A Most 'Valuable Class': The Shetland Female Emigration Society and the Emigration of Single Women to South Australia and Tasmania in the early 1850s.

This article examines the reasons behind the formation of the little-known Shetland Female Emigration Society and its reception in the Australian colonies. Much has been written about emigration from Scotland and, even more extensively, about female emigration from the United Kingdom in the second half of the nineteenth century. The question of female emigration from Scotland at the time has, by contrast, attracted little attention from scholars so far, even though the country represents a particularly interesting case-study, offering as it did candidates for emigration that differed widely from one region to another in linguistic, religious and ethnic terms. Yet, the SFES, which was launched in 1850 to help in the emigration of young and single women to South Australia and Tasmania, presents the particularity of having offered a Presbyterian, Scandinavian, English-speaking set of emigrants whose moral, domestic and religious qualities made them stand out from their Celtic (and Roman Catholic) Highland and Irish counterparts. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, this paper looks at the conditions in which this philanthropic society was launched, at the intersection of Scottish, British and Australian needs. It also, and mostly, argues that the reception of such schemes must not only be analysed through the lens of gender, famine-relief and imperialist goals, but also through that of a cultural, religious and ethnic bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]