February 9th
The Last Cornish Mining Emigrants (1850)
 

Until 1850, Cornish miners were granted free passage to Australia due to the need for those with skills to make the most of the Australian Gold Rush. Although Britain had many tens of thousands of miners, most worked in coal extraction and so Cornish tin and copper miners were in high demand.   Both single men and women as well as families were eligible but, if the man was accompanied by his wife and children, then to be eligible for free travel, the family could contain no more than two children below the age of seven, both parents must be under forty years of age and both must travel.  Few of the miners could afford to migrate to Australia at their own expense since the cost was approximately £200 per adult and half that for each child.  Applicants required the signature, and statement of good health, from a doctor and a testimonial from a clergyman or magistrate.  

By 1850 though it was determined that sufficient miners had been recruited and it was perceived that there was now a need for agricultural labourers who could be recruited from anywhere in Britain or other colonies and cost less to employ.

On this day in 1850, one of the last groups of Cornish mining emigrants arrived in New South Wales travelling from Plymouth on board, appropriately, a ship called ‘Cornwall’.  The immigrants on board the Cornwall comprised 33 married couples, 87 single men, 83 single women, 32 boys, and 34 girls from one to fourteen years of age, and 9 infants.  Only seven children died on the, 107 day, journey which is a remarkably low rate of death for travel conditions of those times.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                      Previous                                   Next