Editorial: British Home Children a Canadian disaster not apologized for since
On May 24, 1906, a seven-year-old girl by the name of Mary Chorley was loaded onto the SS Dominion in Liverpool, England, along with dozens of other children, and arrived in Quebec, Canada on June 3, 1906 to live with families who purchased them to work as housekeepers in their homes or labourers on family farms.
Mary Chorley was my grandmother.
This child migration scheme was founded by Annie MacPherson in 1869 and in decades over 100,000 poor or orphaned children were sold for profit and called British Home Children through Barnardo Homes or others like them.
An agent for the Dr. Barnardo’s Homes, Alfred Owen, stated in a distribution letter that the children “have been inmates of the workhouses and have been brought out under the Authority of “The Local Government Board” for the purpose of settling in Canada.” Mary and her sisters, Annie and Bessie, were sent together on this ship.
In Liverpool, the girls lived very poorly (as many did in England at the time) with their parents near the dock area. When the girls’ mother died, and there was nobody to take care of them when their father was at work, with a broken heart he took the girls to “Children’s Aid” which promptly turned the kids over to the Barnardo Homes. . . . contd.
