Why did they do it?

Now I think I am beginning to understand something of the people who set out to rescue the homeless children off our streets in the late 19^th century.

Which is not to say that I think their action was ultimately the correct solution or that in the bigger picture it proved decisive in tackling child poverty and homelessness.

But it is always refreshing to go back to basics and read about  those who found the children on the streets and alleys, set up the rescue homes and of course organised so many to cross the Atlantic to Canada thought and said.

The Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuge was one such organisation and their entire archive is here in the city, split between the Local History Library on Deansgate and Archives at Marshall Street, which is a temporary measure until Central Ref is refurbished and the two can be reunited again.

So, wanting to know more about how the British Home Child scheme worked I have resolved to dig deep into the records of the Manchester and Salford  Boys’ and Girls’ Refuge who from 1872 were themselves engaged in sending children to Canada.

But as we all know first you need an overview and for me that has come in the form of a book on the work of the Refuge written in 1921 by William Edmondson, Late Secretary of the Institution.*

It is not an easy read and I have to confess I have only reached the second chapter, although I did skip ahead to look at Chapter IV Child Emigration.  The text is shot through with religious references and argues that “work for homeless children ..... Is almost without exception begun under the impulse of a religious motive.”

But it also gives a harrowing picture of the children themselves which none of those photographs that were published can convey. 

“Barefoot, capless wet and cold, the wet feet making a mark on the floor, hair rough and matted he comes forward........ As he comes nearer we find his trousers supported by a bit of string, and opening the wet jacket we find neither waistcoat nor shirt but a shivering little body, vermin –bitten and smelling of accumulated filth.”

It is a vision that must have been repeated in all our cities, towns and even villages and goes a long way to understanding why these charities were set up.  It also takes us to that age old debate about individual action or political campaigning.

Who could not want to help that child, “saving one soul is enough” but in doing so it perpetuates the system.  You may rescue one but what of the others who were left behind?  So it becomes an argument about replacing an economic system or at the very least putting in place a set of policies which will help all the dispossessed.  Meanwhile a generation of children is left to rot.

So no easy answers there then.  And there is the vexed debate on the rights and wrongs of sending the children to Canada.  Are we dealing with a sincere belief that the open land of a young country would be the making of these children?  Go West and seek your destiny?  Or a cynical cost cutting exercise which emptied our cities of problem children and on the way helped seed a colony for Empire?  Or as I suspect a mix of all these, coupled with a failure on the part of the organisers to vet and check on how these children were treated on the farms and in the homes of their adopted country.

Of course the apologists will have us believe that at best the distances were too great to properly supervise each placement and that the infrastructure was not there and at worst the organisers were just too naive.

Now I already have a sense of what I think, but this is too important to allow my own prejudices to take over.  And so I am going to spend what I suspect will be months looking at the minutes of the meetings, following up on the individuals who took the decisions, seeking permission to read the files of the children and putting all that in the context of the period and set against those who at the time opposed BHC.  And finally with the help of my Canadian friends and colleagues balance all of that with the stories of the children themselves, happy and sad, good and bad.

It might very well prove to be an exercise which echoes old Lear’s lines about being bound upon a wheel of fire that mine own tears do scald like molten lead.  Easy enough to crawl over the evidence perhaps more difficult to decide what it all means and how I can square it with the story of my own great uncle who went across in 1914  with Middlemore, paid for by the Derby Guardians in an attempt to straighten out a wayward lad from a broken home.

And because history is messy who knows what conclusions can be drawn from what I uncover?

Pictures; Courtesy of the Together Trust

*Making Rough Places Plain, Fifty Years of the Work of The Manchester and Salford Boys’ & Girls’ Refuges and Homes 1870-1920, Sherratt & Hughes, Manchester 1921