Why emigrate in 1877 or 1878? (General)

by Mike Pinchin , Bedford, England, Friday, March 30, 2018, 16:49 (2473 days ago) @ probinson

In some areas it could have been, couldn’t it!

This is the memorial of the women of the township of West Dean to Queen Victoria,

BNA Gloucestershire Chronicle - Saturday 01 December 1877

To our Sovereign Lady Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria.

We the women of the township of West Dean, in your Majesty’s Royal Forest of Dean, humbly approach your Throne with the following statement of our present sorrowful condition. We represent a population of about 12,000 persons of whom about 5,000 or 1,000 families are at the present time in circumstances of great distress and many of them are utterly destitute of the common necessaries of life. This distress has been occasioned by the stoppage of the blast furnaces, tin-plate works and other manufactories, and numerous collieries and iron mines in the locality whereby some 12,000 men and boys have been thrown out of employment, and the families dependent on them for support are reduced to circumstances of privation and distress unparalleled in the history of your Royal Forest. With feelings of the most devoted loyalty to your Majesty’s Royal person, and to your Sovereign rule, we earnestly solicit such help in our distress as your Majesty may graciously see fit to render. More especially we implore your Majesty to express your Royal Pleasure to the Ministers and advisers of the Crown, recommending to their valuable consideration the memorial presented to the Commissioners of your Majesty’s Woods and Forests on our behalf, praying that employment may be given to a portion of our famishing population in the formation and improvement of roads and footpaths in and over the Forest, such roads, footpaths, and improvements being greatly needed. We shall bless your Majesty for any influence you may be pleased to use on our behalf to promote this good work, which would give effectual relief to a large proportion of our distressed families, and would effect a great improvement in your Majesty’s Royal Forest. We humbly entreat your Majesty to pardon this intrusion; our great distress emboldens us to implore your Majesty’s sympathy and help. We are proud and thankful to recognise our allegiance to your Majesty, not only as subjects of your realm, but also as servants and servants of the Crown. We pray Almighty God to bless and save your Majesty and your children, the Royal Princes and Princesses, and their children, and we subscribe ourselves your Majesty’s loyal devoted subjects, the women of West Dean in public meeting assembled. Nov 29th, 1877.