Who Cares? Welfare and Consent to Child Emigration from England to Canada, 1870–1918

Abstract

From the 1870's, children in the care of charities or state provided institutions, including workhouses and industrial schools, were subject to the practice of emigration to Canada, separating them from their parents and wider family. This was achieved ostensibly to secure the child's welfare, and provide opportunities in Canada beyond the poverty of the industrialising cities of the north of England. Using original archive material, this article examines the legal rights of parents of children identified for emigration, and how charities and state institutions obtained the authority to emigrate children. The lack of a clear basis for assessing child welfare led organisations to consider a broad range of moralistic considerations regarding the characterisation of parents and the child's circumstances in deciding whether a child should be emigrated. Despite these negative perceptions, it will be demonstrated that some parents exercised considerable agency in seeking to resist emigration of a child, and in attempting to maintain the familial relationship.

Emigration State: Race, Citizenship and Settler Imperialism in Modern British History, c. 1850–1972

“…While central government in Whitehall tended to stay out of the picture in the nineteenth century, by the 1890s laws provided a framework for deciding on who had custody in the case of unaccompanied child emigration (Lamont et al., 2020). These reforms grew up in response to the growth of industrial schools and philanthropic organizations which sent out children to the settler colonies, most prominently Barnardo's (Boucher, 2014; Ch.…”

Reintegrating agency, regulation and the economy into histories of child emigration from North West England to Canada, 1860–1930

“…(Murdoch, 2006, p. 22). Ultimately, this language functioned as a recognised apparatus through which discretion for emigration could be ceded to the local institution with care for the child, in loco parentis, counter‐balanced by the approval of the Home Secretary (Lamont et al, 2020).…”

“…Although the sums of money involved tended to be relatively modest, this analysis has significantly reinforced the status of children as economic units within the emigration system (a status often difficult to fully reconcile with institutions' rhetoric of rescue). In doing so, it makes a contribution the history of children and childhood and the shift to try and appreciate the status and experience of children as economic actors, and the process of emigration as an important part of the wider history of child protection and development of state intervention in the family (Lamont, Moss, & Wildman, 2020).…”