WA Bride Ships Girls 1853-1868

Between 1848 and 1889, single women were sent to the colony in what became known as the ‘Bride Ships’. This was in order to counteract the “morally objectionable behaviour” and drinking in which the predominantly free and bonded male colonists were engaging, and to supply servant girls and domestic help to the fledgling colony. A combination of courage and desperation saw journeys made by women from orphanages of Cork and Dublin; from the poorhouses in London, and workers laid off from a downturn in cotton mill manufacture in Lancashire.