The Horsekeeper's Daughter

by Jane Gulliford Lowes

  By dusk on 28th June 1882, at the age of forty-eight, Thomas Marshall was dead.

  7

  The Long Goodbye

  Like the widows and orphans of the victims of the Seaham mining disaster, Margaret Marshall and her five little girls were evicted from their colliery cottage within weeks of Thomas’ death. It is difficult to imagine the depths of their despair, widowed, fatherless, and destitute, with no income. There is no record of what happened to them in the immediate aftermath of their bereavement but, as was so common in those days, it is likely that the family was dispersed and the children taken in by various friends and relatives in order to avoid the horrors of the workhouse – the ultimate shame and the last resort of the Victorian poor and homeless.

  Elizabeth, the third daughter, who was thirteen at the time of Thomas’ death, probably went into domestic service like her two older sisters. Within four years, the second daughter, Ann, had married James Hudson, a Sunderland miner, and by 1891 Margaret and Fanny, then nine years old but a baby when Thomas died, were living with Ann and James and their children at Grindon Cottage, Bishop Wearmouth, on the outskirts of Sunderland, perhaps five miles or so from Seaham. Fanny would always stay close to the Hudsons. In Edie’s box of photographs and letters, there are numerous portraits of her Hudson cousins, particularly Jane, known as Jenny, and Amelia, of whom she and her mother Fanny were very fond.

  There is no way of knowing when Sarah finally made her decision to start a new life, alone, on the far side of the world. Was she afraid? Did she question her own motives? How could she leave her poor widowed mother and her six younger sisters? Was she torn or did she possess a steely determination and a clarity of purpose, underpinned by utter desperation and an ambition to achieve bigger and better things? Perhaps her mother begged her not to go; perhaps she pleaded with her not to stay. Margaret must have known that she would never see her first-born daughter again but maybe she considered migration to be Sarah’s only chance to escape the dirt, the cold, and the grinding poverty of the family’s hand-to-mouth existence.

  Why did Sarah choose to go to Australia, and why in particular to Queensland? I pondered this question for some time. Why didn’t she choose America, like several other Seaham residents? Sarah’s descendants in Brisbane, the Balkins and the Campbells, could shed no light on the matter. However, a clue was revealed in the ship’s passenger list and her Brisbane immigration records. These show that Sarah Marshall was travelling as a “remittance passenger”. In other words, her voyage was paid for and sponsored by someone else.

  My immediate thought was that perhaps Sarah had met and fallen in love with a young gentleman who had travelled to Australia to make his fortune, and when established, had sent for her to be his wife. Perhaps she had answered one of those “wife wanted” advertisements, so beloved of Victorian fiction. However, I could find no evidence of this – one would have anticipated a wedding to have taken place fairly quickly after her arrival, but no nuptials occurred.

  I then wondered whether Sarah had gone to join another relative, who, upon learning of the death of her father and the family’s straitened circumstances, had offered her a position in the family business or had secured employment for her with an acquaintance. Again, I could find no trace of any other of the Marshalls or Thorntons having emigrated (by choice or otherwise) to Australia. Only Sarah’s uncle Mark had left England, for America.

  Queensland had achieved separation from the colony of New South Wales in 1859, and formed its own legislative assembly in the same year. However, at that time the new state had a population of just twenty five thousand, not much more than the current population of Seaham, spread across an area roughly seven times the size of Great Britain, five times the size of Japan and two and a half times the size of Texas. Queensland needed infrastructure, it needed people and it needed money, fast.17 The Queensland government therefore embarked upon an intensive immigration programme almost immediately. From the outset, however, immigration was tightly controlled, and the government made it quite clear that despite the best attempts of the British to clear out their workhouses, asylums and prisons and ship their inmates to the colonies, such “unsuitable” candidates would not be welcome.18 Queensland required hard working skilled people to “civilise” and tame the thousands of square miles of territory, not the poor, the infirm, felons and the destitute.

  Back home, immigration was considered by many to be the last resort, due to its longstanding association with the transportation of convicts, which had ceased in 1868; however, the enterprising Victorians of the 1850s and 1860s began to see it as an opportunity for self-improvement, and the chance to seek a fortune. The first convicts had been sent out from England in 1788; Moreton Bay, in Southern Queensland, near where the city of Brisbane now stands, was originally a penal colony for twice-convicted criminals, but was opened up after the penal colony closed down, so that anyone was free to settle there.19 In the 1850s, Queensland had no paved roads, no railways and no method of communication with the outside world apart from a very patchy and infrequent mail service. The building of the first railway, from Ipswich to Grandchester, didn’t even start until 1861 and didn’t open until 1865. The few immigrants who did arrive tended to settle in and around Brisbane, and it was difficult to persuade newcomers to move further up the country, and in particular to the tropical far north of the state.

  Rather than focusing on and recruiting the wealthy middle classes, members of the professions such as doctors and lawyers, engineers and dentists, gentlemen farmers and those with a private income, the Queensland politicians wanted to recruit the state’s new populace from farm labourers, loggers, railway workers, shepherds, and female domestic servants – in effect the government were importing an entire “working class”. Queensland needed people who, in the language beloved of modern recruitment consultants, could “hit the ground running”. What was needed were tough, industrious people, used to hardship, with the skills to overcome whatever difficulties they might encounter. The role of the female domestic servant was crucial – there was a huge demand for their skills, but they were also needed to redress the imbalance in the male/female population, and ultimately, to breed and increase. If it was to succeed, Queensland needed to be populated.

  Of course, Queensland already had an indigenous population who had lived there for thousands of years. In a pattern replicated throughout Australia, and indeed in so many other colonies of the British Empire, the indigenous population were shamefully and brutally treated by the incoming pioneers, and in many areas, simply wiped out. HR Woolcock writes in Rights of Passage,

  “Aborigines were either ignored or exterminated. The colony, despite its climate and location, was to be a white man’s land with immigration directed towards introducing a suitable European, and predominantly British, population.”20

  The journey itself was enough to deter many would-be immigrants. It’s a daunting trip now, even though it can be accomplished in a little over twenty-four hours; in the 1850s and 1860s, immigrants faced a two or three month journey by sea. The horrors of the transatlantic migrant ships, particularly those that left Ireland for New York during the famine, were well documented in the newspapers and literature of the day. The dreadful insanitary conditions, overcrowding, terrible sea-sickness, on-board epidemics of diseases such as diarrhoea, cholera and measles, combined with badly-equipped and ill-maintained ships and poorly-trained crews resulted in high mortality rates, particularly amongst children. Tales abounded of immigrant parents burying their children at sea, one after another, as they made their way to the New World.

  The Queensland government knew that, in order to attract the calibre of people the state needed to develop and expand the population, they would have to greatly improve the “immigrant experience” –and this started with the journey. Back in Britain, Parliament had already passed The Passenger Act of 1855 which imposed minimum standards on immigrant ships. Representatives of the
Queensland government were dispatched to London and embarked upon a huge PR campaign; the law makers in Brisbane put in place a raft of legislation designed to control every aspect of immigration, from imposing standards on shipping companies to ensure the safe deliverance of their precious cargo in a fit and healthy state, to organising grants of land to those who landed ashore, in order that they could build homes, farm the land and provide for themselves. A deal was signed with the Black Ball Shipping Line to provide ships ferrying immigrants from London and Glasgow, and taking goods and mail back to Britain on the return journey.

  The arrangement with the Black Ball Line quickly went awry, however; the shipping owners agreed to provide free passage to any immigrant who agreed to sign over his land grant to the company, but in return they insisted on being allowed to carry a proportion of fare-paying passengers without any of the usual selection criteria imposed by the Queensland government. This resulted in land grants being swallowed up by the Black Ball owners, and the swathes of land which would have been colonised, farmed or otherwise developed stood vacant. In addition, many of the fare-paying passengers turned out to be completely unsuitable and lacking in the skills required to “make a go of it”. The Black Ball ships were not run as they should have been; terrible conditions on board and high death rates on some of their ships ultimately resulted in the government contract being terminated.

  A financial crisis in Britain in 1866, followed by economic woes and unemployment in the fledgling state meant that the Queensland government still struggled to attract the “right sort” of immigrant. However, everything changed when gold was found in Queensland in the early 1870s, and people flocked there in their thousands from Europe and from elsewhere in Australia. The good days didn’t last long – a corruption scandal in the Queensland government immigration office in London in 1875 coincided with economic depression in the state, part of the seemingly endless cycle of “boom and bust” that would plague the colony well into the twentieth century and which would have heart-rending implications for some of the other people we will meet in this story.

  In 1880, the Queensland parliament introduced new immigration rules designed to root out any weaknesses and corruption in the old system, and signed an exclusive contract with the newly-formed British India Steam Navigation Company.21 The age of sail was coming to an end. The government launched yet another recruitment campaign, focusing on experienced agricultural workers and female domestic servants. Sarah Marshall was one of those to benefit from a “perfect storm” for the would-be Australian female immigrant – new technology resulting in faster journey times and better conditions on board ship; a more direct route to Australasia as a consequence of the newly-built Suez Canal; and a huge demand for experienced female domestic servants. For Sarah and women like her, there was never a better time to go.

  Prior to researching Sarah’s story, I had never heard of the Single Female Migrant recruitment programme. Between 1850 and 1890, one hundred thousand single British women and girls emigrated to Australia, recruited, and passage paid for, by the colonial governments. Some forty-six thousand women were given free passage by the State of Queensland; twenty thousand of those left London and Glasgow in the 1880s alone, due to a desperate shortage of female domestic servants to service the burgeoning middle-class population of Brisbane, Cairns and beyond.22 A fair portion of those women and girls were from the north east of England – Northumberland and County Durham.

  According to leading academic Jan Gothard in her book, Blue China – Single Female Migration to Australia,23 almost four times as many working-class women emigrated to colonial Australia as were sent out on the convict ships. The offer of free passage meant that very poor women like Sarah Marshall did not have to scrimp and save to scrape together their fare from their meagre wages – this in itself made Australia a more attractive proposition to the poorest emigrants than, say, America or Canada. The fact that there was a shortage of domestic help meant that, upon arrival, employment was virtually guaranteed. Rather than being considered the dregs of humanity in British society, the female domestic servant seemed, on the face of it at least, to be valued and sought after in the Colonies.

  But how would Sarah have learned about Queensland and the promise of a new life there? As part of the recruitment programme, the colonial government established a network of agents and publicists throughout Britain and Ireland. These agents toured the country giving lectures in churches, village halls, sporting clubs, workers’ associations, and at fairs and festivals.24 Advertisements were published in both national and local newspapers, in journals and periodicals, and posters appeared in every town and city. Of course, the more people who migrated, the more information about life in Australia made its way home to their friends and relatives. Migration was nothing new – many County Durham miners had sought out new lives abroad in the aftermath of industrial unrest, and this was even reflected in the street names of the colliery village of New Seaham, with pitmen and their families occupying cottages in California and Australia Streets. There is even a Seaham in New South Wales, not too far from Newcastle.

  Due to the Queensland government’s stringent criteria for their recruitment programme, acceptance was by no means guaranteed. There was a rigorous and lengthy application process. Sarah would have first completed an application form, with details of age, occupation and providing the names and addresses of three referees, including her local religious minister, her doctor and her most recent employer. Perhaps Mrs Boland and the Reverend Thaddeus Armbrister provided references. All references were always followed up, with particular attention paid to checking that an applicant was of good “moral character and sober habits”. Any young woman with an illegitimate child, a criminal conviction, a fondness for strong drink or a “colourful past” would not be considered. A poor reference from an employer could ruin a would-be migrant’s plans. Likewise, any health problems, past or present, would automatically have ruled her out.

  Jan Gothard describes in Blue China how moral fibre was given equal weight alongside domestic skills, experience and physical condition. Emigrating domestic servants were looked upon as a commodity, as precious cargo. Soiled goods were not wanted. A young woman would be expected to conduct herself with the utmost integrity both before departure, during the voyage and upon arrival in the colony, and strict measures were put in place to ensure that she did not stray from the path of righteousness at any time during the process.

  To modern eyes, the Victorian obsession with morality appears very old-fashioned, however, it underpinned the Single Migrant Recruitment programme for two very good reasons. Firstly, these young women from the lowest strata of British society would be welcomed into the middle class homes and families of complete strangers in Queensland, and had to be completely trustworthy. Secondly, they had to be “wife and mother material” to fulfil their subsidiary role of increasing the population of the colony. Fortunately, in the opinion of the agents of the government of Queensland, Sarah Marshall appears to have been well thought of by those who provided her references. She possessed the “right stuff” and she was accepted onto the programme in 1886 as a remittance passenger, her fare paid for by the state.

  The winter of 1886 was a particularly harsh one. Snowdrifts six and seven feet deep were reported on the roads of Seaham and Seaton Village. On a bitterly cold morning in late October 1886, Sarah said her goodbyes to her widowed mother and younger sisters and boarded the train at Durham station, bound first for London. Even in the 1880s, London could be reached easily in the course of a day by steam-train. The view from Durham station remains one of the most magnificent from any station in England. Did she look back from the station high above the city, one last glance down over the ancient jumble of medieval, Georgian and Victorian rooftops to the towering Cathedral and princely Norman castle keep beyond?

  Every one of us has stood on the brink, hearts leaping and leading us forwards, ready to step off the precipice of the r
outine, the everyday, the familiar, yet ‘reason’, the rope tangled around our hopes and ambitions pulls ever tighter, restraining, choking and eventually suffocating our dreams.

  How many times have we paused, waiting at the gates of something new, something life-changing, the gates that will open up to reveal the path to our heart’s desire, only to prevaricate too long? We watch, helpless, as the gates slowly begin to close, the weight of old loves and old lives, old ties and old lies eventually slamming them shut forever.

  Would you have been strong enough? Would I? Do we have the strength of character, the determination, the single-mindedness to seize the day, to grasp opportunity with both hands, to struggle out from beneath the weight of familial expectation and the crushing need to be seen to “do the right thing”? Are we sufficiently resolute to escape one future and exchange it for another? Several times in my life I have wavered, and failed to take that leap. I wasn’t bold enough. But Sarah Marshall was.

  Sarah would not see the beautiful city of Durham, her village home, the mining folk of Seaton and Seaham, nor her family, ever again.

  8

  Precious Cargo

  On the morning of 1st November 1886, Sarah Marshall stepped on board the steamship, the SS Duke of Sutherland, at Gravesend on the Thames Estuary, having taken the train from the newly-opened Immigrants’ Home in Blackwell, London. Sarah would have been required to arrive at the Home, which was basically a lodging house run along the same lines as a ship, two or three days prior to embarkation, in order to be issued with her kit for the journey, have her luggage inspected, and to undergo further rigorous checks regarding her suitability. How daunting this must have been for any passenger, let alone a young woman travelling alone from the colliery villages of County Durham. Sarah Marshall, however, was no ordinary woman. How did she feel as she walked up the gangway, dragging her few possessions behind her? Hesitant? Nervous? Excited about what lay ahead tempered with relief at finally escaping her old existence? Or fear, bordering on terror, that she was making the biggest mistake of her life? I suspect a combination of all.