The Amahs of the SS Marama: Using shipping records to recover the experiences of Chinese amahs
Over the past couple of years we have focused on collecting digitised primary sources related to Indian ayahs and Chinese amahs. We have found some amazing material ranging from postcards and paintings to dolls and diaries.…
Transcolonial Journeys: The Ayahs and Amahs Project’s online exhibition
One of the key aims of the Ayahs and Amahs project is to reconstruct, describe and analyse the historical experiences of ayahs and amahs and to investigate the way that visual and literary representations of these…
The Ayahs’ and Amahs’ Home: A History
Part II: The Home at Hackney It is the Hansons then (“aka” the Rogers), who appear in front of the door to the imposing new premises, along with the four sari-clad women, in 1900 (figure 2.1).…
The Ayahs’ and Amahs’ Home: A History
This year a new English Heritage Blue Plaque will be unveiled at 26 King Edward Road, Hackney, in London, to commemorate the Ayahs’ Home that operated there in the opening decades of the twentieth century. This…
She Travelled: The Portrait of Joanna de Silva, the Indian Ayah at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
My encounter with Joanna de Silva, a nursemaid from eighteenth-century Bengal, India, was rather serendipitous! I came to know of the portrait of Joanna through a research network of scholars and enthusiasts committed to unravel the…
“For Nannie”? The controversial case of a Sinhalese “amah” in white Australia
The historical relationship that connects Australia and South Asia is one that we are just beginning to understand.[1] Our project brings a new dimension to that story by exploring the experiences of South Asian women who…
Travelling Pictures and Blurry Visions: Photographs of Chinese Amahs
Our project seeks to trace not only how ayahs and amahs travelled across the world but also how images of these women circulated. Pictures of ayahs and amahs travelled as illustrations in books, photographs enclosed in…
Loading…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
Thomassee: The first Australian ayah
Many of the stories of the travelling ayahs and amahs that we are learning about today concern those women who travelled between Asia and England during the period of the British Empire. As part of this project, however, we are looking for stories of women who travelled south from India and China, to Australia. These…
A Japanese Amah
The following blog tells the story of a uniquely transnational amah called Tuk-San. [1] Tuk-San was a Japanese woman who travelled with the Hillier family between China and England at the turn of the twentieth century. Her story is contributed by historian and author Dr Andrew Hillier. ‘I came to Europe from Peking for the…
Chinese amahs in Britain and Australia
A range of historians and public history practitioners have brought to light the stories of travelling Indian ayahs in Britain. [1] Much less is known about the Chinese amahs that travelled with employer families to Britain. The stories of the Chinese amahs and Indian ayahs who travelled to Australia (even after the passing of the…
Ayahs and Amahs 