The
Catholic Weekly
Online
Sydney
8 February 2004
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First day fun? It’s all smiles at All Hallows
Needy hit by Christmas credit card crisis
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Tick for Govt ‘report card’
Rome youth forum
‘Holy lawyers’
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Editorial: Suffer the children
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Conversation: Fr Arthur Bridge, patron of the arts - Parish priest who likes to face the music
Fathers and sandcastles
Tribute to ‘the Chief’
Parish Profile: A gifted beginning ...
Life in a seminary
Law challenged in many ways: bishop
Kicking goals with kids
Tribute to ‘the Chief’
THE CHIEF: Michael Dwyer
By Chris Lindsay
The story of how Sydney’s Waverley Cemetery came to have the world’s largest memorial to the Irish Rebellion of 1798 is celebrated in a new booklet, Sydney 1798 Memorial – tomb of a man who fought an empire.
The booklet, written by Fr Michael O’Sullivan, covers the history of Michael Dwyer and others involved in the 1798 Rising, how Dwyer and his wife Mary came to be buried here and how, when and why the monument was erected.
The 1798 Memorial is built mostly of white Carrara marble. Rectangular in shape, it is nine metres wide and seven metres deep.
A white marble cross rises nine metres above the rear wall.
Carved on the base of the cross are the words: “In loving memory of all who dared and suffered in Ireland in 1798.”
On the sub-base of the cross it says: “Pray for the Souls of Michael Dwyer the ‘Wicklow Chief’ and Mary his wife whose remains are interred in this vault.”
Michael Dwyer, born in Wicklow, Ireland, in 1772, was 26 when the 1798 Rising against English rule began.
He received his first independent command as a captain at the Battle of Hacketstown.
The English subdued the Rising. But, although other units surrendered, Michael Dwyer continued with a highly successful guerilla resistance which caught the imagination of the Irish people looking for rays of hope after the defeats of 1798.
He led the English on a merry dance until December, 1803, when he and some of his lieutenants surrendered voluntarily on condition they be sent to America.
However, the English reneged and, without a trial, sent them to the penal colony of Botany Bay for life.
They were classified as state prisoners, not convicts, so they were treated as free settlers when they arrived in Sydney on February 15, 1806; each received a land grant of 100 acres (40ha) along the Cabramatta Creek.
Dwyer spent a brief time on Norfolk Island (he was accused of organising a rising in Sydney). Then he was named as one of three new constables to serve the Georges River area.
Governor Lachlan Macquarie gave him a full pardon in 1814.
Dwyer died in 1825, aged 53, survived by Mary and seven children.
In 1885 a group of working class Irishmen in Sydney formed a social group, the Shamrock Club. From 1886 they organised an annual pilgrimage to Dwyer’s grave in the Devonshire St cemetery.
They would have erected a monument there, but the state government chose the cemetery as the site for Central Railway Station and to move the graves elsewhere.
Most went to Botany cemetery.
With the centenary of the Rising approaching, the Irish community sought a conspicuous resting place for the ‘Wicklow Chief’ and his colleagues.
A committee led by Dr Charles William MacCarthy paid £50 for a plot in the centre of Waverley Cemetery, overlooking the ocean.
The £2000 needed for the memorial – with its Carrara marble, bronze plaques and wolfhounds and mosaic floor – was raised by the Irish in Sydney, country towns in NSW and in Queensland, Victoria and New Zealand. Hence the inscription: “Erected by the Irish People and Sympathisers in Australasia”.
Not everyone was in favour of honouring 1798. Cardinal Moran described it as “a blunder and a crime”.
He then “drew a distinction between infidels like Wolfe Tone and the great body of the people, who freely died for their faith”.
The Irish community was prevented from moving the remains of other 1798 veterans. Only Michael and Mary Dwyer were to be buried at Waverley – on Sunday, May 22.
It was the largest funeral Sydney had seen with 400 horse-drawn carriages following the hearse in a procession of 10,000 people watched by 100,000 others.
The 1798 Memorial is a wonderful tribute to the faith and generosity of the Australian Irish at the end of the 19th century.
The information above is from Sydney 1798 Memorial – tomb of a man who fought an empire. Copies can be ordered by sending a cheque or postal order for $19.95 to Fr Michael O’Sullivan, 6/55 Gladstone St, Kogarah, 2217.