Authors: Kay Moloney Caball
On 16 March 1848 the ‘Right Honourable Earl Grey’, Secretary of State for the Colonies, received a despatch from Sir C.A. Fitzroy, sent in September 1847 urging a renewal of emigration and enclosing a copy of a report from the Colonial Government showing that ‘a supply of labour is indpensably [
sic
] necessary for its prosperity’.
14
A theme running through the request to the British Parliament was the problem of a lack of labour affecting both sheep and cattle production and the cost of such labour, both of which would have an undue bearing on the success or otherwise of the development of the colony. The report included Minutes from a Select Committee which pointed out, among other things, that while shepherds more than any other type of labour were required, also ‘families residing in towns are greatly in want of domestic servants’.
15
Alexander Mollison of Mount Macedon, Port Philip stated: ‘I know some families in Melbourne in which the ladies are doing their own domestic work.’ In May 1847 the want of domestic servants was causing ‘very great discomfort to many families’.
In all the above reports, colonial authorities refer to England as the ‘Mother Country’, thereby reminding the imperial powers of their loyalty and the immeasurable possibilities of developing this huge continent with its attending prospect for joint prosperity.
At the same time as the ‘lack of domestic servants’ was causing ‘very great discomfort’ in Melbourne, in Westminster, the Select Committee on Poor Laws (Ireland), Third Report, was examining all of the problems being thrown up by the Famine – poverty, destitution, evictions, emigration and the overcrowding of workhouses. Edward Senior, Assistant Poor Law Commissioner, a committed and compassionate public servant, giving evidence at this Select Committee, stated that in his opinion it would be of the utmost importance to relieve the pressure on the workhouses by emigration. He went further by suggesting that those who would benefit most would be ‘persons aged from 13 or 14 to 18 or 19, especially girls’.
16
He stated that the ‘accumulation of young women in the workhouses is now much greater than young men’.
17
Mr Senior had already given a lot of thought to the desperate situation in the workhouses. He also suggested that respective Unions should defray the cost of clothing and removal to the port of embarkation, and that the Imperial Treasury or sale from the land fund of the colonies should be used to defray the remaining expenses. He stated that the emigration of these females would be advantageous in most of the Australian settlements, adding, ‘I may explain that the tendency to a dead weight in the workhouses on the part of children is constantly increasing in every part of Ireland; epidemics and fevers and other causes, carry off the heads of the family, but the children are left; more than half of the inmates of the workhouses now consist of children.’
18
By January 1848, Earl Grey, anxious to keep the colonists happy, informed Fitzroy that the Commissioners of Colonial Land and Emigration had taken steps to renew emigration to Australia. He explained that due to ‘abundance of employment in Great Britain’ and consequent lack of emigrants from there, it would be necessary fill the void from Ireland. ‘They also have taken steps, as you will perceive, designed to admit of sending out a larger proportion than heretofore of single women.’
19
By February 1848, Grey was more specific. He informed Fitzroy that in order to keep up the supply of labour, ‘a free passage to New South Wales should be offered to certain classes of orphans of both sexes in Ireland between the ages of 14 and 18.’
20
‘Although I have not yet received any official communication of the assent of the Irish Government to the conditions of the proposal, I have no reason to doubt that it will be given’.
21
He also outlined the conditions that should prevail both on the voyage and in Australia for these young persons. Only ‘responsible persons’ who were in a position to offer instruction in the occupations ‘which will be most useful to them’ should be considered as potential employers. They should be placed ‘within reach of the superintendence of some clergyman of their own religion, and the proposed Committee in Australia were to act as guardians in cases of masters failing to discharge their duties.
By March 1848 a scheme had been worked out with the Irish Poor Law Commissioners. ‘It involved the selection of young orphan females between 14 and 18 years of age who would be sent as emigrants to the Australian colonies, where, it was hoped they would in time become the wives of settlers.’
22
It is not surprising that Grey should find this a suitable solution to the pressing needs of further developing the Australian Colonies. In February 1847 there were 63,000 children among the workhouse population of 116,000; by the middle of 1849 the number had increased to 90,000.
23
The general situation in Ireland was difficult and looked like become a long-term problem.
Each Poor Law inspector received a letter dated 7 March 1848 from the Commissioners for administering the Laws of Relief of the Poor in Ireland (called the Commissioners) informing them of the decision and communications from Earl Grey explaining the manner in which the emigration of young females ‘is proposed to be conducted’.
24
The Commissioners made it plain that they expected the Boards of Guardians to address themselves to the objective without delay. They were advised that the young persons are ‘duly and properly apprised of prospects which await them in the event of their availing themselves of the free passage to Australia’ and the final line of the letter pointed out the responsibility of the Boards to ‘bear the cost of the outfits and the expense of conveyance to the place of embarkation’.
25
The Commissioners and the colonial authorities were keen to avoid blunders that had been made in previous emigration efforts. While choosing the right sort of girl was to be the responsibility of the Emigration Inspector appointed, Lieutenant Henry and the individual Boards of Guardians in Ireland, the responsibility of getting respectable employers in Australia rested with the ‘Orphan’ Committees established in South Australia, Port Philip and New South Wales.
In outlining the scheme, the Emigration Commissioners placed great emphasis on this occasion of the importance of selecting only suitable candidates. The colonists wanted now to attract a more respectable immigrant rather than the convicts, paupers and other undesirables from Britain and Ireland that had been the mainstay of settlers for the previous forty years.
26
At this point, the scheme met with satisfaction all round. The Australians would get females who would become ‘active and useful members of society’, the Boards of Guardians and Poor Law Commissioners would get some relief from the pressure on the workhouses and consequently on their funds, the British Government would be seen to be active and responsible. Although the British Treasury was not involved in this scheme, with his usual thoroughness, Charles Trevelyan attempted to impose his own views on it. A habitual controller, he insisted that the Emigration Commissioners should submit to him personally regular reports of their activities.
Honora Jones
Honora Jones was one of the Listowel orphans who travelled on the
Thomas Arbuthnot
and arrived in Port Jackson in 3 February 1850. Her arrival records tell us that she was 16 years of age, her parents, John and Ellen, were both dead and she was a Roman Catholic.
Honora does not have a descendant to tell her story; it has been left to an unknown ‘lady since removed from the colony’ to give us a description of what happened to Honora and seven members of the Thatcher family who perished in the Gundagai Floods of June 1852.
27
These girls who journeyed into the interior in the company of Dr Strutt were the ‘lucky girls’, as they were treated with care and compassion by the doctor, both on the ship and later when he went to so much trouble to get ‘good’ placements for them. These Dingle and Listowel girls were no doubt more fortunate than any of the other orphans, but Honora’s good luck ran out very quickly.
She was employed in late March 1850 by R.P. Jenkins, a substantial landowner at his property, Browenor at Bangus near Gundagai, at £8 per year, no doubt with the approval of Dr Strutt. Just a year and a half later, Honora married Henry Thomas Thatcher on 25 October 1851. At some point in the following months, Henry left for the ‘diggings’. Like most other young men of the time, he visualised hitting it rich in the goldfields. He left his young wife in the care of his parents and family.
The original settlement of Gundagai was founded in 1838 at a crossing on the Murrumbidgee River. This particular crossing on the Sydney to Melbourne road had been identified by Captain Charles Sturt as a favourable place to cross the river. The town grew quickly but most of the development took place on the banks of the river or the adjacent river mudflats. A number of floods had occurred, but none like that which inundated the area in June 1852. Although the Aborigines gave the settlers warning about the threat of the coming floods and moved their camps to higher ground, nobody paid attention.
We have a contemporary account of the terrors of the flood written by this ‘lady since removed from the colony’ and published in the
Sydney Morning Herald
on 3 March 1855. She herself, her three-week-old baby, husband and three other children spent three days clinging to the roof of their bark hut in the middle of seas of churning water, until they were miraculously rescued by ‘Jacky’, their aboriginal neighbour. Having described how quickly the flood rose and their situation on the roof, she also gives us a picture of their neighbours, the Thatchers.
Having spent the first night on the roof, she goes on to tell us:
Day began to dawn, which cheered us very much. About 10 o’clock we saw a boat approaching us to our great joy; however, it passed us; my husband hailed them; there were four men in the boat; they answered us and said they would relieve us when they rescued a family farther on, who appeared in more danger than we were, their cottage being a weatherboard one, and situated much lower than our house; this family was a Mr. Thatcher’s four sons and one daughter, 16 years of age; we saw them all enter the boat.
The lady goes on to explain that the boatmen would not take Mr Thatcher, Mrs Thatcher or Mrs Thatcher junior (Honora) as the boat was full with five children and the four oarsmen. They left Mr and Mrs Thatcher and Honora still clinging to their roof, with the promise that they would return for them. The stream they were trying to row in:
appeared to get more furious and the boat was thrown from side to side, crashing into logs and debris floating by.
Anxiously did we watch them; they had just got in the middle of the river, the boat struck with fearful force on an immense tree. We saw the boat spring out of the water, and fall again, head first and sink in an instant. The burst of grief from the now bereaved parents, may be better imagined than expressed, it was heart-rending in the extreme. Such a scene I never before witnessed, and trust that I may never again.
Poor Mrs. Thatcher Jnr., was in a sad state, her husband, a very worthy young man, was absent at the diggings; he left his young wife with his father and mother during his absence. I distinctly heard her several times call her husband by name, ‘Henry, oh Henry, could I but see you for one moment, I would die happy’. Her piteous lamentations we heard up to the moment she perished. Mrs. Thatcher senior, sat with her baby, her hands clasped after the first burst of grief was over, she uttered not a word.
It was now Friday night. With darkness approaching, both families had been on the roofs of their houses for over twenty-four hours.
Between eight and nine o’clock, crash went Mr. T’s cottage, they were on the roof, but were soon out of sight; the roof broke, Mr. Thatcher grasped a tree, his wife, child and daughter-in-law, were swept from his side in an instant and perished. He remained in that tree until Sunday noon when he was taken off by Jacky, an Aboriginal.
The ‘lady’ and her family were eventually rescued by the same Jacky. The Aboriginal’s boats were made of bark and more navigable on the raging waters. She continues to relate what happened afterwards, which is why she is now ‘late of this colony’. On being rescued, there were hundreds of people gathered on shore to meet and help those who survived. There were ‘bursts of rejoicing … tears of joy were shed by men that doubtless had not done so for many years before’. At least eighty-nine people had perished in the floods, which still holds the record for the worst flood in Australian history. Gundagai was now a desolate waste and while there was excitement for many months after the flood, plunder started almost right away, in a ‘barefaced manner’. Both the actual inhabitants and people on their way through to the diggings started to help themselves to all the possessions that had floated out of the small cottages. The ‘lady’ saw several of her own dresses on other women and children wearing her daughter’s dresses ‘while mine were destitute of a change of clothing’.
This convinced the family to leave the colony – ‘I did not leave it without bitter feelings of regret. It was the home of my childhood’.
Honora is remembered on the Gundagai Flood Plaque.
1
‘Immigration’,
Sydney Herald
(NSW: 1831–1842) 28 June 1838: 4. Web. 14 Aug 2013
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article12862413.
2
‘The Colonist’,
The Colonist
(Sydney, NSW: 1835–1840) 22 September 1840: 2. Web. 12 Aug 2013
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article31725656.
3
‘The Colonist’,
The Colonist
(Sydney, NSW: 1835–1840) 22 September 1840: 2. Web. 12 Aug 2013
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article31725656.
4
Ibid.
5
Judith Iltis, ‘Chisholm, Caroline (1808–1877)’,
Australian Dictionary of Biography
, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University,
http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/chisholm-caroline-1894/text2231
, accessed 12 August 2013.