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; Bogue, 1851]

Cruikshank's burlesque cartoon is a response to the exodus of women who took up offers of assisted passage to Australia and in so doing created a supposed shortage of women in England. His dockside scene depicts a crowd of pallid and astonished-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 immigration

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'

Descriptive notes from Hordern House catalogue

Inscriptions: Recto - beneath image - Title

Quantity: 1 colour art print(s).

Physical Description: Etching, hand-coloured 160 x 415 mm