Uprooted: The Shipment of Poor Children to Canada, 1867-1917
Roy Parker
Abstract
Some 80,000 British children – many of them under the age of ten – were shipped from Britain to Canada by Poor Law authorities and voluntary bodies during the fifty years following Confederation in 1867. How did this come about? What were the motives and methods of the people involved in both countries? Why did it come to an end? What effects did it have on the children involved and what eventually became of them? These are the questions explored in this book, which brings together economic, political, social, medical, legal, administrative, and religious aspects of the story in Britain and Ca ... More
Some 80,000 British children – many of them under the age of ten – were shipped from Britain to Canada by Poor Law authorities and voluntary bodies during the fifty years following Confederation in 1867. How did this come about? What were the motives and methods of the people involved in both countries? Why did it come to an end? What effects did it have on the children involved and what eventually became of them? These are the questions explored in this book, which brings together economic, political, social, medical, legal, administrative, and religious aspects of the story in Britain and Canada. The author concludes with a review of evidence from more-recent survivors of child migration, discussing the lifelong effects of their experiences with the help of modern psychological insights. The book features the relatives and descendants, both in Britain and Canada, of the children around whom this study revolves.
Keywords:
British children,
Poor Law authorities,
voluntary bodies,
Canadian Confederation,
economic issues,
political issues,
social issues,
medical issues,
legal issues,
administrative issues
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2010 |
Print ISBN-13: 9781847420145 |
| Published to Policy Press Scholarship Online: March 2012 |
DOI:10.1332/policypress/9781847420145.001.0001 |
