Shelford Emigrations

Leaving the village for a new life

If, like me, you are a local historian, you soon come into contact with people from America, Australia and other former colonies whose forebears migrated from Shelford to find a new life.
So when did they leave, and why? I guess there are as many reasons for leaving home to make a new life as there are people. Perhaps you are naturally adventurous and want to see the world; perhaps you find your family and village suffocating, and want to move away to a place where you can make a fresh start, with no-one looking over your shoulder. But by far the most common reason, and one that certainly prevailed in Shelford in the nineteenth century, was simply that, if you were one of the poor – and that was the greater part of the village population – there wasn’t a good living to be had here.
Now if you’ve read my other pieces on the nineteenth century (Class War in Shelford, The Shelford Arsonist), you’ll know that, in the 1820s and 1830s the village had too many labourers for the amount of work available, and that there was unemployment within the village. Wages were appallingly low. Life for the labouring families was grim. They had few moveable possessions, whether clothes, furniture, or consumer goods. They would have bought things for necessity, not pleasure. Their diet was mostly bread. Their houses were primitive and overcrowded. The system of poor relief bound them to the parish.
You’ll also know that, while the farmers were more affluent, they too were frustrated by the economic stalemate that existed in the village. Something had to give. And it did. But it was not what anyone expected.
In July 1845 the railway came to Shelford. Suddenly travel to London and the Midlands, and indeed many other parts of the country, was easy (though not necessarily cheap).
By 1851, you could find adverts such as these in the local newspapers:

Imagine reading this and starting to think… Word soon spread in Shelford.

On 20 March the Cambridge Chronicle reported:

On 18th September:

Well, this turn of events certainly rocked the boat in Shelford, because on 25th June we read:

On 11th March the Chronicle further reported that:

Money for the fare, of course, was an issue, but it seems that fares were cheap, though the conditions in the ships were, consequently, pretty awful. There also seems to be a hint here that the parish might be prepared to find the fare to rid itself of some of the surplus labour.

In April 1854, Hayes Powter and his wife, who had emigrated to Australia in 1850, made a return visit to Shelford. They were welcomed at the station by a group of friends and family, and the bells were rung to greet them. Lots of people called round to see them. Powter had obviously gone to the gold fields. He made a good showing, with his gold watch and chain, a fistful of gold rings, and pockets bulging with gold sovereigns. He was the master of grandiose gesture, presenting a gentleman who had helped him emigrate with a handsome gold ring.
There were more stories of fortunes made: John Howard (of Lt Shelford) heard from his son, who was at the gold fields in Australia, that he was earning £10 per week. Labourers in Shelford at this time would get 7-10s per week. James Butler, a labourer in Australia, had saved £50 in his first year, and thought that “by perseverance” he would have £100 by the end of the next. These were prospects so far beyond anything possible in the village that it was like a fairy tale.
The aforementioned Hayes Powter, by November, was announcing that his funds were nearly exhausted, and that he would have to return to Australia to replenish them. By this time he had, it seemed, outstayed his welcome. The Chronicle headlined his departure:
LEFT HIS COUNTRY FOR HIS COUNTRY’S GOOD.
Powter had, it appears, been had up any number of times for poaching, and had fled under a warrant for his arrest for breach of good behaviour. He had got through his fortune of over £100. “The whole of the inhabitants of the village express a wish that he may not return again”. Of course the “whole of the inhabitants” may mean only the respectable and affluent village residents, readers of the local Conservative newspaper. Perhaps the labouring class saw it differently. Powter, however, left with one last flourish. He paid the bellringers to ring him out of the village.

Another party of labourers from Shelford and Stapleford left on 14 November 1854. In February 1855:

So I guess those high harvest wages offered in June 1851 had not lasted.

On 8th August:

You can see how such letters, which would have been read, and passed round and talked over in the village would have encouraged others to consider taking the plunge. It wasn’t, however, without its dangers. That month, the emigrant ship Martin Luther was wrecked on its voyage from Liverpool to Quebec. The 408 passengers were miraculously saved by another vessel, which towed them back to Plymouth. W. Smith of Great Shelford, an emigration agent, was himself on board, and hastened to underline the fact that this was the first mishap to befall any immigrants.
Thereafter we don’t hear any more about emigrants in the papers. It had become old news. But, by then, many families had looked at their lives in Shelford, and voted with their feet. Were their new lives better? Where did they go, and what did they find there? How did they earn their living? If you are in America, or Australia, or South Africa, and part of the Shelford diaspora, then perhaps you can tell me. I’d love to know.

Transportation and after…

Of course, not all emigrants went voluntarily. William Dean was tried for “grand larceny” at the Epiphany Quarter Sessions in Cambridge in 1827 and sentenced to seven years’ transportation to Australia.
William Dean was a “higgler and dealer in poultry”, working with or for his father (also a William). The family farm was in Tunwells Lane, roughly where Norfolk House is now. Dean was accused of having stolen 8 turkeys in November 1826.
Turkeys featured prominently in Shelford farming, presumably for the Christmas market. The landlord of the Greyhound, John Moore produced particularly good birds. Dean stole some of the best, and sent them off to the London market. Unfortunately, Moore heard about this, went up to London and identified his birds.
It sounds as though Dean really annoyed the court – his defence made “unremitting endeavours… to defeat step by step the evidence adduced in support of the prosecution”. All in vain. he was sentenced to 7 years’ transportation to Australia. I think the sentence was so severe because he was not just stealing turkeys to eat, but as an item of business.
We next find Dean on the hulk, Captivity, at Portsmouth. After sentence, prisoners for transportation were sent from Cambridge Gaol to floating prisons where they were held awaiting the next transport ship. Dean, who was only 20, is listed alongside another turkey thief from Cambridge – there were obviously a lot of them about!
I know nothing more about Dean until he apparently received a full pardon in May 1832 – not quite the full 7 years. I think he must have behaved well and kept a clean slate. He hotfooted it back to Shelford, and, we find, married Hannah Ellum on Christmas Day that year. His childhood sweetheart? It certainly wasn’t that common for transported men to return home again. The couple remained in Shelford, William continuing as a poulterer. In 1851 they are living in the thatched cottage right beside the Square and Compasses.

The Deans’ home in the 1850s

Presumably life didn’t go well because, in the mid-1850s, they emigrated, not to Australia like the rest of the Shelford labourers, but to West Bend, Wisconsin in the United States. I can only assume he’d had enough of Australia to last him a lifetime! William went first, sailing from Liverpool, and Hannah followed a year or so later with 2 of their children, by now young adults.
I gather from his descendant, Valerie Breen, that he remained an agricultural day labourer for the rest of his life. Was his life in the States better? Only he could tell us that…