Mr. Roger Hall …. last known in British Columbia has been found ….

It is the sort of discovery which would gladden the heart of anyone engaged in family history.

The Griffth farmhouse, New Brunswick, 2008

More so because Roger Hall had disappeared almost a full century ago and despite the efforts of me in the UK and my Canadian cousins, he remained the “lost relative”.

He had been born in 1898 in Birmingham to Montague and Eliza who were our great grandparents.  Theirs was a tempestuous relationship and after moving from Derby via Birmingham and London, they settled in Gravesend only to split in 1902.  He remained in Gravesend, and she returned to Derby with her three sons and it was there in the Derby Workhouse that she gave birth to her last child.

Her return was not an easy one and for most of their childhood the children were in care before being placed in occupations.  Roger and my grandfather proved more troublesome, and both were sentenced to a naval boot camp.  Granddad went but great uncle Roger opted to go to Canada, migrated as a British Home Child in 1914.*

His Attestation Papers, 1915

In a few short months he worked on three Canadian farms, being sent back twice and absconding from the third to join the Canadian Expeditionary Force.  In the process he changed his name, lied about his age and gave his aunt as next of kin rather than his mother.

His unwillingness to conform on the farms was replicated in the army and he court martialled four times, once for hitting an officer and three times for absence without leave.

But he survived, returned to Canada, and persuaded his sister to follow him out on an Empire Assisted Scheme in 1925, and then sometime after that we lost him.

Until our Marisa found him on the census return for the Municipality of Coquitlam in British Columbia.

One of his letters, 1916

He was lodging with a family, gave his occupation as a labourer on a farm and was single.

There is much more to find out which I know our Marisa will uncover. But its is the first real reference we have after 1925 and confirms his sister’s belief that he had headed out to the west of Canada, a place still in the making and as rough and ready with promise of new things as the western states of its neighbour.

I suspect it was somewhere that would allow a young restless man an opportunity to reinvent himself.

As it was, he had reverted to his given names of Roger and Hall, which had been dropped in favour of James Rogers when he ran away and enlisted.  That reversion seems to have muddied the search but now we have him, living in a community dominated by single men from China and Japan who were labourers.

His landlord was a James William Williams who was also from the UK and was a barber aged 42 and perhaps a search may reveal something more of his Canadian life.  I know he was married to Mary and that their daughter, Elizabeth Mary was born in BC in 1917.

There are several James William Williams who fit the date of birth in various bits of Britain which in turn may offer up more.

But essentially that is it.

To which some will mutter so what?  And follow it up with, “apart from the family what interest can there be in a man who disappeared a century ago?”

Well, whenever research brings anyone out of the shadows that is a good result and even more so when he is a member of that group of children who were migrated to Canada and later other parts of the former British Empire. 

Places he knew, St John River, NB, 2008

They were sent from 1870 and a century later some British organizations were still engaged in settling young people in Australia.

Until recently they were a virtually forgotten group and while they are still a neglected part of our history at least in Canada the study of British Home Children has become a serious area of historic study.*

That study has occasioned a serious debate about the motives of those engaged in the migration, the effects on the young people both at the time and subsequently, and the contribution they made to the countries they settled in.

And our great uncle was one of them.

Special thanks to our cousin Marisa Cooper who continued the search for Roger Hall when I had all but given up.

Location; Canada,

Pictures; One of the farms he stayed at in New Brunswick, 2008, his Attestation papers, 1915, letter from Roger James Hall/James Rogers, February 2, 1916, from the collection of Andrew Simpson and picture of the Griffith's farmhouse, N.B., Angela Faubert, 2008

*British Home Children, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/British%20Home%20Children

Lives revealed, commitments rediscovered

“they were robbed of their childhood and of the opportunity of a sound education .... the emigration of young children for working purposes savoured of a traffic in child labour carried on between agencies in this country and agencies in Canada and children would not be allowed to go from the care of the Guardians to anything like such conditions in this country.”

I have been thinking that William Edward Skivington deserves to be remembered. His was a short life spanning just 42 years from 1869 to 1911.

 There are no blue plaques to him in the city, nor to my knowledge has he been honoured in any way for his work on behalf of the unemployed and poor of Manchester.

 No photographs of him have survived and even the mean little streets in Hulme where he grew up and lived are long gone. But some of what he said and did and something of his political ideas do exist and from these I want to tell a little of his history.

 I first discovered him as one the three socialist Guardians on the board of the Chorlton Union which administered the Poor Law across south Manchester. Time and time again the three spoke out against the sending of young children from our workhouse to Canada to work on farms and as a domestic labour. They questioned the often petty but humiliating practices that existed, demanded better conditions and opposed any perceived cuts in the provision of relief to the inmates.

Now admission into the workhouse for working people was just an accident away, be it unemployment, ill heath, old age or just bad luck. And it was a scenario which William Skivington would have been all too close to himself.

His father was a bookbinder, his mother a bookfolder, and both he and his brother had worked as iron turners. He began his married life in a one up one down back to back in Hulme and his brother died at the early age of 17 from an industrial accident.

He was a member of the Socialist Democratic Federation which was formed in 1884 and was the first Marxist political group in Britain. The membership included trade unionists like Tom Mann, John Burns and Ben Tillet as well George Lansbury, William Morris and Eleanor Marx. During the mid 1880s against a backdrop of economic depression the SDF campaigned for “the Right to Work" and demanded the establishment of state directed co-operative colonies.

Now I don’t know when he joined but in 1896 he nominated an SDF candidate in the municipal elections and may have already been in the party when he unsuccessfully stood for election as a Poor Law Guardian two years earlier.

 The SDF experienced splits and defections along with short periods of greater political unity. In 1900 it had come together with the Independent Labour Party, the Fabian Society and some trade unions to form the Labour Representation Committee, but left just seven years later. William remained in the SDF speaking at its meetings and on occasion arguing against members of the Independent Labour Party within the unemployed movement.

And it was the unemployed movement which dominated much of his political life during the first decade of the 20th century. In the winter of 1904 in Manchester something like “7,000 heads of families were out of work, and that probably twenty-one thousand children were on the verge of starvation”* and William was at the centre of the campaign to publicize the situation and argue for change.

Over the next seven years he was on delegations which met the Prime Minister and leading Government Ministers, organised mass meetings, as well as marches and sat on the Distress Committee which had been set up by the Unemployment Act of 1905. He argued for improved rates of pay for the unemployed in the public works schemes, highlighted poor working conditions, constantly pushed for the adoption of new opportunities for the jobless and the rights of women workers.

Above all it was not just about the right to a job but about a person’s dignity. So when the Distress Committee found work for some men carrying sandwich boards at eighteen pence a day, “it was not right that human beings should be employed as perambulating hoardings.”**

Likewise “He was opposed to emigration as he thought its only use was to supply Canada with cheap labour so necessary to that country. He had received a letter from a friend out there, who said the prison in the town where he was was filled with boys from a well known charity organisation in the country and the asylum with young men who had been homesteading.”***

Which is pretty much where we came in.

I would like to end on a positive note but stories don’t always end such. Unemployment remained an issue and by 1910 -11 we were locked into a period of industrial unrest which highlighted the class fault lines.

And William was dead at 42. His obituary notes that “as his home was in the working class district of Hulme he was constrained by his interests in the improvement of the conditions of living there to bring forward many propositions for an active policy in the provision of work by the municipality” **** 

Which is a fine if brief record of a man’s commitment.

But nor is this quite the end. William it seems died of neglect, at the hands of the Royal Infirmary after he had attended feeling ill. It could almost have been one of his own campaigns to highlight the disparity between different health services. But that is another story for another day.

 *J B Hitchen speaking at a mass rally in Stevenson Square quoted from the Manchester Guardian November 17th 1904. **Manchester Guardian March 21st 1906 *** Manchester Guardian June 26th 1905 **** Manchester Guardian November 17th 1910

Hidden away, living in a court in 1908

We are in New gates which was a closed court off Corporation Street close to the junction with Withy Grove and the year is 1908.

There were still enough of these dismal and dark places around in the city and the height of these houses should not blind us to the fact that they contained just three rooms.  So what you see in the picture was what you got.

Well almost for in fact only three of the houses in the court had three rooms, most of the rest consisted of just two.  Into these thirteen properties lived fifty-six people.

The majority made a living at the bottom end of the job market and so here were labourers, cleaners, and charwomen along with a street hawker and umbrella makers.

Living conditions were pretty basic.  The water pump in the corner of the picture and the white painted building which was the shared lavatory served the whole court. Clothes were washed in the big wooden tubs close to the pump and hung out on lines across the yard. 

And this narrow yard was the communal area where along with the washing, the children played and people met and talked.

Here there was little in the way of privacy and judging by the repairs being done to cobbles and the  poor brick work there was much that made the place an uncomfortable one.  Add to this the lack of sunlight and ventilation and it is easy to see why such courts were places of necessity not choice.

Now I have written about other such courts in the city and it is easy to pass over the image and the conditions but I suspect many people looking at the photograph will have family who lived in such places.  

My own great grandmother did and some of these courts were still around as late as the mid 1960s.

Here in New gates in 1908  it may just be possible  to identify some some of the people in the picture.  This is not so fanciful.  True many inhabitants of such courts did not stay long, but others did. The parents of my great grandmother lived in Whiteman’s Yard for at least two decades.

Just seven years before this photograph was taken Sarah Cooper was living at number 4.  She was a widow who earned a living as a charwoman at that may just be her sitting on the doorstep.  But as I said we are bordering on the realms of speculation, better to wait till I have visited the rate books which will not only give the names of the tenants but also the rents they paid and the duration of their stay.

Picture; New gates, 1908, m8316, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

The remarkable Miss Olga Hertz and her work for the children of Manchester

I doubt I would ever have come across Miss Olga Hertz, had it not been for a report she wrote in 1909 which surfaced recently.

The report, 1909

What makes the report and Miss Hertz particularly interesting for me, is that she was one of the elected Guardians on the Chorlton Union which was the Poor Law authority covering my bit of Manchester and she lived almost all her adult life just round the corner.

Now I say I wouldn’t, but as the plan has always been to research this Poor Law Union, I suppose I would in time have met up with her.

The Chorlton Union covered most of south Manchester with its first work house in Hulme and its later one in Withington.  This second workhouse built in the 1850s, saw the Union out and developed into Withington Hospital only closing in 2002.

Like other Poor Law authority’s, Chorlton migrated some of their young people to Canada, and at the beginning of the century the three socialist Guardians argued against the policy, raising concerns about the degree of monitoring of children were highly critical of an economic and social system which accepted poverty and inequality as natural.

And that brings us back to Miss Hertz who in the June of 1909 sailed from Liverpool to Montreal and then across Ontario, visiting the Marchmont Home and by degree the farms and homes where Chorlton children had been placed from both Marchmont and Belleville.

It paints a positive picture of those who had been sent over, raising some concerns about the monitoring of some children given the large distances.

There will be those who wonder whether it was “too positive”, but Miss Hertz was very dedicated to the welfare of the young people in the charge of the Union and maintained close contacts with many of them long after they had grown up, even referring to them as “Miss Hertz’s grandchildren".

The offices of the Chorlton Union, 2009

So like so much to do with British Home Children there will have to be much more research, matching the assertions of the socialist Guardians with the quality and quantity of the reports sent back.

For now it is Miss Hertz who interests me.  She was born in Scotland in 1851 and moved to Manchester in 1871, settling on Palatine Road in Withington sometime after 1881 and where she died in 1946.

Her adult life was predicated on public service, and she was involved with administration of nursing in the city as well as her work with young people.

She was first elected as a Guardian to the Chorlton Union in 1892 and served until 1930, during which time she did five years as chair of the committee responsible for the Styal Cottage Homes for young people run by the Chorlton Union.

She remained a champion of such provision, arguing such small homes were preferable to the older and larger “barrack” institutions or the practice of boarding children out.

And she campaigned for feminist issues, opposing the practice of one hospital for refusing to employ women doctors, argued that at least one of the Union’s three doctors should be a woman and consistently pushed for the establishment of maternity centres across Manchester and in 1914 had been a delegate at  the Fifth International Council of Women held in Rome.

The entrance to the offices of the Chorlton Union' 2009

There is much more to find out about this remarkable women but I will close with her work for "the Girls’ Lodging House which existed to meet the needs of young homeless, inexperienced domestic workers during their off duty time and during periods of unemployment, girls brought up in the Poor Law homes having first claim”.**

It had been set up in the 19th century and while it closed in 1937, Miss Hertz had remarked that "she considers that there are still young workers to whom such a place would be a boon".

Leaving me just to reflect that while her house has gone, replaced by a car park for Christies' Hospital, there are the offices of the old Chorlton Poor Law Union and by an odd quirk some of the Canadian soldiers from the Great War were treated in the Unions' hospital in Withington Workhouse, and some who died are buried Southern Cemetery which is close by.

And if all that is a coincidence some of those Canadians were British Home Children.

Location; Manchester & Canada

Pictures; cover of Report to the Chorlton Board of Guardians, the offices of the Chorlton Union, 2009, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Research, the Manchester Guardian, 1894-1946, selected census records and street directories

*Copy of the Report to the Chorlton Board of Guardians on a Visit to Emigrated Children in Canada, by Miss O Hertz, Chairman of the Cottage Homes Committee

**Miss Olga Hertz Her 90th Birthday, Manchester Guardian November 19 1941

Tragic Loveland Family

This month’s history talk at Chorlton Good Neighbours given by Andrew Simpson explored the subject of British Home Children; a scheme which saw many thousands of destitute children “transferred” from Britain to (largely) Canada between 1870 and 1930. 

Thomas John Loveland’s headstone 

One of these children was Thomas John Loveland who, after the death of his father (1) impoverished his mother with five young children, was, at the tender aged of eight, sent to Canada by the Barnardo Homes. Thomas John later returned to the United Kingdom as a member of the Canadian Expeditionary Force which came to Britain’s aid during the First World War. He was invalided home to Britain, where he died on 6th November 1918. He is buried in Manchester’s Southern Cemetery.  Andrew also mentioned Thomas John’s family which he was separated from as they remained in England and that one of his 4 siblings, his brother Edward, was also a casualty of “The Great War”. In his case dying on 6th August 1917 of wounds suffered while serving as a Gunner / Acting Bombardier with the Royal Field Artillery. He is buried in Lussenthoek Military Cemetery, West- Vlaanderen, Belgium. (2)

Canadians returning from trenches on the Somme, November 1916

I was curious about the lives of the other family members and decided to investigate what became of them.

Starting with the 1911 census I found the mother living with a widower (3) William Smith Fearis, a house painter, at 4a, George Street, Walsoken, Norfolk.

Several factors made further progress a painstaking business. Firstly, although the village is located in the west of Norfolk it adjoins the town of Wisbech, Cambridgeshire which results in a split in the registration of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, with some catalogued as Cambridgeshire events and some Norfolk. Of more confusion however is the fact that although William Smith and Eleanor did not marry until the December quarter of 1915, they had several children between them. Also, I found William Smith’s last name spelt at least three different ways.

The 1911 household then comprised of William Smith and Eleanor living as man and wife, Eliza the 15- years-old daughter (4) of Mr. Fearis’s first marriage, Mary, William and Eleanor’s child and John a child of Eleanor’s first marriage. 

  Following further research in the 1911 census I discovered Thomas John’s two sisters Eliza and Harriet had both remained in London, Harriet who was 15 was living at 100, Leven Road, Poplar, London; a few doors away from where her family were residing in 1901. This was also the address Edward gave on his attestation papers at his enlistment into the army on New Years Day 1915. According to the census return Harriet was living with her aunt, a widow, Eliza Walter however, I have discovered she was more likely her great aunt as in the 1891 census, Harriet’s mother Eleanor (Hawks) was recorded in the Walter’s household. 

 Eliza Loveland, Thomas John’s other sister was, working as a general domestic servant for John Conoley, a beer seller, his wife Minnie and their five children at 5, Crosby Road, Forest Gate, West Ham, London.

The 4 years of the First World War were incredibly tragic for Eleanor Loveland / Fearis as not only did she suffer the loss of two of her sons in the conflict but two of her daughters died within months of each other in 1916, Harriet in Poplar during the June quarter, then Eliza in the December quarter in Hampstead. 

Sadly, she had also previously had to grieve the death, during the March quarter of 1899, of a third daughter, Eleanor Elizabeth who was just seven years old

It is not hard to fathom her feelings then when her remaining son was mobilised into the royal Tank Corps on 27th August 1918. He survived the war and was demobilised on 2nd December 1919 and returned to live with his, by then again widowed, mother in George Street, Walsoken.

Both Edward James and Thomas John were taken into care by Dr Barnardo's Homes, as was their younger brother George, who was born in the West Ham registration district during the December quarter of 1902.  Whilst Edward James was to remain in Britain, George was also a British Home Child. He was one of 195 such children, some as young as seven, who sailed from London on 14th March 1912 onboard the S.S. Corinthian bound for Toronto via St. John, New Brunswick. 

 Interestingly in the 1911 census he is shown as a “boarder” with an elderly couple Henry and Ann Dorsett and their unmarried son Herbert (40) and daughter Matilda (42) on the High Street, Long Crendon, Buckinghamshire. Herbert was a journeyman baker while Matilda is described as a chapel cleaner. One of George Loveland’s fellow boarders, Alfred William Dodson was also a “Barnardo's Boy” and in turn was shipped to Canada in March 1914.

William Fearis died in July 1917 and was buried in Walsoken on 6th July. His widow, Eleanor Elizabeth, remained in Walsoken until at least 1931 largely on her own though both her son John and stepson, George William briefly resided with her on the demobilisations from the army.  When she died in the March quarter of 1937 however, she had returned to Poplar, London.

 Mrs. Loveland/ Fearis had two daughters with William Smith; Mary Elizabeth born on 16th September 1909 and Eleanor E. born June 1911.  Mary Elizabeth went to live with her Aunt Eliza in Leven Road, Poplar; she later married Leonard H.W. Hutchins there in the December quarter of 1932. The 1939 register records her living at 17, Constance Road, Leicester with her half-brother John Loveland and his wife Gladys Ethel (née Cunnington) who were married in Leicester during the December quarter of 1935.

 In 1921 Eleanor E. (Nellie) was recorded as an adopted child of the Coleman family at 19, Nene Parade, Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. The household was a Public House, “The Nene Inn”. The licensee was Henry James Coleman, who was married to Rebecca Ann (née Jackson). Also in the household were two sons and a daughter, one of the sons, George Henry, being married to Nellie’s half-sister Rose Emma.

 Eleanor married William Jackson during the March quarter of 1931 and gave birth to a child in the March quarter of 1933 only for tragedy to strike this extended family yet again. Eleanor at just 24-years-old died in Ipswich, Suffolk in 1936’s March quarter.

Finally, what is evident that in the face of all the hardship and loss this family suffered they steadfastly endeavoured to maintain family connections.  Desperately sad evidence of this can be seen in this request sent by Eleanor to the Army ---

  “---- can son be sent home, on leave, as sister is dying”.

Notes: - 

 “Bow Creek Mystery” -The Echo London 10th September 1903

1) Thomas John’s father Edward Loveland married his mother Eleanor Elizabeth (née Hawks) in the West Ham registration district during the June quarter of 1891.  As this cutting from “The Echo (London)”, dated 10th September 1903, reveals his death was both tragic and mysterious.

2)  Thomas John’s story and that of Arthur Wisdon Ervine, another British Home Child and soldier of the Canadian Expeditionary Force buried in a neighbouring grave in Manchester’s Southern Cemetery are covered extensively in these blog posts. 26th June 2019 and 11th November 2018.

3) William Smith’s first wife, Emma, appears on the 1891 census at 12, Morley Carr, North Bierley, Bradford, Yorkshire. It is likely she is the Emma Feairs who died in Wisbech during July 1897 and buried in the town’s Mount Pleasant Cemetery on 25th July 1897. Despite repeated searches I have found no record of their marriage.

4) Due to the variations in the spelling of William Smiths surname allied to the family moving counties regularly it is hard to be accurate concerning their pre- 1901 history.  The daughters Emma Rose and Eliza were born in Wisbech, Cambridgeshire and Cleckheaton, Yorkshire respectively. Emma Rose on 12th March 1887 and Eliza during the September quarter of 1896.  According to the record of his time as a prisoner-of-war in Soltau, Lower Saxony, Germany George William was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire on 17th August 1891. These detailed and well-preserved German records also state alongside his home address, name, rank, and serial number that he was captured “Nicht verwundet” at Lille on 20th October 1914. However, the birth details shown on them are incorrect as George William appears with his parents on the 1891 census aged 7 months, born in North Bierley, Bradford, Yorkshire (West Riding). 

Pictures: - Thomas John Loveland’s headstone from the collection of Tony Goulding, Canadians returning from the Somme, November 1916 by Castle, W.I. (William Ivor) - Library and Archives Canada -Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33407592  “Bow Creek Mystery” -The Echo London 10th September 1903 Content provided by THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. With thanks to The British Newspaper Archive. www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk.

What to do with the children? …… British Home Children …. a story only partly told … the talk June 10th

 Between 1870 and 1930 100, 000 children were sent to Canada, and placed on farms and in domestic service ….. the youngest were aged just 4 years.

Young people admitted to the Manchester & Salford Boys' & Girls Refuge, undated

Opinions are still bitterly divided as to why they were sent, the morality of the project and the impact on the young people who were migrated.

Emma before admission, undated

In the early years some of the children were those who were found homeless, living on the streets and potentially vulnerable to predators and open to petty criminality.

Others were from families who had fallen into poverty through illness, unemployment or the death of one of the parents and sought help from charities who promised that migration offered a better life and a new start for one or more of the children.

And it was children’s charities, along with the Poor Law Unions who offered the opportunity to participate in the scheme.

Critics pointed out that many were used as cheap labour, were open to all sorts of abuse and in the case of those sent to farms were cast adrift at 16 to fend for themselves.

In the absence of strict supervision some farmers failed to keep the promises they made to adequately feed and clothe the children or ensure they had access to a school.

To these critics the programme was the exploitation of young people who were powerless to protect themselves, an opinion summed up by William Edward Skivington one of the three Socialist Poor Law Guardians on the Chorlton Union in 1905 who wrote, “they were robbed of their childhood and of the opportunity of a sound education .... the emigration of young children for working purposes savoured of a traffic in child labour carried on between agencies in this country and agencies in Canada and children would not be allowed to go from the care of the Guardians to anything like such conditions in this country.”

Leaving for Canada on the steps of Manchester Town Hall, 1897

It was a policy which those engaged in the practice recognised was a cheaper solution to keeping the children in care.

But many of the advocates of the policy genuinely believed they were engaged in giving hope and lifting children from appalling conditions. 

Leonard Shaw of the Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuges argued that “some [children] would be dragged back to vagrant, drunken and vicious associations …. their only salvation for them was to be placed far away from the baneful environment of their early life … and supplied a colony with one of the other needs – healthy, honest Labour”.

Mr. Shaw was speaking in 1910 of the situation that he had encountered forty years earlier, when destitute children were to be found in many of our cities and towns, and while that scandal had pretty much vanished there were still families who were on the margin of poverty and some who had toppled over.

Application for a BHS boy, 1914

Today the arguments about the policy remain and the battle lines no less tightly drawn. Many who discover they have a family member who was transported are bitter and condemn the practice.

Other’s like me whose great uncle went out in 1914 aged 16 are more nuanced, and as the study of British Home Children finds its way on to University courses, and attracts more writers, the story enters the grey zone.

That said it is a subject which is still not well known.  More so in Canada than in Britain but still a story which deserves better coverage.

So, while there are a growing number of books and sites devoted to British Home Children across Canada, here in Britain the list is small which led me and Tricia Leslie to set up a Facebook site, where stories can be shared and information exchanged all of which will raise awareness of the subject. *

And added to the site I am back again talking to groups about the story which is the lead into my next presentation this coming Tuesday at 1.30 on June 10th to Chorlton Good Neighbours at St Ninians Church on Wilbraham Road.**

And beyond the talk  .... there is Home Children Canada which is "a proactive charity established in 2012, has been dedicated to elevating the profile of the Home Children and preserving their memory. 

Emma after admission, undated

Through diligent efforts, the organization has worked tirelessly to shed light on the historical experiences of the Home Children and to honor their legacy. With a strong commitment to raising awareness and promoting understanding, Home Children Canada strives to ensure that the stories of these children are recognized and respected. 

By honoring their memory, the charity seeks to ensure that the Home Children's contributions and struggles are never forgotten and that their rightful place in history is acknowledged with dignity and compassion".***

Location, June 10th, 1.30, St Ninians Church on Wilbraham Road 

Pictures; Young people admitted to the Manchester & Salford Boys' & Girls' Refuges, undated, Emma before and after admission to the same Charity, undated, party of boys on the steps of Manchester Town Hall about to leave for Canada, 1897, courtesy of the Together Trust, Application for a BHS boy, 1914, British Home Children, poster from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* British Home Children ....... the story from Britain, https://www.facebook.com/groups/1624406061006317

** Chorlton Good Neighbours, https://chorltongoodneighbours.org/ Wilbraham St Ninians Church, Egerton Road South, Manchester M21 0XJ, 0161 881 2925

***Home Children Canada, https://www.britishhomechildren.com/

"Shedding an occasional ray of light and cheer upon the dull lives of the slum children" ......... the Cinderella Clubs

Now until recently I had no idea that there was an organisation called the Cinderella Club or of its links to the wider socialist movement and of its work in helping poor working class children.

It is one of those little stories which has faded from view, but is an interesting insight into how we were dealing with child poverty over a century ago.

“The idea of the Cinderella Clubs seems to have originated with Robert Blatchford, a journalist with the Sunday Chronicle. According to the Leeds Mercury of 18 April 1890, the Cinderella Club Movement, which was founded in Manchester, aimed 'to shed an occasional ray of light and cheer upon the dull lives of the slum children.' 

The Chronicle had 'asked for helpers in other towns,' and appears to have had little difficulty in securing these from the middle and working classes as well as patrons from the better classes.  In Leeds, for example, the Cinderella Club could count amongst its patrons the Mayor and Lady Mayoress and at least one local Member of Parliament.”*

In pursuing the story I came across twenty-five photographs of the work of the club taken in 1910.

They cover everything from Christmas visits to parties and the inevitable day out by the sea.

And it clearly there is a story here, both in its own right and as another challenge to those who saw the migration to Canada as the answer to child poverty, destitution and neglect.

Of course the Cinderella Clubs could never do more than be a short term fix to a big problem and there will be those who argued that in the long run a new start away from the grime and awful conditions of our inner cities in the fresh air and open fields of Canada and later Australia was the way forward.

For a few this may have been the case but as the records are beginning to show the migration of thousands of children to Canada brought heart ache, suffering and in some cases a degree of cruelty which exceeded what these young people had experienced here.

It also neatly side stepped the real issues that the prevailing economic and social system was responsible for the conditions endured by the majority of working people which even in good times was circumscribed by the possibilities of ill health unemployment and just bad luck.

Any of which could pitch a family into real poverty and destitution.

So I shall dig deeper in to the Cinderella Club Movement and into the Christian Socialists who seemed to be linked to the clubs.

All of which only leaves me to thank Dee who first published the story on facebook yesterday and in turn led me to the various sites which gave me some insight into their work.

In the meantime I shall just return to the images from the archive and in particular to the four I have featured.  I could have chosen others. But these I think sum up the club.

They all convey that mix of excitement and sheer pleasure that from a  party and a day out.  It is there in the smile on the face of the lone boy and from some of those in the hall.

And then there is the station scene.  It is a destination I do not know but maybe someone will follow the clue of “FURNISH AT WARINGS MANCH’R or recognise the station approach and come up with a place.

It is so representative of an institutional day out.  The children all in the best clothes, with a uniformity in their dress, the adults also decked out in their finest accompanying their own children and beyond them the day to day throng of railway passengers.

But there is also something else which I am not so sure about and sits a little uncomfortably with me.  It starts with that sign announcing “POOR GIRLS AND BOYS”, and going on to explain that the camp is SUPPORTED SOLELY BY VOLUNTARY CONTRIBUTIONS, and that it is "OPEN FOR INSPECTION DAILY.”

This may be a necessary part of any voluntary organisation and good self publicity but  reminds me of those before and after images that the children’s societies of the period went in for as a way of promoting their work of rescuing young people off the streets.

But I suspect that those in our picture were not bothered about the sign, they like the lad with the smile and the present are more content with what had been offered them.

Pictures; Cricket Game with the Cinderella Club, 1910,  m68190 , a party meal, m68191, one happy child, m68208, and setting off, m68209, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council

* The Cinderella Club Movement from the blog, Victorian History, http://vichist.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/cinderella-club-movement.html

**Manchester Local Image Collection, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/ResultsList.php?QueryName=BasicQuery&QueryPage=%2Findex.php%3Fsession%3Dpass&Anywhere=SummaryData%7CAdmWebMetadata&QueryTerms=Cinderella-Club&QueryOption=Anywhere&Submit=Search&StartAt=1

The stories behind the picture ................... Manchester in the 1870s

Now you know just by looking at the photograph that there is a story here.

And the more you look it is apparent that there will be as many stories as there are people staring back at us.

It starts with those young boys, all in uniform and many holding musical instruments and goes on to the adults.

Their tall hats and beards suggest a date sometime in the 1870s.

Of course we do have to be careful because often the appearance of a person, from their clothes to the style of their hair may reflect the fashions of an early age from which the individual has not moved on from.

Finally there is the banner which is difficult toread but there is enough to suggest a message carrying a high moral tone.

So it might be logical to suppose that this is the youth wing of a religious group and that might takes us to the Salvation Army or the Boys Brigade or any one of a number of others.

The Salvation Army is a candidate in that it was formed in 1865 and just possibly so is the Boy’s Brigade which was established in 1883.

But neither fit the picture.  In the case of the Boys Brigade while the organisation was formed in 1883 in Glasgow it would be a full decade before it took root across the country and I know this is not a group of  Salvation Army, because we are in the back yard of a building belonging to the Manchester & Salford Boys’ and Girl’s Refuges which was established in 1870.

Their original purpose was to rescue destitute children from the streets of Manchester and Salford but expanded into a much wider organisation which owned homes, undertook the vocational training of young people and campaigned for better working conditions for those children engaged in a range of exploited labour.

Alongside these activities the charity was also active in the prosecution of parents who were abusive or neglectful, and offered help to others who through bereavement, ill health or unemployment found it difficult to support their children.

Finally like many other children’s charities they migrated some of those in their care to Canada.

In the case of the Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuges this part of their work lasted just 34 years from 1872 till 1914 in two short periods from 1872-75 and 1883-1914.

The organisation still exists although it is now the Together Trust,  and is based in Cheadle and it is still engaged in the primary role of helping young people.

For me as a historian leaving aside all their good work it is their archive that fascinates me, which includes the records of those who went through the charity including admission books, letters and profiles and photographs.

And as you would expect the archivist of the Trust is very careful about confidentiality and the rights of individuals to their anonymity even a century and bit on from when they were admitted.

That said she regularly features some of the material in the Trust’s blog.*

And that brings me back neatly to our picture which dates from the 1873 and was taken in the back yard of the charity’s building in Strangeways.
Now this I know because I asked the archivist who for good measure supplied the message on the banner which reads Boy's Refuges, Industrial Home, Francis Street, Strangeways.

The rest as they say is for another time.

Picture; resources at the Together Trust, courtesy of the Together Trust,  http://togethertrustarchive.blogspot.co.uk/p/about-together-trust.html

*Getting down and dusty, the Together Trust, http://togethertrustarchive.blogspot.co.uk/

Behind number 14 Major Street in the winter of 1905

14 Major Street, 1905

Now as ever there is a story behind this picture.

We are on Major Street in 1905 and the building is the Boys’ and Girls’ Refuge which was established in 1884.

It was the second shelter opened by the Manchester & Salford Boys’ & Girls’ Refuges offering food and shelter to destitute young people.

The first shelter had been opened by the charity on Quay Street and later relocated to Strangeways but the scale of the problem was such that one refuge was not enough.

That lack of provision was highlighted “in the winter months of 1871 when three boys applied at the Refuge looking for shelter. 

As the home was already full, they had to be turned away. Seeking warmth and shelter and being unable to afford three pence to stay in a lodging house for the night they had wandered up to the brickfields of Cheetham. 

A few days later a newspaper reported on the demise of a young boy who had been burned to death at one of the brick kilns in the neighbourhood. This boy was one of the three who had, had to be turned away much to the consternation of the committee. 

It was this incident that convinced the charity that they needed another building in which to receive any child in need of help, whatever the hour. 

On admittance, date unknown

The result was the Children’s Shelter at 14 Major Street. Open all day and all night children in need of shelter could be brought and receive food and a bed for the night, whilst their individual circumstances were investigated. It ensured that no child requesting aid would ever be turned away again.”*

The story comes from the excellent blog of the Together Trust which describes the work of the Manchester & Salford Boys’ & Girls’ Refuges during the 19th and 20th centuries and is a first stop forthose wanting to trace family members who were cared for by the charity.

I am always impressed by the extent of their archives and the help offered by the archivist to those who want to know more about an ancestor.

Sadly for anyone wanting to stand in front of number 14 Major Street it has long gone.

To be truthful there is very little left of Major Street which runs from Aytoun Street down to Princess Street

Major Street in 1886**

On the corner with Princess Street there is the old Mechanics Institute where the TUC met in 1868, but walk the length of the road today and it  is dominated by two car parks a whole tranche of huge office blocks dating from the end of the last century and the beginning of this one and stuck in the middle is the bus station.

As for number 14 which was on the right hand side just down from Aytoun Street that is now one of those car parks.

At which point I could I suppose regret its passing but it was just a building and the work of the charity still goes and in the fullness of time I hope the archivist will be able to shed some light on what life was like at number 14 Major Street.

Reading back stories from the blog there is much that would help anyone wanting to know about its work and much to set interested descendants on a path of discovery.

All of which leaves me to point you in the direction of that blog and in particular the rest of the story on the opening of number 14.


Pictures; 14 Major Street, 1905 and one of the young people cared for by the Trust courtesy of the Together Trust, http://togethertrustarchive.blogspot.co.uk/p/about-together-trust.html

*The Second Annual Meeting, http://togethertrustarchive.blogspot.co.uk/

**Slater's Directory of Manchester & Salford, 1886. [Part 2: Trades, Institutions, Streets], page 508, Historical Directories, http://cdm16445.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/search/collection/p16445coll4/searchterm/Lancashire/field/place/mode/exact/conn/and/order/nosort

Growing up in Australia with no past, no family and just unanswered questions ..... Empty Cradles

The story of the children sent to Canada from the late 19th century into the early 20th has almost passed out of living memory, but those who went to Australia were still leaving our shores in the 1970s.

These Australian stories are no less harrowing than those young people who travelled across the Atlantic.

They bring to the surface all the same feelings of anger and incredulity that someone could think it was a good idea to solve the problems of our homeless, neglected and poverty stricken children by dumping them in other parts of the Empire.

Now before any one accuses me of a lack of historical impartiality I do have to say that like many of the descendants of children sent from Britain to Canada I have been very careful in examining the case for their migration. Some in Canada might even feel that I have been over cautious about coming to a judgement.

Here is it is enough to say that despite some well meaning thinking on the part of some good people and a belief that wide open spaces were a better environment than the streets and dismal courts of the poorer parts of our cities the policy was wrong.

And it was seen to be wrong at the time.  Almost from the onset of the programme people were worried about the lack of supervision and inspection in Canada and had been challenging the very premise upon which the migration was undertaken.

So, that I hope has negated that oft used argument by the apologists of the scheme that we are in  some way judging past actions by  present day sensibilities.   It always was a tired and barren argument but one totally exposed when you consider that the policy was still in full swing in the 1960s and really only came to an end 40 or so years ago.

This was no case of another time and another place, but at a moment when Britain had embraced the welfare state, believed we were advancing to a new bright future which offered new life choices to its entire people and set against full employment and growing prosperity.

And yet the children were still being sent.  In some cases having been told their parents were dead and in almost all cases denied any real knowledge of who they had been or why they were sent.

This shabby little episode, this last flickering of a discredited policy in child care was exposed by Margaret Humphreys, a Nottingham social worker in the 1980s.  Her work in providing a history for all those Australians who grew up with no knowledge of a family in Britain or the circumstances which led to them being sent to Australia is documented in her book Empty Cradles which in turn became the film Oranges and Sunshine.

It is a powerful account of the confusion, hurt and anger felt by many of these young people combined with an insight into the reluctance shown on the part of the charities and government agencies to either help or even admit the extent of the programme.

And this is why I think it is essential reading for all of us engaged in telling the story of British Home Children.

For most of us our own BHC relatives are dead and many of their records are scattered, lost or unobtainable.  Even just identifying the names of the young people is a huge task and some I fear will never emerge from the shadows.

So for most of us looking for family it is a matter of pouring over newspaper accounts, census returns and just possibly if we are very lucky the records of the local work house or children’s charity.

Going the next step and trying to understand the justification for the migrations is wrapped up in dense committee minutes of long forgotten charities or the often vain self congratulatory biographies and autobiographies of the worthies involved.

All of which means our own feelings of anger and disbelief are one step removed.  Mrs Humphrey’s book has the value that here are the voices and experiences of people still alive, still able to recount their stories and give a context to what happened.

In its way the book has done more to make me angry about what went on than the plight of my own great uncle or the stories uncovered by Lori and Norah and the many others committed to telling the story of our Canadian BHC.

But it is also a very revealing insight into how the charities and authorities tried to minimise what went on and in some cases to perpetuate the myth that it was all oranges and sunshine and that they were only doing what was best for the children.

More than once Mrs Humphrey’s was told that her work had caused hurt to those who ran the charities to which her reply was always that she knew of countless other Australians who had been at the receiving end and were also still hurting.

I know there are those who feel that the publicity around the book takes the limelight away from the experiences of our Canadian relatives but I rather think it is the reverse.  Empty Cradles exposed an awful episode in child care, opened up the debate and contributed to national apologies made by the Australian and British Governments.

All of that was a good thing, and will lead I have no doubt to an apology from the Government of Canada.  The work of those promoting the petition along with the growing number of books, exhibitions and research will continue to shine a light on all those young people sent north across the Atlantic.

In the meantime I shall finish the book and order up the DVD of the film.

*Empty Cradles,  was published in 1994. Its sales of 75,000 copies helped to fund the work of the Child Migrants Trust at a critical time when British government grants had been stopped. Empty Cradles has been dramatised as the 2011 feature film Oranges and Sunshine.

The Child Migrants Trust was established in 1987 by Margaret Humphreys CBE, OAM. It addresses the issues surrounding the deportation of children from Britain. In the post-war period, child migrants as young as three were shipped to Canada, New Zealand, the former Rhodesia and Australia, a practice that continued as late as 1970. http://www.childmigrantstrust.com/

Living on the streets ………… Manchester 1870

Some of us will in the course of family research come across the relative who was living on the streets, which will be as shocking as that other revelation that they may also have spent time in the Workhouse.

On admission, date unknown

But it is easy to gloss over the realties of being destitute, seeing it as the precursor to the story of what happened next.

And yet, those experiences are vital in helping understand the extent of the problem and the efforts of some to combat it.

Today we may be quite surprised at the absence of provision for homeless children in the twin cities of Manchester and Salford, but in 1869 there was no where to offer them safety and a degree of comfort.

All of which makes that decision by Leonard K Shaw, and his fellow teachers including Mr B. Taylor to set up a place of safety where homeless young people could come and be given a bed for the night and breakfast the following morning a hugely important one.

The Manchester and Salford Boys' and Girls' Refuge opened on January 4 1870 at 16 Quay Street off Deansgate and at first was limited to just twelve beds.

The admission book for that first year recorded that one lad aged fifteen had been “living on the streets and sleeping in Boiler Houses” while William Owen who was just eleven had been “staying in a house of ill fame” on Hardman Street and two brothers who presented themselves at the door of the Refuge were regularly “sleeping in a yard at the back of one of the worst houses in the Charter Street neighbourhood.”

The extent of the homelessness was shocking. In the first decade of its existence the Refuge had picked a thousand young people off the streets and according to the Chief Constable the number apprehended with no fixed home amounted to 1,063 between 1870-72 and while this fell away slightly during remainder of the decade it still stood at 603 in 1879.

Emma on admission to the Refuge, 1913

Nor did the problem abate, in 1886 the Refuge reported that during the previous year it had provided 4,984 meals and given a bed to 1,648 young people.

Behind each of those admissions was a story.  Thomas from Salford, had had been living on the streets for three years having been turned out of the family home by his parents while what had pushed another “on to the streets for some time had been an unkind stepfather.”

But not all of those who occupied a bed were there because of their parents.  Some had left home to find work in the city but without sufficient funds for a lodging house had been “helped with a free supper, a bed and a breakfast, and are afterwards put in the way of returning to the country or their town and sometimes helped to get to sea or to join the army.

In this way many youths have been saved from the alternative of having to spend a night on one of the brick-fields of the city, with the result perhaps of being arrested and sent to prison for "sleeping out.” 

And the risk of arrest was a real one with all its attendant horrors of a night in the cells.  That said the police increasingly used the shelter as an alternative to the lock up in preparation for an appearance in the police courts.

Emma after admission to the Refuge, 1913

Both the authorities and the charity were well aware of the risks that living on the streets posed.

On one of his nightly trips across Manchester and Salford, Leonard Shaw encountered “groups of idle vagrant boys and girls from about 15 to 18 years of age ..... on Angel Street and Charter Street, few of them can read and write, and many have been in prison.”*

The Refuge offered the chance for some at least to turn their lives around and many did just that.

Adapted from the newly published book on the work of the Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuges, published  by the Together Trust as part of the events to
commemorate the Trust’s 150th anniversary.

Location; Manchester and Salford

Pictures; courtesy of the Together Trust, https://www.togethertrust.org.uk/

* Saving the Children, Work of the Boys ‘and Girls’ Refuges, Manchester Guardian, April 12 1912







**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, https://shop.togethertrust.org.uk/     But given the current circumstances there may be a delay in getting books out in the post to people.

Stories of Empire, and a context for one British family

Sometimes you can just lose perspective when researching a family relative. I always told myself that in telling their stories I wanted to put them into the bigger picture. As intriguing as the life of my great uncle might be it is nothing unless you place him in the context of where he lived, when he lived and what was going on around him.

He was a British Home Child, and understandably his life and the difficulties of tracking down a man born in 1898 who spent his early years in institutions and then left for Canada in the May of 1914 can become so absorbing that you don’t see the wood for the trees.

Now all of us who have researched BHC are aware of the social and economic background that led well meaning organisations and individuals to sweep up children in Britain and relocate them to Canada, Australia and the other colonies of the former British Empire.

And I guess we have all come across those back in the home country with an eye to empire. For them these children were also about putting down a population in a colony still being built, who in time with family, a farm and a flag would bind these new territories to the mother country. Barnado himself is reputedly to have talked about the children he sent as “bricks for empire.”

Of course the bigger picture helps place BHC in a context. We had been sending our criminals and unwanted children to North America, the West Indies and later Australia since the 17th century while in the 1840s the Poor Law Commissioners and local land owners connived a scheme to send the unemployed across the Atlantic.

So I suppose I should have not been surprised to read about the Free Passage Scheme which at the end of the First World War offered a “Free Passage Scheme for ex-servicemen, ex-servicewomen and their dependants to emigrate to the colonies and dominions of the Empire,”* and was followed by the larger, Empire Settlement Act of 1922 to emigrate large numbers of British women as domestic servants.

Now I knew vaguely about the Empire Settlement Act, but it was her article in this month’s BBC History Magazine “Our Excess Girls” which drew me into the story. It has been written by Lucy Noakes who lectures in history at the University of Brighton and is a curtain raiser to her book
From War Service to Domestic Service: Ex-Servicewomen and the Free Passage Scheme 1919–22, OUP, 2010. It is a fascinating story and fits well with the idea of the mother country populating the outposts of Empire. There were she writes a “complex network of interlinked beliefs and policies concerning both the relationship between the metropole and the Empire, and the perceived necessity for social stability in Britain and in the dominions and colonies.” But in the case of over 4, 000 young women who had been in the services it was the opportunity for a new life often in domestic service.

And like so much in history there is a direct echo with my own family. My great aunt who had been born in the Derby Workhouse in 1902 and like my great uncle had spent her early years intuitions before being sent into service at the age of nine went across to Canada in 1925. She was one of the beneficiaries of the many schemes for the settlement of people in Canada. I guess she was part of the the program providing transportation assistance and guaranteeing standard wages and transition support for more than 22,000 domestic workers between 1919 and 1930.

Hers is a story I have yet to tell and it is one that my cousin who is her granddaughter and I have often talked about. Great aunt Dolly had planned to stay in Canada just a short while, and took only a few clothes in a suitcase. She had been encouraged to go by her brother who was my BHC. The plan was for her to meet him in British Columbia but she got no further than Ontario where she stayed, married and raised a large family.

Put their two life stories together and I begin to have something more than just a family history. Add in another uncle who spent his entire working life in Africa and great uncles who plied the oceans as ships engineers and it is the start of my family and an Empire.

Picture; the reference for my great aunt for her new life in Canada & with her husband in later life, date unknown, from the collection Jac Pember Barnum
*Lucy Noakes