Fairbridge: Empire and Child Migration: Empire and Child Migration (Woburn Education Series)

This item is a special order that could take a long time to obtain. Description Details Customer Reviews In the half-century after approximately 5, children were sent from Britain to Australia, Canada and Rhodesia under the auspices of the Child Emigration Society, established by the South African-born Kingsley Fairbridge in The Fairbridge Society's 'child emigration' scheme became the best known and most celebrated of the twentieth-century juvenile migration schemes from Britain to the Imperial Dominions.

This study investigates the motives for the establishment of the Fairbridge child migration scheme, examines its history in Australia and Canada, and outlines the experiences of many of the former child migrants. The book is based upon extensive research in the PRO and government archives in Australia and Canada as well as archives of the Fairbridge Society in England, Western Australia and New South Wales, plus surviving records of the Society in British Columbia and on interviews with former Fairbridge children.

This detailed and scholarly examination places such a significant scheme as Fairbridge's clearly in its historical context. Oral history, interviews and photographs complement the documentary research.

Fairbridge: Empire and Child Migration - Geoffrey Sherington, Chris Jeffery - Google Книги

Merlene Fawdry, The Little Mongrel: Alan Gill, Orphans of the Empire: Frank Golding, An Orphan's Escape: David Hill, The Forgotten Children: Robert Hirst, One Man's Story: Surviving a Childhood of Abuse: Howard C Jones, Orphanage Survivors: Ivor A Knight, Out of Darkness: Lionel Pearce, Feathers of the Snow Angel: Joanna Penglase, Orphans of the Living. Peter Read, Tripping Over Feathers: Kate Shayler, A Tuesday Thing: Geoffrey Sherington and Chris Jeffery, Fairbridge: Finally, the article concludes by identifying further important comparative questions that could be explored in relation to these schemes.

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In both sociology and anthropology, moral meanings articulated by social actors have, as James Laidlaw: Beyond superficial moral meanings, it has been claimed, lie the genuine motive-forces of social life whether power, capital, the pursuit of interests or the outworking of inherent cognitive structures. This article, however, follows the argument advanced both by cultural sociologists and those working in the anthropology of ethics that the content and practice of articulating moral meanings is not reducible to other social factors and exerts its own relative autonomy over the conduct of social life Thus, i the ase of Ale a de s , 0 concept of the binary code of the civil sphere, moral distinctions between social actors who are shown to be credible or untrustworthy in terms of sacred and profane traits of civil life can play an influential role in the operations of public life.

In contrast to concepts of moral life that situate it in some prior, pre-social state, such as moral intuitionism, the moral is therefore here understood in terms of its articulation through social practices. The moral is thus inseparably bound to social process and to structures of cultural meaning that render such moral articulations and performances meaningful.

The performance of moral meaning is a practice with social ends. It is undertaken in specific contexts i hi h a tio s eed to e e de ed ea i gful a d legiti ate eithe to o e s self o to suppo ti e, indifferent or critical others Moral meanings categorise persons and actions They establish who is seen as acting within the civic and moral structure on which social order rests, as well as who or what constitutes a profane and polluting threat to it. They become the symbolic basis on which a sense of shared moral solidarity may be constructed and experienced.

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Moral meanings justify the legitimacy of particular social acts, including their defence in the face of criticism and censure. They give grounds on which behaviours that might normally be considered intrusive, harmful or uncivil for example, in the context of welfare interventions, war or criminal punishment can be rendered meaningful and acceptable Internalised, they become the medium through which the sense of being an ethical subject is constructed Through public articulation, they provide a symbolic means of assuring the trustworthiness of particular social bonds37 and, in some cases, form the basis of charismatic authority Such performances of moral meaning do not determine social life, for they are as vulnerable to different forms of failure as they are capable of exerting social influence.

As with Alexander a d Mast s o ept of fusio ith ultu all pe fo ed ea i gs, so the su ess 32 Alexander, Thus, although moral meanings may be articulated for social ends i.

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This understanding of the performance of moral meaning draws attention both to the content of those meanings and the situations in which such performances take place. For the child welfare schemes discussed in this article, these moral meanings were, to some degree, articulated in micro- level interactions between adults and children in the delivery of these schemes As the quotation from Kingsley Fairbridge at the start of this article illustrates, those leading these schemes sometimes aspired to weave a particular moral sensibility through the everyday experiences of hild e th ough all thei o k a d pla.

The particular moral frame discussed in this article was, however, made more explicit in three kinds of public communication in relation to these schemes One context for this was media produced by organizations delivering these schemes to create a sense of moral solidarity amongst those who might support them particularly through making financial donations These took the form of annual reports, books and magazines including magazines aimed at other child readers43 and, in the case of Thomas Barnardo, the sale of photographs depicting poor children before and after redemptive intervention into their lives Another was public communication by those associated with these schemes whether speeches, letters to newspapers, articles or submissions to public bodies that sought to give moral accounts of 39 See, e.

This experience of immediacy can, however, be threatened by the perception that images of suffering are inauthentic see Koven The third was external media coverage of these schemes that repeated moral claims made by them as a wider gesture of public moral solidarity, or public communication that reproduced this moral frame through giving an account of contemporary social conditions The social ends to which these moral meanings were articulated were important to the on-going delivery of these schemes.

As will be discussed in more detail later in the article, these schemes often operated on the basis of limited budgets, dependent on insecure or limited sources of private donations and public funding. As a consequence, drawing people into active support of these initiatives through creating a sense of their social and moral worth was an essential part of their public communication about their work, even for organizations such as Quarriers opposed on religious grounds to conducting formal public appeals.

Moral justifications also needed to be made in relation to these schemes in the face of different kinds of countervailing moral claim against them. In the mid to late nineteenth-century, for example, child rescue work sought to justify itself against claims of the sanctity of the home and of parental rights particular those of the father over the child Oppositio to i te e tio s i to the p i a of the hild s life i the ho e as appa e t, fo example, in assumptions and counter-arguments made against the development of child protection organizations and legislation. For example, when a pioneering figure in the English child protection movement wrote in to Lord Shaftesbury to enlist his support, Shaftesbury replied that whilst he e og ised that the a use of the hild i the ho e as a se ious p o le , it as of so p i ate, internal and domestic a character as to be e o d ea h of legislatio Another source of moral objection to those schemes constructed their interventions as socially destructive either because they rewarded morally irresponsible parents by removing the responsibility of care of their children from them or by obstructing the natural processes through which excess population would be controlled through hunger or disease A third was that the schemes were not in the best interests of the child, either because separation from their family or local community caused lasting harm or because the new environments into which they were being placed were unsuitable, poorly supervised and characterised by poor levels of nutrition and care Across these different forms of public communication, reference was made to a common moral frame structured around the symbolic elements of the vulnerable but redeemable child, the polluting environment and the new environment in which the hild s moral and civic redemption could be achieved.

These elements functioned within broader humanitarian assumptions that interventions should be made i to hild e s li es to elie e thei suffe i g But these humanitarian sentiments were generally refracted through the moral frame of redeeming the child for the sake of the nation As a consequence, claims that these schemes provided material aid to these children in terms of better food, clothing and housing were made alongside claims that these interventions ould ot o l sa e hild e s odies, ut thei i i , o al and spiritual lives as well The 49 Crenson, Advocates of the child protection movement argued that it was a Ch istia hu a ita ia espo se to hild e s suffe i g i oppositio to se ula , Malthusia a gu e ts for non-intervention into social suffering as a means of population control Behlmer, On the broader roots of this humanitarian frame in Victorian society, see Roberts It was to prepare them, as Our Waifs and Strays magazine put it, to be useful itize s hile o ea th, a d, so e da , as hea e l itize s i God s ete al ki gdo A central assumption within this moral frame was that there were particular kinds of children, prey to physical suffering and moral corruption, who were capable of some form of redemption if a constructive intervention were made into their lives.

Such interventions were commonly conceived of not simply as acts of individual transformation but as a wider public good. As the reformer, Florence Davenport Hill Fo thei e ou age e t e should add that the o k of e lai i g depe de t a d delinquent children, though slow and arduous, is hopeful.

We trust that an age which has dis o e ed the g eat alue of aste i a depa t e ts of hu a i dust … may devote its energies to organising different methods of training its waste humanity into good citizenship. For we do not believe that our great Empire has yet touched the limits of her resources, or that she will ever become unable to support her vast and growing family, if only she will bring up its members to be capable and self-depe de t.

The same notion of child welfare interventions as a public national good stretched across different countries and types of scheme. The Australian child rescue leader George Ardill claimed that neglected children in both white and Aboriginal communities in Australia could be o side ed the raw material for the making of good citizens and the uildi g up of a e atio The removal of indigenous children from their families a d o u ities as justified i te s of sa i g the fo a a is a d sa age 55 See, e.

On the gendered and classed nature of this training see, e. Native residential education in the United States was for example, in the words of the Indian Board of Commissioners, designed to share the glories of a modern education ith the , e ighted hild e of the ed e of ou ou t , that the a sha e its benefits a d speedil e e ge f o the ig o a e of e tu ies In the context of wider interests in the processes of social, cultural and moral evolution62, such interventions into the lives were understood as part of a civilizing process that was necessary to ensure that indigenous children had some form of stake in the modern world.

Without this, they would inevitably suffer the fate of indigenous peoples who had no place in the moral, social and economic order of modern society — extinction through conflict, disease or starvation Notions of the civilizing effects of these child welfare s he es e e ot, ho e e , li ited to i dige ous hild e.

The idel used i age of the st eet a a , fo e a ple, o st u ted hild e li i g a d su sisti g o the street as savages comparable to those of heathen lands British 59 Adams and Jacobs Visual codes drawn from physiognomic photography similarly emphasised the ild, u - hite ed o ditio of su h hild e The re-location of children through migration schemes, assimilatory policies and institutions of corrective confinement was justified, however, not simply on the basis of the wider public good but because particular kinds of children were seen as being capable of redemption if placed in the right environment.

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This involved a symbolic positioning of children that both resisted deterministic assu ptio s, asso iated ith euge i s, that a hild s o al ha a te as i et ie a l shaped heredity and the liberal assumption that children should take personal responsibility for their social condition as much as adults Between these positions, this moral frame constructed particular kinds of children as vulnerable, dependent and in need of care, whilst also being capable of change.

See also Behlmer, I B itai , fo example, children who were permanently housed in residential institutions were seen as being at risk from the polluti g effe ts of asuals o i s a d outs , that is, hild e ho e e pla ed te po a il i those i stitutio s poo fa ilies a d ho e e take a k he those fa ilies situations allowed it. By being exposed periodically to the polluting environment of the slums and street life, su h asuals e e depi ted as sou es of o al a d ph si al disease to those hild e protected from such evils by full-time institutional care.

Florence Davenport Hill, for example, la e ted the polluti g effe ts of su h asual hild e ho pouring through and contaminating thei o ds a d deeds, as ell as the ph si al diseases the i po t , tai ted the fully institutionalised children with whom they came into contact Similar distinctions between redeemable and irredeemable children were also made, in various ways, in relation to non-white populations. As Kim Cary Warren Native American education, through the native boarding schools, was premised on the aim of the assimilation of native American children into American society.

Education for African- American children operated on segregationist principles that emphasised racial separation over assimilation. Underpinning these different approaches were the assumptions that native American children were capable of a form of civic redemption in ways that African-American children were not.

Similar symbolic distinctions about which racial groups were considered redeemable or not operated in Australia. In the early phase of removal of Aboriginal children in Australia, the emphasis as pla ed o the es ue a d ede ptio of i ed- lood hild e , hose deg ee of Eu opea 71 Murdoch, See also similar points and language used by Samuel Wolfenstein Crenson, B o t ast, full- lood A o igi al adults a d hild e e e see as ei g a alogous to Af i a -Americans in the United States, in the sense that no redemptive intervention could be expected to be fruitful In other contexts, the distinction between redeemable and irredeemable was not drawn between different kinds of children, but between adults and children.

When an American Commissioner for I dia Affai s ote that ou ai hope lies ith the outhful ge e atio s ho are still measurably plasti , he efle ted a ide disti tio ade et ee adults e e too o p o ised o oke down by the polluting environments in which they lived and their children whose malformation had not yet run so deep as to place them beyond hope Whether particular kinds of children were capable of redemption or not was also publicly contested. In late nineteenth century Canada, for example, the claims of British-based organizations that their child migrants could help to build up the emerging Canadian nation were challenged by counter- claims that these child migrants were irretrievably polluted and that they threatened to contaminate Canadian civil life with both the physical diseases and the moral vices of the British underclasses.

Where more grudging acceptance of British child migrants was evident, this could still be framed in terms of their potentially polluting traits, as an article in a Canadian journal in put it: Ce tai l , adult paupe s a e ot desi able on any grounds [as immigrants to Canada]. As regards pauper children, the case is somewhat different. So long as their constitutions are not hopelessly broken, their moral natures black at the core, and their blood not poisoned 72 See Human Rights and Equality Commission, , 2: But we all know that very many, if not the majority of these pauper children, carry with them inherited tendencies both physical and moral which no training, however careful, can eradicate and which may do more harm to the community receiving them than good to the individuals received.

Not a few of these imported paupers have turned out to be veritable plague spots in the physical and moral life of the community. We have already so much of the evil element among us that we cannot afford to receive a very much larger i flue e of ad lood. If such redemptive acts were not undertaken, such children were seen as at risk of being so irretrievably tainted by their morally polluted social environment that they would present a severe future threat to social order.

As a committee member of the London Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children put it, writing to The Times i , the e pi e of hildren is one which the nation cannot ignore.

It is the Empire within the Empire. If it cannot command our sympathy it must someday command our fear Samuel Smith, one of the founders of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, donated money in support of Thomas Ba a do s hild ig atio s he e, iti g to hi that the ti e is app oa hi g he this seethi g ass of hu a ise ill shake the so ial fa i u less e g apple o e ea estl ith it tha e ha e do e In Toronto, John J. Alongside imaginings of a future social chaos that such unreformed children might bring in their later years, these anxieties also took more politically focused forms.

The neglected or uncivilised child of today would, it was feared, later in life turn not only to general criminality and disorder, but lend their political support to the threats to liberal democracy posed both by populist demagogues, atheists and socialists In the case of indigenous children, such collective anxieties focused more on the persistence of indigenous tribes hostile to the mainstream of society who, if they could not be redeemed through a civilizing, Christian education, would most likely have to be subjugated militarily The potential civic and moral threat posed by these children was grounded in the second central element of the broader moral frame that these child welfare schemes drew on — that these potentially redeemable children were at risk of becoming morally tainted through their prolonged exposure to particular kinds of social environment.

Fairbridge - Empire and Child Migration (Paperback)

This environment was understood in spatial terms as places — whether over-crowded urban slu s o the ese atio s a d a ps 84 of indigenous peoples — that fell beyond the boundaries of conventional moral society. As Our Waifs and Strays put it, the poo a eas of Lo do o stituted a te i le pollutio to the st ea of ou atio al life 85, in hi h hild e ould e o ta i ated f o the outset i ious su ou di gs I Aust alia, Geo ge A dill efe ed to su h poo u a a eas as et hed de s… the plague spots u de l i g the e oide ed eil of i ilizatio See also Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples,: Lack of work together with lack of productivity arising out of natural indolence or love of alcohol , crumbling infrastructure88, overcrowded homes89, and the absence of civilizing social relationships could all, at different times, be seen as contributing to such environments in which there was little potential for moral and civic virtue to flourish.

Caught in such dark, polluted environments, parents were often constructed as either being powerless to prevent the inevitable corruption of their children, or as actively seeking their hild e s es ue f o the. At other times, they were represented as constituting an active moral threat to their children in their own right. Parents of this latter type fell outside the moral order on which human society was constituted Thomas Barnardo, for example, described his encounter with one such mother — seeking to obstruct the rescue of a child — i hi h she e a e so ethi g far more hideous and more repulsive, in which there was little that was womanly or even human left The parent responsible for neglect and cruelty towards their child was, in Waugh and Ma i gs ph ase, the E glish sa age.

Charles Loring Brace, for example, described the u geo i g i ig a t populatio of i etee th e tu Ne Yo k as s u a d efuse of ill-formed i ilizatio s i o t ast to t ue A e i a s ho alued lea li ess, i depe de e, good o de a d de e Indigenous peoples were similarly considered incapable of providing proper love and nurture for their children, with their children being held back, as the Canadian Department of Indian Affai s put it, the i diffe e e a d o adi ha its of the pa e ts The final element of this moral frame was the claim that moral and spiritual change would only really be possible for children living in such polluted environments if they were removed to more 88 See, e.

To run a programme of occasional events in the urban slums of Manhattan, argued Charles Loring Brace, could have only a limited moral benefit for children who were still exposed on a daily basis to their morally polluting ualities. It as ette i stead to drain the city e o i g hild e f o the altogethe The new environments into which children were re-located, whether domestic placements or residential institutions, were represented as places of piety, care and new opportunities in which earthly and heavenly redemption were intertwined.

What destitute and vulnerable children needed, claimed Thomas Barnardo on sending out his first group of child migrants to Ca ada, is a e hea e a d a new earth — the f esh o ditio s of olo ial life Residential institutions were similarly represented as idylls of care and formation. Writing about the ethos of their industrial schools in Ireland, a Superior General of the Irish Christian Brothers said: Severity and sternness would produce ruinous results on the character of these afflicted ones.

The Superior, showing himself as a kind father, should set the standard of o du t… He should e ge e ous i suppl i g thei te po al eeds — abundance of wholesome, well-prepared food of which pure milk should be a large constituent … 98 94 Connor, The assumption of the moral rectitude of the new environments into which children were placed also provided the grounds for less rigorous scrutiny of them, either because of a genuine moral confidence in these placements or an aversion to creating conflict by criticising them Holt, The superintendent of the Cleveland Jewish Orphan Asylum, Rabbi Samuel Wolfenstein, for example, understood the protective iron fence around the institution not as a means of confining children, but as protecting them from the polluting moral influences of the neighbourhoods around them Other idealised claims were made.