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| Extract on the report of Roger Hall, 1915 |
He was one of the 100,000 or so young people who were migrated to Canada during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
It was a policy which even after Canada stopped, carried on into the 1970s with boat loads of children going to Australia and other parts of the old British Empire.
These were the British Home Children and until recently it was a story shrouded in official amnesia, and compounded by a reticence on the part of those migrated to talk about what happened to them.
The policy was born out of a mix of good intentions cynical self interest and an unwillingness on the part of the authorities to accept its shortcomings.
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| Extract from the passenger list of the SS Carthaginian, 1914 |
For many of us it was the chance discovery that a relative had been migrated to Canada which led us into the history of British Home Children.
Many of those who first started to explore the story had little to go on, and in an age before the internet and the digitalization of records were forced to spend long month’s fruitlessly writing to charities and public archives to elicit a few facts.
More recently particularly in Canada self help organistions have sprung up aided by the internet which have made the task easier.
And like all good self help organisations people are keen to share information, links and ideas, all of which is how I like my history.
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| Boys in the care of the Manchester & Salford charity about to leave for Canada |
In just the last few years the interest in British Home Children has grown.
In part this reflects the search by relatives for information about their migrated family members, but also has become a serious area of study with an increasing number of books devoted to the subject.
Most of these have been published in Canada, but there are a few on this side of the Atlantic and with them has come specialist sites including that of the Together Trust which was the Manchester & Salford Boys’ and Girl’s Refuges and sent children to Canada from 1870 till 1914.***
What both British Home Children Advocacy & Research Association and the Together Trust offer are help and links which will assist anyone on a personal search or those interested in learning more about the story.
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| Manchester Boys in Canada |
The Together Trust has its own archivist who is keen to assist those who may have family members who were cared for by the charity and wish to know more about their relatives.
Nor should we forget the experiences of those young people sent to Australia.
These young people continued to be sent from Britain well into the 1970s.
Some of their stories featured in Empty Cradles, which was published in 1994.
Its sales of 75,000 copies helped to fund the work of the Child Migrants Trust which was established in 1987 by Margaret Humphreys CBE, OAM.****
The Trust deals with the issues surrounding the deportation of children to Australia in the post-war period. Empty Cradles has been dramatised as the 2011 feature film Oranges and Sunshine.
So British Home Children have come out of the shadows in more ways than one and have quite rightly become a serious area of study.
Pictures; of Roger Hall's report and the shipping list of the carthaginian, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and pictures of Manchester boys of the Manchester & Salford Boys' and Girls' Refuge courtesy of the Together Trust.
*British Home Children, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/British%20Home%20Children
** British Home Children Advocacy & Research Association http://britishhomechildrenadvocacy.weebly.com/
***The Together Trust Archive, http://togethertrustarchive.blogspot.co.uk/
**** The Child Migrants Trust, http://www.childmigrantstrust.com/
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