The Irish Evictee's contribution to Australia is a magnificent story. It is not one that I feel qualifies to write myself so I am seeking an Irish Evictee to tell the story in the first person. According to my slightly English memory, the Irish Freedom Fighters made up a third part of the Convicts sent here in slavery's days, and they were supplemented by this very important group of Irish "free" arrivals. These were the Evictees.
The Imperial memory we do not have any such victims of ethnic cleansing in this country, but we do have quite a number of "Assisted Immigrants". Of course at that time in Ireland the English invader considered that burning someone's house down was an excellent way of "assisting" them to immigrate, but that is beside the point. This additional influx of people saw the Colony come to life.
The typical Evictee was a single young woman with one or more rug-rats and ankle-bighters attached. The Convict and Evictee women where shamed and oppressed as drunken prostitutes for more than a century, but the historical fact is that only 11% of woman Transported were convicted of prostitution and none of the Evictees came here for that reason. The vast majority of women Transported here were done over for trivial matters of petty theft and the like that would bring a caution or at most a fine today. The evictees of course were never accused of any wrong doing. Their crime was to be of less value than an English sheep.