The Gentlewomen of Queen Mary's
Coronation Hostel
MARILYN BARBER

A

brass plaque outside 2412 Alder Street Vancouver, in the early
twentieth century proclaimed to passers•by that the dwelling was Queen
Mary's Coronation Hostel for Gentlewomen born in the United Kingdom
seeking employment in British Columbia. From the end of 1912 until the
1930s, Queen Mary's Coronation Hostel provided accommodation and
training in Canadian household methods for emigrant gentlewomen. It was
one of a growing number of women's hostels established across Canada
before World War I by women interested in promoting British female
immigration. While hostels which operated with the aid of government funds
welcomed immigrant domestics, the privately endowed Vancouver Hostel
acquired distinctive statl\S by restricting admission exclusively to
gentlewomen. The location of the hostel for gentlewomen did not occur by
accident; in the early twentieth century British Columbia became a favoured
destination for working gentlewomen from the British Isles. A study of Queen
Mary's Coronation Hostel shows how belonging to a privileged social class
both benefited and restricted one group of gentlewomen who were attracted
to British Columbia. 1
Female emigration recently has begun to receive attention from authors
interested in the complex relationship of gender, class, and ethnicity. The
connection between feminism and imperialism is an important issue in the
study of British female middle class emigration. Victorian ideology confined
middle class women to the domestic sphere as "angels-in-the house" but
acknowledged that women of the lower social orders might need to work
outside the home. Therefore, the sexual imbalance in British society in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries created a particularly difficult
situation for gentlewomen whose marriage prospects were seriously curtailed
by the lack of suitable men and whose employment prospects were severely
constrained by the need to maintain social status. In the mid-nineteenth
Barbara K. Latham and Roberta J. Pazdro, Eds., Not Just Pin Money
Victoria: Camosun College, I984
·

142 Queen Mary's Hostel

century; emigration began to be promoted as one solution to their needs, a
feminist solution if designed to provide greater independence through a wider
range of employment opportunities, and an anti-feminist solution if intended
to constrain middle class women to the traditional sphere of the home and to
prevent reform in Britain through the use of a safety-valve mechanism.
Migration within the Empire was strongly encouraged by imperial interests.
Since imperialists generally stressed women's central role in developing the
homes of the Empire, they seem to be associated with the more conservative
forces. Yet imperialism and anti-feminism are not automatically bedfellows;
an interest in strengthening the Empire could equally be linked with a
commitment to improving opportunities for women.
Two books directly relevant to Canada focus on British emigrant
gentlewomen. Emigrant Gentlewomen, by James Hammerton, traces the
promotion and growth of British female emigration as a solution to the
"problem"of distressed gentlewomen from 1830 to 1914. A Flannel Shirt and
Liberty, edited by Susan Jackel, presents selections from the writings of
British gentlewomen who came to the Canadian prairies often for the express
purpose of reporting their experiences to a British audience. Both
Hammerton and Jackel identify the relation between feminism and
imperialism as a major theme. Hammerton portrays the 1860s feminism of
the Female Middle Class Emigration Society as quickly being overwhelmed
by philanthropic and imperialistic enthusiasm for the feminine civilizing
mission of home and family. Jackel rejects a clear dichotomy and views the
concentration on gender and marriage as coexisting with an emphasis on
training to reduce dependency.2 Given the divergence of interpretation in the
existing studies, the significance of feminism and imperialism, including
possible differences in motivation between sponsors and emigrants, becomes
a central issue in the examination of Queen Mary's Coronation Hostel.
The study of Queen Mary's Coronation Hostel extends the analysis of
gentlewomen's emigration beyond the chronological boundary of World War
I where existing literature on female emigration and women's work tends to
end. The intriguing question of whether the war constituted a watershed in
female middle class immigration cannot be answered without more studies on
the place of women in the l 920s on both side_s of the Atlantic, bu.t the history
of the gentlewomen of Queen Mary's Coronation Hostel provides initial
indications of probable changes. Did the war mark the disappearance of the
distressed gentlewoman so commonly associated with the Victorian period?
Hammerton challenges the nineteenth century stereotype of the helpless,
dependent gentlewoman, possessing the accomplishments of a lady but
lacking employment skills, by asserting that many of these same gentlewomen
had the courage and determination to create new lives for themselves in the
colonies. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the qualities of character which
he praises increasingly became an inadequate substitute for the formal
training required for-professional employment in the twentieth century. Lee
Holcombe in her book Victorian Ladies at Work claims that the idea work
degraded ladies was passing away by 1914, but shows that middle class
working women were still restricted to certain occupations, especially
teaching and nursing, shop and clerical work. 3 A study of Queen Mary's

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143

Coronation Hostel raises questions about the preparation for work received
by emigrant gentlewomen, as opposed to the wider spectrum of middle class
women, in relation to their expectations and experiences of life in British
Columbia.
The Queen Mary's Coronation Hostel records, held at the Va.ncouver
City Archives, provide better information on individual immigrants than is
available in the surviving documentation from most Canadian women's
hostels of the period. As well as annual reports, the Hostel records for several
of the years contain monthly reports which give the names of residents, their
period of stay, and the employment they obtained. In addition, there are lists
of emigrants for both pre-war and post-war years, a register book for the prewar period, and official emigration forms for those emigrants who arrived in
the years 1930 and later. Nevertheless, there are gaps in the information,
especially regarding the background of the immigrants, ~nd variations in the
types of record make it difficult to compare the pre-war and post-war period.
Correspondence between Hostel authorities and representatives of British
societies selecting gentlewomen for the Hostel and between Hostel authorities
and· emigrant gentlewomen or prospective employers reveals more of the
expectations and ·motivations of both sponsors and emigrants. I have
supplemented the Hostel records with interviews with five of the women.who
came to the Hostel between 1926 and 1931 and who provided information on
their own experiences and those of other emigrants whom they knew, and
with records held in England of the British societies which cooperated with
the Hostel.
Queen Mary's Coronation Hostel owed it existence to the initiative of
Mrs. Mary Agnes FitzGibbon, a Toronto journalist who in 1907 moved to
British Columbia.4 In 1911, with the aid of Mary Minto, wife of the former
Governor-General of Canada, who acted as intermediary, Mr~. FitzGibbon
persuaded Lord Strathcona, Canadian High Commissioner in London, to
· provide an endowment fund of $100,000 for the Hostel. Financial advisers,
· appointed by the trust deed, controlled the major fiscal arrangements for the
purchase and maintenance of the Hostel, but FitzGibbon, as head of the
Board of Management, was responsible for overseeing the actual operation.
After a house on Barclay Street had.been leased for nine months, the Hostel
acquired permanent quarters with the purchase of an Alder Street house
which a prominent Vancouver citizen had built in the _late nineteenth century
on the highest point on the city outskirts overlooking False Creek. An
. additional bequest of $ 1000 from Lord Strathcona facilitated furnishing the
Hostel in style with monogrammed Doulton china, linen, chairs, and St.
James rugs shipped from England. 5 As a result, the Hostel resembled an
upper middle class home more than an institution. As described by a former
resident who appreciated the comfort and view which the Hostel offered:
It was just like a home away from home. It was very
nice. It wasn't a hostelly sort of place. It had a big
verandah. It was on Alder Street with a lovely view of
the city below. 6
The terms of the trust deed empowered the Hostel to receive various
categor,ies of British gentlewomen including students of household work and

144 Queen Mary's Hostel

service to receive training at the Hostel, a limited number of permanent
boarders who would provide practice for the students, and transients seeking
temporary accommodation on first arrival in the province or between
situations.
Mary Agnes FitzGihbon drew what she described as the "stick-to-itness" necessary for founding the Vancouver Hostel from her strong
imperialism.7 Described in Morgan's Canadian Men and Women ofthe Time
as "more interested in the problem of imperial unity than in anything else", 8
FitzGibbon undoubtedly absorbed imperial sentiments from her immediate
family. She never knew her lawyer father, Richard Bernard, who died before
she was born, but when she was eleven her widowed mother married D'Alton
McCarthy, a staunch imperialist later to gain prominence as a founder of the
Imperial Federation League. In 1881, as a young lady of nineteen, Mary went
to England with her aunt, the second wife of john A. Macdonald, and made
her debut in the London season. A year later, she married Clare FitzGibbon, a
lawyer of titled Irish parentage and lived in Britain for the next fourteen
years. 9 For Mary Agnes FitzGibbon, England truly became a second home,
and she readily linked her sense of Canadian identity with loyalty to the wider
Empire. Even after her return to Canada in 1896, FitzGibbon spent almost as
much time in England as she did in the land of her birth. It was during an
extended visit to London· on the occasion of the coronation of King George
and Queen Mary that Mary FitzGibbon arranged for the establishment of
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BARBER

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. FitzGibbon's interest in fostering women's emigration formed part of a
well-established pattern of activity for socially prominent women concerned
with the fate of Empire. The women's societies concentrated on female
emigration not only because women's affairs unquestionably belonged to
women's proper sphere but also because women required the most assistance.
Single men of all classes emigrated much more readily than did their sisters,
helping to create an imbalance of the sexes in both Britain and Canada. Class
interests as well as imperial enthusiasms shaped the work of the emigration
promoters. These interests did not always coincide on both sides of the
Atlantic. Canadian women, especially in the larger eastern cities, most
warmly welcomed trained British domestic servants whom they and their
friends could employ while advancing the cause of the Empire, but not
educated. women Who would compete with their daughters for jobs and
husbands. British women, who did not wish to lose their domestic servants,
directed most of their emigration propaganda to the middle class women
who, because of their lack of training and the social restrictions on their
employment, seemed to be the most obviously displaced by the sexual
imbalance in British society. They argued that women of culture and
refinement made especially valuable "Missionaries of Empire," and that
Britain must send out her best to ensure the imperial loyalty of the
Dominions. 11 The British Women's Emigration Association (BWEA), the
largest of the British societies, in its literature consistently maintained a
special interest in educated women but in practice worked with all social
classes. Because educated women were always a minority of those sponsored
by the BWEA, a separate association, the Colonial Intelligence League for
Educated Women (CIL), was formed in 1910 to deal exclusively with them.
Ella Sykes, a League representative who toured Canada in 1911 to investigate
employment opportunities for educated women, explained the imperial
motivation of the CIL:
It is an Imperial work to help girls of a high stamp to
seek their fortunes beyond the seas - women who will
care for our glorious Flag and what it signifies, who
will stand for higher ideals than the worship of the
"almighty dollar," and who will do their part in the
land that their brothers are developing so splendidly .12
In establishing Queen Mary's Coronation Hostel, FitzGibbon similarly
chose to work exclusively with those whom she called gentlewomen.
"Gentlewoman" was a flexible term in British society which defied exact
definition. Gentility did not depend solely on birth and station, but also
incorporated qualities of character. To be a gentlewoman connoted, more
than anything else, good breeding: manners, culture, and refinement which
could only be nurtured by those with considerable leisure time. With the
growth of the middle classes in. nineteenth century Britain, the belief that
gentility could be acquired by education and effort challenged the older view
that birth determined social status. 13 Since the concept of gentility was
amorphous, whom did FitzGibbon accept as gentlewomen qualified for
admission to Queen Mary's Coronation Hostel?
FitzGibbon's interpretation of "gentlewoman" appears to have been

146 Queen Mary's Hostel

more rigid than that of her British associates who selected applicants for the
Hostel. The terms of the trust deed contain no definition of "gentlewoman",
but correspondence indfoates that FitzGibbon believed that gentlewomen
derived their status by birth; that is, they were the daughters of gentlemen
farmers or of professional men, such as lawyers, doctors, clergymen, and
military officers. By contrast, FitzGibbon's British associates placed more
emphasis on education than on birth. The head of the Scottish committee,
Lady Helen Munro Ferguson, made education the only criterion of selection
and rejected the term "gentlewoman" as an English concept inapplicable to
Scotland. She informed FitzGibbon:
I think that we in Scotland have rather a different type
of individual from what is meant in England by the
term "gentlewoman" - an expression which one never
hears in Scotland - but I expect that you would include
in such a term women who had had a thoroughly good
secondary education, and those who came from the
teacher class, many of which class we have already
placed in Canada as Home he,ps. I think myself that
such young women would probably be more valuable
in Canada than those that in England are termed
"gentlewomen," but it is difficult for anyone not
acquainted with the Scotch quite to appreciate these
National distinctions.1 4
The English associates also pressed the claims of education as a basis of
selection. Mrs. Caroline Grosvenor, President of the Colonial Intelligence
League, wrote to FitzGibbon: "It is impossible to draw a hard and fast line.
The daughters of men in business are often absolute ladies, while the
daughters of some professional men are nothing of the kind. " 15 The League
agreed that "all students of household work and service who desire to obtain
.posts through the medium of the Hostel shall belong to class (a), i.e.
GENTLEWOMEN BY BIRTH" but refused to eliminate entirely those
referred to as "the Class B girl" because:
.We are.doing our very utmost in the C.I.L. to keep up
the standard of efficiency, character, physical health
.etc. If a woman of education comes up to our standard
in all these ways, we cannot possibly refuse her because
we do not consider her to be socially Class A .... From
what I have seen of Canadians, I am quite sure that
they will quite rightly value efficiency far more than
they will value birth and breeding.1 6
In her surviving correspondence, FitzGibbon unfortunately never
explicitly indicates why she chose to concentrate her emigration work on a
narrowly defined group of gentlewomen. Mary FitzGibbon possessed the
requisite social graces for moving in the best circles of British society, and,
according to observers, she fully enjoyed the experience_17 Undoubtedly she
shared the belief that women of culture and refinement made superior
missionaries of Empire. In addition, more than most society women, .
FitzGibbon could empathize with the problems of working gentlewomen for
she knew from personal experience the difficulties of having to earn money.

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147

In 1896, Mrs. FitzGibbon's husband was confined to a mental institution, and
two years later her step-father, D'Alton McCarthy, with whom she was living
in Toronto, was killed in a carriage accident. Thereafter, Mary Agnes
FitzGibbon became the sole support of herself and her daughter Frances. She
turned to journalism, writing the Driftwood column in the Toronto Globe
under the name of Lally Bernard, because she had to earn her living by her
pen. 18 It was gentlewomen like herself, possessing the accomplishments of a
lady but forced by circumstances to seek employment, whom FitzGibbon
wished to assist.
FitzGibbon's imperialism was quite compatible with an interest in
improving employment opportunities for gentlewomen. Queen Mary's
Coronation Hostel received gentlewomen seeking any type of employment in
British Columbia, and one resident recalled how she was castigated by
FitzGibbon for wasting her capabilities because she seemed to have
secretarial training which she was not using to obtain steady employment. 19
Nevertheless, the Hostel catered particularly to those in search of work as
home helps. For these women, the Hostel not only provided a training course
but also operated an employment service, appointing representatives in
various part of the province to find suitable positions and placing the
beneficiaries without fee, several times if required. FitzGibbon promoted the
occupation of home help, not because she wanted to confine women to the
home sphere, but because she believed domestic work to be the most practical
solution to the employment problems of untrained gentlewomen. She
explained her view of the "superfluous woman in Britain" in her column in the
Globe:
She is the non-professional woman, usually the
daughter of a professional man, and she is generally in
every sense a "gentlewoman"... She has been brought
up by her parents in a sort of haphazard way. The
possibility of matrimony is a sort. of mirage on the
horizon. She is really fitted only to fill a niche in some
household, and the question is how to find the proper
niche for her to fill and then to transport her possibly
many thousands of miles to the vocation which may
await her. 20
FitzGibbon regarded household work as suitable employment for
gentlewomen partly because she shared the ideas of the domestic science
advocates. In her writings in the Globe, she supported the idea that household
work could be placed on a footing with the sciences of medicine and nursing
through the development of certificated, trained domestic help. 21 Her
insistence that British women must either take the training course at the
Hostel or, if already trained in Britain, pass a test in Canadian household
methods before being recommended for positions formed part of the effort to
improve and guarantee standards of domestic work. The apparent
inconsistency between advocating domestic work as the most practical
employment for those without training and insisting that training was
essential for domestic work may be resolved when the lack of prior formal
education required and the limited period of time proposed for domestic

148 Queen Mary's Hostel

training is taken into account. No educational certificate was necessary for
admission to the training course at the Hostel which generally lasted six to
eight weeks.
.
In spite of her hope that domestic science might raise the status of
· domestic service, FitzGibbo:ri definitely did not regard all household work in
the unreformed society of British Columbia as suitable for gentlewomen.
Gentlewomen maintained their social standing by taking positions as home
helps, not as servants. As the Lady-in-Charge at the Hostel informed a
prospective employer, "we never supply servants and only receive and find
positions for ladies. ''22 A home help - or companion help or lady help - was
·distinguished from a domestic servant by her status in the household more
than by the work which .she performed. As implied by the term 'help', she
expected to be treated as a member of the family, to assist with the family
work, to eat meals with the family, and to share in the social life of the
community. Such employment could usually be found in rural rather than
urban areas, but one important qualification separated home helps from the
majority of rural hired helps. A home help must be placed with a family of her
own class where she would not suffer loss of status by associating with either
employers or servants who were less cultured than herself. Hence, in seeking
positions for emigrant gentlewomen, Hostel authorities tried to combine the
dual criteria of rural life and family of proper social rank. The provisional
rules of the Hostel stated that a suitable post would be found for emigrants "if
possible in a rural district as the Hostel authorities consider that the position
of Domestic help is far better in the country than in the town, and will
endeavour to place the graduate from the hostel with people of her own rank
of life. ''23 British Columbia, more than other Canadian provinces, seemed to
present the possibility of fulfilling these aims.
Representatives of British societies who toured Canada investigating
opportunities for educated women concluded that only British Columbia
offered satisfactory employment for home helps. In other parts of Canada,
home help was too often simply another word for a maid-of-all-work, but on
Vancouver Island, in the Okanagan and K.ootenay Valleys, and even in the
northern Cariboo region, emigrant gentlewomen could be placed with British
settlers of their own status. In 1919, a British committee investigating
openings for women in Canada described the British character of part of
Vancouver Island:
The districts of Duncan, Shawnigan and Cowichan,
Vancouver Island, comprise several settlements of
retired Army, Navy and professional men and other
British residents of moderate means, who in many
cases do some farming on their holdings, but in others
live upon their incomes. The settlement is thus largely
English in character and bears little resemblance to the
usual Canadian farming community. 24
Such communities were believed to offer ideal opportunities for British home
helps. As Ella Sykes reported for the CIL:
Vancouver Island presents advantages from the point
of view of the "lady-help" which are not to be

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149

surpassed in any other part of the Dominion. Climate,
environment, and many other blessings make this an
ideal locality for the woman of gentle birth who seeks
employment in a private household, for there are
scores of country homes .... To work with and for the
people who regulate their daily life with much the same
method and charm as one finds in English country
homes, without losing what may be described as
"Social caste," should be a simple and congenial
occupation. 25
Accepting employment with these British families, emigrant gentlewomen
should have the right environment and sufficient leisure time to maintain
their culture and accomplishments. Although not mentioned explicitly by the
· investigators, the frequent employment of Chinese servants in British
Columbia may also have increased the attractiveness of BC positions. The
Chinese servants lived in separate quarters, not interfering with the living
arrangements of a home help, and removed much of the heavy work, often
including the cooking, from the realm of the home help.
In spite of its favourable location, the Hostel never assisted as many
gentlewomen as was originally intended. In part, limited accommodation
facilities restricted admission to the Hostel. The city of Vancouver biocked
plans for building an addition to the Alder Street house which would have
. expanded the capacity of the Hostel to twenty-seven residents in addition to
the staff. 26 Consequently, although Hostel reports do not state precisely the
number of women who could be accommodated at one time, nine, or ten at
the most, obviously filled all available space. Expansion problems might have
been overcome but a more serious obstacle intervened. The Hostel had been
in operation in its Alder Street quarters for only a year when the Great War
disrupted immigration from Britain.
Little information is available on the background and motivations of the
gentlewomen who came to Queen Mary's Coronation Hostel during its first
period of operation. According to Hostel reports, seventy-five beneficiaries
passed through the Hostel by 1915: one in 1912, thirty-eight in 1913, thirtyone in 1914, and five in 1915. Of those listed in the Hostel register book, most
came from England, primarily southern England, with a few from Scotland,
Ireland, and Wales. 27 Seldom was any other background information
recorded in spite of the insistence that beneficiaries· must be gentlewomen.
British women obtained admission to the Hostel only through personal
introduction - from Mrs. FitzGibbon herself, from a representative of the
CIL, or from another beneficiary or person known to the Hostel authorities.
The introduction guaranteed suitability and the name of the person providing
the recommendation was the information entered in the register book.
The Hostel began its work at a difficult time; emigrant gentlewomen
found their chances for securing suitable employment and adjusting happily
to life in British Columbia severely constricted by the 1913-14 recession and
the advent of war. Gentlewomen who arrived at the Hostel seeking secretarial
or teaching employment outnumbered those who wanted household work,
but regardless of initial preference, most obtained positions as home helps.

150 Queen Mary's Hostel

Canadian competition made clerical posts difficult to obtain, especially if the
applicant lacked shorthand and typing skills. Hence, of the fifty gentlewomen
whose employment can be ascertained from the registration book, thirty-two
were engaged in homes, while thirteen obtained clericai positions, four were
teachers and one a waitress. The 1914 Hostel Annual Report confirms that
almost all suitable applications received by the Hostel were for household
workers; of forty-two posts filled in 1914, thirty-eight were for household
helps, housekeepers, or governesses in homes. 28
Employment as a home help, the only type of work' which the Hostel
could guarantee, did not always suit the abilities or meet the expectations of
the pre-war emigrant gentlewomen. Inevitably, success and satisfaction varied
greatly, depending both on the nature of the position offered and the qualities
of the gentlewoman taking the employment. Miss Kinlock, age thirty-two, a
member of a "very good Scotch family," and described as "thoroughly
capable, a nice inmate of a household, and good tennis player and musician,"
took the course of training at the Hostel and obtained a well-paid position in
desirable surroundings with Colonel and Mrs. Eardley-Wilmot at Sha wnigan
Lake.29 Not all were so fortunate. Wages were usually modest and with the
outbreak of war sometimes non-existent. The Lady-in-Charge at the Hostel
advised beneficiaries to work for board and lodging if necessary rather than
be out of a place. 30 Not surprisingly, those gentlewomen who encountered
problems occupied much of the time of Hostel authorities. Certain
beneficiaries. were not physically or emotionally strong enough to fill regular
home help positions, and Hostel authorities repeatedly sought light work for
them. The first annual report of the Hostel painted a very bleak picture of the
fate of working gentlewomen in British Columbia:
The first part of the year was largely taken up in
looking after those who entered the Hostel in bad
health, and they received from the Management all the
care and attention usually found in a convalescent
home. It is necessary to point out that this side of the
work is of great importance in British Columbia; so
many of the gentlewomen workers from the United
Kingdom break down during their first year in the
Province from overwork, or strain, consequent upon
the uncertainty, loneliness and their general inability
to cope with circumstances of a novel character. 31
The adaptation of the gentlewomen of Queen Mary's Coronation
Hostel, with or without the benefit of convalescent care, was interrupted by
the war. The Great War aborted the colonial experience of many Hostelites
who "returned to their homes to be near their people during the war,"32 some
from a sense of duty and others probably with a sigh of relief. Since the Hostel
stopped its work in the latter war years, the records for those gentlewomen
who remained in British Columbia are incomplete. At least nine are recorded
as married, and a few as attempting varied independent endeavours such as
operating tea rooms in Vancouver in the summer. Whether others who
remained in British Columbia were able to use home help work as a steppingstone to more permanent careers, including marriage, is unknown. The
Hostel itself placed its living rooms at the disposal of a large chapter of the

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151

Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire and in 1917 closed entirely, renting
the premises for the duration of the war. 33
When Queen Mary's Coronation Hostel reopened its doors to emigrant
gentlewomen in November 1922, FitzGibbon's aims had not changed. For
imperialists, the cooperation between Britain and the Dominions in the war
effort confirmed the importance of strengthening imperial bonds by
redistributing population within the Empire. Encouraging the emigration of
single women continued to be a priority because the war, which killed part of
a generation of young men, reinforced sexual imbalance in British society.
Fitz Gibbon also adamantly refused to alter the class bias of recruiting for the
Hostel only gentlewomen of approved background. The divergence of
interest between FitzGibbon and her British associates became even more
pronounced in the 1920s. Most gentlewomen were sent to the Hostel either by
the Society for Overseas Settlement of British Women (SOSBW), a new
society which absorbed both the CIL and BWEA, or by Miss Mabel Durham,
head of the CNR's Women's Bureau in London, who as a well-known BC
resident and journalist was given special permission by Mrs. FitzGibbon to
direct women to the Hostel.34 The SOSBW wanted FitzGibbon to "take girls
of a different category who had attended secondary schools but were not
necessarily daughters of professional men. "35 A SOSBW representative
stayed at the Hostel which she found "quite delightful" but was unable to
impress upon FitzGibbon "the views of the modern educated girl in this
country. "36
The Great War changed the lives of many educated women in Britain.
While their experience still requires much more study, undoubtedly educated
women frequently acquired from war work an independence and training
which otherwise they would not have received. At the same time as the war
brought tragedy and death into their lives, it fostered a spirit of self-reliance
which did not vanish with the cessation of hostilities. A 1928 emigrant to
Queen Mary's Coronation Hostel later explained how the war affected her life
and prepared the way for her decision to travel to Canada:
The majority of the young men that I knew where I
grew up - I grew up on the east coast of England - just
never returned, so we were a lost generation more or
less and in fact a good many of my friends in England
have never married from that generation because there
weren't the men. (Q. ls that one of the reasons why you
came to Canada?) I suppose. It wasn't uppermost in
my mind because I was full of adventure in those days
and I was the oldest in the family and I'd never been
allowed to do anything until the war came along and
then I joined the Wrens and that was the beginning of
the end as far as my people were concerned because
girls just didn't do those things then you know.37
The image of the emigrant gentlewoman which emerges from the Hostel
records of the inter-war period bears little resemblance to the distressed
gentlewoman stereotype of pre-war emigration literature. A precise total of
arrivals during the decade from 1922 to 1932 cannot be given because Hostel
records., are incomplete for certain years, but the number can be estimated at

152

Queen Mary's Hostel

approximately one hundred. The small number of British women coming to
the Hostel indicates careful pre-selection which seemed to stress not only
social class but also the suitability of the applicant for work as a home help.
As one former Hostel resident explained, "It was expected that we should be
household helps. "38
Unfortunately, detailed background information from emigration forms
is available only for the group of twenty-two women who came between 1930
and 1932. These women ranged in age from nineteen to forty-four, but most
were between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five. 39 Those who were old
enough had been employed in war service ranging from the Women's
Forestry Services in France or V AD work with a Paris hostel to clerical work
with the Ministry of National Service, industrial work with scientific
instrument manufacturers, and farm work in England. Those who held paid
employment after the war generally worked in clerical positions, as matrons
in institutions, or in a variety of household positions involving either indoor
or gardening work. Several who had not been old enough to engage in war
service remained at home after they left school. The section for experience on
their forms emphasized their volunteer activities in the community or with
organizations such as Girl Guides, their participation in sports, especially
tennis and swimming, and often their ability to drive a motor car. Whether or
not they held paid employment, the emigrants were not destitute or lacking in
resources to pay their fare to Canada. Because of the restrictions beginning
to be imposed on immigration to Canada during the Depression, they may
have possessed more funds than some of the earlier 1920s gentlewomen who
received passage loans under the Empire Settlement Act in order to come to
Canada. While Hostel correspondence confirms that the inter-war emigrants
possessed the requisite qualities of character and strength to cope with life in
British Columbia, it is striking that even by 1930 many educated women
coming_ to the Hostel were not trained for professional work.
Interviews provide more information on some of the individual
circumstances and interests which motivated gentlewomen to come to Queen
Mary's Coronation Hostel. Miss Swan sought better employment
opportunities in Canada. 40 Since her parents had died and she had lost most
of her inheritance to her· step-father, she had to earn her own living. After
taking a domestic science course at Gloucester Training College, she obtained
a position as Under Matron in the Junior House at Cheltenham Ladies
College but she could never become Head Matron because she lacked the
necessary nursing qualifications. A Canadian friend whom she met
encouraged her to seek improvement in Canada so she emigrated in 1928 at
age twenty-six.
Other gentlewomen seemed primarily interested in travel, adventure,
and seeing more of the world. Upper middle class women with money had
travelled before World War I to extend their education and sometimes to
write about their experiences, but the idea of working one's way around the
_world - or even through part of the Empire - was a more novel one for
gentlewomen. In" A Lady-Tramp in Canada," which appeared in Chamber's
Journal in 1904, Margaret Innes Pollock advocated earning money with
domestic work in order to pay for travel expenses. 41 Without having read the

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article, some 1920s gentlewomen followed her suggestion.
Miss Chambers and Miss Taylor, both ex-Wrens who engaged in clerical
positions after the war, regarded the possibility of working in British
Columbia as an "adventure" and a "real challenge and change from London."
Influenced by Wren friends who had already emigrated to British Columbia,
Chambers came to the Hostel in 1926 at age twenty-six and Taylor in 1928 at
age thirty-one. In 1930, Miss Brown at age thirty-five left a good job with a
London investment office, which she obtained after war work at the Oxford
recruiting barracks and a correspondence college course, because she read a
Canadian employment notice at the Overseas League and decided to see the
world. In her words:
I thought I might as well see the world and work at the
same time so I went to Canada House and BC House.
They put me in touch with the SOSBW. They thought
I had some ulterior idea of going - that I had fallen out
with my family or had an unhappy love affair or
something. I assured them, no, I am going to see the
world.
·
Similarly, Miss Johnson, who had remained at home since leaving school,
was influenced by an article in a Guide magazine and by friends who had
worked their way around the world and found that BC was the best place to
find work for those unqualified. She left England in 1931 at age twenty-eight,
escaping from an unwelcome boyfriend and promising her mother that she
would return in a year.
The gentlewomen of Queen Mary's Coronation Hostel were concerned
with their own interests, not with the fate of Empire. While it is very unlikely
that they consciously shared any imperial aims to strengthen the Empire
through female emigration, their individual actions were shaped by imperial
structures. In both emotional and practical terms, movement within the
Empire was easier than emigration to a foreign country. Advertising and
networks of assistance promoted opportunities in the Dominions. The choice
lay between Canada and Australia, New Zealand, or South Africa, and
Canada frequently was favoured because it was closer to Britain.
Organizations with imperial interests, such as the Guides and the Overseas
League, supported the encouragement which the SOSBW gave to migration
within the Empire.· The Canadian display at the Wembley British Empire
Exhibition in 1924 also aroused much interest. Personal contacts frequently
were the most important. A number of 1930s emigrants belonged to families
who had lived in various parts of the Empire, and the settlement of retired
military officers in British Columbia often provided a nucleus of friends, or
even relatives, as well as of potential employers.
In the decade from 1922 to 1932 as in the pre-war period, most of the
Hostel beneficiaries took posi\ions as home helps or in related types of
outdoor work on poultry, dairy, sheep, or seed farms. Home help was the
work available, especially for those lacking professional training. Secretarial
work, the one main alternative for many gentlewomen, remained difficult to
obtain in the 1920s and Hostel literature warned prospective applicants that
they should be prepared to begin as home helps. The Hostel provided the

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Queen Mary's Hostel

training considered necessary for rural home help work in a six to eight week
course which most beneficiaries took. As one emigrant explained:
We took a six weeks' course to familiarize us with
Canadian ways of cooking and living. We had to learn
more isolated ways ofliving in Canada as well as urban
ways ... I'd never done hard housework and I wondered
whether I'd do it properly, and the idea of having this
course was quite a comfort because we had to do
things properly. 42
Home help positions provided respectable work for gentlewomen who,
from necessity or from choice, sought to earn their living in British Columbia,
but employment conditions were generally restrictive. Wages continued to be
relatively low, about twenty to twenty-five dollars per month according to
applications sent to the Hostel. 43 In addition, the work was doubly isolated,
being both in rural areas and in the private sphere. For example, Margaret
Beadle worked on a goat ranch near Fulford Harbour on Salt Spring Island
which her employer described as "about a mile from the road, in the bush, up
a very steep hill, so that it is .impossible for a girl to get out at night. ''44 She
wrote to the Lady-in-Charge at the Hostel that:
Col. and Mrs. Bryant are both very nice to work for
and they make you feel absolutely at home. I find the
work interesting too. I am leaving in about a fortnight
time, because I find it a bit lonely and I want to get a
job with another girl for the summer.45
Employers often called attention to the lack of social life int.heir applications
for help. Laura Forbes of the Overbury Poultry Farm on Thetis Island wrote
"as we are very much in the country and there are not a great many young
people about, I think perhaps not too young a girl would be the most suitable say about 25 or so. "46 It was not only positions on the small islands or more
remote ranches which seemed so isolated. The Hon. Mrs. Laugton wrote that
. a home help working for her "would have to be fond of the country as this
place is 4 miles from Duncan, the nearest town. "47
Relations with the family could also create problems. One home help
found her first employer's standard of cleanliness quite appalling:
There was no water in the house and a Chinaman had
to bring buckets of water in the kitchen, for
everything, washing, cooking, etc. The house, [and my
employer], were accordingly dirty. Everything was
dirty, my bedroom full of dirty paper, the wash basin
had a black rim, the bedcloth was dirty - I was
horrified, disgusted. I wrote at once to Mrs. McKay,
the Lady-in-Charge at the Hostel that I simply could
not stay. After a month I left. 48
More frequently, living conditions were satisfactory, but home helps
found difficulty reconciling a position as a paid employee with treatment as a
member of the family. Home helps did not always enjoy sharing family social
activities. One who worked near Duncan conveyed her feelings of reluctance:
They went in for dinner parties - Duncan was full of
colonels and people. They used to insist on me going in

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and eating with them which was very difficult for me
because I used to look and see whether he could cut the
pastry on the pie. I put on a long dress [for dinner] and
then afterwards I refused to go in and sit with them in
the sitting room. I used to put on my white coat and go
in and wash up.49
What some home helps particularly missed was the opportunity to
pursue their own interests or leisure activities during definite hours off work.
Home helps may have possessed a status superior to domestic servants but
they shared the common complaint of household workers - not enough free
time. One stated emphatically:
We never got away. We never got away. We were
supposed to have four days off to come to Victoria but
we never got them. Always some excuse .... (Q. Did you
do anything socially while you were there?) No,
nothing.so
Yet at least one home help suggested that those who lacked time off work had
themselves to blame for insufficient initiative:
(Q. Did you have definite days off!) Yes, and I always
took it even if I just went for a walk because I noticed
that the other helps if they didn't have anything special
to do, they'd just work which I think was silly. I think it
is much better even if you stay in bed reading if it's
raining. It's much better to take your day off .... I
organized a help's day off once and we hired a boat.
We had fun. We went clear over to Salt Spring and had
a picnic. 51
Home help work, even among British settlers in British Columbia,
continued to be considered by Hostel authorities as best suited for the young
and the strong. Positions where the home help was required to assist with
cooking, housework, and children entailed hard labour. Outdoor types who
enjoyed animals, gardening, and sports seemed best prepared for many rural
openings, but even they sometimes were frustrated. Lois Evans wrote from
"Goatlands" on Vancouver Island that
I am fond of all animals and have worked in England
with cows, goats, pigs and poultry but I am keenest on
· goats. I have been with Miss Payne for 6 months .... I
did not realize until I arrived that I had all the indoor
work including the cooking to do as well as the goats. I
have had 5 years with goats and here I do the work that
any lad of 14 could do. 52
Gentlewomen frequently moved from one position to another and combined
work in private homes with seasonal employment in fruit picking or in resort
hotels. Home help work was the most available employment but it was
usually only a temporary solution to the needs of gentlewomen who had to
earn their own living. Unfortunately, the Hostel records, which end in the
early 1930s do not provide very satisfactory information on the later lives of
the inter-war emigrants. At least twelve are known to have married and an
equal number to have left the province to return home or go to other

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Queen Mary's Hostel

countries. Of the five women whom I interviewed, three married men whom
they met in Canada. Taylor met her husband while they were both working at
a CPR hotel in the Rockies. Brown also met her husband, a ferry operator,
when she was working at a summer resort hotel. Chambers, after employment
on a seed and dairy farm on Vancouver Island;bought a shack of her own, did
odd jobs, and eventually married the brother of a good friend. Johnson kept
her promise to her mother and returned to England, travelling via the
Panama Canal and New York, but she soon came back to British Columbia
and, encouraged by her former BC employer, trained as a nurse at the
Vancouver General Hospital. Swan, after employment as a home help on
Vancouver Island, took a business course but was unable to obtain office
employment. She worked for thirty-two years as the companion-housekeeper
for a Victoria lady who in her will left her a house and two lots .
. . Mary Agnes FitzGibbon died in 1933 at the same time as the Depression
ended the emigration activities of the Hostel which she founded. FitzGibbon
hoped to strengthen imperial ties and to give a better chance in life to
gentlewomen who had to earn their own living. She saw no inconsistency
between these two aims and there is no indication that she viewed the Hostel
as a matrimonial bureau in disguise. It was her class interests and
assumptions, rather· than her imperialism, which circumscribed her work,
restricting the group admitted to the Hostel and concentrating the activities of
the Hostel on promoting the occupation of home help. The emphasis placed
on home help work, while in part a recognition of existing employment
opportunities and in part an effort to improve conditions in the home sphere,
reinforced rather than challenged the limitations surrounding gentlewomen's
employment. The emigrant gentlewomen who came to Queen Mary's
Coronation Hostel were motivated primarily by their own private concerns
rather than by more general imperial or societal interests, but their choices
were shaped by the imperial and class framework which governed their lives.
By the very act of emigrating and seeking work in British Columbia, whether
because of the need for better employment or the desire to travel, the
gentlewomen of Queen Mary's Coronation Hostel asserted their
independence and their interest in expanding their horizons. Although their
background as well as their character continued to influence their
opportunities, life in a new country with more space had attractive features.
In the words of a Sussex gentlewoman who found she could not remain in
England after having lived in Canada:
I shall never settle in this country again! And I should
much prefer to be in B. C. I have to earn my living. I am
doing so at the present time. My experience is that
wherever I go I have to work hard and I'd rather do it
in Canada, a new Country and a beautiful climate
where I love the life. 53

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Footnotes
1. A study of the immigration of gentlewomen as home helps forms part of my
research in progress on "The Women Canada Welcomed: Immigrant Domestics for
Canadian Homes, 1870-1940". I wish to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada for the research grant which assisted me in the
production of this paper.
2. A. James Hammerton, Emigrant Gentlewomen: Genteel Poverty and Female
Emigration, 1830-1914, London, 1979; Susan Jackel, A Flannel Shirt and Liberty:
British Emigrant Gentlewomen in the Canadian West, 1880-1914, The University of
British Columbia, 1982.
3. Lee-Holcombe, Victorian Ladies at Work, Hamden, Connecticut, 1973.
4. Mrs. Mary Agnes FitzGibbon must not be confused with Miss Mary Agnes
FitzGibbon, the granddaughter of Susanna Moodie, who was instrumental in the
establishment of the Toronto Women's Welcome Hostel in 1905. For information on
the Toronto Hostel, see M. Barber, "The Women Ontario Welcomed: Immigrant
Domestics for Ontario Homes, 1870-1930," Ontario History Vol. LXXII, No. 3, Sept.
1980, and B. Roberts, " •A Work of Empire': Canadian Reformers and British Female
Immigration," in A Not Unreasonable Claim, ed. Linda Kealey, Toronto, 1979.
5. Vancouver City Archives [VCA], Queen Mary's Coronation Hostel records
[QMCH]. Vol. 1, File l, Minto to FitzGibbon, 2 Oct. 1911, 25 Jan. 1912; First Annual
Report of the Board of Management; Trust Deed; Invoice of Goods, Doulton & Co
Ltd., Jas. Shoolbred & Co. Ltd.; Vancouver Sun, 8 June 1940, "Mansion of the 80s".
6. Interview with 1931 emigrant, 30 October 1979.
7. PAC, George Parkin Papers, FitzGibbon to Parkin, 15 July 1912.
8. H.J. Morgan, The Canadian Men and Women of the Time, Second Edition,
Toronto, 1912: 399.
9. Ibid., Clare FitzGibbon was the son of the Hon. Gerald and Lady Louise
FitzGibbon of Mt. Shannon, Ireland.
10. Amy Ridley, "The Dual Struggle: Mary Agnes FitzGibbon, Toronto Journalist
1899-1907," M.A. Research Essay, Institute of Canadian Studies, Carleton
University, 1983, provides information on the life and journalistic career of Mary
Agnes FitzGibbon.
I l. Imperial Colonist, Nov. 1904: 404.
12. Ella Sykes, A Home-Help in Canada, Second Edition, London, 1915: 304.
13. Barbara Frankle, The Genteel Family: High-Victorian Conceptions of
Domesticity and Good Behaviour, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1969;
Deborah Gorham, The Victorian Girl and the Feminine Ideal, Bloomington, Indiana,
1982, Chap. l.
14. VCA, QM CH, Vol. 1, File 1, Helen Munro Ferguson to Mrs. FitzGibbon, 4 Dec.
1912.
l:S. VCA, QMCH, Vol. 1 File 1, Grosvenor to Mrs. Fitz.Gibbon, 7 August, 1913.
16. Ibid.
17. Amy Ridley, op. cit.: 51.
18. Amy Ridley, op. cit.
19. Interview with 1926 emigrant, 19 March 1980.
20. Globe, Toronto, 25 June 1904.
21. Ibid., 20 June 1903.
22. VCA, QMCH, Vol. 1, File 4,_Letterbook, p. 290, Lady-in-Charge to Mrs. Read,
Duncan, 26 April 1915.
23. Ibid., Vol. 2, File l, Provisional Rules.
24. Report to the President of the Oversea Settlement Committee of the Delegates
Appointed to Enquire as to Openings in Canada for Women from the United
Kingdom, Parliamentary Paper, Cmd. 403, 1919.

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Queen Mary's Hostel

25. The Imperial Colonist, Oct. 1910: 163.
26. Municipal authorities refused to grant a permit for a wooden building and stated
that if the addition were built in brick the entire existing building would have to be
covered with a veneer of the same material. The Board decided that the expense of
such an undertaking would exceed the amount allowed by the terms of the Trust.
VCA, QMCH, Vol.1, File 2, Second Annual Report of the Board of Management.
27. Of the sixty-four listed, thirty-nine were from England, seven from Scotland,
three from Ireland, two from Wales, and thirteen origin not given. VCA, QMCH,
· Registration Book.
28.
VCA, QMCH, Vol. 1, File 2. Of the fifty-five gentlewomen for whom the
Registration Book lists the employment sought, twenty-eight sought clerical,
teaching, nursing, or journalistic employment while twenty-four sought household
work and three wanted horticultural employment.
29. VCA, QMCH, Vol. l, File 4, Letterbook: 49, 52.
30. Ibid.: 129, 132.
31. VCA, QMCH, Vol. 1, File l, First Annual Report of the Board of Management:
3.
32. VCA, QMCH, Vol. 1, File 2, Second Annual Report of the Board of
Management: 2.
33. Ibid., Second and Fifth Annual Reports of the Board of Management.
34. Mabel Theresa Durham, of UEL descent, grew up in the Niagara Peninsula of
Ontario, taught school in the "Upper Country" of BC in the early 1900s and worked
for the Vancouver Province after moving to Vancouver in 1907. Woman".s- Life and
Work in British Columbia, Compiled by Local Councils of Women of B.C., 1909,
UBC Special Collections.
35. Fawcett Library, London, SOSBW, Canada Committee, Oct. 1928, p. 12.
36. Ibid., Dec. 1928: 20.
37. Interview 1928 emigrant, age 31, Victoria, 26 October 1979.
38. Interview 1926 emigrant, 19 March 1980.
39. There may have been only twenty-one in the group as it is not clear whether one
applicant actually came to the Hostel. Of the twenty whose ages are available, half
(ten) were between twenty-five and twenty-nine, four between thirty and thirty-four,
three between nineteen and twenty-four and three between thirty-five and forty-four.
The one age nineteen was regarded as "very young'' by the Hostel authorities who
made a special effort to place her close to the Hostel. Information compiled from
VCA, QMCH, Vol. 2.
40. Names of those interviewed have been altered to preserved confidentiality.
41. Chambers' Journal, Vol. VIII, 1904-05: 11-14.
42. Interview 1928 emigrant (Miss Taylor), Victoria, 26 October 1979.
43. In the 1920s, inexperienced female farm help on the prairies were supposed to
receive $15 per month, and experienced cooks or cook-generals in major cities
received at least $40 per month.
44. VCA QMCH, Vol. 1 File 5, Mrs. Bryant to Mrs. Durand, 5 April 1926.
45. Ibid., Margaret Beadle to Mrs. Durand, 5 April 1926.
46. Ibid., March 1926.
41. Ibid., 1 July 1926.
48. ~tte_r_tp ~uthor, 15 October 1979.
49. Interview 1931 emigrant, 30 October 1979.
50. Interview 1928 emigrant, 27 October 1979.
51. Interview 1931 emigrant, 30 October 1979.
52. VCA, QMCH, Lois Evans to Mrs. Durand, 7 March 1926.
53. VCA, QMCH, Vol. 2, File 3, VirginiaBarford to Mrs. FitzGibbon, 14July 1933.