Immigration remains a major talking point around the world as governments try to tackle the thorny question of how many should be allowed into their countries and whether they have the facilities to cope.

The situation has been created by a burgeoning world population and a tide of people seeking a new life which was not a problem in past centuries as many governments opened their borders to all comers to help develop their countries and economies. The 19th century was a particularly busy period when the number of people leaving Lincolnshire for the colonies and elsewhere was extremely high after being attracted by the prospect of a fresh start in another land.

In the first fifty years of the century alone, many from Bourne and the surrounding villages joined the exodus such as the three families from Dowsby who sailed for New South Wales in 1844, together with a father, mother and seven children from the adjoining parish of Aslackby, while in June 1848, 21 people from Morton left for North America, among them 17 with the name Taylor including father, mother, sons and daughters.

During this period there was a mass migration from Europe to the United States and it has been estimated that between 1836 and 1914, over 30 million Europeans made the transatlantic crossing although the death rate was high with one in seven dying on the voyage.

Until 1850 sail rather than steam carried passengers over the seas and despite the long voyages, Australia was a popular destination although most people favoured North America. Shipping lines advertised berths in the local newspapers with vessels of 1,000 to 1,500 tons sailing regularly from Liverpool and in 1845 one company offered passage to New York in 29-31 days and New Orleans in 30 days “with the most superior accommodation for passengers”.

Other packet boats left regularly for Philadelphia, Baltimore and Boston, and one company even had a smaller sailing ship of 200 tons leaving from Wisbech which reduced the usual journey time by road to Liverpool for passengers from the Bourne area.

One typical newspaper advertisement from 1845 circulating in the Bourne area said: “Emigrants can engage passage by letter stating the port to which they intend to go, when the price of passage and all other particulars will be stated, so that they need not be in Liverpool until the day before the ship is to sail, and they will thereby avoid detention and other expenses, besides securing a cheaper passage, and having the best berths allotted to them previous to their arrival.”

Special stagecoaches left central points around the country to take emigrants to the dockside at their port of departure and the journey and the voyage was made so appealing that hundreds flocked to go, so many in fact that questions were raised in Parliament about the loss of valuable workers from England.

In June 1844, Sir John Trollope, the M P for Lincolnshire, voiced the fears of many landowners when he spoke during a debate in the House of Commons. “Not less than 100 families comprising some of the cleverest artisans and most skilful farmers in Lincolnshire emigrated from one spot in the county”, he said, “and an affecting and pitiful sight it was to see these men abandoning their homes to seek new habitations on the other side of the Atlantic. It is a serious loss to the mother country when the best and most industrious of her citizens leave our shores and settled in foreign climes.”

But the flow of emigrants had become unstoppable and more men, often with their wives, families and girlfriends, chose to take the risk. Many found wealth and happiness while others discovered that life in the new world could be just as harsh as it was at home.

The prospects for achievement, however, were great and success stories are a heartening example of man’s ability to rise above adversity such as that experienced by John Thorpe Layton, son of William Layton who kept the Bull Hotel in the Market Place at Bourne [now the Burghley Arms], who left home at eighteen to seek his fortune in the Californian gold rush and in July 1849 signed on as a seaman aboard the barque Jane Dixon bound for San Francisco.

His adventures after that are the stuff of fiction and twenty-five years after leaving Bourne, Layton had become a wealthy mine owner and astute businessman, married three times and raised nine children, and in 1904 his success was eulogised by the state of Oregon where he died the following year aged 74.

Another success story began in 1869 when John Christian, also aged 18, left Bourne and sailed for New York because his parents could not make ends meet bringing up their eight children. He found work and two years later, felt sufficiently confident to welcome two of his young sisters from Bourne who also made the Atlantic crossing, Annie, aged 18, and Maria, aged 16, who then began a struggle for survival in a strange country where the means of earning a living were often difficult to find.

In 1876, Maria gave birth to her only child, Frank, and from then on dedicated her life to raising him by doing menial jobs such as taking in washing and working as a maid. She never married and Frank Christian proved to be equally industrious, both at his studies and later forging a distinguished medical career to become one of America’s most highly respected doctors, holding high public office and becoming a friend of President Franklin D Roosevelt. He died in 1955, aged 79.

Meanwhile, John Christian married Mary Gibbs and died in 1929, aged 79. Maria died in 1921 while Annie also married and died in 1923, aged 72, but the parents they left behind in Bourne knew little of their lives and of the accomplishments of their illustrious grandson.

Robert Christian fell on hard times after his wife, Ann, died in 1877, aged 65, and poverty forced him into the workhouse at Bourne where he died in 1881, aged 82. Both were given pauper’s burials in the South Road cemetery where they lie today, many yards apart in separate unmarked graves but their American descendants prosper and they are not forgotten.