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Socialist Review Index (1993–1996) | Socialist Review 181 Contents
From Socialist Review, No. 181, December 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
Empty Cradles
Margaret Humphreys
Doubleday £14.99
In 1986 a Nottinghamshire social worker uncovered a disturbing fragment of Britain’s secret history while working with adopted people trying to trace their biological relatives.
A woman attending one of her groups told Margaret Humphreys that as a child her brother had been sent to Australia on a ship with hundreds of other children. Initially Humphreys did not take this claim very seriously but when another woman approached her with a similar story she decided to investigate. She discovered that these children had been sent without their parents’ knowledge or consent, and there were hundreds of other cases dating from the 1800s to 1967.
When Humphreys contacted the agencies involved in the transportation of these children – namely the Catholic Church, the Church of England, Dr Barnardo’s, the National Children’s Home, the Salvation Army and the Fairbridge Society – she was met with a brick wall. In Australia when she tried to verify some of the more horrific incidents of abuse perpetrated mainly by the Christian Brothers, an attempt was made on her life.
It was obvious that Humphreys had opened up a can of worms that both the Australian and British authorities would have liked to have left forgotten. They, along with the voluntary agencies and church groups involved, went to great lengths to destroy or deliberately falsify documents. Throughout her investigation Humphreys was constantly bewildered as to why children as young as three years old should be transported, not only to Australia, but also to Canada and Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). Although the agencies involved were quick to point out that it ‘was important to put this migration in its proper historical context’, the reality was that children were taken from orphanages all over Britain and Ireland. Many were not actually orphans but had been left in the church’s care until their mothers found employment.
There were many reasons for this horrific treatment. The British government was eager to get rid of as many hungry mouths as possible. As victims of illegitimacy or poverty, these children were regarded as deprived and a burden to society. The authorities believed that this ‘urban flotsam’ would grow up as ‘thieves and hooligans’ and probably finish up in jail. In the 19th century it cost £12 per year to keep a child in a parish workhouse, but for a single payment of £15 these children could be sent overseas and the authorities would thus be absolved of any further financial responsibilities. This made obvious economic sense and also disposed of undesirable elements within society. The colonies, on the other hand, were desperate for people to colonise their uninhabited open spaces which otherwise, according to the Archbishop of Perth, were ‘leaving themselves exposed to the menace of the teeming millions of our neighbouring Asiatic races’.
This book exposes some of the most horrific abuses perpetrated by those from within the ‘caring professions’. It shows just how anything or anybody can be turned into commodities by capitalism. The book is marred, however, mainly by Humphreys’ mawkish style and at times comes over as a glowing profile of herself.
But Humphreys does continually ask the question, what sort of country sends its children to these conditions and what kind of country accepts them? The answer is that any country driven by questions of economics will treat its children in this way. The truth of this shines through the sentimental fog.
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