Caroline Chisholm

by Sarah Goldman

  In fact, Caroline did believe that men, even those who had suffered brutality under the transportation system and in the hellholes of Norfolk Island and Port Arthur, could also be inherently decent and moral without recourse to feminine influence. In her 1847 open letter to Earl Grey, she wrote about former male convicts: “While there is hope of heaven, there is hope on earth . . . vast numbers . . . have gained through the force of an innate virtue . . . a respectable position in the ranks of social life.” She continued: “Wandering for hundreds of miles in . . . New South Wales . . . I have shared in the hospitality of all classes . . . I have had opportunities of gaining an intimate knowledge of the peculiarities and feelings of the people, and these justify . . . my recording here my humble testimony to the sterling worth and exemplary conduct . . . of the emancipists of New South Wales.”15 Caroline was in no doubt that “goodness and virtue” were intrinsic human qualities, and not confined to the female sex.

  She did, however, consider that “goodness and virtue” were the necessary traits of the women needed to redress the imbalance of the sexes; in fact she believed that to import “immoral” women would be cruel because they would not be wanted for regular employment or as wives. Caroline was lobbying for the type of female that she thought essential for creating a fruitful and, even more significant, happy community. She believed that any hardworking, well-behaved females would not only address the frustration and loneliness of the bushmen but also help develop the colony. She wrote, “Those who, at home, have been accustomed to work, and are willing to do so in this country: these . . . stout, strong girls that can milk cows, wash, boil a potato, scour the floor, and are willing to try to do whatever their mistress bids them: for these, the demand is very great, both as servants and wives.”16 She was, in effect, cherry-picking the type of immigrant she thought would be most beneficial to the community; in that she was doing no less or no more than governments of all complexions have done since Australia was first invaded by the British. Unlike many of those governments though, she was listening to the people and addressing their needs, and she was seeking to alleviate a social ill.

  Her other motive was to offer the female flotsam and jetsam washing up on Australian shores an opportunity to build substantially better lives than the ones that they had left behind. Certainly, she was often sending them into situations where they would meet marriageable men, but they were not being forced towards the altar. Caroline was no white slaver prostituting girls on exclusive long-term agreements. Marriage was not being offered as the lesser of two evils but as a means to an end. Caroline was arranging for the girls to work, but with the safeguard of a contract that stipulated a reasonable rate of pay and fair conditions at a time when only the most incipient rumblings of workers’ rights were being raised in Australia, and those purely for men. Effectively, she was giving the girls far more autonomy than they had ever experienced, and certainly more than they would have had access to in Britain. Putting it into context, it would be close to another 130 years (1973) before the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission finally accepted the concept of equal pay for females.17 While Caroline did not advocate equal pay, she did ensure that the girls’ remuneration and conditions were adequate: for example, a governess she contracted on £16 a year plus board and keep, as well as defined workdays and hours, enjoyed an arrangement that compares favourably with that of a shepherd (not a beneficiary of one of Caroline’s contracts) who two years later was receiving between £16 and £20 per annum plus board and keep but without any definite days off or limits on hours per week.18 Some thirteen years later in 1855, writing a letter to the editor of the Melbourne Argus, she said, “We ought not to forget that if this country is to become a great nation, we must endeavour to uphold in the females who come here principles of self-reliance and independence.”19 There is little doubt that Caroline believed women were entitled to be both self-sufficient and free to make their own choices.

  To criticise Caroline for promoting agricultural and domestic work for women along with marriage is to ignore the metaphysical fog of the era and to undervalue Caroline’s attitude to female ability. During an emigration lecture in her home town of Northampton in 1853, she stated, “I never can imagine that Almighty God sent females into the world to be cooks and housemaids all their days.”20 New South Wales in the 1840s was mostly subject to British laws, and although there was a young woman on the throne of the United Kingdom she was caged in by male advisors and her husband. It would be another seven years before women were allowed entry to tertiary education in Britain and, even then, it was only to a secluded London house well away from the traditional bastions of learning, the exclusively male-inhabited universities. In Australia, where the first university was not established until 1850, it would take until 1883 for the first woman to graduate. Universal female suffrage in the United Kingdom would not happen for almost ninety years (1928), although it would be introduced considerably earlier in Australia (1902). Meanwhile, the woman described by the London Post as the “Queen of nineteenth-century science”, Mary Somerville, was prohibited only by her sex from being made a fellow of the Royal Society, the pre-eminent British association for mathematicians and scientists.21 (The first women were not elected fellows until 1945.)

  So, to condemn Caroline as a promoter of female subservience is to totally misunderstand and misrepresent her achievements. Nineteenth-century society did not value women, except as mothers or sex objects, and that variance depended on their social status. The most vulnerable were those of the lower classes, especially those with little or no education or financial independence. Caroline was a fierce advocate for these women, giving many of them a degree of autonomy well in advance of the precepts of the era and, in turn, instilling a level of self-respect that abetted the move from serfage to suffrage. In later years, Caroline would even start conversations about women politicians, and men doing their share of domestic duties.

  *

  Throughout her early work with the immigrants, Caroline received many requests from countrymen looking for wives. To Caroline the bushmen working the land, who were often alienated, depressed and in need of succour and love, were not just statistics, they were real people with real needs. One of the many letters she received was from a farmer who was well known “as a person of integrity”. As a one-man-band he could not leave his holding to spend time in Sydney looking for a wife, but he obviously carried heartache in his solitude. This is what he wrote to Caroline:

  Reverend madam,

  I heard you are the best to send to for a servant, and I heard our police magistrate say, it was best to leave all to you; and so I’ll just do the same, as his honour says it’s the best. I had a wife once, and so she was too good for me by the far, and it was God’s will, ma’am; but I has a child, ma’am, that I wouldn’t see a straw touch for the world; the boy’s only four yeare old: and I has a snug fifty-acre farm and a town ’lotment, and I has no debts in the world, and one teem and four bullocks; and I’se ten head oh cattle, and a share on eight hundred sheep, so I as a rite to a desent servant, that can wash and cook and make the place decant; and I don’t mind what religion she bey, if she is sober and good, only I’se a Protestant myself; and the boy I have, I promised the mother on her death bed, should be a Catholic, and I wont, anyhow, have any interferance in this here matter . . . I wouldn’t, mam, on any account in the world, be bound to marry; but I don’t wish it altogether to be left out. I’ll get her fourteen wages, and if she don’t like me, and I don’t like her, I’ll pay her back to Sydney. I want nothing in the world but what is honest, so make the agrement as you like, and I’ll bide by it. I sends you all the papers, and you’l now I’m a man wot’s to be trusted. I sends you five pounds; she may get wages first, for I know some of the gals, and the best on um, to, are not heavy we boxes; and supposing anything should happen, I would not like it to be said she come here in rags. I wants, also, a man and his wife; he must be willing to learn to plough, if he don’t now h
ow, and do a good fair day’s work at any thing: his wife must be a milker, and ah dustrious woman; I’ll give them as much as they can eat and drink of tea and milk, and, whatever wages you set my name down for, I’ll be bound to pay it. With all the honer in the world I’se bound to remain your servant till death.22

  Apart from the pathos of this letter, what is notable here is that it shows a man wanting a companion, not just a sex partner. He was cognisant, moreover, that the female as well as the male had rights within a relationship: “and if she don’t like me, and I don’t like her, I’ll pay her back to Sydney. I want nothing in the world but what is honest.” Such an attitude would have appealed to Caroline. And it did. She wrote: “There was something in the character of this honest bushman to admire; he had gained his freedom, sent home money to his parents, and, during a long and tedious illness of twenty months, he had tended his sick wife with patient care. Who would not get up an hour earlier to serve such a man?”

  Caroline took time to look around for the right girl and eventually discovered one at the home who she thought would be ideal. The girl was “at the wash-tub; she was at work with spirit; she was rather good looking, very neat and tidy”. Investigating further, Caroline found that she was related to a married couple, so she sent the three of them to her petitioner. Even so, she made sure the girl still had a choice, by giving her letters of introduction to three ladies living nearby. One engaged her within a few days of her arriving in the district, but she does not seem to have remained there long, as Caroline learnt: “About a fortnight after, the bushman wrote to thank me, for sending him the married couple; and concluded by saying, ‘With regard to that other matter, upon my word, you have suited me exactly; and, as soon as our month is up, we is to be married.’”23 (The “month” referred to the banns, or notice of intended marriage, which had to be issued three times in a parish church before a wedding could take place.) Caroline acknowledged that she received more than forty requests for wives, but insisted that this young woman was “the only one she sent into the country with a direct matrimonial intention”.24

  CHAPTER 9

  The Trouble with Men

  1842–44

  Sydney, 22 February 1842

  It was mid-morning in late February, one of those heavy, stifling days: the air hanging wet, a dirty haze rising over a fetid road, the sun a furnace, the sky cobalt. Caroline pulled the bell at the entrance to her friend Ann Therry’s house and heard its urgent clanging behind the cedar doors. Like an excited child, she wanted to share her news with someone and, in the absence of Archie, Ann was the natural choice.

  The door was opened by a maid, who curtsied and said that Mrs Therry was entertaining in the front drawing room. “Please follow me ma’am,” she requested. Caroline stopped for a moment inside the door. It was deliciously cool there, the thick sandstone walls a fortress against the heat.

  When Caroline entered the drawing room, Ann flew out of her chair to grab her by the hand. “My dear! The very person I was hoping would visit,” she exclaimed. The irrepressible Ann was about to continue, but Caroline swiftly interjected.

  “No, Ann, you must listen to me first. I have such wonderful news, astonishing you will say.” Excited and ebullient, Caroline clutched her friend’s hand. “The governor has agreed to the prosecution. I’ve just come from his office. Ann, your own Mr Therry will be in charge.” Caroline was glowing. “He will win, I know he will. What’s more, Sir George says that I will be called to testify. I depend on you to advise me.”

  “Caroline! How simply wonderful. And yes, I am certain that my Roger will win, he is so clever. But how on earth can I help?” Ann was brimming with delight at being asked. “Of course, I will do anything for you my dear, but you speak so well. I don’t think I can add much.”

  “I know very well what to say,” said Caroline. “But you must advise me how to dress for court. There is no one better.”

  “Indeed, I don’t think I could improve on the way you look at this very moment,” replied Ann, turning to her visitor, a young man, who was standing on the other side of the room staring appreciatively at Caroline. Ann repressed a gurgle of laughter and inquired impishly, “What is your advice, Mr Callaghan? A man has such a different eye to a woman.” And then, “Oh, where are my manners, Caroline. This is Mr Thomas Callaghan, of whom you have heard me talk, and this, you must know Mr Callaghan, is my very dear friend, Mrs Chisholm. Now I command you to like each other.”

  “Oh, I do,” breathed Mr Callaghan, bowing then coming across the room to take Caroline’s outstretched hand. “Simply perfection, ma’am. I would not change a thing,” he twinkled at her. “All the lawyers will think themselves most fortunate men to be in the same room with you, as do I.”

  Caroline responded immediately to Thomas’s lightning smile. He was tall and slender, with a long face set amongst carefully brushed brown locks; his fulsome side-whiskers gave him a distinguished appearance. What Caroline found surprising were his eyes: they were a soft, honey brown and had an almost soulful expression. He was maybe a little younger than she was but had so much natural confidence that the age difference seemed insignificant. He was fashionably dressed too, even elegant, and she found herself wondering if he was a sportsman — he had the physique of one.

  She was confused by his admiration. At thirty-three and the mother of three children, Caroline thought of herself as a staid matron, certainly not a female trying to attract attention. What she hadn’t allowed for was the bloom in her cheeks from the walk to Ann’s, tinged with the exhilaration of her news. She looked for all the world like a china doll in her dusky green, taffeta dress with its low, white lace-trimmed neckline and the bodice tapering down to an impossibly small waist. Apart from her wedding ring, her single adornment was a black ribbon tied around her throat, which emphasised the smooth alabaster of her skin. If Archie had given her such a look, she would have been thrilled, but she was unprepared and somewhat nonplussed by such attention from a stranger.

  At Ann’s behest Caroline sat down and told Thomas about the case of Margaret Ann Bolton, a young woman who had been brutalised by the captain and surgeon of the Carthaginian, and how finally, after she, Caroline, had petitioned the governor, he had agreed to prosecute the two men. “If he had not, I would have done so myself,” said Caroline, unaware of the effect of her passion on Thomas Callaghan.

  She would have continued, but just then the maid entered with tea and cakes. They began a light-hearted discussion about the correct attire for a woman to wear to court, and Thomas Callaghan made the ladies giggle time and again with outrageous suggestions and stories. Ann, delighted to see her friends so amiable, turned to Caroline with a knowing look and said, “My dear, if you flirt with the judge the way you are doing with Mr Callaghan, I’m certain that you will win without my Roger’s help.”

  Caroline’s cheeks turned fiery red. She looked up at the mantelpiece clock and rose, saying that it was time she left. Straightaway, Mr Callaghan offered to escort her wherever she was heading.

  “Thank you but no, Mr Callaghan. It is very kind of you, but I have work to do and it is only a short walk back to the home,” she said, drawing on her gloves.

  “I insist, Mrs Chisholm. It is the least I can do after leading you astray with my foolish stories.” His voice was sober, though his eyes still held that twinkle.

  Caroline finally acquiesced and they left the house together. On the street, Thomas offered his arm. She hesitated for a heartbeat, before tucking her hand into the crook of his elbow.

  “So, which way are we headed?” he asked.

  She smiled slightly, managing to avoid his eyes. “To the Immigrants’ Home on Bent Street. I would prefer to be going back to Jamison Street, though. That’s where the captain and I first stayed when we arrived here in ’38. He’s back in India, you know, and I do miss him.” As soon as the words were out, she wondered why she had said them and wished she had not. Would he think her a good, devoted wife or imagine that she wa
s lonely and offering him some sort of invitation?

  Looking grave, he said something about how difficult it must be for an army wife, then turned the conversation back to the coming court case. “The law moves slowly,” he warned. “It may not come to court for some months. Therry is a good man, though. I wonder if he would accept my help?”

  “Would such a case interest you?” she asked, resisting the temptation to look at him.

  “Mrs Chisholm, anything that interests you interests me.” That did bring her eyes up to his, but there was a sudden frown across her brow.

  “No, really,” he assured her, “I am, mostly, a sober individual, a man of the law, you know, and it greatly concerns me that a young woman could be treated in that way.”

  “Then, indeed, I do hope that you can assist.”

  “And may I visit you at the home?” he asked. “I would like to bring you a donation.”

  There was a long pause before she answered. Making a pretence of smoothing out her gloves, she nodded her agreement. “Yes,” she spoke softly, “in that case, Mr Callaghan, I would welcome your visit.”1

  Caroline was determined that the men responsible for the heinous violations on board the immigrant boat the Carthaginian should be brought to justice. The fact that they were the very people who should have protected the immigrant women only made it more imperative to her that the law should intercede.

  Margaret Ann Bolton, a slender, twenty-six-year-old seamstress from Ireland via Liverpool, had arrived at Caroline’s home at the end of January 1842. She was near physical and emotional collapse. Described by a Catholic priest on the Carthaginian as a “modest well-behaved woman”, she had disapproved of the lewd and loose behaviour of others on board and not been afraid to express her opinions with an acerbic tongue.2 Most of her fellow travellers disliked her and she was nicknamed “The Old Maid”, becoming the butt of derision from both passengers and crew. Late one night during the last few weeks of the voyage, there was some sort of ruckus in the steerage cabins, with several women playing “ghosts” and screaming. Margaret Ann Bolton was not one of them. Nevertheless, she was dragged out on deck wearing nothing but a thin nightgown, handcuffed by the captain, and made to stand whilst the surgeon hurled buckets of cold water over her thin frame, after which she was left shivering and alone in the dark for at least two hours before being released. Even then, she was unable to change out of her drenched nightdress until the morning because, with no lights allowed in the cabin, she was unable to find her key to unlock her bag.