Cruikshank, George, 1792-1878 :Probable effects of over female emigration, or importing the fair sex from the Savage Islands in consequence of exporting all our own to Australia / designed & etched by George Cruikshank. [London : s.n., ca 1851]

Cruikshank's burlesque cartoon is in response to the exodus of women who took up offers of assisted passage to Australia and in so doing created a critical shortage of men in England. His dockside scene depicts a crowd of pallid & astonded-looking Englishmen who have come to greet the arrival of a ship load of smiling dark-skinned women who have responded to the call for female emigration.

Throughout the first decades of settlement men outnumbered women to an extraordinary degree resulting in grave social problems. Active attempts to address the imbalance included immigration drives for women in Britain.

Issued with Cruikshank's `The Comic Almanac for 1851'

The Library holds a hand-coloured version of this etching at B-021-047

Inscriptions: Recto - beneath image - Title

Quantity: 1 b&w art print(s).

Physical Description: Etching, 185 x 440 mm