The work of Caroline Chisholm unfolded in Australia and England in the middle decades of the 19th century. The main focus of her work was to alleviate poverty and the associated moral dangers. Caroline’s most pressing and immediate concern was the well being of young unaccompanied women immigrants many of whom found themselves alone on the streets of Sydney. With no contacts in the colony, no experience, and no pre-arranged employment, they often found themselves recruited into prostitution. Many of these girls were too naïve to realise what they were being lured into, others were too desperate to offer resistance. Caroline recounted the story of one fifteen year old girl who had no idea of the nature of her employment – she had simply been told to walk between two city streets until a gentleman would approach her with an offer of money. Caroline soon became a familiar figure on the waterfront as each ship arrived. She began taking girls into her own home, but soon realised the need for more systematic measures and lobbied Governor Gipps for assistance in establishing a home where these girls would be housed until suitable employment could be found for them.
Governor Gipps was surprised when he met Mrs Chisholm. He explained that he expected:
to have seen an old lady in a white cap and spectacles, who would have talked to me about my soul. I was amazed when my aid introduced a handsome, stately young woman, who proceeded to reason the question as if she thought her experience worth as much as mine.
Although the Governor did not believe she would succeed, Caroline won the battle and he agreed to allow her the use of the disused immigrant barracks in Bent. These were no more than a 40 foot long, rat infested, draughty shed. It was built of slabs with a dirt floor and partitioned into several smaller rooms. Her first task was to rid the establishment of the rats which she did by laying in wait for them at night with a prepared concoction of bread soaked in arsenic. It was not long before the barracks were accommodating 100 young women.
Many of the women were too frightened to leave the city to take on work in the country. Before long, Caroline became a familiar figure on her white horse personally leading parties of young women into the interior where they would take on work as servants on country properties.
Caroline responded to the needs of those around her and very soon her role expanded to assist unemployed single men and families. In response to economic depression and unemployment in the city, Caroline was able to place many of the unemployed in the countryside where labour was still scarce.
As a result of her work with immigrant girls and immigrant families, Caroline became concerned with the conditions they had been forced to endure on the bounty ships. This included cramped and dirty conditions, lack of privacy and the sexual assault of young women. On this last count, she became the first woman in the colony to bring a case to court when she filed a case against the Captain and Surgeon of the Carthaginian for the maltreatment of a passenger. The female passenger concerned, Margaret Bolten, had spoken up against the immorality on the ship and for her courage spent the night on deck, in stocks, in a wet night dress. Caroline was outraged. She wrote:
I am ready to prosecute; I have the necessary evidence; and if it be a risk whether I or these men go to prison I am ready to take the risk.
Caroline won the case, described as ‘one of the most significant cases in the colony so far’ by the solicitor-general Roger Therry.
Ultimately, Caroline saw the encouragement of family life as the solution to the social problems of her time. She dedicated much of her energies to reuniting the families of emancipists and free settlers by obtaining government assistance in the emigration of spouses and children left behind in England. She also assisted in the settlement of young Irish women from famine stricken Ireland. She rallied against the squattocracy for locking up the lands and making the settlement of families on small farms difficult. She opposed ‘bachelor stations’ – a policy of employing only single men because they attracted lower wages and rations. Caroline Chisholm saw immigration and settlement of families from the desperate poverty of England to the new land of opportunity in Australia as a solution to the economic problems of both overcrowded England and the shortages of labour in the Australian colonies. She returned to England for a few years and established the Family Colonisation Loan Society to facilitate the emigration of intact families