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William Dedicoat/Day and Mary Kirwin |
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WILLIAM DEDICOAT/DAY AND MARY KIRWIN These two ancestors are such characters as you might find in a Charles Dickens novel. William Dedicoat, or Bold Bill Day, convict and bushranger, was a larger than life character who has even had an opera written about him, while Mary Kirwin is a shadowy figure who more or less flits between the lines of his story without much to distinguish her from hundreds of other Irish lasses who came to Australia at the time to seek their fortune. One sad story has survived in the family that later in life she came calling at her daughter’s house in Surry Hills in an attempt at reconciliation only to be left on the doorstep. We do not even know when she died or where. She deserves better – may these few pages do her some honour. |