Assisted female immigration 1860-1920

Between 1860, as all of the Australian colonies began to take financial responsibility for their own immigration programs, and 1920, when responsibility for promoting immigration began to shift into federal government hands, one factor dominated assisted immigration policies: peopling the Australian colonies, then the nation, with British Stock. The assisted migration of single women was an essential part of that strategy. In the colonial period at least, out numbering other groups of immigrants such as single men, married men and women and children, single British women were the largest category of migrant given financial assistance. More than 100000 of them migrated to Australia in the period from 1860 to 1920, four times as many women as came out as convicts..