Tuesday 22 November 2011

British Home Children a new story and a new research project

Picture the scene today somewhere in the Midlands. A charitable organisation moved by the plight of neglected and in some cases abandoned children who face dire poverty and are in danger of falling into crime and perhaps sexual exploitation acts to save these young people by giving them a new start in life. This isn’t some Government initiative, or a council driven plan. It will cost the tax payer nothing, be free of bureaucratic politically correct red tape, and fits into the new social landscape of self help and the big society.
Who you might ask could object? Well Gordon Brown and the Australian Prime Minister both felt moved to offer public apologies for just such a programme. And thousands of the children who took part continue to feel a mix of anger bewilderment and loss that they were taken from this country and placed half way round the world. These are the British Home Children.
Between 1870-1939 100,000 boys and girls between the ages of 5-16, from all over the country were sent to Canada. Later still right into the middle of the 20th century many more went to Australia. They were pauper children or orphans, picked off the streets often after deals done with parents, and some were from the Work Houses. They went to work on farms and as domestic servants.
Many lost all contact with their families, and others grew up totally ignorant that they even had a family.
Many descendants of these home children have only found out years later that one of their lost relatives was settled in Canada or Australia. All of us who have discovered a British Home Child in our family

have faced a mixture of emotions, from anger, to deep sadness to a sense of pride in the achievements of these young people. For most of us it has been a long journey piecing together fragments of clues, unpicking half remembered stories and coping with some awful stories.

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