3 - Travelling and the Morality of Moving

Summary

We are glad to report that the White Slave Traffic through Liverpool, especially with the United States, has been considerably checked […] The evil, however, still exists, and is worse in some other countries, but its progress has been impeded and frequently frustrated by the work of the Society and other Vigilance Associations in Great Britain.

Liverpool Port and Station Work Society, Annual Report 1923.

In 1923, the National Vigilance Association (NVA) in Britain wrote to the Irish High Commissioner, James McNeill, urging him to address the problem of Irish women coming to Britain. Such women were stated to be often without money, luggage or a job, or, alternatively, completely unfit for jobs they were accepted for and hence quickly lost. Mr Sempkins, head of the NVA, pointed out that although many women were helped in their travel arrangements by the International Catholic Girls’ Protection Society (ICGPS) in Cork and Dublin, he:

would suggest that the girls for whom special protection is most needed are not the girls who seek the help of these two Societies; but are rather those girls who either come over in entire ignorance of the dangers and difficulties awaiting them, or those who think they are quite capable of taking care of themselves.

The message from many involved in helping emigrant women was that above all they needed guidance and the ‘special protection’ offered by welfare associations during their journeys.

The vulnerability of Irish girls travelling to and living in Britain was a consistent theme in the post-independence period. As I have argued elsewhere, morality, keeping ‘respectable’ and upholding the religious values imbued in Ireland were markers of success for women in a way they were not for men. In a nutshell, where financial achievement was a hallmark of the ‘right type’ of male emigrant, sexual purity before marriage was such for women – a quality more difficult to ‘police’ when a woman was abroad. This is where emigrant philanthropy, primarily of a religious nature, stepped in: organisations designed to protect women on their journeys, the largest recipients of such attention being Irish women. Thus, on both sides of the Irish Sea, women were continually framed as needful of assistance, yet while small numbers actively called on the services of voluntary organisations, many thousands more ignored them.