Single and Free: Female Migration to Australia, 1833-1837 by Elizabeth Rushen

Book Description

Secondhand. Good condition. Ex library copy with external stickers and protective plastic covering. Stamp on imprint page. Partial date due slip on inside page now covered with blank ex libris bookplate sticker. Wear to book corners and edges. Minor marks on foredges. Marks on back cover.

Single & Free explores the scheme administered by the London Emigration Committee to assist free women in migrating to Australia from Great Britain and Ireland. In the 1830s, approximately 3000 women took advantage of this scheme, representing an enormous influx to the population of the two eastern colonies of Australia, New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land.

The book analyses the women’s motivations and life experiences, challenging contemporary criticisms that they were the ‘sweepings of the gutters’. Many women migrated in family groups or were joining family and friends in the colonies. They came from a wide cross-section of nineteenth-century society. They were bold and enterprising and made ideal workers and wives in the new colonies.

Single & Free provides the life histories of many of the women who took part in this scheme and provides an index of all the women and their ship of arrival. (publisher blurb)