Blue China : single female migration to colonial Australia /Jan Gothard.

"Almost a hundred thousand single women emigrated from Britain to the Australian colonies between 1850 and 1900. Colonial governments paid for their passages. The popular assumption is that most of these women came out to find husbands, but Jan Gothard establishes that the female immigration schemes were devised to ease the desperate shortage of domestic servants in the colonies. The attitudes of the time strictly curtailed their mobility and initiative. Shipboard matrons went to great lengths to keep their charges away from all men. On arrival, the young women were isolated from their fellow-colonists, and left ignorant about the wages they could have demanded in a hungry market. Blue China shows how women made their own use of institutions designed to control them. Brought to life by fascinating excerpts from journals and diaries written by the women themselves."--Provided by the publisher.