Dead Letter Office

An undeliverable letter is a very sad thing indeed. Someone took the time to write, to pass along a bit of news or a few words of gossip, but the sentences remain unheard. Such is the tragic case of the missive that James Walsh sent to his wife in 1843.

Postmarked in Clonmel, the letter turned up recently at a philatelic auction in Sydney, Australia. Although it was addressed to Mary Walsh in Tasmania, the item was in the possession of an American collector, and no one seems to know where it was from 1843 until said collector acquired it in 1973. Normally at such auctions, the only thing of interest is the stamp and so the only thing available is the envelope to which it is attached. In this case, the contents remained, and historians would like to know more.

Mary Walsh was transported in 1842, charged with stealing a piece of cashmere wool. Her sentence, as was typical at the time, was seven years. Despite protests and petitions that the sentence was excessive, Mrs. Walsh was put aboard the Hope and sent off to Van Diemen's Land. She left behind her husband and two children, taking along her infant daughter. No bottles of baby formula available back then, and there was no other choice but to keep mammy and baby together until baby was weaned.

By all accounts, the year-old infant was dumped in an orphanage in Tasmania and Mary was put to work as a servant. About a year after Mary arrived in Hobart, Tasmania, her husband hired a professional letter writer to inform her that he and the other two children missed her terribly. He included a few lines about local gossip, about the people and places that his wife knew well. As far as anyone can tell, Mary never received the letter, perhaps because she was living at a different address than the one her husband had. The baby died about a year after that, Mary was given her ticket of leave in 1846 and then was freed after her seven years were up.

Like most other Irish transportees, Mary had no money for her return passage to Ireland, transportation provided to but not from prison. Historian Elspeth Wishart of the Tasmania Museum and Art Gallery is hoping to find out what happened to Mary, whose existence cannot be traced beyond the issuance of her Free Certificate. As for her husband and two other children, they too are lost in the past. All that is left is a touching letter and the profound sense of heartbreak and injustice.

Perhaps in another two hundred years, some of my letters will turn up at a philatelic auction, the stamps postmarked in Illinois, the letters sent to New York City. Who is this Steven Axelrod of the Axelrod Agency, a historian might ask. The letters were never received, left perhaps in a dead letter office somewhere, unread, the queries unanswered, the author unpublished.