The age of mass migration
The period 1815 to 1914 was seen as the great age of mass migration. Open borders and the need for labour encouraged millions to emigrate, mainly to the Americas. Our collections record details of those that began new lives overseas, from passenger lists to land grants.
Poster encouraging emigration to South Australia, Western Australia and New Zealand
Date: 1841
Catalogue reference: View the record CO 384/66 in the catalogue
In the mid-19th century, the Colonial Land and Emigration Commission was created to foster and promote emigration to British colonies and dominions. Britain was keen to grow the economies of its newly-claimed territories in Oceania at this time.
Originally settling Australia as a penal colony in the 1780s, the British sought skilled migrants to develop its vast land and provide services for its growing population. The offer of free passage and land grants appealed to many, especially to those whose livelihoods were increasingly threatened by the Industrial Revolution (as mechanisation increased unemployment) in the UK.
Application form for free passage to New Zealand
Date: 1841
Catalogue reference: View the record CO 208/274 in the catalogue
The New Zealand Company was set up in the 19th century to colonise New Zealand, by encouraging capitalists and skilled labourers from Britain to settle there.
Unlike the Australian territories, New Zealand was not identified as a penal colony. In the 1830s, much of the rural economies of Britain and Ireland were in decline, and the associated potato famines had meant that many families had become paupers. Thousands of people would be enticed by assisted emigration programmes to move across the world and resettle.
Before the advent of steam, the journeys would take weeks and be very hazardous. Many ships would be shipwrecked on route. With cramped conditions – especially in steerage class – ill health was a problem, with thousands of would-be emigrants dying from diseases such as measles, diphtheria, scarlet fever, typhoid, smallpox and tuberculosis.
Notice from Poplar Union about its child emigration scheme
Date: 1884
Catalogue reference: View the record MH 12/7698 in the catalogue
Child emigration schemes to Canada, Australia and Rhodesia were a feature of Victorian and Edwardian Britain, where so many children had been orphaned or abandoned.
Dr Barnado's was the biggest player in terms of organising the resettlement of pauper children to Canada. Over 80,000 would be dispatched there between 1869 and 1930.
The majority of children would never be reunited with their families again, and in 2010 UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown issued an official apology for the ‘shameful’ child resettlement programme.
Calendar advertising the White Star Line
Date: 1889
Catalogue reference: View the record COPY 1/930 in the catalogue
Over 10 million people emigrated from the UK and Ireland to North America in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and a further 1.5 million to Australia and New Zealand.
Shipping companies like the White Star Line made the scale and speed of this possible, as steam technology became used to power vessels. Journey times to America were cut from weeks to days.
White Star owned the Titanic, which was the largest steamship in the world when it sank on 15 April 1912.
