Patrick Cusack, Convict "Havering" 1849

Patrick Cusack was born in 1829 in Askeaton, County Limerick in Ireland. His father was Michael Cusack and his mother was Mary Green. Patrick had at least two siblings, a brother named John who was born around 1823 and a sister named Honora who was born in 1831.

Patrick and his siblings grew up in the time when the Catholic majority of Ireland lived in poverty under oppressive British rule. In the 1840s in Limerick, there were widespread potato crop failures, followed by the subsequent horrors of the Great Hunger, which led to an incredible number of deaths due to disease and starvation. Life would have been incredibly difficult for Patrick and his family.

In 1848, the course of Patrick's life was to change considerably. At the age of 19, Patrick and his brother John, aged 25, were convicted of larceny - larceny of a sheep.

The Ireland Prison Register entry indicated this was the first crime for the brothers as it stated "never convicted before". The brothers were obviously not experienced criminals, considering they were caught during the execution of their very first crime.

Perhaps the incident was a bit of a lark gone horribly wrong, or it may have been the desperate act of brothers trying to provide food for the family given the conditions they must have been enduring during and after the Great Hunger.

The brothers were convicted of their first-ever crime in July of 1848, and sent to the Dublin Bridewell Prison (known as Richmond Prison) in September of 1848. The Richmond prison was supposedly used to hold offenders convicted of minor crimes, so I guess that the brothers were not considered hardened criminals. The conditions were nonetheless, very tough. Among the punishments that were supposedly dished out were solitary confinement, the treadmill, wearing a metal helmet to constrict the skull, and flogging!

Patrick Cusack and his brother John were incarcerated in that prison for almost a year awaiting the execution of their sentence, which was seven years transportation. Whilst the Irish Prison Register listed Patrick's age as 17 when he entered Richmond Prison, he was in fact 19 years old.

Patrick and his brother, along with over 300 other convicts, boarded a ship in 1849 that was bound for Australia.

'The Havering' left Dublin on the 4th of August 1849, and arrived in Port Jackson on the 8th of November 1849.

A ticket of leave - No. 49/1081 - was issued for Patrick not long after his arrival in the colonies.

It was granted on the 30th of November, which was just 3 weeks after Patrick had arrived.

It was clearly recorded on Patrick's ticket of leave, granted in November of 1849, he was to remain in the district of Port Macquarie, where he was allowed to find work or work for himself. It appears he found work fairly quickly and was then allowed to move to the Clarence River district the following year.

Another ticket of leave, dated January 1850, showed that Patrick was working for a Mr. N. Garard in the Clarence River District and was expected to remain there for a period of 12 months. After that he was a free man.