Caroline Chisholm

by Sarah Goldman

  A little over six months after Archibald Jnr was born, Caroline was pregnant again. This second child was born in Bowenpally on 6 September 1837.18 Another son, he was named William after both Archibald’s brother, who had been killed in India almost twenty years earlier, and, of course, Caroline’s father, the indomitable William Jones.

  The end of 1837 found the family still in Bowenpally. Caroline was now a twenty-nine-year-old mother of two boys under two years of age. Her early narrow world view had expanded, as had her understanding of dealings in a curious foreign land that she may not even have imagined as a child in Northampton. Moreover, she had successfully engaged in her first philanthropic endeavour, through which she managed not just to influence the lives of vulnerable girls, but also to gain vital experience of how to manipulate authority and harvest the respect she needed to achieve her goals. Along the way she had proved herself both diligent and extremely well organised.

  Judging from Caroline’s own writings and those of her contemporary biographers, her school appears to have been a success. However, little is known about what happened to it after Caroline left India. In the Madras Almanac and Compendium of Intelligence for 1839, published a year after she departed from the subcontinent, there is mention of the “Ladies Institution for the Education of the Daughters of Europeans and their Descendants in the Presidency of Madras”. The school was based “in the Vicinity of Black Town” and took both day girls and boarders, although it did charge some fees, which were not mentioned in documents pertaining to Caroline’s school.19An unusual trait in Caroline was that she always seemed too busy looking forward to notice what happened behind her. Once she left India she appeared to forget all about the school. It was almost a counterintuitive feature of her character, that having worked so hard for an outcome, she could then just walk away from it with barely a glance backwards. She was to do the same in Sydney and in London.

  In February 1838, the clock was ticking, and there was still half a world to navigate. Archibald, on the threshold of his fortieth year, was unwell. He applied to visit Madras preparatory to requesting leave to travel to New South Wales.20 It’s unclear what was behind Caroline and Archibald’s decision not to return home. Possibly they thought that the milder climate in Sydney would benefit Archibald, or maybe they headed to the New World in a spirit of sheer adventure. Whatever the reason, that choice was to have an immeasurable impact on the burgeoning colony.

  CHAPTER 5

  The Bounty Girls

  1838–40

  Sydney, 1840

  The girl raised the bottle she was holding and swirled the light brown liquid around inside it before taking a long draft from its neck. Caroline reckoned her to be little more than fifteen years old. Propped against a stone wall, with her dirty brown hair falling loosely about her freckled face, the girl looked at Caroline for a moment, with green eyes listless and indifferent. Her dress bespoke her calling: a red bodice only partly laced over a grubby blouse hardly troubled by breasts that had not yet fully developed; a stained white chemise slipping off one thin shoulder; and an oversized skirt, a hand-me-down of some sort, kept in place by a gaudy red ribbon, beginning to fray.

  Only a short time earlier, passing the Military Hospital in George Street and the elegant abode of the trader Robert Campbell, one of Sydney’s richest men, Caroline had plunged into a twisted coil of footpaths that led her into the rancid heart of the Rocks. Located at the fag end of the Sydney Cove settlement, the Rocks was surrounded by water on three sides and fused into the hills above west Circular Quay. Along the waterfront and around the cool rim of the promontory rose the lavish homes of the wealthy traders, but crammed within its febrile belly were the dilapidated dwellings that seemed to spread like a virulent rash from the edge of town. Bordering a maze of narrow passageways, they were home to the colony’s poorest families, who fought for survival amidst the crime, booze and carnal pleasures of their neighbours. Dotted among the hovels were a smattering of honest businesses, but also grog shops, pubs and brothels frequented by convicts, the vilest of the emancipists and rough seafarers — the sort of lowlife to be found in the underbelly of most ports.

  Caroline was unused to such squalor; it seemed that all the ugliness of London’s slums had been transported to this insignificant corner of the Empire. She was out of place here and she knew it, but that very fact kept her safe. A couple of scraggy boys had run after her, only to be called back by their mothers. “We don’t want no trouble,” the women had shouted at the boys.

  On almost every street, Caroline saw young women already beyond her help. They hung around in doorways, the dregs of their youth destroyed by the life they led. Something about the green-eyed girl had stopped her and forced her to speak. She tried again, asking how long the girl had been in the colony and, finally, offering to help.

  The girl laughed at her, but with little humour; it was more the sound of tired resignation, past hope of any salvation. She turned from Caroline, swirling her skirt, and headed towards a loutish looking sailor, at least three times her age, making his way up the hill, calling out to catch his attention. Caroline watched as the man put his arm around the girl’s waist and drew her to him. That child was someone’s daughter; a woman had brought her into the world, fed her, guided her first steps, taught her to speak, laughed with her. All to what end? The tragedy of that one girl felt to Caroline like a physical ache. She had to get to these girls, before desperation led to ruin.1

  By 1838, the British colony of New South Wales was past the foetal stage but still in its infancy. It would be another five years before even a limited vote for the Legislative Council was extended to wealthy landowners and more than sixty years before the creation of the Commonwealth of Australia brought about an albeit imperfect nationhood. When Caroline arrived in Sydney, she found numerous and disparate strands of humanity cohabiting in an uneasy, often fractious arrangement.

  Scratch the surface and it was riven by conflict. Apart from the obvious struggle between the convicts and the soldiers, there were so many other bubbling hostilities, such as the dispute between wealthy free settlers, the Exclusives, and the emancipists; the prejudice shown between the English and Irish, and, similarly, amongst the Anglicans and Roman Catholics; and the restless push for democracy, led by William Charles Wentworth and others, against the governor’s rule. Whilst animosity fermented between the white settlers, they turned almost as one to subjugate the Indigenous people, the original owners of the land. Sydney was a plaything of Janus: it had beauty, opportunity and wealth, yet it was also promiscuous, angry and greedy. “Money, money, money. Nothing is considered disgraceful here but the want of money. It covers an immense multitude of sins,” wrote one commentator.2 New South Wales needed direction and morality if it was ever to throw off its brutal past.3

  It is unlikely that Caroline and Archibald had any idea of the turmoil seething within the colony when they first arrived. What they saw on that early spring day in September when the 501-ton Emerald Isle sailed through Sydney Heads was enough to gladden their hearts. As one contemporary writer described it, “The entrance to Port Jackson is grand in the extreme . . . The countless bays and inlets of this noble estuary render it extremely beautiful.”4 Sailing into that almost virgin harbour with Caroline and Archibald were their two young sons and three Indian maids; it was the end of a journey that, including extended stopovers in Mauritius, Adelaide and Hobart, had taken six months.

  Leaving the boat and the Indian maids (who were returned to Madras), the family initially put up at an inn, probably in Jamison Street, not far from the still incomplete Circular Quay. The thoroughfare was named after their neighbour, the somewhat irregular, first titled free settler, Sir John Jamison. In many ways he typified the paradox that was colonial society. Born to middle-class Anglican parents in Ireland, he went to sea as a naval physician and was knighted during the Napoleonic Wars. After inheriting vast tracts of land in New South Wales, he moved there in 1814 at the age of thirty-eight. B
y the time Caroline reached Sydney, Sir John was well established, incredibly wealthy, a member of the governor-appointed Legislative Council, and cofounder of what would become Sydney University, the Bank of New South Wales (later Westpac) and the horse-racing industry. This paragon of the new elite also supported liberalising the political and legal institutions and, maybe most shockingly, had numerous illegitimate children from various working-class and convict mistresses, most of whom he recognised and who carried his name. One bastard daughter of a convict servant even married into the colonial establishment, with the governor attending her wedding.

  Despite some serious attempts to vanquish it, the fluidity of the social order in New South Wales, where the child of a felon could rise to lawmaker, was one of the most obvious differences between this New World and the old one, where social mobility was much more limited. Many settlers from the upper ranks, though accustomed to clear class barriers, had already started to rethink and accept the unstoppable waves of change, and many more would follow suit as the century unfolded.5 This was a community that Caroline could understand. One can almost see the spectre of her father, William Jones, with a satisfied smile on his lips, cheering her on. In this small but strangely altered reproduction of Britain, there was scope for Caroline to carry out charitable works whilst entering the highest echelons of society, moving beyond the traditional confines of her own class and, indeed, her sex also.

  Emigrants eating dinner below decks en route to Australia (National Library of Australia, nla.obj-135889370)

  So, Caroline met with a fractious, confused society, still taking shape, much like the physical town itself. After the teeming populace of India, New South Wales must have seemed strangely empty. Its allure or otherwise was in the eye of the beholder, and opinions varied. Much of the bone work of the town, including buildings such as Sydney Hospital and Hyde Park Barracks, all representing the growing sophistication of British rule, had been built some twenty-five years earlier, in Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s day; by Caroline’s time, the town was described by a Scottish businessman as being “elegant and perfect in its design . . . and is not surpassed by that of any modern town in either hemisphere”.6 The quality of the shops was disputed, though. One long-term resident, an Anglican minister, was scathing about their pretentions: “Look at our splendid shops — some of them fully equal to those of second-rate in London.”7 Another, a woman with an eye to fashion, was more complimentary, describing Sydney as “a large busy town . . . full of good shops exhibiting every variety of merchandise”.8 One of those shops, opened just a few months before Caroline arrived, was situated on the corner of George and Barrack streets; the proprietor, a Welsh immigrant named David Jones, offered the finest goods “bought in the best English Markets”.9 Other observers, however, had no hesitation in poking fun at Sydney’s attempt to emulate London: “George Street seems to be . . . the Pall-Mall . . . of Sydney, and up and down its hot, dusty, glaring, weary length go the fair wives and daughters of the ‘citizens’, enjoying their daily airing.”10 At the same time, parts of Pitt Street were praised for their rural tranquillity, being “remarkable for [their] neatness and cheerful appearance . . . most of the cottages with . . . small garden plots before them [and] shaded verandahs . . . recall the rustic beauties of Old England.”11

  On the edge of Hyde Park, the one place that Caroline would definitely have visited shortly after her arrival was St Mary’s Church. Built in 1821 with the blessing of Governor Macquarie, it was a simple cruciform stone structure in the Gothic style.12 Despite most governors being tolerant of religious diversity, it wasn’t until 1835, and after much negotiation between London and Rome, that John Bede Polding, an Englishman, was appointed by Papal Briefs to be the first Bishop of Sydney (and in 1842 became the first Archbishop of Sydney). The 1841 census showed that just over a quarter of the colony’s 130,000 souls were Roman Catholics, the vast majority of those being Irish convicts and poor working-class immigrants.13 Yet there were also by then a number of eminent Catholics, particularly in the judiciary, including the Attorney General, John Hubert Plunkett, and lawyer and future judge and politician Roger Therry. It is likely that Caroline made their acquaintance, possibly through the church, when she first arrived in Sydney. Certainly, there is evidence that Caroline maintained a close friendship for some years with Therry’s wife, Ann.14 Later Roger Therry was to devote a section of his 1863 book, Reminiscences of Thirty Years’ Residence in New South Wales and Victoria, to Caroline and her work with immigrants.

  Caroline’s first impression of the colony was no doubt coloured by the views of those early friendships. Or maybe, as so often happens, she was drawn to people whose opinions corresponded with her own. Whatever the case, in Therry and Plunkett she certainly found important men with surprisingly liberal views for the era, notably on the rights of Australia’s Indigenous people. Despite public opinion being strongly against them, both men were instrumental in prosecuting the white men responsible for one of the most heinous attacks on Aboriginal people documented since the advent of European settlement. It happened at Myall Creek Station, about 360 kilometres northwest of Sydney, on the Liverpool Plains, on 10 June 1838. (Caroline was still on the boat on her way to Australia when the massacre took place.)

  On the evidence of one brave convict station-hand, a local magistrate, Edward Denny Day, and the station owner, eleven men (a mix of convicts and emancipists) were charged with murdering thirty Aboriginal people, mostly women, old men and children. It was a premeditated slaughter. With the young men of the tribe away, the rest had been inveigled to seek protection on the property. Then they were butchered with swords and their bodies burnt.

  In the first trial in the middle of November 1838, in Sydney, all eleven men were acquitted. Their defence at this trial and the subsequent one was paid for by an association of landowners and stockmen who, like most of the white community, supported the defendants. Later The Sydney Gazette reported the words of one of the jurors from the first trial, who claimed that he knew that the men were guilty but admitted, “I look on blacks as a set of monkeys and I think the earlier they are exterminated from the face of the earth the better . . . I for one, would never consent to see a white man suffer for shooting a black one.”15 Almost immediately Plunkett and Therry found evidence to recharge seven of the men and go to a new trial. (The other four men, plus one free settler also believed responsible, were released, never to face any legal reprobation.) This time, all seven were found guilty, and they were hung on 17 December 1838. The expectation throughout the colony had been that the new Governor, Sir George Gipps, would intervene with an order for clemency, but none was forthcoming. The Sydney Gazette reported that before their executions the men asked to be allowed to embrace: “They kissed and shook each other’s hands, and with eyes streaming with tears, bade each other a last adieu . . . They mounted the scaffold . . . The cries of the men to God for mercy were distinctly audible and they were soon launched into eternity. Throughout the whole of the time they remained in the yard they appeared to pay much attention to their devotions . . . although they expressed no contrition for the crime.”16

  The men were the only whites in all of New South Wales to be hung for crimes against the Indigenous people during the colonial years. Sir George Gipps came in for severe criticism from the newspapers. The Sydney Herald on 5 July 1838 described as “mawkish sentimentality” his statement that Her Majesty’s Government expected an increase in the “just and humane treatment of the aborigines of this country”.17 It seems extraordinary, from a twenty-first-century perspective, that such a statement would even need to be made, but two hundred years ago white society had no perception of equality, be it racial or sexual.

  Caroline would have been very aware of the bitter social divisions created by the massacre and subsequent trials. It gave her an initial insight into the broad social opinions of many of the powerful men within the colony, as well as those of lesser individuals. Although she was to become primarily con
cerned with British immigrants, she exhibited significant sympathy for the plight of the Indigenous people, though true to her main focus, it was Indigenous women who interested her the most, particularly when she discovered that many had been victims of rape and possibly murder at the hands of settlers. An example of her attempting to intervene on behalf of Aboriginal people is a letter that she wrote almost ten years later, when she was able to trade on her status as one of the best-known philanthropists within the colony and exert some influence. Dated February 1847, it was addressed to Earl Grey, Secretary of State for the Colonies in London; she suggested to him that the “frightful disparity” of the sexes in New South Wales was responsible for subjecting the Indigenous population to misery and crimes and pointed out that “this . . . may be traced in a great degree the gradual but certain extermination of those unfortunate tribes . . . the original holders of the soil”.18

  Strife of a different kind was also invading New South Wales by the late 1830s: the colony was on the verge of depression. There were three major causes for the crippling economic slump. The first and possibly chief reason was the type of boom and bust that is not unknown in twenty-first-century Australia. Back in colonial days it was the result of land and stock speculation. From 1831 Crown land had been sold at auction from five shillings an acre, but in 1838, at a time when there were more free immigrants wanting to invest in the New World, that price rose sharply to twelve shillings an acre. With no taxation in the colony, land sales provided much-needed revenue to the government, and the profits from the sales were deposited with Sydney banks. In a dangerous circular effect that left both sides vulnerable, the banks then lent the money out immediately on interest to other eager settlers, often people with little collateral, only a burning desire to buy land that, in many cases, they had not even seen. Many also borrowed to invest in livestock, especially sheep. The Reverend David Mackenzie, writing about the colony after living there for a decade, suggested that speculators needed rather a “cargo of strait-jackets, and a place in a lunatic asylum”.19 He went on to tell of several young men he knew who had taken out five-year loans at ten per cent interest to buy flocks of sheep at £3 a head, only to find that by the time the loan had matured, the sheep were worth no more than six shillings a head.20