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.

Recent historical work has done much to focus attention on changing conceptions of children's rights during the 19th and 20th centuries. These essays address a variety of themes including the abuse of children, and the role of the welfare state.

The biography of a British girl, split from her family by the British child migration program, learning to cope with her hard new life in Canada. Marjorie Too Afraid to Cry — Book #1 In 1937, 10-year-old Marjorie Arnison was shipped from Britain to Prince of Wales Fairbridge Farm School near Victoria, British Columbia. For years she wouldn't talk about her past. It wasn't until daughter Patricia explored archival records and shared them with her mother that a home-child saga emerged. Marjorie Her War Years — Book #2 Sent away from her family and England to an isolated farm where she was at the mercy of a tyrannical “cottage mother,” Marjorie Arnison had to learn to forget her identity in order to survive in her unfamiliar and hostile new home. It was only much later in her life that the memories of where she came from began to resurface.

Between 1850 and 1970, around three hundred thousand children were sent to new homes through child migration programmes run by churches, charities and religious orders in the United States and the United Kingdom. Intended as humanitarian initiatives to save children from social and moral harm and to build them up as national and imperial citizens, these schemes have in many cases since become the focus of public censure, apology and sometimes financial redress. Remembering Child Migration is the first book to examine both the American 'orphan train' programmes and Britain's child migration schemes to its imperial colonies. Setting their work in historical context, it discusses their assumptions, methods and effects on the lives of those they claimed to help. Rather than seeing them as reflecting conventional child-care practice of their time, the book demonstrates that they were subject to criticism for much of the period in which they operated. Noting similarities between the American 'orphan trains' and early British migration schemes to Canada, it also shows how later British child migration schemes to Australia constituted a reversal of what had been understood to be good practice in the late Victorian period. At its heart, the book considers how welfare interventions motivated by humanitarian piety came to have such harmful effects in the lives of many child migrants. By examining how strong moral motivations can deflect critical reflection, legitimise power and build unwarranted bonds of trust, it explores the promise and risks of humanitarian sentiment.

When Marjorie’s daughter began exploring archival records involving Britain’s child-migration program, a home-child saga emerged. Marjorie Arnison was one of the thousands of children removed from their families, communities, and country and placed in a British colony or commonwealth to provide "white stock" and cheap labour. In Marjorie’s case, she was sent to Prince of Wales Fairbridge Farm School, just north of Victoria, British Columbia, in 1937. As a child, Patricia was angered that her mother wouldn’t talk about the past. It took many years to discover why – it wasn’t because she was keeping a dark secret, but because she had "lost" her childhood. For 10-year-old Marjorie, forgetting her past, her family, and England was the only survival tool she had at her disposal to enable her to face her frightening and uncertain future. This is Marjorie’s account as told by her daughter. It is a story of fear, loss, courage, survival, and finding one’s way home.

Her family broken apart and her identity taken away, she had to forget her past in order to face her future. But forgetting isn’t forever. Taken from their mother’s care and deported from England to the colonies, ten-year-old Marjorie Arnison and her nine-year-old brother, Kenny, were sent to the Prince of Wales Fairbridge Farm School on Vancouver Island in September 1937. Their eight-year-old sister, Audrey, followed the next August. Marjorie's new home was on an isolated farm — a cottage she shared with at least ten other girls and a “cottage mother” at the head, who had complete control over her “children.” Survival required sticking to bare essentials. Marjorie had to accept a loss, which was difficult to forgive. Turning inward, she would find strength to pull her through, but she had to lock away her memories in order to endure her new life. Marjorie was well into her senior years before those memories resurfaced.

Originally published in 1989. The extraordinary story of Britain’s child migrants is one of 350 years of shaming exploitation. Around 130,000 children, some just 3 or 4 years old, were shipped off to distant parts of the Empire, the last as recently as 1967. For Britain it was a cheap way of emptying children’s homes and populating the colonies with ‘good British stock’; for the colonies it was a source of cheap labour. Even after the Second World War around 10,000 children were transported to Australia – where many were subjected to at best uncaring abandonment, and at worst a regime of appalling cruelty. Lost Children of the Empire tells the remarkable story of the Child Migrants Trust, set up in 1987, to trace families and to help those involved to come to terms with what has happened. But nothing can explain away the connivance and irresponsibility of the governments and organisations involved in this inhuman chapter of British history.