Sorrow of the children shipped to Canada all alone

When 10-year-old Rose Shapcott and her brother Fred, 14, were orphaned and put into a Barnardo's children's home in 1891, little did they know they would end up being separated and sent thousands of miles away across the Atlantic.

The siblings were sent to Canada as part of the British Home Children child migration programme, which saw about 100,000 impoverished children from Britain sent to overseas colonies including Canada, between 1869 and the 1940s.

These children were separated from their families and sent off to Canada as a source of cheap labour, often suffering mistreatment at the hands of those who took them in, said Rose's great grandson Malcolm Farrow.

Farrow said Fred was sent to Saskatchewan first and then Rose asked to be sent over when she was 17, thinking they would be reunited.

Instead, she was sent thousands of miles away to Peterborough in Ontario and went on to have "a very sad life", Farrow revealed.

Rose ended up getting married but Fred managed to get her back to England as he was concerned about her.

She had a baby boy illegitimately, but he was put into care due to having a disability. At one point, Rose was admitted to an asylum in England when she began struggling with her mental health, Farrow explained.

Eventually, she returned to her husband in Canada, without her son, and died in 1916.

Farrow is a board member at the Home Children Canada charity, which raises awareness of the young child migrants, some of whom died in childhood.

Their work has included locating and documenting burial sites across Canada, including a mass grave of 76 British Home Children in Etobicoke, Ontario - and erecting a monument in their honour.

In another case, George Roberts was 15 when he was sent to Canada on a ship called the Corsican, which sailed out of the Albert Dock in 1913.

According to Simon Roberts - whom George was the great uncle of - he was born out of wedlock in Liverpool in 1897. After his mother moved to London to escape the shame, he was put into care when she began struggling to provide for him and his older brother.

Roberts said being a bit older, his uncle was "one of the luckier ones", but many children endured horrific experiences.

He said "the problem was that, although I think there were good intentions in the UK, there was no inspection process or supervision in Canada".

Roberts said some of the children died and the abuse some faced included being "put into fields in the middle of a Canadian winter with no shoes, with no boots, and told to work the fields".

Roberts said he was "extremely disappointed to discover that there is no memorial to the journeys undertaken by these children in the country from which they were sent".

He said the Home Children Canada charity was "trying to get Liverpool City Council to allow us to put a memorial up to remember these poor lonely little children, many of which were treated horrifically in their short lives".

The proposed memorial shows a young boy and girl dressed ready to get on the boat, each holding a little suitcase, and looking out across the Mersey.

The Home Children Canada charity said it would be willing to pay for the statue but it needs permission to erect it in the city.

Sheila Dodd, also a descendant of one of the British Home Children, said the charity believed that 10-15% of all British Home Children came from the Liverpool area, with at least six sending agencies and homes based in the city.

Dodd said her grandmother Heather McGrath and her grandmother's brother James were sent to Canada via Liverpool in 1930 and 1927 respectively.

She said she was able to speak to her grandmother, who told her about "her terrible experiences".

Dodd said she hoped the memorial could be erected in Liverpool so she and other descendants could visit it as a place of pilgrimage.

The BBC has approached Liverpool City Council for comment.

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