Made in Lancashire: A Collective Biography of Assisted Migrants from Lancashire to Victoria 1852-1853
Richard Turner’s focus is 225 people who migrated from Lancashire in the two years following the announcement in 1851 of the discovery of gold in regional Victoria. He examines the pre- and post-emigration experiences of these individuals and places them in the social context of both industrialising Britain and developing Victoria. Detailed migration studies such as this, which rely on extensive interrogation of the records, do much to enhance our understanding of the development of the colonies.
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Made in Lancashire:
A Collective Biography of Assisted Migrants from Lancashire to Victoria 1852-1853
Richard Turner | 2021
Made in Lancashire is based on Richard Turner’s La Trobe University 2019 PhD thesis, for which he received the Nancy Millis Medal recognising a thesis of exceptional merit. Turner deals with a microcosm of society, and in line with recent migration historiography, argues that ‘these Lancashire emigrants were not pawns to be shifted on the chessboard of the British Empire by its elites’ (p. 210).
Because these people left their home country immediately after the 1851 Census, Turner is able to meaningfully construct their pre-emigration lives. He is also fortunate that the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners kept copious and thorough records of their decisions, their processes, and the people they enabled to migrate. Regrettably, neither of these sources are available for the nearly 3,000 women who migrated to Australia in the 1830s, and who I studied for my doctoral thesis. Turner reveals what valuable information they offer the historian and makes good use of both the census and the emigration resources. While the emphasis of Turner’s book is on family migration, throughout the study he examines the experiences of both married and single women, and like I did, encountered significant problems in reconstructing the lives of women who did not own property nor otherwise entered the domain of civic record-keeping.
This is an excellent study of skilled artisans and their ability to use government processes to enhance their lives: whether it was before they departed Lancashire when they had to complete application forms and meet the stringent requirements for emigration, or once they were in Australia and were navigating various regulatory avenues, for example, for obtaining gold mining licenses or for land selection. Turner devotes several chapters to a thorough examination of the development of Victoria from the 1850s to the 1870s, and places his cohort in this context. He convincingly outlines in this collective biography the emigrants’ overriding determination to become freeholders and build a capitalist society based on the concept of small-property ownership, thus fulfilling their hopes for material improvement.
Turner aligns the emigrants’ aspirations with the expansion of the railways, arguing that the development of Victoria’s rail network was essential in transforming some of the migrants into small landholders, while ruining the business opportunities of others affected by the outward domination of Melbourne. This book provides more than a prosopographical study of the lives of 225 migrants: it delves into the political, social and cultural development of Victoria, as read through the lives of these enterprising people.
Reviewer: Liz Rushen, PHA (Vic & Tas) is the author of Single & Free: female migration to Australia, 1833-1837.
Made in Lancashire: A Collective Biography of Assisted Migrants from Lancashire to Victoria 1852-1853 is published by Monash University Publishing.