Mary Booth and British boy immigration : from progressivism to imperial nationalism

The history of British migration in the first half of the twentieth century is one in which the imperial relationship has been intrinsic: this migration was in the service, or emphasised the strength, of ties between the metropole and periphery of the British Empire. In Australia generally at this time, adherence to ‘imperial’ values could take many forms and could be combined with strong nationalism, as was the case with Dr Mary Booth, a physician, feminist and social activist who was born in Sydney in 1869 and died there in 1956. Her early career in the field of child health and eugenics also shows the influence of Progressivism, the reform movement originating in the United States in the late nineteenth century. Always conservative, Booth appears to have been galvanised by the Great War into greater faith in both the British Empire and Australia, and after the war, she became active in support of British boy immigration. She maintained a strong commitment to British youth immigration and an active involvement in aftercare, from its peak in the mid-to-late 1920s until the end of the 1930s. The following chapter analyses Booth’s activities in support of British immigration in the interwar years. Putting them into the context of her intellectual and political outlook reveals her postwar imperial nationalism as growing out of, rather than departing from, her pre-war Progressivism.