Name/TitleProbable Effects of Over Female Emigration, or Importing the Fair Sex from the Savage Islands, in Consequence of Exporting all our own to Australia!!!
About this objectWell known satirical print, issued with Cruikshank’s The Comic Almanac for 1851.
Throughout the first decades of settlement, men outnumbered women to an extraordinary degree, resulting in grave social problems. Active attempts to address the imbalance included immigration drives for women in Britain. Cruikshank’s burlesque cartoon imagines that the supposed exodus of women who took up offers of assisted passage to Australia has created a critical shortage of women in England. His dockside scene depicts the ship-load of Pacific Island women who have responded to the desperate call of the crowd of pallid, quivering Englishmen greeting them on arrival.
It was only a few decades earlier that Gillray and Rowlandson had made good jokes about the reverse of the situation then applying, the shortage of suitable British brides in the colonies (see catalogue number 109).
MakerGeorge William Evans - Artist
Maker RoleArtist
Date Made1851
Period19th century
Medium and MaterialsPaper and ink.
TechniqueHand coloured
Measurements16cm x 40cm.
Object TypeCartoons
Object numberSF000801
Copyright Licence
Attribution - Non-commercial - No Derivatives (cc)
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The mug is decorated with an underglaze and a blue transfer print. On the body, it is titled ‘Emigrants to Australia’. This type of body and glaze was discontinued by 1840. Comparison of the handle shape and the profile of the foot, point to the attribution of manufacture by the Davenport Factory.
Delta was a ship-rigged vessel with two decks and three masts. It was built in Dordrecht, Netherlands in 1839 at the shipyard of Jan Schouten and registered in the same port. Its hull was constructed of oak and sheathed in ‘yellow metal’. Delta was owned by H. van der Sande at the time of its loss and was engaged as a cargo trader.
The Delta carried 29 crew and passengers, while sailing from Melbourne to Batavia in ballast when wrecked at Kenn Reefs on 30 May 1854 whilst under the command of Captain J.G. Kunst. This vessel loss supports the pattern of shipwrecks located on a well-travelled shipping route that was poorly charted until the mid-nineteenth century. The crew of the Delta could see four other shipwrecks at Kenn Reefs at the time of their vessel’s loss.
Important image of a ship associated with Matthew Flinders, that would shortly become one of the most famous early shipwrecks in eastern Australian waters. This is a fine ship’s portrait, by one of the great exponents of the art