This database contains the names of over 700 members of the Girls’ Friendly Society who were assisted by the society as they emigrated from Ireland in the period 1885 to 1935. It contains information on their current and future home, their future place of employment, membership details, and the associate that helped them in Ireland and in their new place of residence.

The Girls’ Friendly Society (GFS), established in England in 1875 and in Ireland in 1887, sought to protect young, Protestant women at a time of heightened concern about their moral behaviour in the urban landscape. It did this by offering friendship and a structured environment in which women could meet. While the society was supposed to be egalitarian, in practice it was very much a top-down society with associate members (middle-class and aristocratic women) providing direction to ordinary members. Through organised activities such as sewing and cooking classes the GFS equipped its members with the skills necessary to run their own household upon marriage. In the interim it ensured that the member was removed from perceived sites of immorality in the urban landscape. One if its most important contributions in the protection of young, protestant women was in the assistant given to them when they immigrated. Each member was required to inform their home associate of their intention to travel. They would then be met by the associate at the train station or port to ensure their safety. A reciprocal arrangement saw the procedure replicated at the members end destination.
Every step of the journey was recorded along with details of the young woman who needed assistance. That information was kept in an Accommodations Register. In the context of this project two of these registers were identified: One at the Representative Church Body Library, Dublin and the other at the Women’s Library, London School of Economics, London. With regards to the Women’s Library, it should be noted that there are also Accommodation Registers available that record the emigration activities of English members.

Just over 700 women are recorded in these two registers. The Dublin register details the journey’s made from Ireland to destinations across the world including Australia, America and Canada. The London register details journeys made from Ireland primarily to England, but journeys are recorded as far away as Algeria. The records run from 1885 to c.1935. As noted already, the records provide a detailed account of the members personal history, their association with the society in Ireland, where they were emigrating to, details of the new associate and secretary that would assist them, details of their new branch, and additional information, which often contained references to the character of the member. In a few cases reference is made to the member leaving their new address for a third location. The details provided shows the level of surveillance placed on these women.

Note on this dataset
The original database entries were transcribed to a spreadsheet by the project researcher in 2019. Note that the transcribed data has been normalised for consistency in this version (2024). Geolocational coordinates have been extracted from an accompanying kml file and provided in a separate column which was not part of the original database.

Please refer to the Friendships Highway Collection Contextual Document which was created as part of the 2024 Legacy Data Ingest Project to further describe fields, values and the normalisation process.