‘To make the emigrant a better colonist’: transforming women in the Female Immigration Depot, Hyde Park Barracks

ABSTRACT

The immigrant’s journey is a paradigmatic example of the ‘betwixt and between’, both physically and socially ambiguous, suspended momentarily outside of normal society. For archaeologists studying nineteenth-century immigration around the British Empire, ‘institutions of immigration’ (emigrant and immigrant depots, quarantine stations, processing centres, etc.) provide access to this transitional state. Using the example of the Hyde Park Barracks Female Immigration Depot (1848–1887) in Sydney, Australia, the author demonstrates how these the institutional sites encountered throughout the immigrant’s journey were integral to the process of turning immigrants into settlers through the creation of new forms of daily practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Historical archaeology
• institutions
• dining
• Australia
• immigration
• liminality

Acknowledgments

I wish to acknowledge and pay my respects to the Elders of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the traditional owners of the land where Hyde Park Barracks stands. I also recognise my own positionality as a descendant of immigrants who stayed in Hyde Park Barracks, and many others who participated in and benefitted from settler colonialism in Australia.

The research presented here was supported by the USYD Honours Scholarship, and as part of a doctoral project supported by a Stanford University Anthropology Graduate Fellowship, the Ric Weiland Graduate Fellowship, grants from the Stanford Archaeology Center and GRO Funds for Modern British History and Culture.

I would like to thank Barbara Voss, James Flexner, and Ryan Wittingslow for their comments on earlier versions of this article and to two anonymous reviewers for their feedback. My thanks to Sydney Living Museums, NSW State Archives and to Bonnie Montgomery.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. These numbers have been calculated from the assisted shipping lists at NSW State Records for the period the Immigration Depot was in use and with reference to relevant newspaper articles.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Stanford Archaeology Center [Summer Research Grants]; Stanford University [Anthropology Graduate Fellowship, Graduate Research Opportunity Funds Ric Weiland Graduate Fellowship]; University of Sydney [Honours Scholarship].

Notes on contributors

Kimberley G. Connor

Kimberley Connor is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University. Her work focuses on food and dining practices in institutional settings, both historical and modern with a particular emphasis on nineteenth-century institutions of immigration within the British Empire. Her other interests include Early Modern manuscript receipt books and the recreation of historical recipes.