| Description | Documents relating to Teresa and Amelia Kirwan [in some of the documents their last name is given as Kenny], the illegitimate children of a felon, William Burke Kirwan, who murdered his wife. Includes:
Documents relating to the raising of money to enable them to emigrate to the US to join their mother, for example:
Letter to Thomas Mostyn, Crown and Treasury Solicitor from Edward Smith, 3 June 1866, relating to the sale of stock authorised by the Lord Lieutenant to realise £40.
Letter from Edward Kirwan looking for money to accompany his sisters to America, 17 July 1866. 'Dear Sir I would like to accompany my two sisters to America they are young and know nothing of the world. There are a great many traps set for young women going across in those steamers more especially in the steerage they are treated like pigs they will in all probability be [?] sick any person laboring under that sickness becomes as helpless as an infant. It would be a sin to send them alone.'
Letters from the mother of Teresa and Amelia Edwards.
Letters and documents as to the conduct of the Kirwan family in America, for example:
Document signed Mrs Biskinsky, New York, 1 March 1867,
'I certify that Mrs Teresa [?] Kearns stole from my house in 37th street New York several pieces of Ribbons and other goods and Mrs Kearns having brought some of said Ribbons to her Daughters residence in sixth avenue. Said pieses [sic] of ribbons were brought to me by her daughter Teresa A. Kearns, and that I had no knoledge [sic] of the theft until Teresa A. Kearns called on me with the Ribbons asked if they were given to her mother, Both Teresa A. Kearns and Amelie S. Kearns acted most honorably in the matter'
Letter to Thomas Mostyn from T. Smith in New York, 11 November 1866,
'...knowing as I do the interest you have taken in Miss Teresa and Amelia Kenney I think it right to inform you of the treatment they are receiving from members of their own family'. He goes on to discuss the behaviour of the girls' older sister Mary. `The first day I saw Mary I at once saw what sort of character she was and soon after I learned from her sisters Teresa & Amelia (with whom she was living) that nearly every evening she was intoxicated, that she used under the excuse of working in the evenings at a millinery establishment, remain out till 2 o'clock in the morning and some times stay out all night, that when she came home at night she was generally intoxicated and that she used to then quarrell [sic] with, curse and abuse her sisters, especially Amelia who told her she was a disgrace to them, I at once spoke to her mother and she acknowledged that Mary's manner, dress, etc was not what it ought to be but would not allow she was immoral. I then had this girl watched .'` |
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