SOURCE: “Genteel Emigrants,” in The Governesses: Letters from the Colonies, 1862-1882, Hutchinson, 1985, pp. 1-23.

[In the following essay, Clarke offers a history of the Female Middle Class Emigration Society and an overview of the more than three hundred female emigrants who were sponsored by the Society and sent overseas to seek employment as governesses.]

‘Amongst no class does greater distress exist than amongst the class of poor governesses …’

Jane Lewin, London, 1863

When Emily Streeter, a young, vulnerable but spirited girl, landed in Sydney from London on the Rachel in September 1861 in search of employment as a governess, she symbolised the hopes of many women in Great Britain for a better life overseas. Educated and genteel, but unmarried and unemployed, they hoped that their services would be in demand in the British colonies in one of the few congenial occupations then open to them. In England, women like Emily Streeter faced lives of quiet desperation as they searched for employment in an overcrowded market. Their hopes of finding a governess's paradise in the colonies often were not realised, but the more adaptable found a measure of success.

Emily Streeter, one of a group of six women who pioneered a scheme for the emigration of governesses from Great Britain, was not immediately successful in her search for work. However, after a worrying five weeks in Sydney, which exhausted her financial resources, she found a position with a grazier's family in the isolated district of Jerry's Plains on the Upper Hunter, teaching five children aged five to eleven.

Many others followed. Miss A. H. Jackson went to South Africa, to Verulam, near Durban, in 1863 and was catapulted into an unfamiliar world of green mamba snakes, native servants, houses with thatched roofs and canvas ceilings, Natal sores and dysentery. Laura Jones found herself working as an assistant teacher and living in a six-foot-square hut in a small mining-town in northern Victoria. Ostracised because of her religious beliefs, she was forced to resign her position and earned a precarious living doing needlework for the miners' wives.

Marion Hett travelled the last three miles of her journey to Tutu Totara, a station on New Zealand's North Island, by bridlepath. Louisa Geoghegan left Melbourne on Christmas Day 1866 to travel to a sheep-station in the Wimmera, near the South Australian border, a journey that took six days of hard driving with early morning starts, rests in the heat of the day and more riding in the evening. Soon after she arrived, one of her charges died tragically of measles and was buried in a grave near the lonely homestead.

Elizabeth Mitchinson, in the late 1870s, went to Bedford, in the eastern part of Cape Colony, South Africa, where she taught five pupils English, French, Latin, music, drawing and painting. There she did not undress to go to bed, for fear Zulus would attack during the night. Augusta McNeill travelled two days on an overladen bullock-dray to get to a situation north of Christchurch, New Zealand, where she taught six children, cleaned the schoolroom, collected wood, lit the fire, scrubbed the floors, washed dishes, sewed for the family and played the piano three hours a night for their entertainment.

At least Augusta had a job. Others were not so lucky. Ellen Ollard, in Melbourne in the 1870s, earned only £13 in two years and Agnes Macqueen, in Brisbane in 1865, endured great hardships and existed only by selling her drawings.

The emigration of these and other governesses in the latter part of the nineteenth century, to the British colonies in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, and to the United States and Canada—also to more exotic destinations, including India and Russia—was financed by the London-based Female Middle Class Emigration Society. The Society's purpose was to lend money and give other assistance to educated women of good character, to enable them to pay their passages to places overseas where prospects of obtaining employment as governesses were believed to be favourable.

Over its twenty or so years of operation, the Society assisted approximately 300 emigrants, an insignificant number among the human tide of millions who left the British Isles to begin new lives in the colonies. The importance of this tiny, atypical group of women rests on the fact that so many of them recorded their feelings about emigration and their observations on the places to which they emigrated. Because they had borrowed money, they were obliged to communicate regularly with the Society and many, when they repaid part or all of their loans, wrote lengthy and informative letters. This correspondence was encouraged by the Society, particularly letters from those women who reported in any depth on conditions in the colonies, for the Society was looking continually for openings for further emigrants. These letters from the governesses, laboriously transcribed into letterbooks by an office worker in London, have survived.

What emerges from the best of the letters are fresh perceptions on life in Australia and the other countries of destination between 1862 and 1882, when in the dying years of the Scheme, the letters (or the recording of them) petered out. They also provide a fascinating perspective on the attitudes and the prejudices of the type of British middle-class women who were attracted to the Scheme.

The Female Middle Class Emigration Society began as a result of the exertions of Maria S. Rye, who was born in Chelsea in 1829, the eldest of nine children of Edward Rye, a London solicitor of Norfolk origin. One of her brothers, Edward, was an entomologist and author of a book on British beetles and another, Walter, was a voluminous writer on Norfolk history.

Maria Rye, although generally a woman with a moralistic and conservative outlook, held advanced views regarding female employment. In English society, lower-class women traditionally had worked for a living—as domestic servants, and as farm and field workers, particularly during harvest time. Later, they slaved in the notoriously cruel conditions of the early factory system. However, the avenues for employment open to women of the middle and upper classes were almost non-existent. These women were expected to marry and then manage households of their own. Nineteenth-century Britain, however, did not provide all women with the opportunity for marriage and for many the situation was desperate. A substantial surplus of women dimmed the prospects of marriage and middle-class pretensions and educational status posed insurmountable barriers to acceptance of work as shop-assistants or servants. As a result, many middle-class and upper-class women were doomed to a life as unpaid household drudges in their own families or with their relatives. The surplus of women was attributed to losses of men in wars and the effect of migration by far greater numbers of men than women. On the other hand, the colonies were promoted continually as places that needed more emigrants, and particularly women, to balance the surplus of men. This combination of lack of opportunity for marriage or for work in the home country, and the need for women in the colonies, was remarked on by many observers, but one who acted was Maria Rye.

In 1861, and then in her early thirties, Maria Rye was a prominent member of the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women and, in her own right, ran a law stationery service where she employed women to copy legal documents by hand, a new field for women's work. An advertising handbill for the firm described her as:

Law Stationer,

Office: 12, Portugal Street, Lincoln's Inn, W.C.

Law Papers of all kinds carefully and skilfully copied at the usual charges.

Deeds engrossed on parchment and stamped.

Chancery Bills printed.

Specifications copied.

Circular Letters written 1s. 6d. per dozen.

Envelopes addressed 5s. per 1000.

Sermons and Petitions copied.

Maria Rye's experience in this business reinforced her appreciation of the great numbers of educated women who were desperate for employment. Her office was besieged every day by applicants for work, many the daughters of professional men from towns, cities and counties all over the British Isles.

Other similar establishments associated with the Society for Promoting the Employment of Women—for example, the Victoria Press run by Emily Faithfull, who was printer to Queen Victoria, the Register Office run by Miss Crowe [It is not known if this Miss Crowe is Catherine Crowe who emigrated to South Africa in 1862. Certainly, there is no indication of this in her letters to the Society.] and the Telegraph Station run by Mrs Craig—reported similar numbers of applicants. In 1861, 810 women applied for one situation at one of these establishments for which the pay was £15 a year. Another 250 applied for a vacancy at £12 a year. Another similar establishment received 120 apparently unsolicited applications in a single day when there was not even a vacancy. When Emily Faithfull opened her printing office, she received seventy-eight written and more than one hundred personal applications, but she could employ only twenty women. [Although unable to provide work for more than a handful of the young women who applied, these enterprises were forerunners of the move by women into office work. The electric telegraph, for instance, opened up a new field of work for women and their eventual employment in the Civil Service. Women were first employed as telegraph clerks in 1854, when Queen Victoria's speech at the opening of Parliament was telegraphed to the Continent by girls who were supervised by a woman telegraphist. When the privately owned telegraph-stations were taken over by the government in 1870, some of the employees, including some women, became civil servants.]

As a partial solution to the problem of surplus women, Maria Rye turned to emigration. Using her own resources and private donations from others of similar views, she began providing loans for passage money to enable small numbers of educated women to emigrate to the colonies.

At this time, middle-class women generally were considered to be outside the scope of government-assisted migration schemes, unless they were prepared to swallow their pride and describe themselves as servants. These schemes, financed by the colonial governments and run from London by the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners, varied in detail but were based on supplying the type of emigrants most needed in the colonies: usually labourers, artisans and female servants. Miss Rye described the orders from the colonial governments specifying the types of migrants required as being ‘as peremptory and as defined as that of any Melbourne merchant writing to the corresponding house in London, about Manchester cottons or Bermondsey boots’.

There were continual complaints from the colonies that the women who were arriving as emigrants did not fit the category of servant. As early as 1852, the Immigration Agent in Victoria, Edward Grimes, complained that there was no demand for nursery governesses, companions to ladies or artificial flower-makers, after a number who had so described themselves arrived in Melbourne. Another report on immigration the following year stated that openings in the colonies for persons of an educated or half-educated class were not as good as for unskilled workers. At the same time, there were persistent and tantalising reports of the lack of women in the colonies. Miss Rye, in a paper read at the Social Science Congress at Dublin in 1861 on ‘Emigration of Educated Women’, gave the total deficiency of women in New Zealand as 11,161; in Victoria, 138,579; in South Australia, 1,889; and in Western Australia, 4,207. She continued:

155,636 fewer women than men in the two islands of which we alone possess statistical accounts! What would the disproportion be if we could include Natal, Canada and Columbia, in the reckoning? Of the fearful reverse of this picture as exhibited in England it would be superfluous to speak; and if the vice and immorality on either side of the Atlantic is ever to be uprooted, it must be by some further extension of emigration, by the steady departure from these shores of our superfluous workers, and by an influx into the colonies of a body of women infinitely superior by birth, by education, and by taste, to the hordes of wild uneducated creatures we have hitherto sent abroad.

She saw the solution in convincing the colonies that the introduction of such a class of women would ‘not only be a relief to England, but an actual benefit to the colonies themselves—an elevation of morals being the inevitable result of the mere presence in the colony of a number of high-class women’.

Despite the official reports, which were unanimous in discouraging the migration of women looking for more refined employment, Maria Rye, by corresponding with prominent members of society in the Australian colonies, managed to get some influential backing for her scheme. Edward Willis, a pioneer settler at Port Phillip, offered to have the question raised in the Victorian Legislative Assembly. He agreed with Miss Rye: ‘This is a most excellent cause you have in hand. Qualified teachers and governesses are very much wanted indeed in Australia. Those going out have a very fine field before them.’ He added that as there were various grades of society in Melbourne, each with different requirements and wants, it was ‘scarcely fair and just to confine the advantages of free emigration to women of the lowest attainments and capacities’. However useful and necessary such a ‘substratum’ of workers might have been at the start of colonisation, the time had passed for female emigration to be exclusively confined to the servant class.

Mrs Thomas Turner à Beckett, a prominent member of Melbourne society, was more in the mainstream of colonial opinion. She replied that the colonies would be very interested in any scheme for sending out a ‘higher class of servant’.

The most promising response came from the Anglican Bishop of Sydney, Bishop Frederic Barker, and his wife. A letter written on the Bishop's behalf, and quoted by Miss Rye in her paper, stated:

We shall be very glad to assist in finding situations for educated women of respectable character, provided they could be sent out to Sydney by a fund raised in England. The Bishop begs me to tell you that if two or three persons qualified for teaching parochial schools for girls or infants could be sent here, there would not be any difficulty in providing situations for them. They should have some certificates of their competency, and be not under twenty or more than two or at most five and thirty years of age. Should the plan suggested meet with the approbation of your ladies' committee, we must ask you to apprize us of any persons likely to come out and in what vessels their passages are taken, in order that arrangements may be made for their reception in Sydney, and for their future destination as teachers. We have been greatly interested in the various schemes now at work in London and elsewhere for the protection and employment of women. The colonies ought to assist largely in such a work, but you know the many difficulties and evil influences that have to be encountered here; and how we have suffered from swarms of ignorant women, who are a misery to any place. But if respectable, well-taught persons could be introduced in any numbers they would, as you say, be of incalculable benefit to the colony.

There were also enthusiastic responses from Adelaide and Durban, in South Africa. From Adelaide, Miss Rye said she had heard ‘that large incomes are earned there by many highly accomplished women’. She added: ‘It is true that there are all kinds of incongruities in colonial life, but how preferable such a life, to the homeless condition of nine governesses out of ten in this country?’

Maria Rye's views reached a much wider audience when she addressed the Social Science Congress at Dublin in 1861. In her address, she described graphically the desperate unemployment and hopelessness faced by many educated women in England, the real or perceived limitations to the emigration of such women under existing assisted schemes and the imbalance between the sexes in the colonies, with the implied prospects of marriage, as well as employment, for emigrant women. The advice she had had from all quarters, Maria Rye said, was: ‘Teach your protégées to emigrate; send them where the men want wives, the mothers want governesses, where the shopkeepers, the schools, and the sick will thoroughly appreciate your exertions, and heartily welcome your women’.

Her solution was the establishment of a loan fund from which suitable applicants for emigration would be lent passage money, repayable after two years and four months.

There are two great advantages in this system—firstly, we shall, by lending instead of giving, be able to assist a class of persons who, however poor they may be (and I believe not one person in a thousand has the very faintest idea how absolutely poor the women in this class are) would object, and very properly object, to being treated as paupers; secondly, this money, although always changing hands, would, with proper management, scarcely diminish or, at any rate, the losses would be so small that an insignificant subscription would amply cover them.

The printing of this address by the Victoria Press and its distribution, together with a letter by Emily Faithfull, published in the London Times of 4 December 1861, resulted in donations towards the establishment of a fund to assist educated female emigrants. The theme of Maria Rye's address also was taken up in a letter signed ‘S.G.O.’, the well-known initials of Lord (Sidney) Godolphin Osborne, philantropist and Anglican clergyman, published in The Times on 3 April 1862 under the heading ‘Sisters Help Sisters’. The letter commended Miss Rye's scheme and solicited donations, stating that educated women were ‘the very class much wanted in Australia and at Natal’.

A series of letters to the editor of The Times followed, some critical of the plan to send governesses overseas. In The Times of 23 April 1862, an anonymous writer (‘B.’), who had recently returned from Australia, warned:

Bearable situations as a governess are by no means so easily to be obtained as residents in England imagine; and the position of such a lady sent out in search of such a situation, but who fails to obtain it, or who even experiences long delay in obtaining it, is, in a country so expensive and so far from home, lamentable indeed.

This was followed on 24 April by a poignant letter from ‘J. K.’, ‘A Returned Australian Governess’, who wrote:

Sir,—Having experienced all the disappointment and trials attendant on emigrating to Australia as a governess, hoping to get speedy and remunerative employment in that capacity in the colony, perhaps a few words on the subject will strengthen your correspondent ‘B.'s’ excellent advice to those who are so kindly intending emigration assistance for the above object.

Early in 1858 I emigrated to Melbourne (leaving a position in a family as governess for the purpose), on the encouragement and advice of a friend in the colony, taking with me the highest testimonials and a letter of introduction to the Bishop's wife. On arrival I could not obtain a situation, though that lady, with others, interested themselves most warmly for me; and having no funds, I consequently had no home, and, after enduring much distress, could only obtain employment as daily needlewoman, the pay of which was inadequate to meet the still expensive rate of board and lodging in the colony.

Suffering much, my health entirely failing from disappointment, &c., some friends kindly made up a subscription, and sent me home to meet the reproaches of those who, knowing scarcely anything, and nothing practically, of the colony, blame me for not having succeeded. …

Maria Rye replied the next day in a letter which began: ‘J. K., having given her melancholy experience, and forwarded her four-year-old news about Melbourne, allow me to make a few extracts from letters received by the last mail, which will place the picture in another, and, happily, in a brighter light’. Then followed extracts from letters written by FMCES emigrants Caroline Heawood and Maria Barrow from Melbourne and Gertrude Gooch from Sydney, who had written to the Society in favourable terms of their experiences since coming to the colonies.

On 30 April, another correspondent, ‘C.L.T.’, also a former resident of Australia, warned that there were large numbers of young women of ‘superior class’ in Australia ‘without proper means of subsistence’. They had been induced to migrate by the hope of instant employment and a much higher rate of remuneration than in England, but instead were reduced to their last pound and to save themselves from starvation had to take in washing or needlework to earn a precarious existence. The writer concluded:

I think it should be fairly laid before these ladies, that their going to the colonies is like a raffle in which there are 50 blanks to one prize, and that, although that very humane, and I have no doubt most well-intentioned lady, Miss Maria Rye, is enabled to produce a few letters from governesses who have succeeded, there are now, at this moment, ten times as many who have not even the means to pay the postage home of their letters to England, which would plainly prove the inexpediency of any number of these ladies emigrating to the colonies. Hundreds there are, believe me, who will never be heard of; thousands there are who will never have, like ‘J. K.’, the helping hand extended to them to enable them to rejoin their friends and families in England, whom they have quitted without properly weighing the subject of emigration before it was too late.

To all governesses I say, reflect, consider how you will be placed if you don't get a situation. What then?

In The Times of 26 April, there had appeared an official warning from Stephen Walcott of the Government Emigration Board in London. He wrote that there was no demand for governesses in New South Wales, Victoria or South Australia. He quoted the Immigration Agent in Victoria, in a communication dated 25 January 1862, as saying ‘no demand whatever exists for the superior class of emigrants, such as clerks, shopmen, &c., and the same remark applies to the corresponding class of females, such as governesses, milliners, &c. I would strongly dissuade such from coming hither, unless they may have been invited to join friends already settled here’. Walcott concluded: ‘A small number, especially of those who have friends in the colony prepared to receive and protect them till they can obtain situations, may, perhaps, succeed; but we are convinced that a large emigration, should it take place, will only result in disappointment and disaster’.

An equally long letter from Maria Rye and Jane Lewin, published in The Times on the same day, acknowledged subscriptions totalling more than £300. Another letter two days later from Miss Rye showed she was unconvinced that there would be any problems arising from her scheme for the emigration of governesses.

I not only believe, but am confident, that there are vacant situations in the colonies for many hundreds of women vastly superior to the hordes of wild Irish and fast young ladies who have hitherto started as emigrants. If these women of mine work, it will be well; if they marry, it will be well; whichever happens, good must arise for the colonies, for our countrywomen and for commerce.

She contrasted the desperate employment situation in England with the colonies, where, she said, barely competent women were receiving £124 to £130 a year as governesses.

Maria Rye's unshakeable confidence, and the support of influential people, led to the formation of the Female Middle Class Emigration Society in May 1862, with the Earl of Shaftesbury, the great social reformer, as one of the patrons. Other patrons were Lord Brougham, former Lord Chancellor and President of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science; the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Sydney, Bishop Barker; Sir William à Beckett, formerly Victorian Chief Justice; the Honourable Arthur Kinnaird, later Lord Kinnaird, M. P. and philanthropist; and R. Monckton Milnes, later Lord Houghton, M. P. and a president of the Social Science Congress. The patronesses were the Honourable Mrs Locke King, Lady Young, Mrs H. Alers Hankey, Mrs Fynes Webber, Lady Franklin, Lady Dowling, the Honourable Mrs Egerton, Miss B. R. Parkes and Miss Isa Craig. The honorary secretaries were Maria S. Rye and Jane E. Lewin.

The colonial correspondents who acted as representatives of the Society were named in the Society's first annual report as: Mrs Barker, Mrs Gordon and Mrs A. Dillon in Sydney; Mrs T. T. à Beckett, Mrs Gatty Jones, Mrs Perry and E. Willis, Esq. in Melbourne; Mrs Clarke in Adelaide; Mrs R. Acutt, Mrs Brickhill, Mrs Churchill, Mrs Lamport and Mrs McArthur in Natal; and in British Columbia, Governor Douglas, Bishop Hills, Archdeacon and Mrs Wright and Colonel and Mrs Moody. [Despite the high-powered nature of this committee, few emigrants went to British Columbia under the Scheme.]

The FMCES adopted as its rules:

1 The Society confines its assistance entirely to educated women—no applicants being accepted who are not sufficiently educated to undertake the duties of nursery governess.

2 Every applicant is examined as far as possible, with regard to her knowledge of cooking, baking, washing, needlework and housework, and is required to be willing to assist in these departments of labour should it be necessary.

3 Applicants are required to give the names and addresses of four persons as referees, from whom the Society can obtain information respecting the position, character, strength, qualities, and general suitableness of the applicant for a colonial life, two of these referees to be ladies with whom the applicant has held situations, and two to be her personal friends. The references are, if possible, taken up personally by the Secretaries, and the Society hopes, by establishing correspondents in the chief provincial towns, to ensure in all cases a personal interview with the applicant, if not with her referees.

4 If the information obtained is satisfactory, the applicant, being accepted by the Society, receives all possible needful assistance. Should she be unable to pay the entire cost of outfit and passage money, the Society advances the deficient amount, a legal agreement to repay within two years and four months being signed by the emigrant, and two respectable householders as securities. Should an approved applicant not require a loan, she is equally entitled to the advantages of the Society's care and protection.

5 The Society secures all passages and purchases cabin fittings on behalf of the emigrants, thus saving much trouble and time. It is also enabled by the liberality of shipowners and outfitters to effect a considerable saving of expense. [The Society gave the cost of a second-class passage and cabin fittings ‘as generally about £25’. …] The Society's assistance to emigrants is given free of any charge whatever.

6 The Society has established regular correspondents at most of the colonial ports. As soon as a party leaves England, notice of their departure is sent by the Overland Mail to the correspondent at the port to which the emigrants are bound, a list of their names and qualifications, together with copies of the testimonials of each applicant, are sent at the same time and as the notice is received six weeks before the emigrants arrive, there is time to make preparations for their reception, and even to seek for situations.

In practice, some of these rules were unrealistic. As some of the women applied because they were unemployed—gentlewomen in distressed circumstances—they would have had difficulty in complying with the requirement for employers' references. Also, as their plaintive complaints bear out, any idea that they were prepared to combine the duties of adaptable housekeepers with governessing, as envisioned by the rules regarding ability to cook, wash and sew, proved optimistic. They were women deeply ingrained with ideas of their ‘place’ in the rigid caste system of nineteenth-century Britain. They had the usual attainments of their class and sex: the ability to read and write as a minimum, together with varying degrees of training in cultural subjects, such as French, music and drawing—although, as it turned out, some were found wanting in these accomplishments. In addition, some of the emigrants were too old and too set in their ways to adapt to the more demanding and less stratified life of the colonies.

The FMCES's first annual report, dated 28 October 1862, stated that the aim of the Society was to ensure that:

women who are superior in birth and attainments to most of those who have hitherto been sent to the colonies, might receive protection and assistance to emigrate, and thus lessen the number of our ill-paid and starving, because superfluous, workers at home.

Miss Jane Lewin, sole secretary in Miss Rye's then absence overseas, was able to report success:

The first party, consisting of six ladies, sailed for Sydney in June 1861. [Although the Society's work did not begin formally until May 1862, emigrants assisted through Miss Rye's efforts and by donations before that date were regarded as Society emigrants.] Since then 54 persons have been sent out by the Society, all, with five or six exceptions, of the governess class, many of whom had spent months trying in vain to obtain a situation, all from whom there has been time to hear have speedily obtained employment at salaries varying from £20 to £70 per annum.

The Society's report documented the fates of fourteen women sent to Australia and Africa during 1861, together with their initial salaries, if known, and comments, including in some cases a statement on the contrasting lack of employment in Britain. … At the time of this report, Maria Rye was on her way to New Zealand and the Australian colonies, where she planned to investigate female emigration and complete the Society's colonial organisation. The work of the Society, from the time of her departure, was largely in the hands of Jane Lewin, who developed a rapport with many of the emigrants. Although not such a public figure as Maria Rye, Jane Lewin (who was a niece of the historian and Member of Parliament, George Grote) was to become a key member of the FMCES.

Already in 1862, Miss Rye had assisted, independently of the Society, 315 persons to emigrate, including several families. The greater number were domestic servants, shop-women and packing operatives from Manchester, where on a visit to that distressed city, she had been besieged by two thousand applicants for emigration.

In an address to the Social Science Congress in October 1863 on ‘Female Middle Class Emigration’, Jane Lewin explained the difference between the work of the FMCES and the work of emigration undertaken separately by Maria Rye, and the misunderstandings that had occurred. In the latter part of 1862, she said, Miss Rye had dispatched large parties of working women to Queensland, New Zealand (Miss Rye herself had accompanied this group) and British Columbia on assisted passages offered by the colonial governments. These parties had consisted entirely of servants, dressmakers and others, and were sent out through Miss Rye's personal exertions.

Miss Lewin referred to the confusion that had arisen regarding these separate activities, including criticism of the Society for allegedly sending ninety-six governesses to Queensland: these were, in fact, factory or domestic workers. She said: ‘The Society rarely sends more than six of its emigrants in one party and far more generally only two at intervals of two to three months’. And she added:

… it is not only amongst the least educated class of females that great distress exists, nor is it the poorest only that are entitled to the benefits of emigration, nor indeed is it the most ignorant and unintelligent who are the most wanted in the colonies. Amongst no class does greater distress exist than amongst the class of poor governesses; and Miss Rye's efforts are specially directed to the emigration of governesses and of the better class of servants.

… In all cases, however, the Society requires education of the hands, as well as of the head; and the most highly accomplished applicant would be rejected were she to profess total ignorance of household work, cooking and the like, or to refuse to assist in domestic matters in the event of her being called upon to do so. It is hardly necessary to add that all possible precautions are taken to ensure good moral character in those who are sent out.

According to Miss Lewin, the Society fulfilled the two things required by ‘struggling educated women’: loans to pay passages when they were unable to pay for these themselves, and someone to meet them, to obviate the ‘risk of landing in a distant country unknown and unprotected, ignorant where to turn for a night's lodging or a little friendly counsel, for it must always be remembered that no existing immigration agency, public or private, helps this class of women.’ She continued:

The Society supplies the first of these requirements by granting loans, on sufficient security, to accepted applicants, and the second by establishing correspondents in every colonial port to which it sends. These correspondents, generally ladies of good position, receive the immigrants on their arrival, direct them to respectable lodgings and assist them in obtaining employment.

Official reports continued to be sceptical of the existence of openings in the colonies for educated females. The 1863 report of the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners made the sweeping comment that there were no openings for this class in Australia, British North America, the Cape of Good Hope or Natal. However, the report admitted that ‘an opening for one or two governesses might from time to time be found’ and that ‘a few thoroughly educated ladies who would be willing to go into the bush and not object, in addition to their educated duties, to assist occasionally in domestic matters (female servants being scarce) might meet with comfortable homes and that possibly a very limited number might obtain engagements in Sydney’. Nevertheless, the Society continued to sponsor small numbers of governesses and, generally, was able to report at least their initial success.

As a result of the frequent absence of Miss Rye and her absorption in other schemes, together with the illness of Miss Lewin, the Society's next annual report was not issued until 1872. By then, 158 women had sailed for Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, British Columbia and the United States with the assistance of the FMCES. The 1872 report included a short account of the fortunes of the women who had emigrated and a reminder from Miss Lewin that ‘governesses will never be wanted anywhere, in large numbers; so that our emigrants will never be reckoned by hundreds, although the Society may be doing very active and very useful work, among the class for which it is specially designed’.

In the following two years to the end of 1874, a further 21 women emigrated with the Society's assistance, bringing the total to 179 and by the end of 1879, the number had risen to 215.

During the 1870s, a paid secretary, Mrs Sunter, who had been associated with the running of Miss Rye's law-copying firm, was appointed to assist Miss Lewin. She was succeeded in about 1880 by Miss Strongith'arm. Jane Lewin remained honorary secretary until about 1882, when she joined Maria Rye on the Committee.

In its next report, issued at the end of 1882, the Society stated that the number of its emigrants had reached 260 and they had, for the most part, done remarkably well. One success story cited was of a lady who emigrated to New Zealand in 1866 and had been able to retire on an income of £150 per annum, derived from her savings during a period of fifteen years. ‘Such a fact is most encouraging, as shewing the possibilities open to a woman of energy in the Colonies’.

In accordance with the Society's practice of preserving the privacy of emigrants, the successful lady's name is not given. Five FMCES emigrants went to New Zealand in 1866 and the Society reported on them as follows:

No.	Salary in Colony	Remarks
101	£60 per year	Went out to a situation which she kept some years, left to open a School which is doing well.
106	£60 per year	Went out to a situation but found it filled. Afterwards obtained good engagement.
107		Very moderately qualified, took needlework as more lucrative than teaching.
112	£120 per year	First engagement at £40, then £80 in Otago, afterwards Government school.
113		Failed through misconduct. Died in hospital of consumption.

The most likely success story is No. 112, who does not appear to have written to the Society. Next seems to be No. 101, who was probably Martha Wyett, whose experiences are described later.

There is an apparent contradiction in the fact that the Society was able to report on the success or otherwise of most of its 302 emigrants (although it does record ‘nothing known’ about some) while recording letters from only 113. It only can be assumed either that some emigrants recorded the outcome of their movements in note form when they returned their loans, and these notes were not regarded as letters, or the information was obtained from their relatives or the people who guaranteed their loans.

The last letter in the Society's second letter-book is dated 1882 and the Society's final report was issued in 1886. By then, the work of other societies largely had taken over the role of the FMCES. The Society's report for 1886 announced that the work of the FMCES had been transferred to the Colonial Emigration Society, whose honorary secretary, Julia Blake, would act for both societies.

The report warned ‘half-educated women teachers’ against emigrating, since ‘the distress occasioned by the keen competition’ was as ‘extreme and despairing in the large and old-settled towns of the Colonies as in England’. A letter from an emigrant to Sydney was quoted: ‘I have heard of this keen competition in London. I never expected to see it in Sydney! The lady I went to had had 90 ladies already. The avenue to her house was peopled with girls.’ The correspondent added that if teachers wanted work, they must go ‘up country’, must accept the life of the family without other society, and must share the household work with the mother and family. ‘It is dull’, she said, ‘but teachers won't find work in the towns, which are overstocked’.

The report advised half-educated teachers to turn to any other means of living, such as a ‘Mother's Help’, rather than face competition from colonial teachers, who by this time were emerging well-trained from local teachers colleges and universities.

In all, 302 women were sponsored by the FMCES, including those women sent out in 1861 and the early part of 1862, before the formal commencement of the Society. The records of the destinations of these female emigrants are not complete, however, the years 1873 to 1879 inclusive being missing. To the end of 1872, 158 emigrants were assisted by the Society. Of these, 87 went to Australia, 33 to New Zealand, 20 to South Africa, 9 to Canada, 8 to the United States and 1 to India. For the years 1880 to 1885, 86 were assisted, 42 to Australia, 15 to New Zealand, 12 to South Africa, 14 to Canada, 2 to the United States and 1 to Russia.

Over the years of its existence, the FMCES operated on a small budget. Its main expenses were payments for passages for intending emigrants, usually ranging from £200 to £400 a year, and cabin fittings. The main receipts were the payments emigrants made towards their passages (some did not need to borrow the full amount of their fare and others were able to pay their fares, only taking advantage of the other services offered by the Society), the repayments of loans and subscriptions and donations. Each year, repayments reached a substantial figure: for example, from 1 July 1864 to 1 July 1865, repayments totalled £196 0s 10d, payments by emigrants towards their passages were £121 11s 11d, and subscriptions and donations, £77 2s 0d. Expenditure on passages was £230 and on cabin fittings, £12 11s 5d.

The Society's accounts do not indicate the writing-off of any loans as bad debts. Extensions of the time in which repayments had to be made often were granted, but apparently even long-standing debts were regarded as being recoverable, either from the governess herself or from her guarantors.

As the emigration of educated females fostered by the FMCES proceeded, albeit low-key and in small volume, for two decades, controversy continued to surround Miss Rye and her involvement in female emigration schemes. Part of this controversy was a result of confusion about the different schemes in which she was engaged, so that some criticism directed against her mistakenly assumed that her dispatch of some hundreds of females at particular times was in an endeavour to place them as governesses, when usually they were going as domestic servants.

Miss Rye did little to sort out this confusion. She was ever ready to spring into print, as the following extracts from a letter published in the London Times on 5 September 1862 show:

A few days since a letter (written at Melbourne) was placed in my hands, in which the writer very pathetically and very emphatically urged the necessity of my being stopped and prevented ‘sending out a quarter of a million of educated women’. Hydras, gorgons, and chimeras dire! If such is the impression abroad no wonder Argus rolls his eyes and sounds the alarm.

Heaven forbid that I should refuse to listen to any voice of real warning, let the voice sound from what quarter it may; but as long as every girl we send abroad gets comfortably placed within a few hours after landing, receives a fair sum for her services, and continues to write home happily, I shall consider myself perfectly justified in considering my work a success. By the July mail we received £10 from a young governess, part of the loan lent her to reach Sydney. This girl had been out of a situation in England six months before starting, and yet within a year after landing in Australia she could save the sum named out of her salary. Does not this fact speak for itself? …

I shall conclude my letter by quoting the Melbourne Herald of the 14th of June, as the advice tallies with the suggestions embodied in my paper on the subject read at the Guildhall this summer, in which I particularly dwelt on the necessity of women working, whether at home or abroad, more honestly and earnestly at domestic work. The Herald says: ‘If a lady is not afraid of work she will have little difficulty in obtaining employment in a respectable household in some domestic capacity. If she is content to earn a comfortable livelihood in some capacity not exactly menial, but yet not quite that of companion to the mistress of the house, she will find her services in eager request at good wages. This is the kind of help which ladies in Australia require. We do not like to use the word ‘servant’, for that implies the kitchen, and the scullery, and the laundry; but it is the something between servant and governess that is really wanted here (e.g. middle-class girls), and for which liberal remuneration would be paid. A well-educated, handy, thoroughly useful young lady, who would aid the overworked housewife in her multifarious labours, who would keep the young ones in the nursery in order, teach the four-years-old the rudiments of learning, be an intelligent companion for an elder daughter—who would be, in a word, like a good maiden aunt in the house, would be valued in scores of colonial homes as a real treasure. This is precisely the class of young ladies which, next to domestic servants, we want most sadly in the colonies. If Miss Rye and her friends at home will favour us by sending us a few candidates for emigration of that stamp we shall promise to receive them with open arms and to obtain for them instant and well-paid employment.’

Miss Rye quotes this editorial with approval, but the Herald's views were not those of most of the FMCES emigrants, who saw their role as being above any involvement in domestic duties.

As a class, the English governess was a strong element in a class-conscious society, in which she held an ambivalent position. Governesses were expected to be well-bred and genteel, yet materially they were poor and deprived. Charlotte Bronte, who had experience as a governess, summed up society's attitude to these women in Shirley:

The daughters of tradespeople, however well-educated, must necessarily be underbred, and as such unfit to be the inmates of our dwellings, or guardians of our children's minds and persons. We should never prefer to place those about our offspring who have not been born and bred with somewhat of the same refinements as ourselves.

The governesses who ventured abroad went complete with an inner consciousness of and acceptance of strong class divisions. They almost all objected to travelling second class—although they had to borrow money to buy even second-class tickets—not mainly because of the discomfort, but because they felt superior to the people with whom they had to mix. Once settled in their new homes, they were very conscious of any attempts to involve them in duties they considered beneath them. In short, they often were unfitted for the more egalitarian colonial society.

Some women, however, adapted well, while those who were unsuited to their new lives can be contrasted to those who were exploited. In all the countries to which they emigrated, these women entered a buyer's market: there were always more governesses seeking employment than there were jobs available, and in times of economic depression, so widespread in the 1860s and 1870s, the market for their skills dried up almost completely. They had practically no bargaining power over wages (some were reduced to taking unpaid jobs in order to get accommodation); only the highly accomplished who were able to teach a range of subjects, such as French, German and sometimes Latin, music, singing and drawing, could command reasonable salaries. These women, although not under as much pressure to take any job offered, compared with those less qualified, were still vulnerable to finding themselves employed in an uncongenial, or at worst intolerable, family situation. Further, they could be located in an inaccessible part of the country, perhaps up to a week's journey by coach and steamer from town, and requiring relatively a large amount of money for the return fare, should they manage to extricate themselves.

Even when employed in a relatively good position, a governess often was expected to do some domestic work and light sewing, as well as to teach five or six children of different ages and at varying levels. Depending on the circumstances, domestic work could be a pleasant way of occupying the time or a most resented imposition.

A governess also was extremely vulnerable to financial and other changes in her employer's situation. Most of all, she was vulnerable to the devastating effect of illness, which not only could involve loss of income but loss of accommodation and, sometimes, a quite desperate struggle merely to survive. Such illness often was a result of the abnormal stresses of leaving family and friends (usually for ever), the worries of a long sea journey at a time when shipping disasters were common and the trauma of adjusting to a new life in a very different environment, a life that may bring unemployment or cruel treatment by an employer and often required demanding tasks for low pay. Those women who had relatives to rely on for moral and material support were fortunate.

A poignant description of the trauma that resulted from arriving at a new position as a governess was written by Mrs Thomas, one whose arrival in Australia predated that of the first of the FMCES emigrants by almost two decades, but whose experiences spanned the same period and, in some cases, the same households. Writing under the pen-name ‘Lyth’, she said: ‘One of the greatest trials of my life had been the inevitable feeling of utter loneliness when first entering a family as a stranger, where they were all so familiar, so bound up together by the ties of home affection’. [‘Lyth’ (Mrs Thomas), The Golden South: Memories of Australian Home Life from 1843 to 1888, Ward & Downey, London, 1890, p. 173.]

Although she remained associated with the FMCES during its existence, Maria Rye, after her return to England in 1865 from a trip to New Zealand and Australia, turned the major part of her interests to the emigration of destitute and neglected children. She purchased and lived in Avenue House in the then semi-rural district of Peckham, where she took in girls from workhouses and the slums to train in domestic work.

Maria Rye continued this work until the late 1890s. She then retired to Hemel Hempstead, in Hertfordshire, where she died on 12 November 1903 at the age of seventy-four. In a long obituary, published on 17 November, the London Times said of her: ‘[Miss Rye] was of a very strong character and physique and held intense religious convictions’. The obituary dealt mainly with her efforts in promoting the emigration of destitute girls, but also mentioned her efforts in providing work for women of the governess class by starting a law stationers' firm, in association with Jane Lewin, and in the formation of the Female Middle Class Emigration Society, also with Jane Lewin. Of this work, the obituary recorded that Miss Rye ‘visited, between 1860 and 1868, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, her aim being to study the problem of emigration from the colonial standpoint. She met with cordial support from leading colonists, and during those years—largely owing to the advocacy of The Times and to the efforts of Miss Lewin—Miss Rye was instrumental in transferring to the Colonies numbers of girls of the middle classes’.

Works Cited

FMCES records

(microfilmed in 1963 as part of the Australian Joint Copying Project; originals held at the Fawcett Library, City of London Polytechnic)

Annual Reports of the Society for the years 1862-1886; 4 reports, containing rules, details of finances, subscriptions, fate of emigrants, etc.; the reports were not issued yearly.

Letter-books of the Society:

Book 1, 1862-1877

Book 2 (numbered 3), 1877-1882

Jane E. Lewin, Female Middle Class Emigration: A Paper read at the Social Science Congress in October 1863, n.p., n.d. (?Emily Faithfull & Co., London, 1863).

Maria S. Rye, Emigration of Educated Women: A Paper read at the Social Science Congress in Dublin, 1861, printed and published by Emily Faithfull & Co., London, n.d. (?1861).

Books that make use of FMCES records

A. James Hammerton, Emigrant Gentlewoman: Genteel Poverty and Female Emigration, 1830-1914, Croom Helm, London/Rowman & Littlefield, Totowa, NJ, 1979.

[Una Monk], New Horizons: A Hundred Years of Women's Migration, HMSO, London, 1963.

G. F. Plant, A Survey of Voluntary Effort in Women's Empire Migration, Society for the Oversea Settlement of British Women, London, 1950.

Official Government Reports

Report from the Select Committee on the Condition of the Working Classes of the Metropolis, ordered by the Legislative Assembly to be printed, 18 April 1860; New South Wales Legislative Assembly, Votes and Proceedings, 1859-60, vol. 4, pp. 1263-1461.

Report from the Select Committee of the Legislative Council: The Present System of Immigration, ordered by the Council to be printed, 13 January 1853, Government Printer, Melbourne, 1853.

Report of the Board of the Education District of Hawke's Bay, New Zealand, for the Year ended 31 December 1878, Napier, 1879.

Report of the Royal Commission appointed by His Excellency to Enquire into and Report upon the Operation of the System of Public Education, together with Minutes of Evidence and Appendices, Victorian Parliamentary Papers, vol. 4, 1867 (Higinbotham Report).

Victorian Parliamentary Papers, Immigration: Report to His Excellency the Lieutenant Governor by Immigration Agent, Edward Grimes, for the Year 1852. Report dated Immigration Office, Melbourne, 9 June 1853, ordered to be printed by the Legislative Council, 31 August 1853.

General References

George Wigram Dundas Allen (ed.), Early Georgian: Extracts from the Journal of George Allen, 1800-1877, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1958.

Annals of Pinetown, compiled by Pinetown Women's Institute, Pinetown, S. Africa, 1968.

A. G. Austin, Australian Education 1788-1900, Pitman, Melbourne, 3rd edn, 1972.

Australian Dictionary of Biography 1851-1890 (gen. ed. Douglas Pike), Melbourne University Press, Carlton, vols 3-6, 1968-76.

Lady Barker, A Year's Housekeeping in South Africa, Macmillan, London, 1883.

Marjorie F. Barnard, Sydney: The Story of a City, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1956.

William A. Bayley, Lilac City: The Story of Goulburn, New South Wales, Goulburn City Council, Goulburn, 1954.

Allan Birch and David S. Macmillan (arranged and introduced), The Sydney Scene, 1788-1960, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1962.

J. T. S. Bird, The Early History of Rockhampton, Morning Bulletin, Rockhampton, 1904.

Barbara I. Buchanan, Natal Memories, Shuter & Shooter, Pietermaritzburg, 1941.

Bernard Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Colonial Gentry, Harrison & Sons, London, 1891.

John E. P. Bushby, Saltbush Country: History of the Deniliquin District, Library of Australian History, North Sydney, 1980.

Gordon Leslie Buxton, The Riverina, 1861-1891: An Australian Regional Study, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1967.

Ben W. Champion (comp.), Family Entries, Births, Deaths, Marriages, etc., in the Hunter Valley District, 1843-84, the author, [Newcastle, NSW], 1973.

Don Charlwood, The Long Farewell, Penguin Books Australia, Ringwood, Vic., 1981.

———, Settlers Under Sail, Premier's Department, Melbourne, 1978.

Church of England Children's Society, Waifs and Strays, London, January 1904.

T. A. Coghlan, Labour and Industry in Australia: From the First Settlement in 1788 to the Establishment of the Commonwealth in 1901, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1969.

Ephrain Henry Coombe (comp.), History of Gawler, 1837 to 1908, Austraprint, Hampstead Gardens, SA, facsimile edn, 1978.

Crockford's Clerical Dictionary 1908, Horace Cox, London, 1908.

The Cyclopedia of New Zealand, Cyclopedia Co., Christchurch, 1908.

Cyclopaedia of Victoria, James Smith, Melbourne, 1904.

Charles Daley, The Story of Gippsland, Whitcombe & Tombs, Melbourne, 1960.

Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Sidney Lee, London, 1897.

A Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, ed. G. H. Scholefield, Department of Internal Affairs, Wellington, 1940.

A Dictionary of South African Biography, vols 2-3, published for the Human Sciences Research Council by Tafelberg-Vitgewers, Cape Town, 1972, 1977; vol. 4, Butterworth, Durban, 1981.

Ross Fitzgerald, From the Dreaming to 1915: A History of Queensland, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1982.

Michael Fowler, Country Houses of New Zealand: North Island, A. H. & A. W. Reed, Wellington, 1971.

Jonathon Gathorne-Hardy, The Rise and Fall of the British Nanny, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1972.

O. S. Green, Sale: The Early Years and Later, Southern Newspapers, Sale, n.d.

G. Nesta Griffiths, Point Piper: Past and Present, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1970.

———, Some Northern Homes of New South Wales, Shepherd Press, Sydney, 1954.

Wilhelm Grütter, in collaboration with D. J. van Zyl, The Story of South Africa, Human & Rousseau, Cape Town, 1981.

J. C. Hamilton, Pioneering Days in Western Victoria: A Narrative of Early Station Life, Exchange Press, Melbourne, 1912.

W. P. M. Henderson, Durban: Fifty Years of Municipal History, Robinson, Durban, 1904.

Cosmo Grenville Henning, Graaff-Reinet: A Cultural History, Bulpen, Cape Town, 1975.

Georgina Hill, Women in English Life, Richard Bentley, London, 1896.

R. L. Jenkins, Nepean Towers Shorthorn Herd: New Catalogue for 1871, R. Bone, Sydney, 1871.

James A. Jervis, A History of the Berrima District, 1798-1973, Berrima County Council, Berrima, 1962.

W. Ross Johnston, The Call of the Land: A History of Queensland to the Present Day, Jacaranda Press, Brisbane, 1982.

Margaret L. Kiddle, Men of Yesterday: A Social History of the Western District of Victoria, 1834-1890, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1961.

J. K. Loney, Wrecks around Cape Otway, the author, Apollo Bay, 1966.

A. Basil Lubbock, The Colonial Clippers, 1876-1944, J. Brown, Glasgow, 1921.

‘Lyth’ (Mrs Thomas), The Golden South: Memories of Australian Home Life from 1843 to 1888, Ward & Downey, London, 1890.

Miriam Macgregor, Early Stations of Hawke's Bay, A. H. & A. W. Reed, Wellington, 1970.

Joseph J. Mack, Chain of Ponds, Neptune Press, Newtown, Vic., 1983.

George Mackay, The History of Bendigo, Ferguson & Mitchell, Melbourne, 1891.

John Davies Mereweather, Life on Board an Emigrant Ship, being a Diary of a Voyage to Australia, T. Hatchard, London, 1852.

Cecily Joan Mitchell, Hunter's River, Estate of the author, Newcastle West, 1973.

P. C. Mowle, A Genealogical History of Pioneer Families of Australia, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1948.

T. Muir, ‘Tobacco in Early Australia’, Australian Tobacco Growers' Bulletin, nos 15-19, 1969-71.

Natal Who's Who 1906, Durban, 1906.

NSW Department of Education, Sydney and the Bush: A Pictorial History of Education in New South Wales, Sydney, 1980.

W. H. Oliver (ed.), with B. R. Williams, The Oxford History of New Zealand, Oxford University Press, Wellington, 1981.

Robert F. Osborn, Valiant Harvest: The Founding of the South African Sugar Industry, 1848-1926, South African Sugar Association, Durban, 1964.

Robert B. Ronald, The Riverina: People and Properties, Cheshire, Melbourne, 1960.

Watson Rosevear, Waiapu: The Story of a Diocese, Paul's Book Arcade, Hamilton, Auckland, 1960.

George Russell, History of Old Durban and Reminiscences of an Emigrant of 1850, Davis & Sons, Pietermaritzburg, 1899.

Luther A. Scammell, A Voyage to Australia in the Barque ‘William Wilson’, 1849, R. B. Scammell, Sydney, n.d. (?1966).

A. G. Serle, The Golden Age, 1851-1861, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1963.

S. W. Silver and Company's Emigration Guide and Colonial Itinerary, Emigration Warehouse, London, 1859.

South Australian Centenary, 1836-1936, Angaston and Nuriootpa Centenary Souvenir, The Leader, Angaston, 1936.

Shelagh O'Byrne Spencer, British Settlers in Natal, 1824-1857, University of Natal Press, Pietermaritzburg, 1981.

The Standard Encyclopaedia of Southern Africa, ed. D. J. Potgieter, Nassou, Cape Town, 1975.

Charles Swancott, Manly 1788 to 1968, the author, Woy Woy, 1968.

Alexander Sutherland, Victoria and its Metropolis: Past and Present, McCarron, Bird & Co., Melbourne, 1888; Today's Heritage, Melbourne, facsimile edn, 1977.

R. Therry, Reminiscences of Thirty Years' Residence in New South Wales and Victoria, Sampson Low, London, 1863.

Henry Gyles Turner, A History of the Colony of Victoria: From its Discovery to its Absorption into the Commonwealth of Australia, Longmans Green, London, 1904.

Sylvia Vietzen, A History of Education for European Girls in Natal, 1837-1902, University of Natal Press, Pietermaritzburg, 1980.

George Walker, A Link with the Past: A Short History of Avon Plains and District, Ruskin Press, Melbourne, 1924.

Whittaker, D. M., Wangaratta … 1824-1833-1963, Wangaratta City Council, Wangaratta, 1963.

Who's Who in Natal, with which is incorporated Women of Natal, Knox Printing, Durban, 1933.

W. Allan Wood, Dawn in the Valley, Wentworth Books, Sydney 1972.

Ransome T. Wyatt, The History of Goulburn, New South Wales, Lansdowne Press, Sydney, 1972.