In 1885, FW, a 27-year-old single man, having been out of work for six months, was down at the docks in London searching for work. Almost starving, he was invited for a free breakfast by the Self-Help Emigration Society to learn about the employment opportunities in Canada. A Christian man of good character, he was readily accepted by the society and sailed on 10 April 1885, full of hope for a new life. The day after reaching Canada, he got a job that paid him two dollars a day and in August he was able to send his father five dollars, about £1, to help the family in London.

FW was only one of over 8.7 million people who left Britain to find a new life elsewhere between 1850 and 1900, many of whom were assisted by emigration societies. From 1815 to 1825, emigration to the colonies averaged 9000 per year but had risen sharply to about 20,000 a year between 1825 and 1830. In the years that followed, emigration numbers would climb with over 100,000 persons a year leaving Britain.

Generally, emigration is fuelled by two distinct factors. People are pushed to emigrate by unfavourable conditions in their home country while at the same time, they are pulled to emigrate by reports of improved opportunities in the country they are emigrating to. This was most certainly the case with FW. Almost destitute in London, he was drawn to Canada by reports of ample employment and wages that were, in some cases, four times the rates paid at home.

Emigration from Britain to her colonies had started slowly in the 18th century but in the depressed economic conditions that followed the Napoleonic wars, both sides of the equation were in place and the conditions were set for large scale emigration. As men began to return home from the wars in 1815, the movement towards large scale emigration began to gather steam.

It wasn’t surprising then, with the growing tide of emigrants sailing to the colonies, Poor Law Union authorities began to consider assisted emigration as an alternative to supporting the poor within local systems. It was reasoned that helping the poor to emigrate would be a one-time expense, whereas supporting them within the Poor Law Union would be a repetitive expense as the poor, unable to find steady employment, cycled in and out of the workhouses. At the same time, the increased burden of the poor rate taxes fell on small farmers and business men who struggled to eke out a living under the heavy taxation and they too caught the emigration fever.

Between 1819 and 1820, about 5000 persons were assisted by the British government to emigrate to the Cape of Good Hope after Britain gained formal control of the region. After an initial grant from Parliament of £50,000 was exhausted, a further £200,000 was put forth. Likewise, in 1830 the total emigration from the United Kingdom to North America was 55,000, in 1831 it rose to 71,000, and in 1832 was over 99,000, much of it funded from the public purse. From 1834 to 1864, an average of £25,000 per year was pledged to assist emigration mainly to Australia. The Colonial Land and Emigration Department, established in 1840, used profits from selling land in Australia to assist some 339,000 emigrants to travel to Australia between 1847 and 1869.

But it wasn’t only the government who funded emigration. Many small emigration societies, staffed mostly by volunteers were formed in the philanthropic atmosphere of the latter part of the nineteenth century. There were more than a dozen general emigration societies in London alone, as well as others in the major cities in Britain. Most offered financial assistance with emigration rather than funding it outright, requiring the poor emigrant to invest at least part of the passage money themselves, feeling that they would be more successful in their new country if they had invested personally in the opportunity. The emigration societies screened the potential emigrants, ensuring they were hard-working and sober and sometimes pre-arranged employment in the new country. Representatives of the society would meet the emigrant at the ship when they arrived, helping them to find lodgings at to get settled. Other, more specialized emigration societies assisted women or children.

General emigration
Funded mainly by donations, some of the general emigration societies were the Church Emigration Society, the Colonial Emigration Society, the East-End Emigration Society, the Self-Help Emigration Society, the Jews’ Emigration Society, the Salvation Army and the emigration branch of the Charity Organization Society. Often, the volunteers who ran the societies were returned emigrants or travellers themselves, and were therefore in a unique situation to be able to provide prospective emigrants with information about the cost of emigration, the demand for labour in the colonies and the wages that could be earned in various destinations in Canada or Australia or South Africa.

Female emigration
In one of the earliest women’s emigration schemes, the London Emigration Committee sent 2700 women to Sydney, Hobart and Launceston, Australia between the years of 1833 and 1837 where women of good character were said to be in high demand. In 1850, the London Female Emigration Society was formed and as part of their first project, 18 women were assisted to emigrate to Toronto, Canada, their passage fully funded by the society. When this proved to be a success, other similar societies were formed including the British Ladies’ Emigration Society in 1859 and the Female Middle-class Society in 1861, the latter of which sent a party of women to New Zealand in their first year. In 1901, the British Women’s Emigration Society was formed but amalgamated with other organizations to become the Society for the Overseas Settlement of British Women in 1910. Another similar society, the British Women’s Emigration Association, was formed in 1901 and they selected women and girls to be sent to the colonies, arranging for assistance both during the voyage and after arrival.

Child emigration
In the early 19th century, Poor Law officials often found apprenticeships for young children under their care, or placed them in positions in factories. When that practice became difficult after the passage of the Factory Act of 1833 that limited children’s working hours, the Guardians began searching for a new solution and the idea of child emigration was born. The first child emigrants were sent to the Cape in South Africa in about 1830 under the care of the Society for the Suppression of Juvenile Vagrancy which would later become the Children’s Friendly Society. These first children first underwent training in the society’s homes and were then bound in apprenticeship to respectable families in the colonies. Between 1848 and 1850, over 4000 Irish children were sent to New South Wales and Southern Australia by the Colonial Land and Emigration Commission. By the latter part of the 19th century, many child emigration schemes were in place, including those sponsored by Annie MacPherson, her sister Louisa Birt, and Maria Rye and the Barnardo Home Children who were sent to Canada. In all, about 150,000 children were sent to Britain’s colonies with over 80,000 being sent to Canada between the 1870s and 1914.