British Home Children and Barnardo's Boys - A personal Tale

Immigration is always in the news, it seems. Always. Once upon a time, immigration into the USA and Canada was mostly by white people. These people did not always come willingly, and were often not treated well once here. In the USA, check out the 'No Irish Need Apply' statements from the 1800's, for one example. For an example of harsh working conditions, how's about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory? These white immigrants often came from the same impoverished, abusive and horrible situations modern immigrants nowadays leave in their home countries to try for a better place here. And often, the places they found here weren't that much better than those they had left, at least at first.

British Home Children working in the fields. From the BBC story discussed below.

I recently ran across an article about a box of glass negatives of photos of 'British Home' children - impoverished, homeless, orphaned and abandoned children, who were sent overseas to a 'better life' in Canada. The box of negatives was recently found in a Scottish auction house in Glasgow and was bought by the charity Home Children Canada. The pictures in the box are of young boys who 'trained' to become agricultural workers on a farm in Scotland before being sent to Canada to work on a farm there.

Thousands of orphaned and poor children were sent to fill the labour shortages overseas during the late Victorian era. Although the incentives were to give these young children a better life, the reality was very different. Children were unpaid and had no choice in their move. They were separated from family, and many were abused or neglected by those that took them in as cheap labour.

(From the BBC article linked above)

Over 100,000 children were sent overseas to Canada in the late 1800s and early to mid 1900s from Britain several charities, including the Barnardo's charity in England. Of course the children might die before they were sent overseas.

Anyway, my great-grandfather was one of those children. He was a 'Barnardo's Boy'. When Great-grandpa was about 11-13 (around 1900) he was thrown out of his home in a town near London. He was apparently old enough to be on his own. He and his family were poor before he was thrown out, after, he was utterly destitute. He lived for a couple of years by begging on the streets of London, often sleeping in the London train stations (helping workers clean them and more) and working on the trains.

Eventually he was captured and given to the Barnardo's charity. They sent him to Canada to become an agricultural worker, essentially, a slave on a farm. And slave he was. He was sometimes allowed to sleep in the hay in the barn with the animals, at other times he slept in the fields. He was beaten and starved. He ran away as soon as he could. He was caught and punished several times before he finally escaped for good. He was in his late teens by the time he escaped. He made his way into the nearest big city and by chance met up with a group of traveling workers, electricians.

The electricians were part of the huge crew that got electricity and electrical lines set up to run across the entire width of Canada. Great-grandpa immediately glommed onto the electricians, earning their trust and help by doing all kinds of small jobs for them - fetching tools, cleaning things, making meals, carrying stuff, helping them up and down the poles and so on and just being there. He was allowed, by them, to travel with them as they moved across Canada laying the electric lines. By the time they reached western Canada a few years later later, he had learned the trade and was an electrician, going up the poles himself, running the lines, working, working, working, but at a job he wanted and loved and one in which he was not treated as a slave. He worked as an electrician all his life, and much of his life was good. Obviously, I am very grateful that he was not one of the children who died from the abuse they suffered, or starvation. I am not surprised, because of my Great-grandpa's story, to learn that those children existed and suffered so much.

So, thanks for reading a little bit of family history and here's the open thread - and remember, everything is interesting if you dive deep enough, so tell us about where you're diving!