“SEND ME A BONNET”: Colonial Connections, Class Consciousness and Sartorial Display in Colonial Australia, 1788-1850

Abstract

From the outset of British settler until the onset of the Gold Rush, many wealthy settler women in New South Wales sought to acquire clothing, not from local suppliers, but through family and friends residing in Britain who purchased items on their behalf. Yet this pattern was not repeated either among emancipists or by free settlers Van Diemen’s Land. This thesis, through an analysis of the letters left by settler women, posits that this practice of privately importing clothing was in fact a strategy by which they could reinforce their superior social status in the colony. For this practice not only allowed settler women to acquire clothing in manner denied to emancipists, but also to distinguish themselves from a society and culture defined by emancipists and instead identify with but a transnational network of colonial elites, who regards Britain as their true ‘home’.