Letters from Canada

Most of the previous chapters have included some details of what happened to certain children. Without repeating these examples it is time to assemble some of the other evidence about what happened to individual children and to draw some conclusions. It must be emphasised, however, that hard evidence is meagre, and much of what there is concerns cases that caused disquiet. As a result it often reflects the worst side of child emigration. Nonetheless, it is likely that for every child about whom such evidence still exists there were others whose circumstances were similar but which were ignored or unknown. Furthermore, the children, their parents, relatives or friends wrote few letters, many of which were lost or destroyed. We start this chapter by looking at extracts from a selection of children’s letters that did survive. We cannot know how representative they are, but despite the passage of the years, many do foreshadow what the emigrated children of a later generation have begun to disclose, as will be apparent in chapter 15. The letters that are referred to first are drawn from the archive of the Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Welfare Society (MSBG, but now the Together Trust), not because they are substantially different from what is to be found in other collections but because they were more readily accessible.

These letters reveal recurring themes. The most frequent is the search for information, particularly that concerning the whereabouts of mothers (sometimes fathers), brothers, sisters or friends, especially those with whom the children had lived in the Manchester Homes or who had accompanied them on their journey to Canada. This quest is reflected in what is said about the children in many of the reports of the Society's visitors and in those submitted by the Canadian government officers who inspected children from the Poor Law. The desire to locate relatives and friends and to hear from or about them was present even when the children expressed themselves content with their placement and with having come to Canada. For instance, ER (3215, 1899) wrote to Leonard Shaw to tell him that she has ‘a good place – eggs and milk’, but that she was anxious to have her brother's address.