SOURCE: “Genteel Emigrants,” in The Governesses: Letters from the Colonies, 1862-1882, Hutchinson, 1985, pp. 1-23.

In the following essay, Clarke offers a history of the Female Middle Class Emigration Society and an overview of the more than three hundred female emigrants who were sponsored by the Society and sent overseas to seek employment as governesses.

‘Amongst no class does greater distress exist than amongst the class of poor governesses …’

Jane Lewin, London, 1863

When Emily Streeter, a young, vulnerable but spirited girl, landed in Sydney from London on the Rachel in September 1861 in search of employment as a governess, she symbolised the hopes of many women in Great Britain for a better life overseas. Educated and genteel, but unmarried and unemployed, they hoped that their services would be in demand in the British colonies in one of the few congenial occupations then open to them. In England, women like Emily...