Early this morning, the British Isles Family History Society (BIFHSGO) launched the Father Hudson’s Photos database, containing 146 photos of homeless English children who were brought to Ontario between 1908 and 1936.
Fr. Hudson, who was a parish priest in Coleshill, near Birmingham, England, established a home for Catholic boys (and later also girls) at 1153 Wellington Street in Ottawa. The building was known as St. George’s Home, and it is still in use today as part of the Queen of the Most Holy Rosary Parish.
The photos and name indexes database is the sixth to be added to the Home Children section on BIFHSGO’s website.
From 1869 to 1948, more than 100,000 poverty-stricken British children were sent to Canada to start a new life amid strangers. Some of the children ended up being used as indentured farm workers and domestics. These children, known as the British Home Children, were sent to Canada by more than 50 organizations, including Barnardo’s, The Salvation Army, Quarrier’s and Fairbridge.
BIFHSGO has placed special emphasis on Canada’s home children because of the society’s accessibility to the ship, military and federal government records at Library and Archives Canada and to the records of the Family History Center of Ottawa. About 70 percent of the home children were settled in Ontario.
The society’s role in Canada’s home children story is to create databases or indexes and to encourage its members/volunteers to give public lectures and to publish articles about home children in its quarterly journal and other publications.
