Who Were the British Home Children? And Are You Descended From One?

In nineteenth century Britain, the industrial revolution roared into high gear, driven by steam power and the exploding hunger for manufactured goods. At the same time, land owners were clearing tenants from their land to raise sheep for lucrative wool market. The village and agricultural life that had been stable for centuries crumbled. Rural populations poured into polluted, overcrowded cities to sweat in the factories, often for a pittance.

Poverty's Casualties

While entrepreneurs got rich, the workers found themselves at the mercy of factory owners and ruthless economic cycles, plunging vast numbers into dreadful poverty. The resulting tide of destitute children proved a challenge to the many child rescue agencies that sprang up to help. The children ranged from packs of untamed street urchins trying to survive in alleyways to abandoned orphans to youngsters whose families simply could no longer support them due to breadwinner loss, illness, unemployment or other misfortune.

Ship The Children Overseas

Out of this dilemma rose the British child emigration schemes in which these children were sent across the Empire to start new lives and add good British stock to the colonial population. From 1869 right up to the 1959, shiploads of the children, known as Home Children were sent overseas by as many as 50 different British child care organizations or "Homes".

A Hard and Lonely New Beginning

Canada alone, needing ever more hands to work on the farm, received over 100,000 Home Children. They could be indentured as agricultural labourers and domestic servants required to stay until they reached eighteen. In return, they were supposed to receive schooling, a decent home and wages once they reached their teen years. While many found kindness and a genuine fresh start, plenty of others suffered exploitation, abuse and ridicule. They often felt so ashamed of their status as Home Children that they hid their origins from their own kids and sometimes even fabricated a totally different story about their origins. Many Home Children fled to the United States so a significant number of Americans are also descended from them.

Broken Family Ties

While today a family in trouble would receive the support it needed to stay together, early agencies would take the children away from parents, cut off all communication if the parents were deemed unsuitable, separate siblings and hurry them onto ships leaving Britain. Hence, many Home Children sent overseas lost all contact with their loved ones. Some spent the rest of their lives trying to find parents and siblings, mostly without success. So today, for the many Home Children descendants seeking their British families, there are families in Britain just as eager to find the lost branches of their own family tree. Perhaps you are one of them.

Find out more. Get your free e-book on How to Start Finding Your British Home Child Roots.
Gail Hamilton is author of The Tomorrow Country, a fast-paced historical tale of 1870s London, based on the birth of the child emigration movement.

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