A Place for the Friendless Female Exhibition

A Place for the Friendless Female Exhibition

The online exhibition “A Place for the Friendless Female” was evolved from the exhibition at Hyde Park Barracks Museum, A Place for the Friendless Female, Sydney's Female Immigration Depot. It is the outcome of a joint project between the NSW Migration Heritage Centre as well as the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales.

Well renowned as a heritage location affiliated with male convicts in Australia, Hyde Park Barracks is furthermore a important heritage location for female migration to colonial New South Wales. With convict transport to New South Wales finish in 1840 and the Superintendent of Convicts having less convicts to oversee, the residual men lodged at Hyde Park Barracks were shifted to Cockatoo Island in January 1848. The barracks was then presented over to the Immigration Department and reconfigured in readiness for the appearance of Irish orphan young women, victims of the Great Irish Famine, reaching aboard the Earl Grey in October 1848.

The Female Immigration Depot housed at the barracks from 1848 to 1886 was the prime greeting and chartering depot in Sydney for 'unprotected' females, if lone or wed, with or without children. Prior to the Immigration Depot's establishment, the government had not aided female immigrants in any concerted way to protected paid work after their appearance in Sydney. During its 38 years of procedure the depot obtained thousands of juvenile, free, government-assisted, working-class, Irish, English, Scottish and Welsh female migrants to New South Wales. Most women came to the colony searching paid work, or were lured by the aided route, images of colonial prosperity, and possibilities for marriage (Frances 1993). Some came to be reunited with family constituents who had reached previous as convicts or free settlers. While numerous women were reunited with family after only one evening at the depot, other ones resided for longer while they remained for family or employers to journey from 'the bush' or 'the interior' to assemble them. Some resided for some days to find paid work as household domestics at the depot's chartering days. Advertised in the Sydney Morning Herald, chartering days were held a couple of days after the appearance of immigrant ships (Butler-Bowdon 1991).

Working-class immigrant women of good feature were needed in the colony as both household domestics for the middle-class, and finally to supply 'virtuous homes' as wives and mothers 'for the working categories of the community'. (Armstrong 1996) In the early 1800s the ratio of men to women in the colony was seven to one and there was an effort to balance the sexes through the aided migration of free, lone, working-class women. The lone immigrant woman seems to have used by an ambiguous place in humanity - there were high anticipations of her good lesson feature while at the identical time her enthusiasm to depart her family in the British Isles for an unidentified future in the Antipodes distinuished her as a promise lesson risk.

In one week there could be up to 100 ...