07. Blue China

“Women are like blue china; very valuable when sound, but very worthless once damaged or broken.” (Unidentified male emigrationist)

The British Ladies Female Emigration Society (BLFES 1849-1888) while acknowledging migration as inevitable, did not promote or even condone it, but lobbied Colonial governments to finance the employment of matrons on ships to provide protection and training for unaccompanied young women, arguing that these measures would make them better colonists, “whether as servant, wife, or mother”. Respectability was the most important requisite for domestic employment.

Matrons were middle-class women given free passage and a small stipend in return for assuming a most ambiguous role, in which she was responsible for protecting the morality of the young women, while being subordinate to some of the men who could be the greatest threat to it.
Some Matrons allocated a time for family members travelling on the same ship to visit her charges. In one letter home a young woman describes how daring young men willing to risk the Matron’s wrath, would pretend they had a female relative among the group.

I wrote a verse for each group in this story to speak. I imagined a young Scotswoman having been thoroughly berated by a Matron in the situation described, lying at night despairing of the unfairness of her future being ruined by somebody else’s prank.

Acknowledgement:
Jan Gothard – ‘Blue China: Single Female Migration to Colonial Australia’.

Song sample

Blue China – Lyrics

We ask colonial governments to wisely recognise
That single female emigration demands
Selection, protection, reception safeguards
And our Society has these skills at its command

Chorus
Blue china, pretty blue china
Precious, only when unspoiled
Blue china, pretty blue china
Precious, only when unspoiled

My task as On-board Matron is – through strict surveillance
of these young women – to ensure they do not roam
Instruction, recreation, protect morality
Fit them for service in middle class Australian homes

Chorus

I rax oot in the darkness for my Guid Book’s comforting
Since that harsk Matron’s tongue hae whummled my mind
At ‘Visits’, a birkie ca’d me his sister
Noo for some daffen my hirin’ prospects are tined

Chorus
Blue china, pretty blue china
Precious only when unspoiled
Blue china, pretty blue china
Precious, only when unspoiled
Blue china, pretty blue china
Precious, only when unspoiled

© Words and Music by Grace McC. B. Reid