Britain plans to issue an apology Monday for child migrant programs that shipped as many as 150,000 poor British children to Canada, Australia and other former colonies over a period of three and a half centuries.
From the 1860s to 1930s, a mostly forgotten social experiment saw children removed from United Kingdom streets and workhouses and sent into servitude throughout the Commonwealth. According to the book The Little Immigrants, by writer Kenneth Bagnell, over 80,000 of these children ended up in Canada (the Canadian government puts the number at 100,000).
Although eventually more than 50 different organizations would be involved in the Home Children movement, the chief proponents included Maria Rye, who in 1869 became the first person to send children en masse to Canada: Annie MacPherson, whose involvement would out last all others, and Thomas Bernardo, who, through his Dr. Bernardo's Homes, would alone be responsible for over 30,000 children being sent to Canada, and he also gave the movement its name.
Of these children, over two-thirds were under 14 years of age. All these organisations were pious - verging on the fanatic - and firmly believed they were doing God's work (and a favour to British society) by taking children who were living on the streets, working for a subsistence in London's East End slums, or creating a burden on their impoverished families, and sending them to a country with vast agricultural potential, but severely lacking a labour force.
They were supported in their task by the governments of Great Britain and Canada, as well as local and municipal officials. To myself, as to thousands of Londoners some sixty years ago, Dr. Barnardo was a heroic figure — one of the very few who were legends in their own lifetime. There was a great brick building, which stood close to the railway line in the East End of London.
It was dingy — as were all the buildings in this slum area, but one great sign, emblazoned across the front made it stand out imperishably. The sign read: NO DESTITUTE CHILD EVER REFUSED ADMISSION. Thomas Barnardo had left Dublin in 1866 to study medicine in London. His ambition was to become a medical missionary in China. During his student days he heard of an endeavour to bring some schooling to poor boys in the slums of the East End of London. In an old donkey shed, which Costermongers, (a type of salesman) had used, he met a small ragged 10-year-old boy, who was to change his whole life. Jim Darvis took him to see how some of his friends were living: sleeping huddled up in rags underneath railway arches or any other wretched shelter they could find. Shocked by what he saw Dr. Barnardo sought help from “charitable people’, and in 1868 opened his first Mission House.
Two years later, all thoughts of going to China were abandoned. Dr. Barnardo established a Home for “waifs and strays” and found his life's work. It was from that first ‘Home’ that the idea came of taking advantage of the opportunities offered by Canada and Australia. Short of running away, the children themselves had no say in their future. Prior to being sent overseas, they would be housed, fed, and instilled with discipline and a work ethic founded on doing much the same menial jobs they were doing before being taken in. Armed with a rudimentary school education - but a substantial religious one - they would set sail by the hundreds.
Once they got off the ship at journey's end, (Pier 21 Halifax, Nova Scotia) most would never see a familiar face again, including any brothers or sisters, who would usually be split up upon arrival.
On December 27th, 1881, Dr. Barnardo purchased the deed for the Northeast quarter of Section 36 in Township 20, Range 28. Six years later the Doctor visited Russell and chose the site for a large Training Centre.
Buildings were soon constructed and the Home was opened in 1889 under the management of Mr. E. A. Struther. The boys were brought from England twice a year in groups of 30. Girls also came, but not to this facility. When the establishment was at its height the farm covered 8,000 acres, including pastureland in the Assiniboine Valley. Some 800 boys passed through the Russell Barnardo Home, about 200 lived there at one time.
After about one year's training in farm activities the Orphan was placed on a Farm where he may or may not have received an appropriate upbringing.
On the receiving end at the Farm, Farmers requesting a child would enter into a contract with the specific Home - rather than any government agency - in effect making the child an “indentured servant” until the age of 18.
The contract required the farmer to provide such basic necessities like clothing, food and shelter. In most cases, Farmers were required to pay the child money to be held in trust by him, ($1 per year was not uncommon), children were also supposed to receive as much education as possible and of course attend Church regularly.
To add insult to injury, many children – by then young adults, never received the few dollars they had been promised upon their release.
While the evidence would seem to suggest the majority of the children were at least treated humanely, abuse of the system was rampant. With little-to-no follow up, and most often isolated in remote, rural areas, the Farmers were free to treat the children as they pleased. Most worked from sunrise until dark.
Children as young as eight who had previously known nothing but life on the streets of Britain's biggest cities would be expected to milk cows and till fields. Many never saw the inside of a Church, let alone a School. When they did attend School, teachers would complain because they wore no shoes, or coats, in the dead of a Canadian winter.
Some slept in the barn or other outbuildings. Children were beaten and girls were molested. According to Bagnell's book, at least one inquest into the death of a child through neglect took place.
The children would stand out by their UK accents, and be ostracized in the community. Union organizers would attack their presence as a cheap labour source, and opposition politicians claiming Britain was dumping her future criminals into the Dominion attacked their character.
Although occasionally someone would speak up for the welfare of the children – one of the first being Ontario’s superintendent of neglected children, J. J. Kelso – their reports and recommendations would largely be ignored.
It's telling that, in the province of Nova Scotia, for example, the Home Children didn't come under any government child welfare jurisdiction, but instead that of the Department of Natural Resources.
Dr. Thomas Bernardo, whose charitable organization still exists in the UK, died in 1905 at the age of 55, and the Home Children scheme lost its biggest champion.
The Depression and World War II ended it, and by this time, policy makers and social scientists were beginning to understand that poor children were not livestock, and the Homes themselves were starting to evolve into something more resembling Trade Schools.
The Home at Russell was closed in 1908.
In the year 1925 a change in the Immigration Laws of Canada prohibited the immigration of children less than 14 years of age, if not accompanied by their parents, and so the Home Children scheme was terminated, but it continued under different rules and a different name until 1967.
Note: alrhough this is rather a long post, it just touches the serface of this major part of canadian History. It is setimated that their are over 4,000,000 decendents of these waifs living amoung us today.
Source:
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2009/11/15/child-migrants-britain.html