British Home Children ……… be careful of what you are told ……

Now this is a direct response to the interpretation that the migration of thousands of young people to Canada and other parts of the old British Empire was a cynical piece of social engineering on the part of the Establishment to relocate some of the poorest young people in Britain and deposit them as cheap labour on the farms of Canada, and in the homes of respectable Canadians looking for domestic servants.

On admission, date unknown

Like all such sweeping historical generalizations it has an element of truth. 

Successive British Governments had for centuries been unloading those it judged to be criminals to penal colonies on the other side of the world, offered financial incentives to landless labourers in the 1840s to settle in Canada and the USA to relieve the agricultural poverty in parts of Britain, and in the 17th and 18th centuries sent thousands to the West Indies as indentured slaves for joining rebellions against the Crown.

Nor should we forget the vicious class-based legislation enacted against those who sought the vote or to combine in trade unions.

So yes, the Establishment was quite capable of overseeing the migration of children, although we should point out this was not a Government initiatve, but was driven by individials, charities and local government in the form of the Poor Law Unions.

But history is messy, does not always conform to one simple interpretation, and so it is with BHC.  Some of the Poor Law Unions did indeed do the sums and worked out it was cheaper to migrate than to care for destitute and orphaned children in care homes here in Britain.

Equally some Canadian employers saw the benefit of cheap young labour to whom all responsibility ended when they reached maturity.  Added to which there is a wealth of testimony to show how badly some BHC were treated.

But there are plenty of examples, especially from the Manchester based children’s charity I have researched, where the motive to migrate was driven by a desire to offer those who had been dealt the worst deal a better life.*

It fitted well with that idea which had originated in Germany of the positiveness of a rural community in direct contrast to the horrors of 19th century urban living, where workers were sucked into the cities by the Industrial Revolution, eked out a dismal existence in conditions which today we would equate with the Developing World.

Emma on admission to the Refuge

And where a bout of illness or unemployment could pitch them into dire poverty and the Workhouse, leading some families to seek for help by agreeing to send family members abroad.

At which point it is well to recognise the different phases of migration.  

In the first decades the attention was indeed on the destitute children, some of whom were drawn against their will into street crime and prostitution.

But within thirty years inroads had been made into eliminating the destitute from our streets, and more of those migrated came from families who saw no alternative but to offer up some for the fateful leap into the dark to live on another continent.  Often this was because of unemployment, or the death of the main breadwinner.  

For many of these, this was a temporary arrangement, whether it be the Workhouse, a charitable institution or crossing the Atlantic.

All of which begs us to examine the root causes of that “fragile and precarious existence which was the lot of the rural as well as the industrial workforce".

Emma in 1913

And that is down to an economic system and a political ideology which saw the poor as at times feckless and poverty as inevitable as sunrise and sun set.

I don’t defend BHC, but it was a response to a set of circumstances and some of those who were main players acted out of the best of motives.

In the case of my own BHC, he was an unruly and unpredictable young man, whose character had been formed by years of institutionalized care, and accepted migration as a better alternative to an Industrial Training Ship.

The exception to the rule or just one different side of BHC migration?

BHC remains still a relatively new historical study and interpretations will change with the passsage of time and the accumulation of new data.

And that is what makes it exciting and imbues it with the imperative to present it in its full unvarnished truth.

We do it no justice to BHC and by extension no service to the thousands who made that journey if we do not examine it with a forensic eye.

So be careful all those who would lead a charge, dismissing the feelings and views of others in pursuit of a narrow reading of the events, lest just around the corner the data offers a more grey, and nuanced interpretation.

Location; Manchester and Salford

Pictures; On admission, date unknown, Emma on admission to the Refuge, and Emma in 1913, courtesy of the Together Trust, https://www.togethertrust.org.uk/

*The Ever Open Door: 150 years of the Together Trust, Andrew Simpson, The Together Trust, 2020, 140p, £14-99. ISBN 978-1-5272-5671-2. You can obtain copies of the book from, books@togethertrust.org.uk