British Columbia Emigration Society
The British Columbia Emigration Society, also known as the BC Female Emigration Society
and the Female Middle-Class Emigration Society (FMCES), was an operation dedicated
to bringing women to the colony.
It is unclear who first initiated the society. It seems that in the late 1850s, an
Anglican minister, Robert C. Brown of
Lillooet, began the Columbia Emigration Society to
arrange for young women from England to be sent to Cariboo as potential brides for miners.
Although Brown may have initiated the first-known reports of the society, it was,
particularly,
Miss Maria Rye who successfully helped female emigrants enter the country byway of the steamships
Tynemouth and
Robert Lowe.
The society in conjunction with the Female Immigration Committee was one of the early
schemes
to
fill the servant void and to increase the population
in
BC, as seen with the arrival of the
Tynemouth.
Victoria's
Daily Press wrote that the society
intended to facilitate the emigration of industrious women […] to the colonies of
Vancouver Island and British Columbia.
Maria Rye worked closely with the society in
1862, although she had
disregard [for] the FMCES' mission
of recruiting only middle-class women. Instead,
Rye recruited working-class women due to the labour market in
British Columbia. During this time, the FMCES focused on
robust workers and potential brides,
although not all the female emigrants aided were young and single.
The society's first emigration effort took place in
1862, in which 60 girls and women sailed from Dartmouth to
Victoria,
BC on the
Tynemouth. The
Daily Press reported that 50 of the emigrants had
obtained free passage
from the society. Upon their arrival in the
Victoria harbour in
September 1862, many newspapers reported on the
large crowd of anxious suitors and hopeful employers gathered to greet and inspect
the women.
Due to the society's goal to bring about ‘potential brides and workers,' brought
men to the
harbour who awaited their arrival, they were described by
The British Colonist as
breeches-wearing bipeds assembled to see the women disembark.
- 1. Brooke Weber, 'A Mad Proceeding:' Mid-Nineteenth Century Female Emigration to Australia, (Royal Holloway, University of London), p.56.
- 2. History, Gold Rush Trail History: British Columbia.
- 3. Douglas to Pelham-Clinton, 4 July 1863, CO 305/20, 8485, p.235.
- 4. Lorraine Cecilia Brown, Domestic Service in British Columbia, 1850-1914, (University of Victoria, 1995), p. 22.
- 5. Weber, 'A Mad Proceeding', p.57, 205-206.
- 6. Brown, Domestic Service in British Columbia, 1850-1914, p.23.
- 7. Ibid., 24.