SCOTTISH ROMAN CATHOLICS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY AUSTRALIA

Abstract

In a churchyard in the Sydney suburb of Ryde, there stands a simple marble gravestone inscribed 'In Loving Memory of Donald McDonald, A Native of Fort William, Scotland. Died at St Leonards on 8 July 1887 Aged 69 years, A Colonist of 47 years'. Donald McDonald was a member of a group which was a minority of a minority in nineteenth-century Australia—Scottish Roman Catholics. They were a minority of a minority in two ways. First, they were a minority among Scottish immigrants. Scots represented roughly ten per cent of immigrants into Australia to 1900, although in Victoria and Queensland the figure was somewhat higher, about sixteen and thirteen per cent respectively. They were a small but very significant minority of all immigrants. The vast majority of Scottish immigrants was Presbyterian, with very small numbers of Episcopalians, Methodists, Congregationalists, Jews and others. Probably fewer than 9,500 or four per cent of Scottish immigrants were Catholics.1 Secondly, they were a minority among Roman Catholic immigrants. Catholics generally constituted a much bigger minority among all immigrants—about twenty per cent. This suggests that only about two per cent of Catholic immigrants up to 1900 were Scots. Thus, Scottish Roman Catholics were a tiny minority within two minorities. It is therefore not surprising that they are a virtually forgotten group. It is the aim of this article to examine the nature of Scottish Roman Catholics in colonial Australia, their significance to their new country and especially to their church, and to show that their contribution was not insignificant in either sphere.