Caroline Chisholm

by Sarah Goldman

  Mr Fairfax spoke. “What do you want from us?” he asked again.

  She lifted the pile of letters. “If you could print some of these letters, the good people of the colony would surely support me in wanting to establish a home for the girls.”

  This time Mr Kemp was the first to answer: “Mrs Chisholm you are to be commended for such an endeavour. Before we consider what we could do, please can you tell us how exactly you would choose the girls for your home?”

  “Mr Kemp, it is not a matter of ‘picking the girls’. Any and every one that is in need will be welcome” — she hesitated for a moment before continuing — “be they English or Irish or Scottish or be they Church of England, or Catholic or Wesleyan. It’s the girls I care for, not how they worship God.”

  He was quick to respond. “I am sorry to have distressed you with such a question, ma’am. We have heard so much already from both sides of the church fence, as it were, that I wanted to satisfy myself of your impartiality.” A smile creased the line of his wide mouth. “I feel we should back your extremely worthy cause, but I also firmly believe that we should wait for Governor Gipps to lead the way. Only then can we commit to throwing our full support behind your project.”

  “And the letters?” she asked.

  Mr Fairfax had been leafing through the correspondence. “They are indeed valuable evidence of the dire need of which you speak,” he said. “But, for myself, I would hesitate to publish an array of material that will portray the colony in such a bad light at home. No, I think all things considered we should not print these.” But then he looked to Mr Kemp and, after an infinitesimal nod of understanding between them, continued: “I speak for both of us, however, in promising that once the governor agrees, we will start a campaign in The Sydney Herald to fully support your Immigrants’ Home and help you raise funds for it. In fact,” and now he was smiling, “we will be amongst the first to contribute with a donation of £2, which you may collect on the very day that Governor Gipps gives his consent.”1

  Unusually for a woman of her time, Caroline showed a keen appreciation of the influence of newspapers on public opinion, and the importance, therefore, of cultivating contacts in the press. The Sydney Herald (soon to be renamed The Sydney Morning Herald) would join most of the other newspapers in the colony, such as The Australasian Chronicle, The Sydney Monitor and Commercial Advertiser, and The Empire, to become strong supporters of her philanthropy, both in word and financially, and in subsequent years Caroline would use the print media to advertise and promote her causes and, more broadly, seek to influence public opinion. This not only yielded a potent force of supporters but also ensured her own fame. Later, in London, she would even turn journalist herself, writing about Australia and the benefits of emigration, and during a series of lectures in Sydney between 1859 and 1861, she would constantly promote the value of newspapers to her audience, telling them that “the press was the quickest, the best, and most effectual means of representing and procuring redress of their grievances”.2 At each lecture, indeed, she encouraged her audience to “take” the papers, and went on to mention The Sydney Morning Herald, The Empire and The Freeman’s Journal numerous times by name. She was, in effect, engaging in her own marketing exercise.

  In 1841, however, it was a series of reports in mid-September that had nothing to do with Caroline that finally pushed Governor Gipps into agreeing to the establishment of the Sydney Female Immigrants’ Home. Though the reports concerned just one female immigrant, they highlighted the depth of the despair among the bounty girls.

  Mary Teague was a twenty-year-old Irishwoman who had arrived in Sydney, apparently under the protection of a family man but in reality alone, on the ship Forth at the end of August 1841. Unable to find work initially, she was “thrust ashore, without a roof . . . or the means of obtaining food” and became so desperate that she was contemplating suicide when she was found dishevelled and disorientated in George Street a few days later.3 Taken for drunk by a constable despite her denials, she was brought before a magistrate, who ordered her to be placed in the stocks in lieu of the fine she could not pay. Released from the punishment, she was discovered the following day “lying in a ditch, in a paddock near the South Head Road, almost dead . . . She was unable to stand or walk.”4 A Good Samaritan took her to the General Hospital, where she recovered, but the press, led by The Australasian Chronicle and The Sydney Monitor and Commercial Advertiser, were extremely vigorous in their outrage and condemnation of the authorities for their callous disregard.

  By that time, following assistance from Lady Gipps, Caroline had met with Governor Gipps and received his polite refusal to endorse her project. Now, however, with the press agitating for action, he was finally prepared to acquiesce to her plans for the old Immigration Barracks. Before he gave his final approval, Caroline was required to sign a promise that the Colonial Government would not be responsible for any costs involved in either the establishment or the running of the home.

  So, after months of battling, Caroline prevailed. To publicise her campaign and to raise funds, she of course went to the press, who obliged with a number of articles about the founding of the home. On 24 September 1841, The Sydney Herald ran a story under the heading “Sworn to no Master, of no Sect am I”. It described how the home would be organised and concluded, “Such a ‘Home’ is much wanted, and should it be commenced, and go on without party influence and sectarian bias, it shall have our cordial support.”5 About a month later, The Australasian Chronicle also championed the home: “We are glad to perceive that this institution is about to be put in operation . . . and under the prudent and experienced direction of Mrs Chisholm, it will be productive of incalculable good.”6

  With a little help from Mary Teague and the Sydney press, Caroline had effectively cut through official apathy and the sectarian divide — no mean feat in a small, distrustful society, where wealthy settlers jealously protected their privileges. That game she had made up as a child, some twenty-five years previously, imagining a diverse group of religious ministers travelling the world together to create an inclusive new society, was taking seed. In what was a radically eclectic system for the era, Caroline invited clergy from different faiths to attend the home to give guidance and support to girls of their own creed. There was to be no proselytising or favouritism towards any particular sect; all were to be treated equally. The plan did much to bring the clergy and the extended community on side. It also emphasised Caroline’s axiom that whilst a belief in God was important, the style of worship was a personal decision.

  There were still a few detractors of course, but not many. With the governor’s consent and backing from the Ladies’ Committee and the press, Caroline’s supporters were re-energised. She even received financial aid from senior members of the Church of England, although there was some cloak-and-dagger work involved. The Anglican Bishop, W.G. Broughton, maintained his concern that the Catholic clergy would attempt to use Caroline for their own benefits. Even so, he felt that she was candid about helping the women without partiality. “There is an air of openness and honesty in this lady’s declaration,” he wrote in a letter to his chaplain, the Reverend Henry Stiles, “which leads me to believe that she has no views other than she professes . . . I will therefore beg to place £5 at your disposal, to give from time to time . . . I have not the slightest objection to its passing through Mrs Chisholm’s hands, or being distributed according to her recommendations: she however not knowing whence it comes.” Bishop Broughton also asked local Anglican ministers to preach charity sermons dedicated to immigrant relief in their churches on a Sunday.7

  With very few exceptions, the Catholic clergy also fell into line, three notable Fathers — Murphy, Therry and Rigney — all donating £10 each to the home’s coffers.8 Many other contributions followed, including from Lady Gipps and members of the Ladies’ Committee. Caroline was now widely known and talked about, and her supporters included a veritable who’s who of colonial society, spanning religious
and national divides. More importantly, she had reminded those in power that diversity, whilst challenging, could contribute to a healthy society, as long as it was attended by equality. It was a theme she was to put into writing on 24 August 1842, in a letter to Lord Stanley, the English Colonial Secretary: “I have no wish to see any power whether English or Irish — Catholic or Protestant — have too much in their own hands . . . for one might try to oppress the other.”9

  Caroline took possession of the Immigration Barracks, but found that she was not the only one with a claim to the old storeroom that she had planned would be her bedroom and office. This time, fine words would not help so much as grit and imagination. The first night that she slept there she blew out the lights only to hear scufflings and scrapings, as though some living creatures were creeping, crawling and swarming across the chamber. Terrified, she lit her candle — and saw rats everywhere. They were on the floor, the ceiling, the furniture. Her first thought was to throw on her cloak and run out the door. But, realising that deserting her post would “cause much amusement and ruin my plan”, she became more pragmatic. She lit a second candle and curled up on the bed “until three rats, descending from the roof, alighted on my shoulders”. Even then, she was not about to give in to feminine frailties and be out-generalled by a pack of vermin.

  She took two loaves of bread and some butter that was left from her supper and put them in the middle of the room along with a dish of water, then sat reading and watching far into the early hours. Through the long night she counted as many as thirteen rats and never fewer than seven around the food. The following evening, she put out a similar treat — with the addition of arsenic. Within four nights the rodents were gone and she had the room to herself.10

  This plaque at the corner of Bent and Phillip streets in Sydney marks the original location of Caroline’s Female Immigrants’ Home (Sarah Goldman)

  The old Immigration Barracks no longer stands, but it seems to have been a roughly made wooden structure divided into several rooms. The bedroom/office that Caroline won from the rats was just over four square metres. After gaining full control of it, the frustration she had endured bubbled to the surface: “My first feelings were those of indignation that such a trifle should have been so long withheld; but better feelings followed”.11 It was an honest appraisal.

  Within days of opening the home in the late spring of 1841, Caroline had invited upwards of ninety destitute girls to take shelter with her. She was responsible for housing, feeding and finding them employment, all on a shoestring budget. Caroline determined that, apart from the donations, the not-for-profit home would be funded by a subscription scheme. Her aim was to place as many girls as possible in jobs outside Sydney, where she believed they would be safe from the immoral traps waiting for them in town. As she had told Governor Gipps at their first meeting, she had written to a wide range of farmers and business owners in country towns, and she now knew what type of servants were needed in which areas and at what cost. She also understood that farmers, squatters and country townspeople could not always travel to town to engage suitable servants.

  For a yearly fee of £1, a subscriber to her scheme could request any number of servants of different categories be chosen and sent to them. The employer paid the travel costs. Non-subscribers could hire a worker for £1 a time, again covering all travel costs. To ensure that proper wages and conditions, such as rations, the length of the working week, and travel allowances, were adhered to, Caroline wrote a contract for each person she placed in a job, whether they were single females or, later, single men or married couples with children. Not only that, but the contracts were written in triplicate: one copy was for the employer, one went to the employee and one was kept on file at the home in case of any dispute. Some two thousand of Caroline’s contracts were issued between 1841 and 1842, and many more after that date. She wrote them herself, despite the fact she had absolutely no legal training (although it appears that she did seek some advice from lawyer friends in Sydney) and their validity was never questioned before the courts.12 The following is an example of one of Caroline’s later contracts, written in Sydney in 1844:

  No. 460/423. Sydney,

  20th June 1844

  Memorandum of Agreement made this Day between Messrs.

  D. and F. M’Connel of Moreton Bay of the one Part, and Noah Toall, a free Immigrant per Ship “John of London,” 1824, of the other Part.

  The Conditions are, that the said Noah Toall engages to serve the said Messrs. D. and F. M’Connel as a Stockman, and otherwise make himself generally useful, for the Term of Twelve Calendar Months; and also to obey all his or his Overseers or authorized Agents lawful and reasonable Commands during that Period; in consideration of which Services the said Messrs. D. and F. M’Connel doth hereby agree to pay the said Noah Toall Wages at the Rate of Twenty Pounds (20L.) per Annum, and to provide him with the following Rations weekly. Wages to commence on Arrival at the Station. One Half of the Passage Money to be paid by the said Noah Toall.

  Ten Pounds Beef or Mutton.

  Ten Pounds Flour.

  One Pound and a Half Sugar.

  Three Ounces Tea.

  In witness whereof they have mutually affixed their Signatures to this Document.

  D. and F. M’Connel,

  Per Robert Graham the Agent.

  Noah Toall X his Mark.

  Witness, Caroline Chisholm.13

  Caroline did not draw a wage herself, but she did employ a clerk to help write up and copy the contracts, and also a matron to supervise cooking, cleaning and washing for the girls within the home and to ensure its smooth running whenever she was away. Well aware of the cost of the huge amount of correspondence received and sent by Caroline, Governor Gipps made a further contribution to the cause by allowing her to frank her own mail — “the privilege of sending and receiving letters free of postage”.14 At this point, most of the postage and printing costs were for the pamphlets Caroline was sending around New South Wales to let prospective employers know that she was finally open for business.

  It was an extraordinary achievement for a thirty-three-year-old woman in the first half of the nineteenth century to effectively set up a retail employment agency. There were and had been other successful businesswomen in New South Wales at that time, such as former convict Mary Reibey, who had been transported in 1790 for horse stealing at the age of thirteen and just four years later had married a successful trader, Thomas Reibey. When he died in 1811, Mary was thirty-four years old, and she was left with seven children and entire control of her husband’s business, which under her management was worth some £20,000 by 1820 (well in excess of $36 million today). However, while Mary Reibey clearly needed skills to run her business, she had inherited it as an already highly profitable ongoing concern. Caroline, on the other hand, had, alone, taken her business from the merest spark of an idea and turned it into a flame of triumph.

  She admitted to only one personal regret at this time, and that was the fact she couldn’t have her three sons living close to her. She had initially brought the boys, now aged five, four and two, to the home, hoping to keep them with her. It didn’t take long though before she “found the elder one a source of so much anxiety” that she decided to send the two older boys back to Miss Galvin in Windsor, where she knew they would be “well fed and kindly treated”.15 That “source of anxiety” was, one suspects, trying to keep the boys out of mischief and danger: after all, Caroline had never been required to look after them all by herself. She did keep Henry, the two-year-old, with her when she sent the older boys away, but not for long. Aware that other youngsters had died, victims of disease and unsanitary conditions, she thought the risk too great, so Henry was, within a few weeks, also dispatched to Windsor.

  In twenty-first-century terms Caroline was negotiating the work–life balance. Instead of long day care, she was taking the nineteenth-century option of effectively outsourcing her children to a nanny, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I
t left her entirely free to pursue her vision of empowering other women to establish themselves in a largely chauvinistic culture not used to concerning itself with working-class females. The loss of her children features in Caroline’s writings of this time, but rarely again; nor is there regret that Archibald is absent, unable to share either the workload or the success. She may have missed him, but she was busy, she was engaged and she had friends — all panaceas to loneliness. She was a fashionable, attractive woman, eloquent and persuasive, with the ear of some of the most important people in the colony. No wonder she was courted and admired, and not just by the fairer sex.

  CHAPTER 8

  Going Bush

  1841–42

  Hunter Valley, New South Wales, mid-1842

  Gunshot fractured the evensong of a hundred birds. Silence pervaded the small bush camp, but only momentarily, before it was shattered by hysterical screams and panic, fear radiating like dust spreading out across a dry river bed. Caroline stood up, shaken and bewildered, much like the other women. She threw out her arms, as though to protect all within her sight: the terrified girls, the slow-witted bullock drivers, even the cumbersome beasts themselves.