II: Safety Nets and Escape Routes
Concerns for the welfare of governesses, and the populace of unmarried middle-class women that they represented, prompted a wave of action from social reformers, commentators, and philanthropists. While some sought to improve conditions and support for governesses within Britain, others looked to its colonies for a more definitive solution.
By the mid-nineteenth century, a governess's welfare was no longer seen as being limited to reliance on charity or hopes of securing a husband. Another option was now being vigorously promoted: the chance to escape an oversaturated Britain for better opportunities through organised emigration.
The asylum for aged Governesses, Claremont Terrace, Kentish Town, Coloured engraving, Look and Learn / Peter Jackson Collection.
Initiatives such as the Governesses Mutual Assurance Society and the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution were set up to help alleviate the hardships that governesses faced within Britain.
In addition to establishing a governess registry, savings bank and training college, the Governesses’ Benevolent Institution (formed in 1841) ran an asylum for ‘Aged Governesses’. Few women could expect to obtain a governessing position past the page of forty,¹ and records kept by the Benevolent Institution relay countless examples of ex-governesses in their early fifties and sixties who were living in poor health and poverty, with little hope of securing future income or assistance outside of being the recipients of charity.²
For many women who worked as governesses, marriage represented an opportunity for escape. In addition to financial security, it offered a pathway to establishing a household of their own and to gaining greater personal agency. Marriage also promised the solidification of social status, elevating governesses from being a paid employee to the more socially respected role of wife and mother.
The story behind this silk dress reflects this transition. In 1870, a governess named Emily eloped with her pupil’s older brother, a young doctor named Adolphus Bernays. According to records attached to the dress in Canterbury Museum, Emily became not just Adolphus’ wife but his intellectual partner, studying medical books each afternoon to advise him on his patient cases. Adolphus’ practice flourished, and at its “first sign of prosperity” the couple marked their success with the purchase of this elegant silk and lace evening dress. Through marriage, Emily exchanged an uncertain future for greater material wealth, personal agency, partnership, and a cemented social standing as the wife of a respected doctor.
Pink silk evening dress, ca 1898, Christchurch, Canterbury Museum (1974.172.1).
Maria Rye, Emigration of Educated Women (Emily Faithful & Co, 1862). Image: London, The Women’s Library at LSE, 1/FME/3/1 (Records of the FMCES).
“If we look to the resources of our colonies, to their untold wealth and powers yet to be expanded, the rapid stride they are making towards refinement, and the elegances of life – surely we may take courage and hope, that there, amidst the many home-steads of our wonderful colonial possessions, some, at least, of our many worthy, industrious, poor young countrywomen may be safely planted.”
— Extract from Emigration of Educated Women read by Maria Rye in her address to the Social Science Congress in Dublin, 1861.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, British social reformers grappled with the problem of a ‘surplus’ female population—a concern heightened by data from the 1851 census. William Rathbone Greg's 1862 essay, 'Why are Women Redundant?', warned that this surplus would have dire social consequences. He proposed organised emigration as the solution, arguing that it would rebalance gender ratios, restore social order in Britain, and simultaneously populate British colonies.
It was within this context that the Female Middle Class Emigration Society was established to provide "protection and assistance to emigrate" for women deemed "superior in birth and attainments". The society’s co-founder Maria Rye shared this vision in a paper delivered at the Social Science Congress in Dublin in 1861. She asserted that Britain's "wonderful colonial possessions" could offer a home and future for middle-class women facing financial hardship. Britain's social class structure, she believed, would be faithfully replicated in these new colonial spaces, enabling middle-class women to be "safely planted" into settler societies.
Between 1861 and 1886, the FMCES helped approximately 300 women emigrate to Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand to find work as governesses.
¹ Ruth Brandon, Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres (New York: Walker Publishing Company, 2008), p.21.
² See Governesses’ Benevolent Insitution - Report of the Board of Management (London: Edward Brewster, 1844-[19??]).