Yesterday was British Home Child Day in Canada, so it was timely that Findmypast announced on Friday that it had added three new Home Children record sets to its existing collection. With emigration reports, lodgings registers and newspaper cuttings, there are a total of 2,213 new images to explore.
Between 1869 and 1948, the British government sent more than 100,000 children of all ages to Canada. Care homes, the church, local authorities and philanthropic organizations rallied behind the scheme, whereby children as young as two years old were sent to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa as a way of solving England’s “juvenile vagrancy” problem.
Source: Library and Archives Canada.
Here are the new record sets:
Colonial Office, Emigration to Canada Enclosures to Reports
The 1,888 transcriptions and images of reports from the Canadian Colonial Office document children who emigrated from Britain to Canada between 1887 and 1892.
Register of Boys Arrived in Toronto House of Industry
These 250 register entries document boys and men who the Toronto House of Industry received between 1858 and 1864. The Toronto House of Industry was a lodging house that catered to Toronto’s poor and was part of the Home Children scheme in the 19th century.
News Cuttings of Dr. Barnardo
Findmypast also published a collection of browse-only newspaper clippings about the life and work of Dr. Barnado. Missionary Thomas John Barnardo was born in Dublin in 1845. From the creation of the first Barnardo’s children’s home in 1867 to his death in 1905, almost 60,000 children had passed through his various institutions.
