EARL GREY SCHEME
The Earl Grey Scheme
The Earl Grey Scheme
The Earl Grey Scheme was a program masterminded by Henry, the third Earl Grey, who was Secretary of State for the Colonies between 1846 and 1852, more or less the entire duration of the famine in Ireland (1845-1850). Under the program, young girls who had been orphaned by the famine and were resident in Irish workhouses, were shipped out to the Australian colonies.
Earl Grey
Photo: Wiki Commons
The scheme may have been prompted by a letter from Daniel Cooper, a member of the Legislative Council who went on to become the first Speaker of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, to Thomas Spring Rice, Lord Monteagle. Monteagle was an Irish peer who had, in the 1830s, developed a passion for emigration to Australia as a solution to Ireland's woes.
In his letter, Cooper wrote, 'We wish to receive emigrants; we are willing to pay for them. There are millions among you dying of hunger; let us have these starving crowds; here they will find a superabundance of the necessaries of life.'
Perhaps it came from Caroline Chisholm. Caroline had spent the early years of her life in missionary work in India. The needs of India's poorest were great, but so too was the need of wretched young women thrown onto the streets of Sydney Town. She saw orderly settlement of females as the way forward and took her ideas to London and to Earl Grey.
No matter whose idea it was, Grey embraced the plan with enthusiasm. He would rid the Irish workhouses of their female paupers, especially their young unmarried paupers, and send them to the Australian colonies. So he instructed the Colonial Land and Emigration Office to choose appropriate young women from the workhouses and get them to Sydney as fast as possible.
This has come to be known as the Earl Grey Scheme, although no evidence suggests that anyone used the expression at the time.
The colonists, who had not been consulted, reacted badly. Grey had planned to send tens of thousands of girls, but in the event, only 4000 or so made the trip. Grey stirred colonial resentment: the opinion in Whitehall was that the Australian colonies were a suitable dumping ground for the flotsam and jetsam of English society. The new society in Australia rejected this view of themselves, fighting both Grey's attempt to send criminals, and his attempt to send orphans.
Still, for the girls and for the colonists, the Earl Grey Scheme was life-changing. Some of the girls suffered terribly. Some died as a result of what was done to them. But others prospered. Earl Grey's Daughters tells the story of three who despite their circumstances, prospered in their new home.
