Learning more about British Home Children and another talk

Now I am going to state what on the surface seems blindingly obvious that history is the story of people. But it is easy to lose sight of this as you burrow away in an archive or ponder on the details of some diplomatic event that happened long ago. This is even more so when you begin to debate the rights and wrongs of a decision of one of those turning points in history.

True enough you start off with the question of how this played out on individuals but all too quickly it becomes hijacked by the desire to stay objective, weigh the facts, look for the balanced picture and somewhere along the way the person has been reduced to a statistic.

Which is how it can be with the story of British Home Children, who were the young people “rescued” from the streets, orphanages and homes of uncaring parents and transported to Canada, Australia and other out posts of empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

All of us who are descendants of these children start with an admission they knew little of the programme, even less that one of their relatives was involved and quickly slip into anger when stories of neglect, abuse and loneliness come to the surface. But then you try to be objective look for the reasons why it happened, trawl the motives of the organisers and ponder on whether it was all for the best.

So I would like to share these three photographs, all taken from the excellent web site British Home Children http://canadianbritishhomechildren.weebly.com/index.html run by Lori Oschefski.

George Everitt Green was sent to Canada by Barnado’s in 1895 and died 6 months later from a combination of neglect abuse and starvation, Frederick Cheesman was separated from his four siblings and never saw them again, Ralf Cheesman was born sometime around 1922, arrived in Canada in 1924 and fought for his adopted country in the Second World War and Rosa Dunn was sent by Barnado's in 1895.

Each has a part of the story of British Home Children, and I could have included many more like my own great uncle or Annie Geavaux who was taken over by Barnado’s in 1921 and made a new life in Canada marrying in 1940.
But the web site is more than just a collection of pictures but is a growing fund of information about the programme and the plight of these young people.

And for us over here I would also recommend British Home Children http://www.britishhomechildren.org/ which is a "site dedicated to the Descendants of British Home Children (BHC); Families of British Child Migrants and all home children and child migrants still living, no matter where in the world.”


Their story is still one that is not very well known in Britain but there is a growing interest and I will be speaking on the subject tonight at the Co-op hall above the Co-op store on the corner of Hardy Lane and Barlow Moor Road at 7.30.

Pictures; from the collection of Lori Oschefski