ABSTRACT

Successful emigrants like Mary Taylor did much to illustrate the potential of emigration for middle-class women providing the message could reach them in Britain. As early as 1841 Wakefieldian propagandists, anxious to attract respectable settlers to their new colonies in South Australia and New Zealand, were claiming that a radical shift had occurred in middle-class attitudes to emigration. In the same year Hyde Clarke laid plans for the National Benevolent Emigration Fund for Widows and Orphan Daughters of Gentlemen, Clergymen, Professional Men, Officers, Bankers and Merchants. By 1850, admittedly, the outlook did not seem promising for middle-class emigration. Certainly this was the impression conveyed in the Canterbury publicity, with its persistent stress on the respectability of the venture. It was in this highly unfavourable setting for the popularity of middle-class emigration that private and philanthropic efforts began to effect a change from about 1850. Henceforth female emigration would be a respectable and serious business.