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Transcription of Talk on Emigration from Cambridgeshire in the 19th Century
by Chris Jakes, Cambridgeshire Collection, at CFHS Conference 26/2/2000

The 19th century, for the purposes of this talk, starts in 1815, at the end of one world war when Napoleon in France was finally defeated, and runs through to 1914 and the beginning of another world war when the positions of our allies and our adversaries changed.

I'll start off with some figures. The population of Britain in 1801 was roughly 10½ million. By 1901 it had risen to 37 million and on the eve of the great war in 1911 it was up to 44 million. But, during that time, it's estimated that some 20 million people left the United Kingdom. If they had all stayed put we would have had another 54 million people and their offspring. 13 million went to the United States, 4 million to Canada, 1½ million to Australia and New Zealand and proportionally to many other parts of the Empire. The Falkland Islands had a few - not too many; South Africa, 7000.

Statistics again - for Cambridgeshire. In 1821in the old county of (??Canty and Isle of Ely??) the population stood at 122 000. Ten years later in 1831 it had gone up by some 22 000 to 144 000. A similar increase in 1841 and in 1851. In 1851 the County's population stood at 185 000 people. The next 50 years to 1901 the population of the county remained virtually static. There were only 5000 more people in the county in 1901 than there had been in 1851. Previously we were running at 21 to 22 thousand over 10 year intervals. Cambridgeshire, if you like, somewhere along the line lost 120 000 souls.

The table and graph (illustration) gives you an idea of the rise in population in England and Wales, the decrease in population in Ireland, which I won't go into, the steady rise in population in Scotland and, across that, the numbers of people heading off to emigrate from the UK. Obvious sources of interest in emigration were the two discoveries of gold in California and in Australia and dips can be explained by things like the Crimean war. Wars are good for business and good for employment. Less people leave.

At the beginning of the 19th century much of Cambridgeshire resembled this view of Barton (illustration) before enclosure had happened to all of our parishes. You have the strip fields - very much in evidence if you look across the village. The foreground shows quite narrow strips. The enclosure movement changed the face of agriculture. It brought opportunity and prosperity to some and hardship and poverty to others.

This cartoon (illustration) emphasise the difference between life in the UK as (?the former?) and your prospects in the New World as an immigrant.

We recently received in The Collection a diploma, by Dennis Hitch, looking at emigration from (?Falmere?) - an excellent piece of work. He states in that "People do not choose to migrate in large numbers if they are not subjected to discrimination and their quality of life is good. Individuals may move for personal reasons but large scale migration only takes place if conditions are intolerable."

If you were the family pictured on the left (illustration) then your conditions are pretty intolerable.

In the countryside enclosure may have benefited big farmers but it deprived the poor of their access to common land. Common land in the parish was generally swept away or much reduced in size. And in times of need the poorer members of society relied on access to that common land. It took away the safety-net for them and their families and it took away their independence. You may choose to live at subsistence level. It's your choice if you can do so. If you do not have that choice and you face the workhouse and the splitting-up of your family then you look elsewhere.

If the agricultural labouring end of the village society is in difficulty that had a knock-on effect on other areas of the village society. If you were a shoe-maker in Barton or a black-smith or a shopkeeper you couldn't make your living just off the well-to-do farmers and the local squire. You needed a wider base for business. And in times of need this class of person went bankrupt and had two options, principally - to head for the cities in the UK, where the industrial revolution was running full rip - this was one of the alternatives - or to migrate and head for the ports and look elsewhere.

(Illustration) A somewhat idyllic view of agriculture at Liverpool in the last century. Agricultural wages in Cambridgeshire were low. We were either the second or third or fourth lowest paid county for most of the last century and wages actually fell in the countryside between the 1830's and the 1850's. 9 s., 8 s., 7 s. a week would not go very far. In Falmere there was a strike - they were trying to obtain 2 s. a day as a basic wage.

With enclosure something else altered the make-up of the parish and that was the relationship between farmers and their labourers. There's a quote from The Morning Chronicle of 1850 from a chap living at Linton. He refers to the farmers in his parish in this fashion: "They're a screwing, close-fisted, hard set of fellows. That's what the farmers are all about here."

If you're paying rates to run a workhouse, you don't keep on extra men when you don't need them. You lay them off and someone else can look after them.

Another example of the changing relationship between farmer and worker is an obituary of John Seaber(?) who was described as 'an opulent farmer'. He died in 1839. His obituary includes "The poor in his immediate neighbourhood have cause to regret the loss of a generous and sympathetic friend when sickness or distress assailed them. He was one of the school of old English farmers and consequently, to his labourers, affable and considerate. In addressing them, there were no haughty looks, no domineering language and they, in turn, respected him" and, according to this, "laboured cheerfully for so good a master."

I'm sure the farmers in Cambridgeshire today are not the new kind of farmer and I'm sure John Shepston from Swavesey can attest to that!

So those are some of the reasons, if you like, which might push people into emigrating. Change of circumstances in our rural parishes.

What might pull somebody into migration? Obviously the need to improve your own prospects and those of your family; to own, possibly, your own land; to run your own business; to have a fresh start in a New World.

I've mentioned the discovery of gold in California in 1848, the panning for gold in the New World. That took extra people than normal away from the UK and it also moved immigrants round. Remember that not everybody stayed put in the first country they went to. A lot of people that went to the Californian gold fields came from Australia. They'd tried Australia; "Look, there's gold in California. Perhaps we'll try our luck there."

Some of them from Australia that went out to California thought "this sort of landscape, this sort of deposit - I've seen this; I've seen this at home; I've seen this in New South Wales. If they can find gold in places like this in California, I can find it in Australia."

They went back and they did.

The original diggers, (illustration) digging for gold in Australia.

If you were really lucky ... (illustration of prospector with nugget of gold almost as tall as himself) - (audience laughter). That is the largest single nugget of rich gold ever extracted from the earth. That was found in 1872 in Australia. You can imagine the impact of sending that photograph round the globe.

Another reason for emigrating was a religious reason (illustration - audience laughter). The mormon church was active in Cambridgeshire in the 1840's and 1850's. Missionaries were at work in the UK. In 1854 2500 Mormon converts left for Salt Lake City and its environment. One of those from Cambridgeshire was Hannah Tapfield King who formed with her husband, Thomas King, at Durford(?) near Sawston. We've already seen two mentions of Thomas King this morning. When Mike showed his slides it was his stack that was set on fire in 1830 and the wanted notice about those who did it and again it was the wanted notice Jill quoted from in her talk.

She converted; her husband didn't but the husband and the whole family went out to America.

Last year. on a city dump in America, the (?belease?) that she took with her that belonged to her father was found and returned to the family. And inside it were photographs, a scrap book, a bonnet and shawl. One of the photos showed one of her sons - another Thomas - Thomas King, born in Stapleford, emigrated in 1851, I think - a cowboy. He was a pony express rider. So the next time you see a John Wayne film - he may be an ordinary American hero but the chap standing next to him might be from Stapleford, Falmere, Doddington or March!

One of the other principal pulls to encourage emigration from this country was encouragement by your family members or friends that had previously gone out. They were making a go of it; they were finding conditions suited; they were getting good wages and rations working on the land in Australia. They wrote home about it and that would often pull other people out from their own family groups, cousins and from friends and from your own village.

This is the letter home (illustration); this is the people in England reading the letter from Australia. And this (illustration) is the son or the brother reading the news from home in Australia.

In 1847 a quarter million people left the UK. 109 000 went to North America, the North American colonies, Canada; 142 000 went to the United States; 5000 went to Australia and New Zealand. That total was the equivalent of one and a half times the population of Cambridgeshire. Such an exodus did not go unremarked in the journals and newspapers of the period and the Illustrated London News ran a series of articles on emigration and the following appeared on 1850 (illustration). Just to give you a flavour of how it was reported at the time.

This (illustration) is emigration to America from Liverpool - the Waterloo docks. The Illustrated London News reports that the first thing that you do, not unnaturally, is, when you get to Liverpool, you pay your passage money if it hadn't already been paid for by friends or relatives in the USA. The competition for passengers was great and fees can vary from day to day. They can be as high as £5; they can be as low as £3 10s. This is the equivalent of ten weeks wages in Cambridgeshire at the time. As an aside, in 1850 for £1 you could get $4 and 50 cents.

Once you'd chosen a ship you and your family had to present yourselves to the medical inspections office. They were not keen to take on board a cramped and enclosed ship somebody with something nasty like cholera. 250 people on a small sailing ship would not get very far with something like that. However, the medical inspectors would see something like a thousand people a day. So the inspection, at its worst, was that, if you could walk into the room and were capable of walking out of the room, you were fit. (Audience laughter)

1847 was know as the 'plague year' on the transatlantic crossing. Thousands of people went down with cholera and died. Lots of orphans arrived the other side in Canada and in America with no parents.

You were allowed on board your chosen vessel 24 hours before it set sail and, bearing in mind this is Liverpool, heading for America, and four out of five people on that route were from Ireland the Illustrated London News reports that "the feeling is not one of grief at leaving the old country but all is bustle excitement and merriment. There is often dancing between decks."

This (illustration) shows the departure. There are usually large numbers of spectators to witness the departure. Hats are raised; handkerchiefs are waved and a long continued shout of 'farewell' is raised from the shore. It is then, if at any time, that the eyes of the emigrants begin to moisten with regret at the thought that they are looking for the last time at the old country.

Once the ship is under way passengers are assembled on the deck and the search is made for stowaways. The crew go through the ship with a variety of heavy, blunt or sharp instruments looking for people that had stowed away. People hid in packing-cases; people hid in barrels; people hid in rolls of material. If they were found in this first search they were taken off, put on the tug that would have towed the ship out of port and taken back to port without no undue ceremony.

While this was going on, on deck a roll-call was made to make sure that everybody had a ticket and everybody had paid the right price. If not, they, too, went on the tug.

If you survived the search and were halfway across the Atlantic when you were found, then you were given all the nasty and unpleasant jobs to do. You weren't heaved over the side but the rest of your journey was not a pleasant one.

I've included these rather simple sketches (illustrations) because they were taken on board the emigrant ship Cambridge going to America.

In a sailing ship passage to America took between four and seven weeks. If you were wealthy and you were emigrating and you could afford the ticket on a steamship, you could get there in eight to twelve days. You had the option of heading for Montreal or New York. Montreal was some 400 miles less if you were a poor sailor! If you were crafty and you weren't caught you could get government assistance to the colony, that's in Canada, so your fare would be cheaper and for those of them that had worked out that America was next door to Canada ... a number started their lives in Montreal and worked their way south across the border.

This (illustration) is a street market in Montreal in the 1840's. And this (illustration) is living in Canada up to your feet in snow.

The governments' policy on emigration was, at best, not clearly formed and, at worst, they hadn't got one. Early in 1826 it was thought a good thing that people who might be a burden on the rates should be encouraged to disappear. In Canada, with one eye on the thrusting, dynamic United States just across the border, the government encouraged people to go to Canada, basically because they wanted to fill Canada up. There was the large prairie in between the East Coast and the West Coast and there was this hugely expanding America just below that and the British government's fear was that they would ignore the boundary and simply, using squatters' rights and force of numbers, move up into Canada and take over. We'd almost gone to war over the Oregan boundary dispute in the 1840's and there was a genuine fear in the UK that, unless we put British settlers into Canada, the Americans would, by default, move up into those empty spaces.

Mike spoke this morning about local newspapers and their content with regard to criminal activity. Taking examples from one year, 1851, in the Cambridge Chronicle, we'll look at some of the coverage it had on emigration tat year. This (illustration) is 25th January 1851. You've got an advertisement for first class ships heading off to Adelaide, Port Phillip and Sydney and calling in at Plymouth. These are ships designed to carry the relatively well-off. There are no steerage passengers, for example, and you get charged the princely sum of £21. So it gives you an idea of the sort of adverts that Cambridgeshire people would have read throughout the 1840's and 1850's. It mentions that it leaves London and calls in at Plymouth. There's one newspaper report that refers to a farmer, not a hundred miles away from Wicken, which sold up, left his wife here, took his son with him , left his son's wife here, went down to London, got on a ship, went round to Plymouth - decided he couldn't cope with being a sailor, got off at Plymouth and came back home! (Audience laughter.) - much to the surprise of the village which had sent him off in quite some style.

Agents were used in the UK to recruit emigrants. The government had set up The Colonial Land and Emigration Commission. Jonas Johnson of Barley was an agent that covered much of Cambridgeshire. He went around the villages; he set up himself in public houses; he spoke to people of the benefits of emigration and he assisted them in filling out all the required forms.

You could get assisted passage to Australia. If you were a married man under 45, having not more than 2 children under 7 or 3 children under 10 you paid a pound deposit and, once you'd got to Australia and had started to earn income, you then paid a further £12. For a single man under 40 the price structure was the same and for a single woman under 35. The older you got, the difference altered. You paid more money in this country and less money in Australia. (Illustration) Quite a nice painting of an emigrant couple waiting to head for the New World.

The Chronicle was a Tory newspaper and, as such, every other article in connection with emigration had a go at Free Trade. Free Trade was bad. These two articles (illustration): the top one: Pauperism and Free Trade refers to Ely: "Yesterday week 20 - 30 farm labourers, out of work, went to the relieving officer's house with orders to go into the union. The farmers can't pay us. When we ask for work they say they have got plenty of work but no money to pay you. When the work's done they tell us their stock and corn makes next to nothing. Free Trade is a-ruining of them all. When they've paid their outgoings, there ain't a shilling left. It is quite distressing to see these poor fellows in groups of 10 or 20 at the corners of streets willing to work and the farmers willing to employ them without the means of doing so. We are prepared to prove that the poor man, never in our recollection was so dreadfully fixed. Most of the men who went into the union have since left; the mill and loss of liberty act as a spell and they again declare they will die by the roadside before this place can hold them".

Below that this report and again the effects of Free Trade: "The greatest consternation and the most fearful apprehension exists among all the parties in this town and neighbouring fens. The sinews of the country, the agricultural labourers of the better sort are daily leaving the homes of their fathers for a foreign state. In a few days from 50 to 100 are about to bid adieu for ever to the British shores ..." and so on.

In 1851 10 people left for the USA and it reckons that, in four years, about a hundred people, one eighth of the entire population of the village had gone to the same country. Imagine the effect that has on a village community. They can get cheap bread in their own country but man cannot live by bread alone. Therefore they find in a foreign land what is denied them in their own country.

Papers regularly published letters home. Reports by Cambridgeshire emigrants were published in the paper in quite some detail, telling you how they were getting on, what life was like and this report (illustration) from New Zealand goes on for a column and a half. And you can read in detail from the day they first set sight on New Zealand and their first weeks in that new country.

This advert (illustration) gives some idea of the types of people wanted in the New World and wanted in Australia. Small farmers, agricultural labourers and servants of every kind; carpenters, brick-layers, masons, blacksmiths, wheelwrights and mechanics generally, and the families of all of these; female domestic servants and so on.

The last extracts from 1851 again told of the effects of Free Trade.

It's unusual for the papers to actually mention emigrants' names but, here, we do get a few. "Two brothers, William and John Randall, farmers from (?Sowels End?) have left suddenly. They were the sons of the late Mr Randall, for many years a respectable tenant farmer in this neighbourhood. Mr Tibbit is another and a short time since, Bradford Dewey left in the same manner and others are anxious to leave their native country under any circumstances that are possible." And so on.

When you read of this sort of number week after week, year after year leaving Cambridgeshire you get some idea of where that 120 000 people disappeared to.

(Illustration). You've seen this picture already. Jill showed it earlier. This is one of the hulks in Liverpool.

Convicts had been transported to America since the War of Independence; the government had nowhere else to send them, so why not send them to the new continent discovered by Captain Cook in 1770? In 1788 the first convicts landed at Botany Bay and from then on a few free settlers started to arrive. Particularly after the war ended in 1815 and the sea-routes opened up - ships didn't have to travel in convoy and it was safer to travel from continent to continent.

As time went on the population changed. In 1821, 1828 there 15 000 convicts and 21 free settlers. In 1841 there were 27 000 convicts and over 100 000 free settlers. With the population shift the desire of the non-convicts to stop any more convicts being sent out was put over, if you like, and transportation to New South Wales was abolished in 1840. Later, elsewhere, and for a short time in Western Australia it started up again only to be abolished later.

This (illustration) shows the areas of Australia and New Zealand that were settled between 1830 and 1900.

Wool, as you know, founded the prosperity of the country and, by 1850, there were more than 16 million sheep in Australia, which was approximately 16 times the number of people in Australia.

This (illustration) is from the Illustrated London News of 1848. It features the emigrant ship The Artimecia(?) bound for Moreton Bay, then in New South Wales, later Queensland. 209 people left London on this voyage and more were picked up in Plymouth. The journey to Queensland took, on average, three and a half months.

Not every ship arrived safely. In 1845 the (?Cattara Queen?) was shipwrecked off the coast of Victoria and I think only 8 people survived. 23 of the people on board who perished all came from one of our villages, Guilden Morden. A long, detailed and harrowing account of the shipwreck appeared in the Cambridge Chronicle and a special service of remembrance was held at Guilden Morden. Two per cent of the population of the village lost in one shipwreck.

These (illustrations) are from the Illustrated London News: Scenes on board an Australian emigrant ship. A schoolmaster having a lesson with a group of children; a shepherd sits on the keel of a longboat while several are clustered around the cook's galley towards the back. The artist was obviously much in tune with the eating habits of the ship. It's pea soup day. and these people are gathering around the galley again to get their pea soup. Dinner in the fo'c'stle. And once you'd had your soup and dinner, later on in the afternoon, it was tea-water time. This group of people are tracing the vessel's progress as it travels across the globe. This one's a painting by Paul Maddox-Brown is called 'The Last of England'. It shows two of his friends emigrating from the UK and, as luck would have it, they didn't like it and they came back.

I'll draw to a close.

What sort of people were they that went, took the decision - a momentous one in the 1840's and 1850's - to risk everything on a new life in the New World? You've seen the dreadful conditions at home that pushed them out and you've seen something of the delights, the attractions of the New World that lead them to leave. Their stories are told in many books and articles, many of which we have in The Cambridgeshire Collection. If you know of any that have been published in America, Canada or Australia that you don't think we have, then please let us know.

We finish on two thoughts. What sort of people were they that emigrated? In my own village, three young men were awarded the Military Medal during the first war - with the exception of the Victoria Cross, the highest medal for gallantry that other ranks could receive. One of them lived in the village and was a member of the Cambridgeshire regiment. One of them had emigrated to Canada and was serving with the Canadian forces. One of them had emigrated to Australia and was serving with the Australian forces. And linking in with the dreadful Great War another statistic that certainly surprised me: despite the huge number of deaths of young men in this country between 1914 and 1918, the net population in this country increased because people stopped emigrating during the war years.

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Footnote. The Emigrant Transcribers Guild are gradually transcribing the records of all the ships that sailed from this country over to Australia and America with all those who travelled on them being listed. Hamish Turnbull, an Australian member, has various CD's containing information about Cambridgeshire families that sailed to Australia. The strays list is not complete but he is willing to do look-ups and his name will appear in a forthcoming journal of CFHS. Those CD's are acquirable in Australia and the source for them may be obtained from (?)

Notes from Talk on Cambridgeshire Newspapers
by Mike Petty at CFHS Conference 26/2/2000

The newspaper collection referred to in this talk is housed in the Cambridgeshire Collection at CUL (Cambridge University Library). Cambridgeshire newspapers are almost all on film - many originals are available. reader copies are available at 10p per copy.

Papers included news, features, articles and Village News. Much of the news content was culled from the national news.

Some indexing has been completed but further indexing is needed.

There exist collections of 'cuttings files', covering c. 750 topics. These are cross-referenced and indexed.

There exist two newspaper indexes:

1. one in the form of a review of each year;
2. another detailing important stories (these are not yet in the public domain but the speaker has them).

There exist indexes of newspapers for 1770 - 1819, identifying every item included. After that, there was a great expansion in the number of newspapers and it is too big a job to index everything. However, Village News columns up to 1900 have been microfilmed and indexed. They are also indexed by subject.

In addition many village and subject stories have been transcribed and many of these published. Court cases, too, reveal many aspects of daily life but these have not yet been indexed.

FEATURES

Many treasures appear amongst these and are available. E.g. crime and poverty in the Cambridge Chronicle. A number of books have been written, based on these. E.g. A Century of Cambridge News 1888-1988, by Mike Petty; Cooper's Annals of Cambridge (stops at 1858). Both of these are in the Cambridgeshire Collection.

The Ely Standard has been indexed for the period covering the wars, This paper included much news related to individuals in the wars - comings and goings, injuries, etc.

ADVERTISEMENTS

These are a good source of information about individuals. In one case they led to an existing photographic firm which still had many old negatives and these are now in the Cambridge Collection and are indexed.

All advertisements have been indexed from 1770 - 1819.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Illustrations before 1900 were not common but some do exist. Photos were included in greater quantity in the Cambridge Graphic in 1900, many of good quality.

Photos in the major newspapers were not common until 1914. An example of a photo is the one of the fire at Grantchester Mill.

Illustrations are catalogued in the Cambridgeshire Collection.

THE FUTURE FOR NEWSPAPER INDEXING

The task is lengthy but feasible. The plans are to move from microfilm to CD-ROM. It is possible that the indexes could be put onto CD-ROM using volunteer help.

Notes from Talk on The Swing Riots
by Jill Chambers at CFHS Conference 26/2/2000

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