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From: "Karen Bell" <>
Subject: [AUS-VIC-West] HIES
Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2002 12:54:19 +1100


Hello Dot & all,
Loved the HIES site. At least two branches of my family come out on that scheme.

I found an interesting extract in the book Blue China(2001Gothard Melb. Uni Press)) about colonial attitudes to Scots immigrants, particularly the women. The book is basically about single female immigration to Australia, the fact that they were recruited to be servants but only skilled,healthy and moral young women need to apply.

Anyway:-
In the 1850s, some of the island women sent out to the colonies, particularly to Victoria, under the auspices of the Highland and Island Emigration Society had been rejected by the colonists because of the extreme poverty of their background and their total inexperience in domestic service. Rye would later describe these Islanders as 'half-savage and wholly untaught','born and bred in peat huts' and knowing 'nothing of the requirements or even decencies of civilized life'. The islands such as Skye were not generally regarded as a suitable field for recruitment because of their poverty and their traditional crofter lifestyle. Crofters were said to be so deeply attached to family and soil that relocation was virtually impossible;

[the]home feeling...so strong among them that they prefer their sons and daughters to hire out for the fishing season, the former manning boats and the later to assist in the service of fish curing establishments, rather than send them to service, as this gives them the opportunity of spending winters together.

Single women from these communities could generally only be induced to emigrate as members of a family. ...(46-47)

It was reassuring to know my ancestors were half savage, not civilized or decent! But at least they were family oriented! Many of these families did well in the new colonies, they were resourceful and stuck together. Even many years after migrating some members of my family disliked the English so much they refused to speak English...preferring their native Scots tongue up until the 1920s!

It would be interesting to follow through on migrants of the HIES scheme.

Karen

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