Maria Rye
Maria Susan Rye, (31 March 1829 – 12 November 1903), was a social reformer and a promoter of emigration from England, especially of young women living in Liverpool workhouses, to the colonies of the British Empire, especially Canada.
Early life
She was born at 2 Lower James Street,
Maria Rye received her education at home and read for herself in the large library of her father.
Career
Coming under the influence of Charles Kingsley's father, then vicar of St Luke's Church, she devoted herself at the age of sixteen to parochial work in Chelsea. She was impressed by the lack of opportunity of employment for women outside the teaching profession. In succession to Mary Howitt, she soon became secretary of Langham Place, London#The Langham Place Group which promoted the Married Women's Property bill, which was brought forward by Sir Thomas Erskine Perry in 1856 but was not fully passed till 1882.
Rye joined the
The law-stationer's business prospered, but the applications for employment were far in excess of the demands of the concern. With Jane Lewin, she consequently raised a fund for assisting middle-class girls to emigrate, and to the question of emigration she devoted the rest of her life.
Emigration
She founded, in 1861, the Female Middle Class Emigration Society (absorbed since 1884 in the United British Women's Emigration Association). Between 1860 and 1868, she was instrumental in sending girls of the middle class and domestic servants to Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.[5] She visited these colonies to form committees for the protection of the emigrants.[3]
Together with several governesses and over 100 women traveling in steerage, Rye sailed to New Zealand in 1863.[6] There in Dunedin, she found the terrible conditions in which immigrant single women had been housed -- former military barracks with few amenities. She became the center of political and philanthropic controversies as she sought for reform from the provincial government's immigration offices. Within two years, she had traveled across New Zealand and found few opportunities for skilled, educated single women. Even in the more settled Canterbury region, Rye realized the scheme was not going to work since the local populace emphasized their need for domestic servants or marriageable farmhands.[7]
From 1868, when she handed over her law business to Lewin, Rye devoted herself exclusively to the emigration of pauper children, or, in a phrase which she herself coined, 'gutter children.' After visiting in New York the
At
Later life
In 1895, owing to the continuous strain, Rye transferred the two institutions in Peckham and Niagara with their funds to the Church of England Waifs and Strays Society (now The Children's Society). In her farewell report of 1895 she stated that 4000 English and Scottish children then in Canada had been sent out from her home in England.[3]
She retired with her sister Elizabeth to 'Baconsthorpe,' Hemel Hempstead, where she spent the remainder of her life. There she died, after four years' suffering, of intestinal cancer on 12 November 1903, and was buried in the churchyard. [3]
See also
- Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon
- Bessie Rayner Parkes
- The Langham Place Group
- Society for Promoting the Employment of Women
References
- ^ The Herald and Genealogist. 1874. p. 413. Retrieved 10 September 2023.
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
- ^ "Maria Susan Rye Female 31 March 1829 – 12 November 1903". www.familysearch.org. Retrieved 10 September 2023.
- ^ a b c d e f Owen 1912.
- ^ Macdonald, Charlotte. "Rye, Maria Susan". Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 1990. Retrieved 27 November 2022.
- ^ Sales, Margaret (1983). "'Redundant women' in the promised land: English middle class women's migration to Australia 1861-1881, Master of Arts thesis, Department of History". University of Wollongong Thesis Collection 1954-2016. Retrieved 27 November 2022.
- ^ Macdonald, Charlotte (1990). A Woman of Good Character, Single Women as Immigrant Settlers in Nineteenth-century New Zealand. Wellington, NZ: Bridget Williams Books Ltd. pp. 28–36, 176–178.
- ^ Macdonald, Charlotte. "Rye, Maria Susan". Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 1990. e Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. Retrieved 29 November 2022.
Attribution
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Owen, William Benjamin (1912). "Rye, Maria Susan". In Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography (2nd supplement). London: Smith, Elder & Co.
Further reading
- ""Administrative/Biographical History." Records of the Female Middle Class Emigration Society". Women's Library Archives. GB 106 1FME. Archives Hub. Retrieved 27 November 2022.
- Banks, J.A.; Banks, Olive (1964). Feminism and Family Planning in Victorian England. New York: Schocken Books.
- Parr, Joy. "Rye, Maria Susan". Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 13. University of Toronto/Université Laval. Retrieved 27 November 2022.
- Parr, Joy (1980). Labouring Children: British Immigrant Apprentices to Canada, 1869-1924. London: Croom Helm Ltd.
External links
- Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
- Young Immigrants to Canada
- Female Middle Class Emigration Society, Women's Library , Appendix 1.4
- British Home Child Group International
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