Caroline Chisholm

by Sarah Goldman

  Central to the entire operation was Caroline’s vision that emigration should be of a collective nature. Rather than single families travelling alone, she insisted on groups of not less than three families banding together to share personal and financial responsibility for the journey, although sometimes she would allow a few single girls or men to join the family clusters. What was vital to Caroline was that each separate group should bond as a tight-knit unit rather than just be travelling companions. To achieve this, she insisted that each group of families should spend time together before they sailed, to get to know each other and develop special relationships. She believed that this would ensure that they cared for each other during the voyage and would encourage them to continue to work together, to the benefit of all, once they had reached their destination.

  Forming close supportive clusters also made financial sense. An important safeguard against non-repayment of the loans was Caroline’s insistence that each individual be responsible for the overall collective debt: “As each member of a group will have to pay his share of the fees due by any of its defaulters, this will brand such defaulters more deeply, and give additional security to the Society. If, for instance, a group consisted of twenty-one persons, and that one became a defaulter, each would have to pay a sixpence for his dishonesty; the insignificancy of the amount would only make his delinquency the more pointed.”14

  At heart, though, Caroline believed in the indelible honesty of ordinary people and argued it eloquently:

  The proposed repayment of the loan has been called “The Forlorn Hope” . . . and, yet will it be said that the peasantry and the people of England, of Scotland, and of Ireland are so fallen, so destitute of still nobler and higher feelings, that they cannot be trusted with the loan of a few pounds? . . . We exult in the intelligence of our people; we boast of our machinery and our science; but what is all this, my Lord, if our people cannot be trusted with a few pounds to convey them from want to plenty? If their principles are so bad and so utterly worthless . . . it will be necessary to enquire into the causes that have so degraded them.15

  Caroline planned that as each loan was repaid it would be repatriated to London to be lent to new groups of families, therefore allowing dozens of people to emigrate for much the same amount.

  To establish the whole process, Caroline set up an Australian information centre in her home in Charlton Place, furnished a room as if it was steerage accommodation on board a boat, and held evening meetings for upwards of seventy would-be emigrants at a time. These meetings were often attended also by committee members, including Lord Shaftesbury and Sidney Herbert. Although quite relaxed, these get-togethers were treated as business meetings, not social gatherings, and no refreshments were offered.

  Charles Dickens wrote about the first meeting attended by one emigrant, Richard Delver:

  An old woman of a homely appearance opened the door, and directed him up a remarkably narrow passage into a small room, fitted like a school, with benches and a tier of broad shelves in one corner, which he was told formed an exact copy of the berths or beds on board Mrs Chisholm’s ships. . . . He got into conversation with . . . a pale thin young man, who was emigrating to be a shepherd, because he was not able to stand the work of a white-lead factory.16

  Delver was a family man with a wife and two sons. He was also illiterate. At Caroline’s suggestion, another pending emigrant, a bachelor and engineer, taught Delver to read, write and “cipher”; in return, Delver’s wife, Maggie, made the man shirts and tended to his clothes.

  As an excellent communicator, Caroline enjoyed personal interaction, and these meetings gave her yet another chance to shine. She would match single travellers, particularly girls, with like-minded family groups, and advise on what essentials each family would need for a four-month sea journey, as well as what they might need once they arrived at their destination, be it Sydney, Port Phillip or Adelaide. She also offered ideas on how families could best pool resources to save for their contributions towards their fares.

  Caroline was becoming the darling of the press, and the progress of her society was reported in newspapers across the country, from The Inverness Courier in the north to The Plymouth and Devon Advertiser in the south, as well as in other major regional publications throughout Britain and in Ireland, such as The Galway Mercury and The Dublin Evening Post. When, finally, the society was ready to send its initial cargo of emigrants to Australia, no fewer than eight London-based papers and journals recorded the event.17

  The first boat hired exclusively by the society was the Slains Castle, a 503-ton barque that sailed from Gravesend on 30 September 1850. It had been especially converted to Caroline’s specifications for the voyage, giving the passengers ten per cent more sleeping space than was required under the British Government’s Passenger Act. In what was probably a first for ocean-going vessels at the time, there was only one class — all passengers were to be treated equally, and they were even allowed to walk on the poop deck. Another innovation was separate bathhouses for males and females, although the water closets (toilets) were still flushed with salt water straight into the ocean. Alcohol was banned on board the ship for emigrants, but there were larger supplies of water than on other ships. Instead of the traditional dormitory-style accommodation, with little to separate couples or the sexes apart from thin curtains made from cheap materials, Caroline’s passengers were housed in cabins. Married couples with young children were kept together, as were single women and single men, providing more privacy and security. The wooden berths were designed in such a way that they could be pushed back during the day to give more room. One contemporary was full of praise for the innovations aboard the society’s ships: “The cabins, ranged on each side, were numbered, and resembled a ward in Greenwich or Chelsea Hospital . . . By a space being left at the bottom, and the frame-work not reaching the roof by several inches, a free and perfect circulation of air was allowed in each cabin, besides, there being a small window covered by a piece of coloured cotton; thus, there were privacy, air, and light.”18

  The day before the vessel left port, Sunday services were celebrated on board by ministers of the Anglican, Wesleyan and Roman Catholic churches. The 250 men, women and children on board were “120 communicants of the Church of England, two Jewesses, and the others about equally divided between Wesleyans and Roman Catholics.”19 Caroline, of course, went aboard the Slains Castle to bid her emigrants Godspeed. It was an emotional farewell: “The moment for separation now arrived . . . A young Jewess clasped [Caroline] in her arms, kissed her, and called her ‘dear mother.’ Other females wept aloud. The old women hung about her praying for the ‘blessings of God to be her portion.’ The men in silent grief grasped her hand; and the last cheer given was . . . ‘Three cheers for Mrs Chisholm’s children!’”20 For Caroline that particular salute must have been painful: her baby, Sarah, had died only a few weeks earlier.

  The start of the journey was somewhat inauspicious, according to Archdale Low Whitby, one of the passengers, who was travelling with his wife, Eleanor, and three children, Archie, Frederick and Ellen. Archdale Whitby kept a day-by-day diary of the voyage, which lasted just over four months.21 “Very few of us required Dinner today owing to sickness,” he noted on 2 October 1850. There was a bit of excitement the next day when the Slains Castle laid anchor off Deal in Kent waiting for a fair wind. One passenger, a Mr Field, used a small boat to go ashore: “It was generally believed that Field intended to bolt, so getting quit of his wife and family of three children,” reported Whitby on 4 October. A search party was sent out; the man was found in a local pub and brought back to the ship. The next day the boat was under sail again.

  By the end of November, the wind was squally and the barque was rolling in heavy seas. On 28 November, Whitby described a dramatic scene:

  The waves being like high mountains about us . . . at ¼ past 8 o Clock p.m. (Something wrong now we know . . . Captn Andrew a very good quiet man would at this time be comfortably
playing Chess with the Doctor) . . . the Captn was heard with a voice like thunder giving orders for all hands . . . when all of a sudden “Crack Crack” . . . at the same time down came our Masts with a frightful crash carrying away part of our bulwarks — most miraculously none of us received any damage — it will be easier to imagine than describe the consternation which prevailed during this dreadful night — women crying and many waking their children up and dressing them so that they might be close to them, making sure we were all going to the bottom together.

  Whitby went on to explain that the boat was taking water and, amid the fear, the captain ordered his sailors to sing their usual songs to alleviate panic, even as they desperately worked the pumps to keep the boat afloat. When the storm eventually passed, only a lower mast was left standing. The next five days were spent drifting as the carpenter, aided by some of the passengers, repaired the masts and sails.

  Whitby’s diary also details bad behaviour by both passengers and some crew, particularly at Christmas and New Year. On Christmas Day, Field, the man who tried to escape at the start of the journey, managed to get drunk and attempted a punch-up with another passenger. More importantly, the cook was likewise inebriated and tried to fight the carpenter. Both malcontents ended up in leg irons until they apologised to an extremely temperate captain. The day ended with passengers and crew singing songs. “We had for Dinner Soup de Bouilli [vegetable soup] and hard Dumplings consequently did not fair very sumptuously — We had nothing to drink but black water and tea — Our water by this time being very bad. Fortunately for us we had a filter which greatly improved it.”

  As the Slains Castle reached the Southern Ocean, Whitby recorded sightings of whales and albatrosses and, on 21 January 1851, only days before they made landfall, the first and only death on board, of Miss Emma Bishop, a twenty-six-year-old governess from Brixton, who had been travelling by herself. She died of dysentery,

  a disease very prevalent on board just now. She was launched into the Deep at 8 Bells this Evening. It was getting dusk — The Captain read the burial Service, one of the apprentices holding by his side a lamp to see to read by, and although the Deck was thronged with spectators . . . you might have heard a pin drop and the sea which a few hours before was raging mountains high was as calm as it could be.

  Two days later Cape Otway was sighted: “Fine day with a good wind — At noon to our great delight we could see at a distance Cape Otway — [at] the cry of ‘Land in sight’ you may imagine all hands flew upon Deck . . . We were amused this Evening by watching the Cape Otway revolving light.”

  The next day, 24 January 1851, the boat dropped anchor in Port Phillip Bay. A steamer took the passengers “some few miles up the River Yarra Yarra a pretty though narrow stream with trees on both sides which almost meet over head . . . in Melbourne . . . took up our abode . . . at the ‘Royal Exchange’ Hotel, Great Collings Street, glad indeed to lay hold of some fresh provisions etc.”

  When the eager families arrived in Melbourne they were met, according to Whitby, by “Mrs Chisholm’s Agents and others”. Determined that arriving immigrants would not suffer the fate that had so distressed her in the early 1840s, Caroline had planned that immigration agents would be available to receive them. She also sent a letter to newspaper editors in each city where the boat was due to dock, commending the immigrants to their attention. She planned that in the future her agents would have tents erected as temporary residences for the new arrivals, whilst a larger tent would be set up as an employment agency. The agents were to give advice and collect the repayments from the loans that would be remitted to London. Caroline had attempted to top and tail the entire operation with her usual precision. To ensure even greater control, in March 1851 Archibald, who until then had been doing much of the society’s bookwork in London, set sail for Adelaide, where, following his arrival in August he became the colonial agent and organised colonial committees and immigration agents at the major disembarkation points of Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney. All seemed to be in place for a successful scheme. What could go wrong?

  The Slains Castle was just the first of many society boats. The Blundell followed in May 1851, and the Athenian in September 1851. Within twelve months Caroline had sent close to seven hundred new settlers to the Antipodes. The society proved to be far more successful than a concurrent scheme organised by the British Government, as Eneas Mackenzie reported: “In twelve months, during a period that the government had been unable to fill several of their ships with emigrants to whom they gave a free passage, and when filled had only been able to obtain a class whom Earl Grey termed the refuse of workhouses, inferior to convicts, Mrs Chisholm had been able to collect families of the most industrious and frugal class.”22 It does beg the question as to whether Caroline’s emigrants, most of whom seem to have been able to save some money towards their fares, were desperate people fleeing brutal poverty and, in the case of Ireland, famine and starvation, or whether they were more secure working- and lower-middle-class types, able to survive but looking for a better future — essentially economic migrants. For example, Whitby’s command of written English, his records of longitude and latitude, and of other ships sighted, and his later behaviour — he made six voyages between England and Melbourne, as well as a side trip to New Zealand, between 1850 and 1892 — suggest that he was a man of good education and belonged to the more affluent middle class.

  At least another sixteen vessels operated by the society sailed after the Athenian. The society’s funds were boosted significantly in 1852, when the New South Wales Legislative Council, impressed by the society’s achievements, voted to send £10,000 to the London committee to help it continue its work,23 and in London “city merchants engaged in the Australian trade” also raised £10,000 to contribute to the running of the society.24

  Each of the society’s boats had its own characteristics and its own stories. The Blundell appears to have been a particularly lucky vessel: not only were its passengers granted free admittance to the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace in London before departure, but nearly all found employment immediately after arriving in the colony.25 The third ship, the Athenian, was to become the first vessel to use a very crude form of air-conditioning. The surgeon on board, R. Bowie, Esq., fitted two perforated zinc tubes extending from the “stem to the stern” of the vessel and continuing up onto the deck. One tube carried off the used air while the other brought in fresh air, thereby ridding the bowels of the boat of the effluvia that inevitably resulted from so many people living, cooking and eating in close quarters.26 The Caroline Chisholm, which sailed in 1853, included amongst its immigrants at least a dozen poor Jewish girls bound for Sydney and Melbourne and sponsored by “a committee of Jewish ladies” who were also looking to be of “assistance to poor Jewish families desirous of emigrating to the Australian Colonies”.27 At the time Jewish people made up about half of one per cent of the population of New South Wales, or about one thousand people.28

  Gold fever had hit the colony in early 1851, initially across the Great Dividing Range near Bathurst in New South Wales and then, more substantially, at Ballarat, Castlemaine (then known as Forest Creek and the Mount Alexander Goldfield) and Bendigo in what would soon be the separate colony of Victoria. Millions of pounds were dug from the ground as city and bush dwellers alike downed tools and took to mining. The influx of hopefuls from across the globe was extraordinary, with Australia’s population almost tripling in the twenty years from 1851 to 1871, from less than half a million to about 1.7 million people. In the light of those numbers, the tallies achieved by Caroline’s society appear almost inconsequential. Records are vague, but most authorities agree that the society was responsible for bringing out some five thousand settlers between 1851 and 1855. There were also other private groups that sponsored emigration at this time, such as the Highland and Island Emigration Society and one organised by Caroline’s old nemesis, John Dunmore Lang. Like Caroline’s society, these were designed to transfer British subjects f
rom the overcrowded Old World to the new, and none were totally successful or had longevity, for a variety of different reasons. Caroline’s society at least appears to have been the longest lasting, and also set a completely new standard for shipboard travel for the steerage, or lowest-class, passengers. Just as importantly, many of Caroline’s immigrants came to Australia to meet up with extended family members who had gone before them. It was a solid and highly successful family reunion plan that eventuated in many working- and middle-class groups putting down firm roots in the Antipodean colonies.

  If, as a settlement programme, the Family Colonization Loan Society was moderately successful, in pecuniary terms it was a disaster, despite the generous injections of donated funds in 1852 and the fact that Caroline and Archibald both worked without pay. Some of the immigrants, particularly from the first ship, the Slains Castle, started, unasked, to make repayments, but they were ultimately in the minority. After arriving in Adelaide, Archibald, who was probably not cut out to be a debt collector, sought advice from the Advocate General; effectively, he was told that whether or not the contract between the society and the immigrants was enforceable in Australia was a moot point. More salient was the difficulty of finding defaulting immigrants, who had by and large slipped away into the interior of the colony. Many later arrivals headed straight out to the goldfields, their repayments to the society forgotten or ignored. Archibald apparently decided against legal action, and chose instead to remind immigrants of their responsibilities by advertising in the Adelaide newspapers.29

  A few months later, at the end of October 1851, having established an immigration agent and local committee in Adelaide, Archibald moved to Melbourne to do the same. He discovered that, whilst some repayments had been made and almost £4000 collected from family members to bring relatives to Port Phillip, many thousands of pounds were still owed to the society by immigrants who had arrived on Caroline’s boats. Once again, Archibald rejected legal action, in favour of making another appeal in the local newspapers, explaining that by not repaying loans the immigrants from the Slains Castle and the Blundell were denying others the same opportunity that they had been given: