BURIALS - ST PATRICKS PARRAMATTA

 
 
The first burial was performed at St Patricks on 16th January 1836 by 
the Rev.Dr.William Bernard Ullathorne. There were 201 further burials 
performed during this decade. On average about three burials each month.
 
The information recorded for each burial is as follows:
 burial date
 Christian name
 family name
 age
 abode
 civil status at time of death
 year and ship of arrival
 quality or profession
 officiating minister
 reference number
 
Various miscellaneous remarks in the register have been recorded as 
'end-notes' at the bottom of the list.
 
The burials are listed in chronological order. The records in the register 
are not always in strict chronological order but this has been corrected 
in this work.
 
The Rev.Dr.William Bernard Ullathorne was the first chaplain assigned 
to St Patricks in 1836. He only remained one year to be replaced in 1837 
the Rev.Joseph Charles Sumner. The Rev.Richard Maun took over in February 
1839, only stayed one year, to be replaced in 1840 by Rev.Michael Brennan. 
The Rev. John Thomas Lynch performed one burial in 1839 and the Rev.John 
Fitzpatrick a couple in 1840.
 
At the time of commencement of St Patricks the information to be recorded 
for each burial was; reference number, 
date of burial, Christian name of the deceased, family name of the 
deceased, age, abode, ship of arrival, quality or profession and 
officiating minister. Unfortunately the ship of arrival was only recorded 
for serving convicts and then quite rarely.
 
For the colonial born their year of birth and parents names are recorded 
in the ship of arrival column.
 
St Patricks does not appear to have used the official government forms 
in recording its burials. As a consequence there are no 'Dates of Death' 
in 1839 and 1840.
 
The ages of the deceased ranged from twenty four hours for Sophia Evans 
(the age was not recorded for 19 infants) to 90 years for Charles Murphy 
(but there is no corroborating evidence to support this age). In twelve 
cases no age was recorded. The number of infants who did not live past 
their fifth birthday was a whopping 185 or 63% of burials, the highest 
recorded for any parish. The presence in the parish of the Female Factory 
and the fact that the majority of the female convict enclosed therein 
were Irish Catholics undoubtedly explains this high figure.
 
An unexpected and ultimately disappointing feature of the infants 
buried at St Patricks is that less than a quarter were baptized (or 
had their baptisms recorded) making identification almost impossible.
 
Despite extensive research the identity of the deceased at St Patricks 
has only been discovered in 121 (or 60% of) cases during this decade.
 
There were two duplicate entries in the register, both with St Johns 
Parramatta; Phillip Lee and Francis Gilkins (recorded as Gilcaux on her 
indent).
 
The reference number would direct the reader to the relevant entry 
in the original source document. The reference numbers for St Patricks 
run sequentially from 0001 to 0158 at the end of 1839 (number 0150 was left 
blank) then re-initialized in 1840 to A001 to A044 by the end of the decade 
(number A008 was duplicated).
 
There were two interesting features in the reference number sequencing 
at St Patricks. Firstly the four entries for 1836 come at the end of 1839 
which accounts for their numbers being so out of sequence. Secondly whereas 
94 of 157 burials up to 1840 were for infants, there were no infant burials 
recorded amongst the 45 burials of 1840. However after the last entry for 
that year Rev.Brennan has written "during the year 1840 there died 
in the Female Factory 55 male and 36 female children". Why he chose not 
to record these burials individually is a mystery but it can be assumed 
that there were an extra 91 burials in 1840, bringing the total for the 
decade to 293.
 
To locate an entry on this list; firstly an alphabetical search on the 
name would be made on List 5 using code "SPP" from which the date of 
burial would be  retrieved, secondly using the appropriate date, the 
burial would then be located on this list.

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