thumb|right|Boy ploughing at Dr Barnardo's Industrial Farm, Russell, [[Manitoba, 1900. In 2010, the photo was reproduced on a Canadian postage stamp commemorating Home Children emigration.]]

Home Children was the child migration scheme under which more than 100,000 children were sent from the United Kingdom to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Rhodesia and South Africa. The programme was largely discontinued in Canada in the 1930s but not entirely terminated in Australia until the 1970s. A similar systems called the Orphan Train run by churches brought poor children from New York City and Eastern cities crowded to farms and ranches in the Midwest and western United States.

Research beginning in the 1980s exposed abuse and hardships of the relocated children. Australia apologised in 2009 for its involvement in the scheme. In February 2010, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a formal apology to the families of children who suffered. Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney stated in 2009 that Canada would not apologise to child migrants, preferring to "recognize that sad period" in other ways. In the 18th century, labour shortages in the overseas colonies also encouraged the transportation of children for work in the Americas, and large numbers of children were forced to migrate, most of them from Scotland. This practice continued until it was exposed in 1757, following a civil action against Aberdeen merchants and magistrates for their involvement in the trade.

Philanthropic efforts

The Children's Friend Society was founded in London in 1830 as "The Society for the Suppression of Juvenile Vagrancy through the reformation and emigration of children." In 1832, the first group of children was sent to the Cape Colony in South Africa and the Swan River Colony in Australia, and in August 1833, 230 children were shipped to Toronto and New Brunswick in Canada. The building was previously used by the Sisters of Mercy as a cholera hospital. It opened in 1868 and could hold up to two hundred children. She later became convinced that the real solution for these children lay in emigration to a country of opportunity and started an emigration fund. MacPherson began relocating children in 1870, In the first year of the fund's operation, 500 children, trained in the London homes, were shipped to Canada. Rye, who had been placing women emigrants in Canada since 1867, opened her Receiving Home at Niagara-on-the-Lake in 1869, and by the turn of the century had settled some 5,000 children, mostly girls, in Ontario. According to the British House of Commons Child Migrant's Trust Report, "it is estimated that some 150,000 children were dispatched over a period of 350 years—the earliest recorded child migrants left Britain for the Virginia Colony in 1618, and the process did not finally end until the late 1960s." It was widely believed by contemporaries that all of these children were orphans, but it is now known that most (88%) had living parents, some of whom had no idea of the fate of their children after they were left in children's homes, and some were led to believe that their children had been adopted somewhere in Britain.

Child emigration was largely suspended for economic reasons during the Great Depression of the 1930s, but was not completely terminated until the 1970s.

As they were compulsorily shipped out of Britain, many of the children were deceived into believing their parents were dead, and that a more abundant life awaited them. Some were exploited as cheap agricultural labour, or denied proper shelter and education. It was common for Home Children to run away, sometimes finding a caring family or better working conditions.

The emigration schemes were not without their critics, and there were many rumours of ill-treatment of the children by their employers and of profiteering by the organisers of the schemes, particularly Maria Rye. In 1874 The London Board of Governors decided to send a representative, named Andrew Doyle, to Canada to visit the homes and the children to see how they were faring. He said that the attitude of the women in grouping together children from the workhouses, who he said were mostly of good reputation, with street children, whom he considered mostly thieves, was naive and had caused nothing but trouble in Canada.

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The House of Commons of Canada subsequently set up a select committee to examine Doyle's findings and there was much controversy generated by his report in Britain, but the schemes continued with some changes and were copied in other countries of the British Empire.

Notable individuals who were Home Children

Noted Home Children include:

  • Augustus Bridle (1868–1952), journalist
  • Madge Gill (1882–1961), artist
  • Eliza Showell (1895–1978), domestic worker

Exposure and apologies

In 1987 British social worker Margaret Humphreys carried out an investigation leading to the exposure of the child migration scheme and the establishment of the Child Migrants Trust, with the aim of reuniting parents and children. Full details of the scheme only emerged as late as 1998 during a parliamentary inquiry in Britain, which found that many migrant children were subjected to systematic abuse in religious schools in Australia, New Zealand and other countries.

In 1994 Humphreys published a book concerning her research entitled Empty Cradles.

In 2010, this book detailing Humphreys' work, political obstacles, and threats on her life along with the crimes and abuse done to thousands of children by government and religious officials was depicted in the film Oranges and Sunshine.

Australia

In Australia, Child Migrant children are the 7,000 children who migrated to Australia under assisted child migration schemes and form part of a larger group known as the Forgotten Australians; a term the Australian Senate has used to describe the estimated 500,000 children who were brought up in orphanages, children's homes, institutions, or foster care in Australia, up until the early 1990s.

At the urging of the Care Leavers Australia Network, the Senate Community Affairs References Committee published in August 2001 Lost Innocents: Righting the Record—Report on child migration and followed this in August 2004 with the Forgotten Australians report. Both concluded with a number of recommendations, one of which was a call for a national apology. Instead, Prime Minister of Australia Kevin Rudd made an apology on 16 November 2009. The Australian government had contacted about 400 British child migrants for advice on how the apology should be delivered. Australia's Roman Catholic Church had publicly apologised in 2001 to British and Maltese child migrants who suffered abuse including rape, whippings, and slave labour in religious institutions.

The Governor General of Canada proclaimed 2010 the "Year of the British Home Child" and, on 1 September 2010, Canada Post released a commemorative stamp to honour those who were sent to Canada.

United Kingdom

thumb|thumbtime=2:48|Apology from Prime Minister Gordon Brown on 23 February 2010

Prime Minister Gordon Brown read, on 23 February 2010, an apology for the "shameful" child resettlement programme. He announced a £6&nbsp;million fund designed to compensate the families affected by the "misguided" programme.

In 2020, it was reported that the Prince's Trust was providing funds to allow people sent as children from the UK to Australia by the Fairbridge Society to make claims for compensation for sexual and physical abuse. While Australia had a national redress scheme for people sexually abused as children in institutions, those sent by the Fairbridge Society were not eligible, as the Society no longer existed. The Prince's Trust had previously been criticised for "covering its backside" by denying it had knowledge of abuse suffered by Fairbridge Society child migrants.

Today

Home Children Canada claimed in 2011 that one in ten Canadians is a descendant of a home child. The British government's Family Restoration Fund has arranged or reimbursed travel for more than a thousand child emigrants reuniting with their families. It is administered by the Child Migrants Trust and funded by the Department of Health and Social Care.

Media

  • Heaven on Earth, 1987 television film
  • The Leaving of Liverpool: 1992 television mini-series
  • Canadian folksinger Tim Harrison released a song called 'Home Boys' in 2003
  • Oranges and Sunshine: 2010 drama film
  • Singer/songwriter Kelly Irene Chase released the song "Suitcase Full of Lies" in 2021 to accompany the History Detective Podcast Season 2 Episode 6: Child Migrants to Australia After WWII.
  • Season 4, Episode 1 of the British television series Call the Midwife features a family of neglected children who are sent to Australia under the Child Migrant Programme. In the 2018 Christmas Special the series addresses the treatment that children experienced as part of the Child Migrant Programme.
  • Season 1, Episode 10 (entitled ‘Child's Play) and Season 12, Episode 11 (entitled ‘Annabella Cinderella’) of the Canadian television series Murdoch Mysteries, are about home children.
  • The British-Australian television series Ten Pound Poms follows Kate Thorne (Michelle Keegan) fighting to reclaim her son, who was taken from her in England and sent to Australia for adoption without her consent. Introduced in Season 1, her struggle is further explored in Season 2, highlighting the lack of legal rights for mothers in such cases.

See also

References

Notes

Bibliography and further reading

  • Bagnell, Kenneth, and Tabitha de Bruin. "British Home Children in Canada" The Canadian Encyclopedia (2025) online
  • Berry, Liz. The Home Child (Chatto & Windus, 2023) .
  • Boucher, Ellen. Empire's Children: Child Emigration, Welfare, and the Decline of the British World, 1869–1967 (2016) .
  • Brazeau, Susan. They were but children: The immigration of British home children to Canada. Journal of Integrated Studies. https://jis.athabascau.ca/index.php/jis/article/view/139/. (December 2014).
  • Coldrey, Barry. "'A charity which has outlived its usefulness': the last phase of Catholic child migration, 1947–56." History of Education 25.4 (1996): 373–386. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0046760960250406
  • Doyle-Wood, Stan [2011]. A Trace of Genocide: https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/31737/1/Doyle-Wood_Stanley_S_201109_PhD_thesis.pdf
  • Oschefski, Lori. Bleating of the Lambs - Canada's British Home Children (Rose Printing, 2015)
  • Sherington, Geoffrey. "Contrasting narratives in the history of twentieth-century British child migration to Australia: An interpretive essay." History Australia 9.2 (2012): 27–47.
  • Swain, Shurlee and Margot Hillel, eds. Child, Nation, Race and Empire: Child Rescue Discourse, England, Canada and Australia, 1850–1915 (2010). review

Primary sources

  • Harrison, Phyllis. The Home children : their personal stories (1979) for Canada. online
  • https://www.homechildrencanada.com
  • Facebook: Home Children Canada Research Group
  • British Home Child Group International
  • British Child Emigration Scheme to Canada
  • Site dedicated to the one million British Home Children Descendants
  • Ontario Heritage Foundation plaque and background information
  • Home Children (1869–1930) Search Database, Library and Archives Canada.
  • Adoption & Forgotten Australians
  • The Golden Bridge, an online exhibition created by the Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services that tells the story of child migration to Canada from Scotland.
  • British Parliament Health Committee Report, July 1998
  • Child Migration – Legislative Provisions British Parliamentary Report Appendix
  • Inside: Life Inside Children's Homes and Institutions, National Museum of Australia
  • Inside: Life Inside Children's Homes and Institutions exhibition blog, National Museum of Australia
  • Forgotten Australians: Our history – Australian Government website which includes oral histories, resources and photographs
  • List of Child Migrant sent to Australia – History
  • Child Migrants Trust

Films

  • The Leaving of Liverpool (1992) Australian film regarding UK children shipped to Australia following World War 2
  • Oranges and Sunshine (2010) British-Australian co-production based on Margaret Humphreys' story.