Leaving for Canada

It is more than likely that one or more of the children you can see playing football will have made the journey to Canada as a British Home Child.

They are in the yard of the Manchester & Salford Boys & Girls Refuge on Francis Street.  Now I can’t be exactly certain that some were destined for the other side of the Atlantic but the Refuge began sending children soon after the scheme started and by 1910 over 1,800 had been “rescued from dangerous surroundings in Manchester & Salford and sent to Ontario.”*

The photograph comes from the blog of the Together Trust which regularly features stories of the work of the Refuge drawn from their archives.  Now I am not in the habit of repeating the research and work of others so I would point you in the direction of the blog at

http://togethertrustarchive.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/children-at-play.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+TogetherTrustArchive-GettingDownAndDusty+(Together+Trust+Archive+-+getting+down+and+dusty!)

One of the exciting things about the blog is the growing number of posts which feature the letters stories and pictures of the children who went to Canada.  It is something I have commented on before but is well worth bringing back out into the fresh air.**

So to return to the photograph.  I don't have a date, and of course none of these may have been rescued and sent on to Ontario, but sometimes given the evidence is acceptable to make a bit of a leap, after all every good historian needs a little imagination.

*The Lord Mayor of Manchester, on the occasion of a farewell ceremony of  52 children from the Boys and Girls Refuge and Chorlton and Salford Poor Law Unions at the Town Hall April 14th 1910, Manchester Guardian, April 15th 1910

** http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/letters-and-reports-from-british-home.html

Picture; Courtesy of the Together Trust, http://www.togethertrust.org.uk/