Single women, encouraged to migrate to the colonies during the late 1880s to fulfil the shortage of domestic servants, had their freedom restricted and were kept isolated from their fellow colonists.
‘Woman, it has been said, is like blue china, very valuable when sound, but very worthless when damaged or broken’ is a quote showing one such example of this attitude.
As part of the Western Australian Museum’s second year of the Harry Butler Lecture Series: In the Wild West, Dr Jan Gothard will discuss the fascinating experiences of these women, beginning with their selection and screening, and following their shipboard passage to the colonies, and their arrival and transit into paid domestic work.
Dr Gothard said that between 1850 and 1900, almost one hundred thousand single women emigrated from Britain to the Australian colonies under schemes organised and funded by Australian colonial governments.
“The popular assumption is that most of these women came out to find husbands but my research has established that female immigration schemes were devised to ease the desperate colonial shortage, not of wives, but of domestic servants in colonial homes,” Dr Gothard said.
Dr Gothard has also found that the primary objective of most of these young women was to improve their lives through paid employment.
The migration of single women was a process very unlike the migration of men.
“Colonial governments were keen to see that their investment in these expensive schemes was well protected, so shipboard matrons went to great lengths to keep their charges away from the contaminating influence of men, including the ships’ officers,” Dr Gothard said.
On arrival, the young women were confined once again, this time in often grossly sub-standard immigrant depots. Isolated from their fellow colonists, they were left ignorant about the wages they could command in a labour hungry market.
“It’s a story which hasn’t been told before but which illustrates not only the experiences of the immigrants themselves, but colonial society more generally.”
Dr Jan Gothard is associate professor in history at Murdoch University. Her teaching and research interests include migration, environmental history and disability. She is also a committed oral historian and is past editor of the Oral History Association of Australia Journal and convenor of the Association’s Editorial Board. Her book, Blue China: Single Female Migration to Colonial Australia (2001) was awarded the WA Premiers Prize for History in 2002. Jan’s most recent book, Greater Expectations: Living with Down syndrome in the 21st century, was published by Fremantle Press earlier this year.
The Harry Butler lecture series: In the Wild West is proudly presented by the WA Museum in partnership with Chevron Australia. The series showcases the work of Museum scientists, curators and associates in the areas of natural and social sciences.
Information about single female migration and the ‘Brideships’ as they were sometimes called is included in the Unearthed: Mining Stories from the Mid West exhibition currently running at the WA Museum – Geraldton until 23 October 2011. This community exhibition tells the story of mining in the Mid West region from ochre to Oakajee.
LECTURE: Blue China: single female migration to colonial Australia
WHEN: 7.00pm Thursday 28 July, 2011
WHERE: WA Museum – Geraldton, Museum Place, Batavia Coast Marina, Geraldton.
BOOKINGS ESSENTIAL: www.museum.wa.gov.au/inthewildwest
COST: By gold coin donation.
Flora Perrella, Western Australian Museum: T. 9212 3856 M. 0424 027 646
