We look at Australia today and it’s a destination that many of us are desperate to visit. With the beautiful Sydney Opera House and renowned Bondi Beach in New South Wales, the glorious Great Barrier Reef and K’gari in Queensland, the bustling Darwin Night Markets and majestic Uluru (or Ayers Rock) in the Northern Territory, it’s clear to see the appeal. However, much like Ireland at the time, Australia was a very different place in the 1840s. The country was in an economic depression, and its Indigenous people were being driven off their lands by British settlers. To say that things were rough is about as big of an understatement as you could make.
One of the lesser-known problems in Australia during that time was that men outnumbered women 8 to 1 out on the frontier districts; the gender imbalance was staggering. The situation was not sustainable; a future for these settlers was not possible if there was no one to pass their legacy down to, regardless of how blood-stained that legacy might be. The Australian Colonial Authorities quickly recognised that something had to be done, so they reached out to the British Colonial Office, fully prepared to fund the emigration of girls and women from Great Britain and Ireland to the Colonies in Australia. Their request was simple enough. They wanted girls and young women in good health between 14-18, who were both “imbued with religion” and were “morally pure.” Additionally, it was preferred that these young women would have some level of industrial or domestic training. We will touch upon this point again later in the post.
Henry George Grey, the 3rd Earl Grey, was the British Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1846-1852. He is often confused with his father, Charles Grey, the 2nd Earl Grey, who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1830-1834 and the namesake of Earl Grey tea. Henry was the lead architect behind what eventually became known as the Earl Grey Scheme. The scheme, which additionally attempted to address the overcrowding in the Irish workhouses, saw over 4,000 Irish orphan girls and young women drawn out of the workhouses and sent to the colonies in Australia to address the gender imbalance. These young women were taken to harbours in Cork and Dublin, then transported by steamships to Plymouth, England. Since the majority of these girls were orphans, these ships took on the moniker Orphan Ships. The first ship to leave Plymouth for Australia was aptly called The Earl Grey, underlying how much of a hand Henry had in designing the scheme.
At least 89 women from the Mountmellick and Abbeyleix Union Workhouses left Co. Laois and emigrated to Australia through the Earl Grey Scheme. You can see a list of the young women who travelled to Australia through the scheme in the 🔗 Mountmellick Embroidery and Heritage Museum, where 67 of the girls’ names and ages are given. Additionally, it’s there that you can find a replica of the wooden boxes the girls would be given to carry their belongings, as well as the items the girls were given for their journey. Additionally, the 🔗 Women’s Museum of Ireland also has an exhibit dedicated to these girls and young women, so it’s definitely worth giving them a visit too.
If anyone who has read our previous post on the Board of Guardians is scratching their heads thinking, “Hold on a minute. I thought that the inmates of the Irish workhouses weren’t given the opportunity to learn a trade or employable skill. Why would they send girls and young women from the workhouses of Ireland to Australia when they requested that these women have some level of industrial or domestic training?” First things first, well caught, and secondly, you’re right. It’s one of the ways in which the Earl Grey Scheme could be deemed a failure. In fact, that was the main complaint given by the Australian Colonial Authorities and one of the underlying reasons why the scheme was ultimately abandoned.
So far, these young women had spent the majority of their working lives in the workhouse, where the entirety of their work experience had been baking bread, washing clothes, tending to the old and infirm, the sick and dying, and children under two. Their level of domestic training amounted to little more than what the average Irish woman had tending to their own homes and families. It is just another example of how the Irish Poor Law Act 1838 failed the Irish people and robbed them of the chance of finding work.
The Australian Colonial Authorities followed the narrative written by the government in the United Kingdom about the Irish and viewed these young women as lazy and undisciplined. Some of the women coming from the workhouses in the North, specifically Belfast, had been prostitutes before submitting themselves into the care of the workhouses. As such, all of these girls and young women were tarred with the same brush, viewed as immoral and promiscuous. One report suggests that on one of the ships ferrying these women from Plymouth to Australia, the women had tried to seduce the crewmen, with one of the women having died during a failed abortion attempt. Despite their innocence, these girls and young women were harshly discriminated against for the narrative the British Government had sown about them and for the actions of the few.
Upon arriving in Australia, the Earl Grey Girls – as they became known (or Earl Grey Orphans – had their health and records vetted by immigration and medical officers before they were allowed to disembark from the ships on which they arrived. They were then received and processed at the 🔗 Hyde Park Barracks (pictured below) in Sydney and the city of Melbourne in the Port Phillip District (now Victoria), as well as Adelaide, South Australia, in the Port Adelaide Depot. In the Hyde Park Barracks, these girls and young women were accommodated on the upper floors of the barracks, while the lower floors were used by potential employers to scrutinize them, before contracting them as domestic servants, most commonly as cooks, cleaners, maids, and nannies. Typically, a contract would last 6-12 months, and their salary was based on their age, which was between £7 – £10 annually. After fulfilling the terms of their contract, the Earl Grey Girls who remained in the workforce gained their freedom and were able to negotiate standard wages.
Ultimately, the scheme was abandoned in 1850, two short years after its inception in 1848. As we touched upon earlier, there was severe criticism over the quality of the women sent to Australia, but not just over their competencies, or lack thereof. Australia was predominantly a Protestant country colonised by English settlers, who followed the teachings of the Anglican Church and believed the rhetoric of the government in Great Britain. As such, there was intense discrimination shown towards these Irish women, the overwhelming majority of whom were Catholic. Economics played a great part too; local taxpayers were furious that their taxes were funding the importation of “unwanted produce” from Irish workhouses and gaols. Additionally, local governing bodies wanted the power to govern their own country, dictate their own immigration policies, and spend their funds where they saw fit. The Earl Grey Scheme was not one of those projects.
After this scheme was abandoned, so too were the Earl Grey Girls. The British Government refused to provide any assistance to these women or give them the opportunity to return to Ireland and – presumably – the workhouses. They were left to fend for themselves, negotiate their own wages, and were moved out to rural depots, all the while facing severe discrimination, abuse, and sexual assault. For many of them it was too much to bear. With the weight of their depression and PTSD, they once again fell into destitution and alcoholism. However, many of the Earl Grey Girls fought to survive, battling discrimination and the rough hand that they had been dealt, and thrived as a result of their strength and perseverance. They were ultimately absorbed into the Australian population by way of marriage, often marrying local farmers, tradesmen, or labourers, allowing them to hide the perceived ‘taint’ of their Irish heritage and Catholic upbringing.
As is much the case around the world, where the Irish faced severe discrimination, these women became the matriarchs to a nation that didn’t want them. They became the homemakers to men who initially rejected them and the workforce of a country that grew and thrived. Their stories, which took root in the dark and cold, grew into something beautiful and deserving of adoration – something that, at our core, we all yearn to achieve.
(Disclaimer: The image featured at the top of this post was generated using AI (Google Gemini). It is an artistic representation of a fictional individual affected by the abolition of the Earl Grey Scheme. The image does not depict any real historical person, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to other fictitious characters, is purely coincidental.)
