ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the workings of a scheme that was distinctive for its transcolonial vision of producing potential settlers for New Zealand from a problem population in British India. Aileen Sinclair was the first of sixty-five adolescent 'Anglo-Indian' women who were systematically emigrated to New Zealand between 1909 and 1938. Many Anglo-Indian women were employed as ayahs or nurses, and Alison Blunt has argued that their high representation in paid employment was an important means of embracing European habits. The presence of these Anglo-Indian women in New Zealand families represents a small but significant exception to Macdonald's finding that unlike other colonies, domestic service in New Zealand was almost exclusively European. Yet domestic labor was a crucial means of getting these young women off the ships and onto the shores of New Zealand. Their placement in families too was about more than adequate performance in their domestic service roles.
