhibition offers a unique opportunity to present the stories of women transported from Waterford to Tasmania, via Grangegorman, whose experiences have often been overlooked in traditional historical narratives. It forms part of the upcoming ‘Beyond the Walls’ exhibition set to open in Autumn in TU Dublin’s new Academic Hub & Library in Grangegorman, Dublin.

Between 1788 and 1853, approximately 380 women from the Waterford area were transported to Australia – with many women’s crimes rooted in poverty and survival. Among these are 10 women admitted to Grangegorman in 1849, who later travelled together to Tasmania (formerly Van Diemen’s Land) aboard the convict ship Australasia.

This free online resource combines digitised archival records, personal testimonies from descendants and handcrafted memorials to shed a light into the lives and legacies of these Waterford women.

The exhibition is also enriched by the poems written by Shirley O’ Shea, a writer from Carrick-on-Suir and a Teacher of English and German at St. Declan’s Community College, Kilmacthomas since 1999, and Heather Multimer, direct descendant of one of the transported women.