ABSTRACT
The use of the testimony of migrant women recognizes that they are in a unique position to provide evidence of the experience of migration. Many migrants from Wales moved from counties and communities with a long tradition of migration and emigration. Migration of women from Wales had been a feature of demographic change for several centuries. Seasonal migration of women to the market gardens of England during the summer months in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries offers evidence of long-distance movement. Nineteenth-century preoccupations with moral and disciplinary conditions on board emigrant ships continued into the twentieth century, especially with regard to women emigrants. It is in the light shed on the process of migration for single, lone female migrants that these testimonies are particularly useful, for this group has remained elusive or indistinct by other methods because of gaps in statistics and name changes on marriage.
