Reaching an audience, the story of British Home Children

Now I have been banging on about British Home Children for some months. Not that I pretend to be an expert. I really only became aware of their existence less than a year ago and this because one of my own family was sent to Canada in the May of 1914 as a British Home Child.

Even after I had discovered he was sent it was still some while before I made the connection with the fact that this was a deliberate act on the part of some individuals and organisations who saw it as their duty to save these children from a life of dire poverty and worse.

I suspected before I gave the talk to the history group that most people in the room were only dimly aware of this policy of forced migration and if they did know of its existence tended to associate it with Australia. After all children were still being sent to Australia as late as the 1970s and there has been a fair amount of media coverage on their story.
But the Canadian venture finished in the 1930s which means that even the youngest who might have been sent across the Atlantic are now in their 90’s.

I hope I did my best to tell the story. The real test always comes in the questions and observations at the end of the meeting. It did become clear that while many knew of the connection with Australia few were aware of the existence or extent of the migration to Canada. During the discussion people began to remember individuals who had talked or just hinted about the connection with children sent to Canada. In one case it was an elderly woman in hospital who spoke of having been sent as a young girl.

So I guess the talk did a little to bring the subject out of the shadows and that’s all you can ask.

Pictures; from the collection of Bernard Leach