Are You Descended From a British Home Child? Filling the Gap in Your Family Tree
If you have just become interested in researching your family history and have found an unexplained gap in your family tree, there may be a simple reason.
Perhaps you are descended from one of the British Home Children who were sent overseas to find new lives between the years 1869 and 1940.
Who were British Home Children? These children were the victims of the appalling poverty that resulted from the social upheavals of the industrial revolution transforming Britain in the nineteenth century.
Displaced rural populations flooded into overcrowded cities to work in the factories, often encountering misery, sickness and unemployment.
Conditions were so bad that, in parts of London and Sheffield, the average life expectancy was only twenty years.
The problem was what to do with the waves of abandoned, orphaned and destitute children with no one to take them in.
Child Emigration Movement Soon a number of child rescue organizations appeared, such as the Barnardo Homes whose motto was ""No destitute child ever refused admission.
" Since they could not cope with the numbers, they came up with the scheme of sending these children to Canada, Australia and other parts of the Empire for a fresh start and to add British blood to the population.
Very young children were offered for adoption.
Older children were indentured until the age of eighteen, the boys as farm labour, the girls as domestic servants.
In return, they were supposed to receive a home, some schooling and wages when they reached fourteen.
No Wonder You Don't Know While many found kindness and care, far too many others suffered abuse and exploitation.
They slaved, morning to night, on remote, lonely farms hungry for extra labour.
Their accents, funny clothes and stigma as unwanted cast-offs, brought on ridicule and sometimes ostracism to the point where, as soon as they became adults, they hid their personal history as Home Children, never telling their own families and sometimes even making up a completely different tale about their origins.
Or they considered their past so unimportant they never bothered to mention it.
They died with their story untold.
A Fresh Direction For Your Search So if you've always wondered why Great Aunt Sally never said a word about where she came from or why there's a funny old tin trunk in the attic with initials stenciled on it, these could be clues to a British Home Child past and a new direction to search for a tribe of British relatives you didn't know you had.
Good luck and good hunting.
Perhaps you are descended from one of the British Home Children who were sent overseas to find new lives between the years 1869 and 1940.
Who were British Home Children? These children were the victims of the appalling poverty that resulted from the social upheavals of the industrial revolution transforming Britain in the nineteenth century.
Displaced rural populations flooded into overcrowded cities to work in the factories, often encountering misery, sickness and unemployment.
Conditions were so bad that, in parts of London and Sheffield, the average life expectancy was only twenty years.
The problem was what to do with the waves of abandoned, orphaned and destitute children with no one to take them in.
Child Emigration Movement Soon a number of child rescue organizations appeared, such as the Barnardo Homes whose motto was ""No destitute child ever refused admission.
" Since they could not cope with the numbers, they came up with the scheme of sending these children to Canada, Australia and other parts of the Empire for a fresh start and to add British blood to the population.
Very young children were offered for adoption.
Older children were indentured until the age of eighteen, the boys as farm labour, the girls as domestic servants.
In return, they were supposed to receive a home, some schooling and wages when they reached fourteen.
No Wonder You Don't Know While many found kindness and care, far too many others suffered abuse and exploitation.
They slaved, morning to night, on remote, lonely farms hungry for extra labour.
Their accents, funny clothes and stigma as unwanted cast-offs, brought on ridicule and sometimes ostracism to the point where, as soon as they became adults, they hid their personal history as Home Children, never telling their own families and sometimes even making up a completely different tale about their origins.
Or they considered their past so unimportant they never bothered to mention it.
They died with their story untold.
A Fresh Direction For Your Search So if you've always wondered why Great Aunt Sally never said a word about where she came from or why there's a funny old tin trunk in the attic with initials stenciled on it, these could be clues to a British Home Child past and a new direction to search for a tribe of British relatives you didn't know you had.
Good luck and good hunting.