The Little Immigrants: The Orphans who Came to Canada

257 Pages·2001·2.008 MB·English

by  Bagnell, K.

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T
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The Orphans
Who Came to Canada
New Edition
Kenneth Bagnell
The Dundurn Group
Toronto • Oxford
Copyright © Kenneth Bagnell, 2001
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise (except for brief passages for purposes of review) without the prior permission of
Dundurn Press. Permission to photocopy should be requested from the Canadian Copyright
Licensing Agency.
Design: Jennifer Scott
Printer: AGMV Marquis
National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data
Bagnell, Kenneth, 1934-
The little immigrants : the orphans who came to Canada
New ed.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-55022-370-5
1. Orphans--Canada--History. 2. Immigrant children--Canada--History. 3. Home children
(Canadian immigrants) 4. Canada--Emigration and immigration--History. 5. Great Britain--
Emigration and immigration--History. 6. British--Canada--History. I. Title.
FC548.I4B33 2001 305.23'086'9450971 C2001-903395-8 F1034.B33 2001
1 2 3 4 5 05 04 03 02 01
THE CANADA COUNCIL LE CONSEIL DES ARTS
FOR THE ARTS DU CANADA
SINCE 1957 DEPUIS 1957
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts
Councilfor our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the
Government of Canadathrough the Book Publishing Industry Development Programand
The Association for the Export of Canadian Books, and the Government of Ontariothrough
the Ontario Book Publishers Tax Creditprogram.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The
author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or
credit in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
Printed and bound in Canada.e
Printed on recycled paper.
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Table of Contents
Preface by Roy MacLaren 9
Introduction to the New Edition 11
Author’s Note 17
Prologue 19
One The Ladies of London 23
Two The Verdict of Andrew Doyle 37
Three Tragedy and Trial 59
Four Enter Dr. Barnardo 81
Five The Scandal of the Pious 103
Six Thomas Barnardo in Canada 123
Seven The Children 151
Eight Life Beyond the Golden Gate 175
Nine The Curtain Falls 199
Epilogue 215
Afterword 217
Notes 219
Bibliography 221
Index 231
Preface
by Roy MacLaren*
In 1980 Kenneth Bagnell wrote a remarkable book. TheLittle Immigrants
was both a lively and a reliable account of the history of the migration
of British children to Canada and elsewhere in the Empire. Child migra-
tion, promoted by the pioneering Dr. Barnardo and by a variety of church
groups, was in the 1920s discouraged and finally terminated by the British
Government, following mounting misgivings about the reported abuse
and exploitation of children on the farms and in the workshops of the
Empire. As recently as the year 2000, a committee of the British House
of Commons attempted to assess the impact on the children of their
forced migration as “surplus population”. In part, they uncovered and
recorded, as Kenneth Bagnell had done already, a not very pretty story.
Yet for some “little immigrants”, possibly a majority, their child-
hood experiences were no worse and in many instances better than in
the loveless and brutal slums of London, Liverpool or Glasgow from
whence they came. Some eventually achieved prosperity and distinc-
tion in Canada, in turn raising themselves families in which the loving
home life that they themselves had seldom or never experienced made
possible the contributions of their descendants to the development of
Canada. That is the story that Kenneth Bagnell tells so well, making
real and moving the experiences of individuals who otherwise are
recorded only in government documents as mere statistics. His account
of the “home children” is an important element in our social history,
leaving us all in his debt.
*The Hon. Roy MacLaren, P.C., served as a federal cabinet minister in the gov-
ernments of prime ministers Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chretien and in 1996, was
appointed Canada’s High Commissioner to Great Britain. He is the author of
several books including Canadians Behind Enemy Lines, 1935—1945.