GELLEY GIRLS IMPORTED TO BE DOMESTICS IN CANADA : MAIDEN VOYAGES

 

EXCERPTS: Conditions in third class transatlantic ships had continued to improve markedly during the early 1920's, and now bore little resemblance to the horrors of the notorious steerage class before the Great War.  On the Zeeland, hot seawater baths were available with special soap that would lather in brine. The women could clean themselves and wash their clothes.  On one occasion an impatient chief steward tried to speed up the process by making two girls share the same bath. Edith insisted each woman should bathe alone, in privacy, and her argument prevailed.  Her tussles on behalf of her charges, who were looked down on by some of the crew as racially inferior, often  made her unpopular.  When she insisted that the third class women and children were moved to better quarters in the Zeeland, to minimizes the likelihood of them getting seasick, she encountered hostility from some of the crew, though she won her case...  (page 122)

Quote from Edith (page 123)

We had many Jews - all types -traveling as emigrants from Europe.  The looked as if a terror was behind them, running away with a real sense of fear... all the tragedies of the world seemed to be in their melancholy eyes.  They also seemed to have an awful fear of the sea on this, the first time they had ever seen the ocean, or  experienced what it could do when in the the mood.  How terrible it was for those poor, ground-down peasant types, and the persecuted Jews, to be storm-buffeted on a rolling ship, knowing little of what they might expect, only that it was a land of opportunity that awaited them - a strange land, a better life. Others had gone before and written home to say so....

Many of Edith's adult female charges had been recruited in their hone countries to be domestics, and were known as Gelley Girls, after the Commissioner of the Canadian Immigrations who had invented the assisted places scheme.  However, some would try to escape their escorts before their intended destination, having arranged clandestinely to meet a boyfriend or a family member.  They didn't get far...

*****

Edith also safeguarded unaccompanied children from possible sexual predators on board ships.  She would sometimes encounter very young girls who were being sent alone to a distant relative in the far country, and who had been laced, with the relevant photograph, on the passport of some unrelated male.  The man accompanying them was usually form the same home town or village, and of course this arrangement might be entirely innocent.  However, Edith would step in if she discovered that any young girl or boy had been booked into the same cabin as an unrelated adult male....

Picture Brides were another intriguing feature of Edith's shipboard life.  These were European born women who had consented to marry men already living in Canada or the USA without ever having met them. These women took life-changing decisions after answering a newspaper advert, then exchanging letters and photos, arranging their marriages by post... (page 125)

The Canadian immigration system was well organized' having interviewed each woman and noted her details, Edith would giver her a colour-coded piece of ribbon which showed her eventual destination: red for Manitoba or Saskatchewan, blue for Ontario, white for the maritime provinces.  The women proudly wore these ribbons like badges of honor, or campaign medals, pinned to their clothes....  They were grouped according to their ribbon colors  and then taken to their various destination all over Canada by so-called 'train girls.

(Page 126)