19Th Century Emigration from Cornwall As Experienced by the Wives ‘Left Behind’
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19th Century Emigration from Cornwall as Experienced by the Wives ‘Left Behind’ Submitted by Lesley Jane Trotter to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Cornish Studies in May 2015. This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other University. Signature …………………………….. 1 2 Abstract: The 19th century is recognised as a period of mass emigration from Cornwall, with a significant proportion of the male population leaving to work overseas, mainly in the mining industry. Less appreciated is that many of these migrants were married men who left wives and children behind in Cornwall. This study seeks to shed some light on the experiences of these women, known as ‘married widows’. It adopts a multi-faceted approach, which draws upon crowd-sourcing and digital resources, in combination with more traditional methodologies. Scattered and fragmentary qualitative evidence (drawn from correspondence, newspapers, remittance and poor law records, supplemented by personal testimony recorded in family histories) is examined within a quantitative framework produced by an innovative database created from census records and a longitudinal study of outcomes. This thesis describes how tens of thousands of wives were ‘left behind’ in the mining communities of Cornwall, and the wide range of resources they drew upon in the absence of their husbands. It examines the interaction between the wives and the State in the form of the Poor Law and the Courts, identifying a pragmatic response to the needs of the emerging transnational nuclear family. Male migration from Cornwall is revealed to vary widely in type, intent and duration, leading to great diversity of experiences and outcomes for the wives ‘left behind’. The establishment of temporary male labour emigration from the Cornish mining communities is shown to have occurred earlier than in many other emigration centres, creating greater potential for cultural acclimatisation to the challenges of spousal separation. The findings of this study challenge existing, generalised, perceptions of the wives as passive victims in the Cornish emigration story. Levels of destitution or desertion appear low compared to the scale of the phenomenon, and wives are shown as active participants and influential voices in family strategies. Nonetheless, this study highlights the vulnerability and greater risks faced by the wives ‘left behind’, and identifies financial and emotional insecurity as common elements of their experience. This thesis demonstrates a methodology and reveals insights that might be applied to the study of wives ‘left behind’ in other parts of the British Isles, and a comparator for existing studies of those elsewhere in the world. 3 4 Contents: Acknowledgements 6 List of Figures 7 List of Tables 8 Chapter 1. The ‘Married Widows’ of Cornwall - addressing a 9 neglected aspect of the Cornish emigration story Chapter 2. Methodology - a quantitative framework for 43 qualitative evidence Chapter 3. The Scale of the Phenomenon 63 Chapter 4. Making Ends Meet 97 Chapter 5. ‘If You Can Accord’ - support within the family and 127 community Chapter 6. The Wives and The Poor Law 165 Chapter 7. ‘Unworthy’ Wives and ‘Forgetful’ Husbands 187 Chapter 8. Lodgers, Lovers and Consequences 211 Chapter 9. Meeting Again on Earth or in Heaven - outcomes of 249 separation Chapter 10. The Worst Kind of Widowhood? - agency and the 283 wife’s emotional response Chapter 11. Conclusion 311 Appendices 323 Bibliography 337 5 Acknowledgements: This research would not have been possible without the enthusiasm and help of numerous family historians who have preserved, recorded and transcribed the material evidence of Cornish wives ’left behind’. In particular, I would like to thank Michael McCormick for permission to copy and manipulate the Cornwall Online Census Project data. I am grateful to representatives of Cornish associations around the world for help in publicizing my appeal for documents and stories, especially: Wendy Ashenden (New Zealand Society of Genealogists); Nick Bartle (New Zealand Cornish Association); Tony Berry (Cornwall Family History Society); Carolyn Bray (Pennsylvania Cornwall Association); Liz Broekmann (London Cornish Association); Liz Cool (Cornish Association of South Australia); Myra Cordrey (Online Parish Clerks (Genealogy) Coordinator, Cornwall); Gage McKinney (California Cornish Cousins); Tommi O'Hagan (Cornish American Heritage Society), and well as all those unknown to me who forwarded the appeal to their contacts. It is impossible to acknowledge all those that responded, but special mention goes to those who shared the family stories mentioned in this thesis: Elizabeth Cameron, Liz Coole, David Coppin, Francis Dunstan, Teresa Farris, Carolyn Haines, Elaine Hamby, Charlotte Hearle, Allan Lance, Lorna Leadbetter, Linda Lowrey, Kitty Quayle, Margaret Stevens, Shirley Westaway and William & Patricia Woolcock. Thanks also to Bernadette Fallon, Mark Johnson and Pam Weeks for passing on leads. Special thanks goes to Moira Tangye for generously sharing her collection of emigrant correspondence, and to Emily Oldenburg (descendant of Mary Ann Dower) and the staff at the Barr Smith Library, University of Adelaide for enabling access to the Dower correspondence. Acknowledgement is also due to the work of the late John Tregenza in preserving copies of Cornish emigrant letters. Finally I would like to thank Garry Tregidga, Bernard Deacon, Philip Payton and Briony Oncuil for their helpful guidance and comments on the various drafts of this thesis, and Anthea Colgate and Miranda Lawrance-Owen for their proofreading of the text. This project was assisted by a bursary awarded by the Cornwall Heritage Trust. 6 Figures: Fig 1. Map of Cornwall showing key locations. 12 Fig 2. Migration destinations of husbands specifically 30 recorded in the census returns for Cornwall 1851- 1891. Fig 3. Numbers of wives heading households compared 67 with numbers of husbands explicitly stated to be abroad. Fig 4. Schematic of relationship between numbers of wives 68 ‘left behind’ and wives with absent husbands. Fig 5. Percentage of wives with absent husbands acting as 70 heads of household. Fig 6. Percentage of wives with absent husbands appearing 75 in previous census cohort for the same parish. Fig 7a-e. Distribution maps of census references to husbands 77-81 abroad. Fig 8a-e. Distribution maps of married female heads of 83-87 household. Fig 9. Numbers of wives with absent husbands. 88 Fig 10. Percentage of wives with absent husbands. 89 Fig 11. Map of Poor Law Unions in Cornwall. 91 Fig 12. Living arrangements of married women with 131 husbands known to be abroad. Fig 13. Percentage of wives with absent husbands 132 enumerated in the households of others. Fig 14. Comparative size of the parishes studied. 132 Fig 15. Heads of households in which married women whose 134 husbands are recorded in the census as being abroad were living, if not their own. Fig 16a-e. Heads of households in which married women with 137-141 absent husbands were living, if not their own. Fig 17. Composition of households headed by married 142 women whose husbands are recorded as being abroad in the census. Fig 18a-e. Composition of households headed by married 143-147 women with absent husbands. Continued overleaf. 7 Figures: continued: Fig 19. Percentage of married women with absent husbands 148 who had lodgers or boarders. Fig 20a-e Outcomes after ten years for wives with absent 250-254 husbands. Tables: Table 1. Percentages of households headed by married 33 women. Table 2. Numbers of wives with absent husbands in selected 69 parishes Table 3. Estimated numbers of wives ‘left behind’. 71 8 Chapter 1 - The ‘Married Widows’ of Cornwall - addressing a neglected aspect of the Cornish emigration story. “These poor creatures are known here as ‘married widows’, to me the worst kind of widowhood. There are, however, a few happy exceptions, where the absent husbands send home good round sums to their wives.” Anon, Royal Cornwall Gazette 18761 Introduction The ‘married widows’ of Cornwall are an overlooked feature of what is known in Cornish historiography as the ‘Great Emigration’. In the 19th century Cornwall, situated in the far south west of the British Isles, experienced a diasporadic exodus that saw its people and culture spread to the far-flung corners of the world. The scale and duration of this emigration, with large waves of movement to the Americas (North2 and South) from the 1830s, to Australia from the 1850s and to South Africa from the 1880s, puts Cornwall on a par with many of the major European emigration centres.3 Emigration is a major theme within Cornish Studies, relevant not only to an understanding of Cornwall’s past, but of its present and future. It has contributed to the evolution of a strong sense of Cornish identity, both in Cornwall and amongst the overseas descendants of Cornish emigrants. It is a significant strand of the heritage tourism offering that forms an important part of the modern Cornish economy, providing a narrative, and a ready market amongst the international Cornish community. Academically, Cornwall’s history of emigration also reinforces the position of Cornish Studies within the wider field of Celtic Studies, parallels being drawn with mass emigrations from the Celtic nations of Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Traditionally, migration studies have focused on the causes of migration, its streams and processes from the point of view of the migrants. However, in recent years research on migration generally has taken a more holistic approach. Migration historians have adopted Harzig and Hoerder’s model of migration as encompassing ‘multiple options’, being potentially: “many- 1 Royal Cornwall Gazette, 15 July 1876, p.