Her father, William Jones, had been married four times. All his previous wives had died in childbirth. Caroline was William's sixteenth child and the youngest of the seven who lived.
William died when Caroline was six years old. His death left the family with little money. She lived with her family at 11 Mayorhold. In , when Caroline was 22, she married Archibald Chisholm. Archibald was a Roman Catholic. He was ten years older than she was.
He served with East India Company Army. It is believed that Caroline converted to her husband's faith at this time. They were married from to Archibald returned to his regiment in Madras , India in January Caroline joined him 18 months later.
When she saw the bad behaviour of some of the girls, she asked the Governor of Madras to help her set up a school. The school provided a practical education for the girls. They were taught to read and write and about religion , cooking , housekeeping, and nursing. Caroline gave birth to two sons, Archibald and William, and she followed her husband around in his travels. In , Archibald became sick. Rather than go back to England, they moved to Australia because they thought the weather would be good for his health.
They sailed for Sydney. She gave evidence before two House of Lords committees, on the execution of the criminal law, and on colonization from Ireland, a rare tribute to a woman.
A pamphlet letter to Earl Grey, Emigration and Transportation Relatively Considered , better written than her first report, contained her first public attack on the Wakefield system. Eighteen voluntary statements formed an appendix and she published others in Comfort for the Poor!
Meat Three Times a Day!! Her house became an Australian information centre and for several years she and her husband received an average of letters a day. After two years of official indifference to her principal object, family emigration, she decided to act unaided. Her first plan for a land-ticket system was defeated by the influence in London of alarmed squatters. Next she formed a committee of wealthy London merchants and, after a lecture tour of Scotland, her Family Colonization Loan Society became a reality in , with Lord Ashley president of the London central committee, branch committees throughout the British Isles and agents in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney.
The society received the savings of intending emigrants or their colonial relations and lent them the balance of the passage money. The Australian agents found them employment and collected the repayment of the loan by easy instalments. A reserve fund bore losses through death or default. Mrs Chisholm's best-written pamphlet, The A.
Charles Dickens gave the society powerful aid and in advertised the society in Household Words , although his unsympathetic portrait of Mrs Jellyby Bleak House was partly drawn from Mrs Chisholm. When the first chartered ship Slains Castle sailed on 1 October , she personally supervised the embarkation of passengers, placing friendless girls with families and the aged with the young. A reliable surgeon was appointed and he, not the captain, issued the rations.
The Blundell and the Athenian followed, before news of the gold discoveries reached England to stimulate emigration and give the society financial security; in they dispatched six ships.
Yet Mrs Chisholm feared that gold seekers would neither produce colonial stability nor create an environment suitable for her young females. In March Captain Chisholm left for Australia to work gratuitously as colonial agent, leaving Caroline with the increasing duties in Britain. She agitated with some success for lower colonial postage rates and the introduction of colonial money orders. Her comments on shipboard conditions ensured the passing of the Passenger Act of A shipowner, W.
Lindsay built for the society the Caroline Chisholm , and on her maiden voyage in September the passengers included a party of girls from the Jewish Ladies' Benevolent Society.
In , the Chisholm family settled in Windsor, Australia. There, Caroline put up employment agencies in the provinces to provide work to the unemployed immigrants. Between and , Caroline was able to provide jobs to 14, individuals. In when the family returned to England, Caroline encouraged migration to Australia and promoted migration reform.
In , with the support of wealthy London nationals, Caroline established Family Colonization Loan Society that lent migrant families the needed money to travel to Australia, where ships to transport the colonists were also provided.
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