Caroline Chisholm

by Sarah Goldman

  They were, all of them, locked within the great lumbering belly of a steaming iron coach, hurtling along, according to Papa, at an extraordinary twenty-eight miles an hour. Outside, they saw England passing before them through a steamy white haze: the countryside with its soft, rich fields and little hamlets, and the towns crammed with dirty hovels backing on to monstrous buildings belching black smoke. Inside the coach, the constant clanging was like some sort of mechanical giant hammering into rocks, and every now and then the locomotive spurted forth an eerie, high-pitched whistle. The boys had dreamt of this journey, but had never imagined being captured by such power.

  Little Henry decided to venture a grin, eyes alight, seeking out the warm good humour he knew lay beyond Papa’s stern exterior. His father’s frown lightened and a self-mocking smile twisted his lips. Papa could never be angry for long. Mama was the strict one, but right now she wasn’t taking any notice of the three boys. That was all the fault of the new bairn, as Papa called him. Henry looked across the carriage to where his mother sat, eyes closed, half asleep, holding his tiny brother, Sydney, on her lap. Henry thought the baby was more like a rat than a real person, with his squished up face and sour smell.

  Henry would never forget the night Sydney had been born. Mama had grown fatter every day on their sea journey and then, just as they were about to arrive in England, she had started having pains. Henry, his brothers and Papa too had all been sent from the cabin. They had heard Mama crying though, even from up on deck. Only the ship’s surgeon and a dirty-looking old woman, a Mrs Doherty from steerage, were allowed to stay. Then there had been a terrible storm, with the boat rocking and tossing on huge seas. Finally, hours later, as the light faded into darkness, the surgeon had called them to see the baby. The boys, crowding around the lamplight, had been disappointed — all that trouble for such a scrawny little thing.

  After that, the adults had said that Sydney might die. Mrs Doherty might have looked like a mucky, witchy sort of old woman with no teeth and bad breath, but amazingly had come up with a plan to save their little brother. She took milk from the last goat on board and gave it to the baby from a strange-looking bottle, and that seemed to keep him going. Henry and his brothers thought it was hilarious and kept calling Sydney “the kid”, but no one else had laughed, least of all Mama. She just lay on her cot, moaning and sleeping. It scared Henry to see Mama like that; she was never sick.

  When they’d reached Hull, they had found rooms in a hotel, and Papa had called in a doctor for Mama and the baby, and found a woman who could feed Sydney. They’d stayed there until both were strong enough to travel.

  Henry had seen drawings of trains, but now he was actually inside one. Papa had said that it would only take eight, maybe ten hours to reach London, 155 miles away. The boys grew fidgety, restless. The baby whimpered, but slumbered on.

  “Ach, but it’s a miracle the bairn sleeps through all this racket,” Papa said, turning his head to look at Sydney nestled in Mama’s lap. Mama was too tired to answer, but a slight smile creased her lips.

  “Papa, how much longer?” asked William. “I’m so hungry.”

  Pulling his watch out, Papa checked the time against a small booklet. “We should be stopping soon,” he said.

  Henry was also beginning to feel an empty gnawing in his stomach. It seemed such a long time since they had eaten breakfast. He wriggled in his seat trying to concentrate on the rattling train, the fields of bright yellow flowers, even baby Sydney — anything apart from food.

  The locomotive emitted a long, shrill blast and a burst of steam engulfed the windows, shutting out the view momentarily as the chugging slowed and the giant machine eased into a station. A guard ran up and down the platform shouting: “Peterborough, Peterborough, one hour, ladies and gentlemen, one hour.”

  Henry and his older brothers jumped from their seats. Archibald Jnr asked, “May we be excused, please?”

  “Of course,” replied Mama, the first words she had spoken since they had left Hull at dawn.

  Then, as Henry scrambled down the iron steps onto the platform behind his brothers, he heard his Mama say: “I’ll stay here with the baby, Archie. You take the boys for something to eat, but please come back in time, so that I have a chance to stretch my legs too.”

  Racing along the platform, Henry suddenly felt light-hearted again, his fears subsiding. Mama was back in charge. All would be well.1

  Some thirteen years had elapsed since Caroline had last stepped foot in England. Time had wrought a remarkable alteration in the untested and heartbroken twenty-five-year-old who had undertaken that first lonesome sea journey to India. Now she was returning to a country that had also undergone many changes in those intervening years. Three great forces had been at work in Britain. The ongoing expansion of the Industrial Revolution had created an impoverished, downtrodden, urban population. This, in turn, had spawned its own antidote: a growing demand for workers’ rights. At the same time an unprecedented natural disaster was sweeping through Ireland. In what became known as the Great Potato Famine, Ireland was devastated by the twin evils of massive crop failures and the deadly diseases that often accompany famine. Between 1845 and 1849, some one million people died as a result of starvation and such illnesses as dysentery, cholera, smallpox and influenza. Another one million people are thought to have emigrated, mostly to North America.2

  These factors would help define Caroline’s pathway forward, but it is probable that, at first, she did not even recognise the extent of the changes around her. On arrival in Hull, the need to feed and succour her newborn infant would have been paramount. It is unlikely that Caroline had breastfed any of her sons, hence it would have been extremely difficult for her, at the age of thirty-eight and with a gap of seven years since her last baby, to start doing so now.

  When Caroline and the baby were finally well enough to leave Hull, the family travelled directly south to London. It is somewhat surprising that, having arrived in northern England, Caroline and Archibald did not take the opportunity to visit family in Scotland or Northampton, particularly as they had been absent for so many years and were now within striking distance of both locations. Their four sons had been born abroad after all, and it would have given them an opportunity to renew family ties and introduce the children to their relations. Sometime in the next few years, Sarah Laws was probably in London, and she was certainly there six years later during the 1851 census (as mentioned previously). Earlier biographers have speculated that Sarah looked after Caroline’s younger children in place of a nanny. It appears, however, that in 1846, when Caroline first arrived back in Britain, she was too eager to start on her emigration work to have time for any family reunion of her own.

  The Chisholms may have journeyed to London by coastal steamer, although it’s more likely they would have taken a steam train. At the time, Britain was gripped by a speculative frenzy known as “Railway Mania”. In 1846, the year Caroline returned to Britain, more than 270 Acts of Parliament were passed setting up new railway companies. It was a rage that would have long-lasting social effects, allowing the poor and working class to travel outside their usual orbit. For Caroline, it not only meant that she would more easily be able to journey around Britain spreading her message of the benefits of living in the Antipodes, but also that would-be emigrants could more easily reach her and access her help. It would have been strangely unlike Caroline, and Archibald too, to have ignored the chance to experience the power of the invention that was already revolutionising the world. Besides which, it was both a faster and cheaper way to travel — not to be ignored when you had four sons to transport, one of them a newborn.3

  Railway companies assisted Caroline by providing tickets free of charge. (Museums Victoria)

  In choosing a home in London, Caroline, heeded the advice of a visiting colonialist and wealthy squatter, Archibald Boyd, by initially renting near Jubilee Place, off Commercial Road in the East End. Boyd had suggested the location because it would mean that Car
oline was within reach of the indigent people wishing to emigrate. It was a far from salubrious location amidst the abject poverty and violence of London’s most degraded, grimy slums, where according to one of London’s leading journalists of the day, “Pigs and cows in back yards, noxious trades like boiling tripe, melting tallow, or preparing cat’s meat, and slaughter houses, dustheaps, and ‘lakes of putrefying night soil’ added to the filth.”4 There were advantages, however: the rent in such an area would have been much cheaper than more modish surroundings, and it was close to the docks and railways.

  It’s likely that Caroline hit the ground running. Having no lasting ill effects from the birth, she probably organised a wet nurse to look after Sydney, leaving herself free to pursue her own agenda. Archibald took responsibility for the education of the three older boys, sending them to board at Sedgley Park School in Staffordshire, about nineteen kilometres from Birmingham, where the former Catholic Vicar General of Sydney, William Ullathorne, was to become bishop a few years later. Sedgley Park was a renowned Catholic college, established back in 1763. It accepted boys from seven to fourteen years of age, and at the time that the Chisholm boys arrived had about 140 students from both the middle and upper classes.5 For a family watching its budget, Sedgley Park was not cheap, costing at least twelve guineas a year per pupil, plus a one guinea entrance fee. Amongst the subjects studied were geography and arithmetic, which also combined book-keeping and land-measuring. Assuming Archibald, with his classical education, would have wanted the boys to learn at least Latin, he would have paid an extra half guinea for each of them. Additionally, there were charges for French, drawing and dancing classes, although it is unlikely, given the Chisholms’ financial restraints, that the boys would have indulged in those activities.6

  Given the location of their home, it was probably just as well that the older children were sent off to school, as it kept them from wandering the local streets amid disease and filth. In this and other ways, Caroline’s overriding concern for her emigrants at the expense of all else had a significant effect on her children, and would do so again in the future.

  With their domestic arrangements sorted out, Caroline and Archibald began working towards her three main aims, the ones she had identified before leaving New South Wales: to procure more single female immigrants; to ensure a free family reunion scheme for both the wives and families of former convicts and the left-behind children of free settlers; and to help Britain by encouraging its hardworking poor to seek new lives in Australia.

  Within two and a half months of settling into London life, at the end of October 1846, Caroline was writing back to a friend in Sydney, confident that although she was still finding her feet, progress was being made towards her goals: “I have taken no public steps, thinking it better to work my way quietly.”7 She was, however, making some noise, letting people know where she could be found, gathering people to her cause and becoming well known as the go-to person for would-be emigrants seeking information about the Australian colonies or assistance with the complicated administrative and financial processes of emigration. Many of the people asking for her guidance had family or friends who had gone before them and were now responding to calls for them to follow. “Numerous letters have been sent me requesting interviews from persons in all parts; some giving long lists of relations who are anxious to emigrate,” she wrote to her friend in Sydney.8 Displaying her usual confidence that she was the person best equipped to select the most promising settlers, Caroline usually wrote back to the applicants asking them to meet her in person.

  Caroline knew what she was about. She had already set up one business-like venture, the Female Immigrants’ Home in Sydney; now she could call on those skills to lobby the British Government to help her establish a not-for-profit emigration network. She knew that government support was essential.

  Like anyone establishing a complex new venture, Caroline, trying to pull together the various strands, was time poor. One of her chief objectives was to enhance communications with both her supporters and, even more importantly, with her clients — those wishing to emigrate. This task was so onerous that there was little time for anything else. “The numerous letters we have received have occupied nearly the whole of my time and the best part of Captain Chisholm’s to answer, and I can see that within three months from this, extra aid will be requisite.”9 Whilst running the Immigrants’ Home in Sydney, Caroline had employed a clerk to help write contracts, and she did the same now. The clerk helped her answer the almost 3400 applications she received within the first year of her arrival in England.10 A prime concern again was the expense of postage. Writing to her Australian friend, she bemoaned that “a letter from Sydney today cost me 2s 3d, and Captain C. paid £1 4s 3d for postage, last week. This is a serious tax; stationery is also a heavy item.”11 The financial burden would only increase, particularly as Caroline was determined to be independent of any outside influences. In Sydney, the Female Immigrants’ Home had received some sponsorship money to help with its running costs, and had been self-sufficient as a result of employers paying for the hire of staff. And although the Colonial Government had offered no direct funding, Caroline had been allowed to frank her own mail, a big saving. In London, she was acting as a private citizen and therefore was wary of appearing to be beholden to any particular groups, especially religious ones. It meant, in effect, that the whole financial responsibility of helping the emigrants was initially being borne by Archibald.

  Whatever the costs, Caroline pushed on with her plans. Undaunted by protocol, she approached the top echelons of government; the Colonial Secretary, Henry Grey, the third Earl Grey, granted her an interview, as did his first cousin, Sir George Grey, who was the Home Secretary. (Although both men were highly respected, important politicians of their day, neither would be remembered as well as Henry’s father and George’s uncle, Charles Grey, by succeeding generations. He was not only Prime Minister of Britain, but is the earl after whom Earl Grey tea is named.) Caroline’s plan that the British Government should, free of charge, reunite the wives and families of convicts and emancipists in Australia, spanned both jurisdictions. Both Secretaries of State and associated civil servants showed respect for her abilities and her opinions, and she was very pleased with the way she was received: “I am happy to say Earl Grey listened with much interest and humanity to all I advanced . . . [He] expressed himself obliged by my affording him so much authentic information.”12

  Following those top-level meetings Caroline made an appearance before the Colonial Land and Emigration Commission. Not long afterwards, she paid two more visits to the Colonial Commissioners’ Offices, “and I have every reason to be satisfied with the attention that has been paid to my suggestions.”13 Caroline, focused on promoting her causes, appeared totally unaware of the singularity of her success in gaining access to these high-born and powerful men and then bending them to her will. She had, of course, already achieved similar success in India with the Governor of Madras, Sir Frederick Adams, and in Sydney with Sir George Gipps. Even so, in London she was dealing with the pivotal power-brokers of the Empire, the colonial masters responsible for tens of millions of lives around the globe — and she had only been in the city for three months.

  In later years, highlighting the David and Goliath battle that she was conducting, Caroline described the physical hardships that she had endured while pursuing her quest:

  Many a weary and cold walk, through the sleet and snow, for it was in winter I commenced my operations, I had to undertake from Prince’s-street, Mile-end, the eastern part of London, to the Home-office, before I succeeded in obtaining a passage to Sydney for those poor people. Although I met with every consideration and attention from the Home Secretary of State, Sir George Grey, forms and inquiries had to be gone though, and I had also to hunt out the wives and families by postal communication.14

  It was worth the effort. In April of the following year, 1847, a group of wives and children of emancipists who had been lef
t behind when their husbands had been transported, were granted free passage by the British Government aboard the Asia, a vessel taking convict women to Hobart (transportation continued to Tasmania until 1853). From there the families would sail to Sydney, their passages paid for with funds entrusted to Caroline by their husbands awaiting them in New South Wales.

  When the women and children first gathered in London, Archibald met the families and, at his own expense, paid for a boat to take them to Woolwich to board the Asia. Some of the women were so poor that Caroline begged funds from two wealthy Australians then in London to provide them with clothes for the journey. Amongst those embarking was an “aged wife separated twenty-one years that very day, as she told me, from her expatriated husband”.15 Within two months another group of emancipist families were aboard the Waverley bound similarly for Hobart and then on to Sydney to be reunited with their husbands. Within just seven months of landing at Hull, Caroline had launched herself at the British establishment and with dedicated single-mindedness, cut through red tape and achieved success. It was just a start.

  *

  Caroline’s next project was to reunite left-behind children with parents who had gone to Australia in the years of the booming economy before 1841, when poor immigrant labour was desperately being sought but dependents were not. Just before Caroline had left Sydney, Governor Gipps had approved her request for the Colonial Government to bear the cost, or bounty, of bringing those youngsters to the colony.16 Now Caroline started pushing for the British Government to make good on that promise. Whilst agreeing to the idea in principal, and even praising Caroline, the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners had reservations about the idea, and even suggested that Caroline had manipulated Sir George into an unwise position: “The Colonial Government have been led by the appeals of Mrs Chisholm, a lady who has distinguished herself by her humanity and her activity in connection with emigration, to promise a bounty for the introduction of these children.”17 The commissioners’ concerns were three-fold: the organisation involved, the costs and the mortality rate on such voyages.