How much better the girls would have fared had they been sent to the colonies can be judged by such comments as these that appeared in the Australian press during good Queen Victoria's golden days:

'Irish orphans, workhouse sweepings'were 'hordes of useless trollops, thrust upon an unwilling community', 'instead of a few hundreds, the girls are coming out by thousands. Instead of mere orphans, we are being inundated with Irish paupers'.
"It is downright robbery to withhold our funds from decent eligible well brought up girls, to lavish it upon a set of ignorant creatures, whose knowledge of household duty barely reaches to distinguishing the inside from the outside of a potato, and whose chief employment hitherto, has consisted of some intellectual occupation as occasionally trotting across a bog to fetch back a runaway pig. Our money ought to be expended upon the rosy cheeked girls of England, upon the braw lassies of bonnie Scotland, instead of being wasted upon these coarse, useless creatures who, with their squat, stunted figures, thick waists and clumsy ankles promises but badly for the 'physique' of the future colonists of Victoria."