Kevin Dowling

This small volume contains a collection of letters written by the artist and photographer William Dowling to his family in Ireland. William was a Young Irelander who, whilst working in London, became involved in the Chartist movement. He was tried for sedition at the Old Bailey and transported to Tasmania along with many other Chartist activists. His letters describe his imprisonment, his trial and sea voyage to Tasmania and his subsequent life working as an artist and photographer in the convict colony. They also describe many of the personalities who were transported with him such as the Chartist William Cuffay and other Young Irelanders such as John Mitchell who joined him in Tasmania following the failed 1848 rebellion of the famine years in Ireland. Many of the letters are personal in nature and reveal his concern for his family both in Tasmania and Ireland during the most difficult of times. The letters are full of fascinating insights from the perspective of someone who lived through those turbulent years and cared deeply about his country's fate.