WEBVTT - Child Migrant Program 0:00:00.640 --> 0:00:03.320 Hey, everybody, just a quick note before we get started 0:00:03.320 --> 0:00:06.680 with today's episode. We recorded this one before the June 0:00:06.760 --> 0:00:11.520 sev attack on Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, 0:00:11.520 --> 0:00:15.160 South Carolina. That mass shooting put the former colony of 0:00:15.240 --> 0:00:18.520 Rhodesia in the national spotlight in the United States. We 0:00:18.640 --> 0:00:21.720 mentioned Rhodesia in this episode almost as an aside. That 0:00:21.840 --> 0:00:24.000 was a coincidence, and we definitely would have approached it 0:00:24.040 --> 0:00:26.880 differently if we had recorded even a couple of days later. 0:00:27.200 --> 0:00:29.920 So if you get to our brief mentioned of Rhodesia 0:00:30.000 --> 0:00:32.600 and wonder why we didn't include a more thorough or 0:00:32.760 --> 0:00:36.400 detailed explanation, that's why our focus was really on Australia 0:00:36.440 --> 0:00:39.559 as we were preparing this episode, and a full episode 0:00:39.600 --> 0:00:42.280 related to Rhodija will be coming in the near future. 0:00:43.800 --> 0:00:47.080 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from housetop 0:00:47.080 --> 0:00:56.360 Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. And 0:00:56.400 --> 0:00:59.760 I'm Tracy D. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. A lot 0:00:59.800 --> 0:01:03.639 of our listeners probably like the BBC drama called The Midwife. 0:01:03.800 --> 0:01:06.560 I know I like it very much. It is for 0:01:06.680 --> 0:01:10.200 those who are not familiar set in the impoverished neighborhood 0:01:10.240 --> 0:01:13.000 of Poplar in London's East End in the nineteen fifties 0:01:13.040 --> 0:01:15.920 and sixties, and it tells the story of these nuns 0:01:16.040 --> 0:01:20.320 and midwives who are basically providing healthcare and delivering babies 0:01:20.800 --> 0:01:23.400 in people's homes. And it's based on the memoirs of 0:01:23.480 --> 0:01:26.160 Jennifer Wirth, who was one of the midwives who did 0:01:26.160 --> 0:01:29.520 this work during this time period. So every episode of 0:01:29.520 --> 0:01:31.800 Called the Midwife tells these stories of women in their 0:01:31.800 --> 0:01:35.679 neighborhood and lots of babies and uh and family stories, 0:01:35.720 --> 0:01:38.759 but because of when they're set, they are also peppered 0:01:38.880 --> 0:01:44.160 with horrific other happenings in the world. Um there are 0:01:44.200 --> 0:01:46.959 stories of women who have survived work houses and the 0:01:46.959 --> 0:01:50.640 eugenics movement. There are ones about teenage mothers who had 0:01:50.640 --> 0:01:53.480 their babies taken away from them without their consent or 0:01:53.520 --> 0:01:56.360 the chance to say goodbye. One of the most recent 0:01:56.400 --> 0:01:59.640 episodes that aired in the US, I was literally yelling 0:01:59.680 --> 0:02:03.040 at my television to a pregnant woman who was having 0:02:03.120 --> 0:02:06.480 extreme morning sickness. Don't take that it's the litamide, because 0:02:07.240 --> 0:02:10.920 we know now the litamide caused many many children to 0:02:10.960 --> 0:02:13.400 be born without their limbs and with all kinds of 0:02:13.440 --> 0:02:17.440 other physical problems. For the most part, when like when 0:02:17.480 --> 0:02:20.519 Called the Midwife drops one of these things on the viewer, 0:02:21.600 --> 0:02:25.360 I know that story already, right, I already knew about 0:02:25.560 --> 0:02:27.919 work houses and teenage moms who had their babies taken 0:02:27.960 --> 0:02:31.440 away and all this stuff. But there's one episode that 0:02:31.520 --> 0:02:34.120 alluded to a horror that was entirely news to me. 0:02:34.600 --> 0:02:37.320 The first episode of the most recent season, which is 0:02:37.360 --> 0:02:40.680 series four. It's about a family of four young children 0:02:40.720 --> 0:02:43.600 who have just been woefully neglected, neglected by their mother, 0:02:44.320 --> 0:02:46.919 and the oldest one is trying to look after the siblings, 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:50.359 but he's just a little boy. In the end, they 0:02:50.360 --> 0:02:54.640 are taken from their mother's care. The baby, who was 0:02:54.680 --> 0:02:57.400 just in very horrible condition from all this neglect, was 0:02:57.520 --> 0:03:01.400 adopted by another family um and then the rest of 0:03:01.440 --> 0:03:05.280 the children are sent to Australia as part of the 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:10.280 Child Migrants program, where, according to Vanessa redgraves narration, they 0:03:10.320 --> 0:03:12.440 faced a life of hard labor. And then I was like, 0:03:12.520 --> 0:03:15.680 I'm wait, I'm sorry, the what the what program are 0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:19.320 we talking about right now? Then I basically tweeted that 0:03:19.360 --> 0:03:21.480 I just wanted to thank Called the Midwife for telling 0:03:21.480 --> 0:03:23.200 me some horrible thing from the past that I didn't 0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:24.359 know about that now I was going to have to 0:03:24.400 --> 0:03:27.280 do a podcast episode on because that's exactly what happened. 0:03:27.600 --> 0:03:29.840 We have before on the show talked about a number 0:03:29.880 --> 0:03:35.560 of government attempts to populate their various colonies throughout encouraged 0:03:35.760 --> 0:03:40.440 or more accurately forced migrations. Before in the fairly recent archives, 0:03:40.440 --> 0:03:43.200 we have episodes on Lefi Duroi, who were the women 0:03:43.280 --> 0:03:46.080 sent to New France which is now Canada as potential 0:03:46.120 --> 0:03:48.040 wives and the hope that they would even out the 0:03:48.040 --> 0:03:51.360 gender ratio and boost population there. And we've also talked 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:54.120 about the Lady Juliana, which was a ship of female 0:03:54.160 --> 0:03:57.760 prisoners sent on a similar mission from Britain to Australia. 0:03:57.920 --> 0:04:00.920 And in the US there were the Offen trains, which 0:04:00.960 --> 0:04:03.600 transported children, some of which were orphans, some of which 0:04:03.640 --> 0:04:07.400 were not from densely populated cities in the east to 0:04:07.720 --> 0:04:10.560 country out west where they would have it was hoped, 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:15.200 a better life. So the fielding wat migrated in the 0:04:15.240 --> 0:04:19.200 late seventeenth century. The Lady Juliana sailed in seventeen eighty nine. 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:21.760 The Orphan trains ran in the United States from the 0:04:21.760 --> 0:04:24.800 eighteen fifties until nineteen twenty nine, although that last train 0:04:24.880 --> 0:04:29.600 only carried three children on it. In Britain, child migration 0:04:29.640 --> 0:04:32.680 efforts started as early as the sixteen hundreds, when children 0:04:32.720 --> 0:04:35.560 were sent to the American colony of Virginia was about 0:04:35.560 --> 0:04:39.240 a hundred children, but these efforts didn't really get going 0:04:39.360 --> 0:04:43.520 until the eighteen hundreds. From then until the nineteen twenties, 0:04:43.560 --> 0:04:48.239 about one hundred thousand children were sent from the British 0:04:48.320 --> 0:04:52.600 Isles to Canada to live. For the most part, these 0:04:52.640 --> 0:04:55.920 Canadian children were sent through processing centers and then they 0:04:55.920 --> 0:04:59.200 were divided by gender. Boys went to farms to do 0:04:59.279 --> 0:05:02.080 farm work and girls went to homes to act as 0:05:02.120 --> 0:05:06.680 domestic servants. So this phase of child migration from Britain 0:05:06.760 --> 0:05:08.880 did have some things in common with the orphan train 0:05:08.960 --> 0:05:13.480 movement that we've had a whole episode on. People thought 0:05:13.600 --> 0:05:15.360 that the children were going to be better off in 0:05:15.400 --> 0:05:18.359 their new circumstances, that they were getting access to a 0:05:18.400 --> 0:05:20.920 better life than they would have had in an institution 0:05:21.720 --> 0:05:24.599 in Britain, and that they were also learning to work 0:05:24.880 --> 0:05:30.000 in their new placements. But in reality, British children sent 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:32.680 to Canada wound up doing manual labor for little to 0:05:32.760 --> 0:05:36.760 no money. Once in Canada, home children, as they came 0:05:36.800 --> 0:05:39.839 to be known, were usually stigmatized, and they were treated 0:05:39.880 --> 0:05:42.880 as second class citizens, regardless of whether they were working 0:05:42.880 --> 0:05:45.640 on a farm or in a home or somewhere else, 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:48.560 so much so that many of them hid this part 0:05:48.560 --> 0:05:52.280 of their childhood when they became adults. It's estimated that 0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:55.599 a little more than ten percent of Canada's population is 0:05:55.640 --> 0:06:00.200 actually descended from child migrants. I kept find in a 0:06:00.240 --> 0:06:03.320 statistic that more than half of these children had also 0:06:03.400 --> 0:06:05.680 been abused in some way, but I could not figure 0:06:05.680 --> 0:06:09.919 out how that statistic was determined. Uh, and some of 0:06:09.960 --> 0:06:12.400 the children who were sent to Canada did wind up 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:16.520 back in orphanages and other institutions when placements for them 0:06:16.520 --> 0:06:18.880 could not be found in homes and farms and other places. 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:21.400 So in these cases, children had basically been sent from 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:25.560 one institution to another institution, with the second one being 0:06:25.640 --> 0:06:27.920 on the other side of an entire ocean, so they 0:06:28.000 --> 0:06:31.040 basically lost the connections they had had to friends and 0:06:31.080 --> 0:06:33.200 family and the people who were caring for them where 0:06:33.200 --> 0:06:36.640 they came from, to have to start all over somewhere 0:06:36.720 --> 0:06:39.960 on the other side of the world. Many of the 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:43.360 surviving British child migrants to Canada were tracked down in 0:06:43.400 --> 0:06:46.359 the nineteen eighties, and by that point the ones that 0:06:46.400 --> 0:06:49.040 were still alive were elderly, and the stories that they 0:06:49.080 --> 0:06:51.599 told were also very similar to what we talked about 0:06:51.600 --> 0:06:54.800 in the Orphan Trains episode. Many had been sent to 0:06:54.839 --> 0:06:57.520 Canada far too young to really know what was going on, 0:06:58.240 --> 0:07:00.760 and most were told that their parents had id but 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:04.559 many had siblings, cousins and other family, all of whom 0:07:04.600 --> 0:07:08.799 were separated from one another. Child migration efforts from Britain 0:07:08.880 --> 0:07:11.760 to Canada ended with the Great Depression, but a new 0:07:11.800 --> 0:07:14.880 wave of migration followed, and this was to Australia and 0:07:15.040 --> 0:07:17.920 New Zealand. We're going to talk about that more after 0:07:18.000 --> 0:07:21.600 a brief word from a sponsor. So the Department of 0:07:21.640 --> 0:07:25.160 Health estimates that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a 0:07:25.280 --> 0:07:28.800 hundred and fifty thousand child migrants were sent from Britain 0:07:28.880 --> 0:07:31.360 to other countries. A hundred thousand of them, as we 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:33.800 just talked about before the break, went to Canada. The 0:07:33.880 --> 0:07:37.000 rest of them went to Australia, New Zealand and Rhodesia 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:40.880 which is now Zimbabwe. In the wake of World War Two, 0:07:41.200 --> 0:07:44.280 the British Empire feared for the stability of its territory 0:07:44.320 --> 0:07:48.280 in Australia and New Zealand. Having such an expansive, largely 0:07:48.360 --> 0:07:52.560 unpopulated territory, so far away from Britain and so much 0:07:52.600 --> 0:07:55.080 closer to nations with which Britain had just been at war, 0:07:55.680 --> 0:08:00.120 seemed very threatening. Plus there were some overall population and 0:08:00.160 --> 0:08:02.520 worries in general, there had been a great loss of 0:08:02.560 --> 0:08:04.920 life that had come along with the war. And then 0:08:04.920 --> 0:08:07.480 there was the fact that the white colonists in Australia 0:08:07.560 --> 0:08:11.200 were basically a minority in that hemisphere. In the words 0:08:11.200 --> 0:08:14.640 of the Archbishop of Perth in quote, if we do 0:08:14.760 --> 0:08:17.960 not supply from our own stock, we are leaving ourselves 0:08:18.000 --> 0:08:20.840 all the more exposed to the menace of the teeming 0:08:20.920 --> 0:08:27.440 millions of our neighboring Asiatic races. So the British government 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:31.480 decided to send children to Australia and New Zealand. Australia 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:35.160 also invited other European nations to participate in this scheme, 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:38.280 and about a hundred children came from Malta, but that 0:08:38.400 --> 0:08:41.439 really seems to be the extent of participation from elsewhere 0:08:41.480 --> 0:08:44.360 in Europe. About five hundred and fifty British children were 0:08:44.400 --> 0:08:46.960 sent to New Zealand and placed in foster homes. Although 0:08:47.000 --> 0:08:49.600 many of those placements turned out to be temporary, they 0:08:49.640 --> 0:08:52.800 just didn't work out for one reason or another, and 0:08:53.480 --> 0:08:57.040 that whole process was not really supervised very well by 0:08:57.160 --> 0:09:00.880 local authorities or child child welfare organization, And once the 0:09:00.960 --> 0:09:04.920 children were in New Zealand, many more children were sent 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:08.640 to Australia. The British and Australian governments took on this 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:13.400 scheme with a collection of religious charities and other charitable organizations, 0:09:13.440 --> 0:09:18.160 including the Salvation Army, Bernardo's, the Fairbridge Society and National 0:09:18.240 --> 0:09:22.520 Children's Homes. There were organizations affiliated with the Roman Catholic 0:09:22.600 --> 0:09:25.079 Church and the Church of England that also were involved 0:09:25.080 --> 0:09:30.439 in this plan. So at least in some cases, there 0:09:30.440 --> 0:09:32.840 seems to have been a genuine desire to provide a 0:09:32.840 --> 0:09:35.720 better life for children who were living in poverty, or 0:09:35.840 --> 0:09:39.200 were being neglected or mistreated by their families, or were 0:09:39.240 --> 0:09:42.880 for some other reason living in some kind of unsafe condition. 0:09:43.360 --> 0:09:46.160 So there were definitely people involved in this who were 0:09:46.280 --> 0:09:49.560 envisioning that these children would have an idyllic life on 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:52.400 a farm with warm weather and lots of sunshine once 0:09:52.440 --> 0:09:55.160 they got to Australia. When you look at the pictures 0:09:55.200 --> 0:09:58.920 of these children as they're leaving Britain or arriving in Australia, 0:09:58.960 --> 0:10:01.480 they often look really happy, like they're about to involve 0:10:01.679 --> 0:10:07.280 embark on this wonderful adventure. But the reality was much different. 0:10:07.840 --> 0:10:11.360 Between the nineteen thirties and nineteen sixty seven, between seven 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:14.440 thousand and ten thousand children between the ages of three 0:10:14.520 --> 0:10:18.360 and fourteen were moved from Britain to Australia, and they 0:10:18.360 --> 0:10:20.640 were described in the press at the time as quote 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:25.160 war orphans, and newspaper coverage praised these efforts as being charitable. 0:10:25.720 --> 0:10:28.080 But even though they had generally been told that their 0:10:28.080 --> 0:10:31.640 parents had died, most of these children were not orphans. 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:34.880 Many of them were children whose families had fallen on 0:10:35.000 --> 0:10:37.600 hard times during the war, and they had consequently put 0:10:37.640 --> 0:10:40.000 their children into care, hoping to come back for them 0:10:40.080 --> 0:10:44.360 later when they had their their finances under control. Many 0:10:44.520 --> 0:10:47.760 of them were children of unmarried women and other parents 0:10:47.760 --> 0:10:50.360 who had placed their children up for adoption and thought 0:10:50.360 --> 0:10:53.800 that their children had been adopted by families who were 0:10:53.920 --> 0:10:58.200 going to be better off that way. For the children 0:10:58.280 --> 0:11:00.560 who still had living families, which was a lot of 0:11:00.559 --> 0:11:04.800 the children who were sent to Australia. This basically deportation 0:11:04.960 --> 0:11:09.280 was done without their parents knowledge or consent. So at 0:11:09.280 --> 0:11:11.360 this point we have children who were told they were 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:14.240 orphans but in fact they were not, and parents who 0:11:14.240 --> 0:11:16.240 were told their children were going to be placed with 0:11:16.280 --> 0:11:18.679 an adoptive family, but in fact that they were not. 0:11:19.280 --> 0:11:21.760 And instead these children, who were as young as three 0:11:21.840 --> 0:11:25.280 years old, were sent twelve thousand miles away on a 0:11:25.360 --> 0:11:28.240 sea voyage that took up to twelve weeks, giving them 0:11:28.360 --> 0:11:31.560 very little hope of ever returning to Britain. Let's make 0:11:31.640 --> 0:11:34.000 things worse. Once the children were in Australia, they were 0:11:34.040 --> 0:11:37.080 not families waiting to care for them. That the whole 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:39.679 plan was pretty much abandoned almost immediately as being too 0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:43.920 much trouble. They went back into institutions. So for a 0:11:44.000 --> 0:11:46.520 lot of children, even if they had started out at 0:11:46.520 --> 0:11:49.600 an institution in Britain, this meant being uprooted from a 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:52.680 setting that was familiar, where they had relationship with relationships 0:11:52.720 --> 0:11:55.920 with staff and other children, and being sent to the 0:11:56.000 --> 0:11:58.640 literal other side of the world once again to start 0:11:58.720 --> 0:12:01.240 over at a different in the tuition, with different staff 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:05.920 and different surroundings and different peers living with them. Although 0:12:05.960 --> 0:12:08.959 some children who were relocated to Australia did well there, 0:12:09.600 --> 0:12:12.920 many wound up feeling rejected by Britain and never really 0:12:13.000 --> 0:12:16.280 at home in Australia. A couple of the institutions where 0:12:16.320 --> 0:12:19.640 these children were placed became notorious for abuse and neglect. 0:12:20.240 --> 0:12:23.320 In particular beIN Dune, Boys Town, which is north of Perth, 0:12:23.760 --> 0:12:26.760 was literally built by the boys who were to live there. 0:12:27.400 --> 0:12:31.400 It was heavy manual labor and they were children as adults. 0:12:31.440 --> 0:12:33.760 Many of the boys who lived there reported being physically 0:12:33.760 --> 0:12:36.560 and sexually abused, and this was by far not the 0:12:36.600 --> 0:12:40.400 only place where abuses were reported, but reports of abuse 0:12:40.440 --> 0:12:46.360 at ben Dune were widespread and extremely horrifying. So apart 0:12:46.400 --> 0:12:48.959 from the news coverage that had happened as children were 0:12:49.000 --> 0:12:52.839 being sent which was generally favorable, this whole process fell 0:12:52.920 --> 0:12:54.600 out of you for a lot of people for a 0:12:54.600 --> 0:12:57.079 long time. We're going to talk about when and how 0:12:57.120 --> 0:13:01.280 that changed. After another brief word from a sponsor, so 0:13:01.320 --> 0:13:04.000 as we just alluded to before the break, after all 0:13:04.040 --> 0:13:06.600 this favorable news coverage in the post war years, this 0:13:06.920 --> 0:13:09.640 program kind of faded away from the public consciousness. In 0:13:09.679 --> 0:13:13.800 the British Empire. That started to change in when a 0:13:13.840 --> 0:13:16.480 woman known as Madeline wrote a letter to a British 0:13:16.559 --> 0:13:20.480 social worker named Margaret Humphries. Humphries had been running a 0:13:20.480 --> 0:13:24.160 support service called Triangle, which was for birth parents, adoptive 0:13:24.200 --> 0:13:27.400 parents and adults who had been adopted as children. So 0:13:27.440 --> 0:13:30.600 it was for all three pieces of the adoption Triangle 0:13:30.679 --> 0:13:32.320 to kind of get to know each other and have 0:13:32.360 --> 0:13:36.600 a support group and that sort of a thing. Madeline 0:13:36.720 --> 0:13:39.440 was living in Adelaide and had heard about the service 0:13:39.480 --> 0:13:41.440 from a friend who had taken a trip to Britain. 0:13:42.240 --> 0:13:44.800 Madeline's letter said that she had been taken from a 0:13:44.880 --> 0:13:47.240 children's home where she had been living because her parents 0:13:47.240 --> 0:13:51.280 had died when she was four, and sent to Australia. 0:13:51.880 --> 0:13:55.000 So when Humphreys read this letter, she thought Madeline must 0:13:55.040 --> 0:13:57.760 be mistaken or misremembering that there had to be some 0:13:57.840 --> 0:14:00.839 other explanation, because the idea of a four year old 0:14:01.280 --> 0:14:04.760 being sent from Britain's to Australia without a guardian there 0:14:05.160 --> 0:14:08.920 was just frankly unbelievable. Not long after that, though, another 0:14:08.960 --> 0:14:11.440 woman at a Triangle meeting who had been adopted as 0:14:11.440 --> 0:14:14.320 a child, told a story of basically remembering as an 0:14:14.320 --> 0:14:17.080 adult that she had had a brother. When she managed 0:14:17.120 --> 0:14:19.280 to track this brother down, it turned out he also 0:14:19.400 --> 0:14:23.600 had been sent to Australia. Even as she started searching 0:14:23.640 --> 0:14:27.280 for birth records and the records of Madeline's parents deaths, 0:14:27.720 --> 0:14:31.160 Humphrey thought this must all have been some kind of misunderstanding, 0:14:31.520 --> 0:14:33.680 But after looking for birth records one day at St 0:14:33.720 --> 0:14:36.280 Catherine's House, which is where all the birth, death and 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:39.480 marriage records were kept, she walked to the nearby Australian 0:14:39.560 --> 0:14:42.560 High Commission House and asked about the records of children 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:45.000 who had been sent to Australia after World War Two, 0:14:45.720 --> 0:14:47.880 and the wording of the answer that she got sent 0:14:48.000 --> 0:14:51.360 off some alarm bells quote the records of the children 0:14:51.360 --> 0:14:54.680 had been sent to Canberra that made it sound like 0:14:54.720 --> 0:14:59.640 there were many, So she started to do some more investigating, 0:15:00.120 --> 0:15:03.080 put ads in Australian newspapers asking for people who had 0:15:03.080 --> 0:15:05.800 been sent to Australia from children's homes in the forties 0:15:05.800 --> 0:15:08.920 and fifties to write to her, and soon it became 0:15:08.960 --> 0:15:12.040 clear that there was just a vast tangle to uncover. 0:15:12.640 --> 0:15:15.600 She teamed up with Annabelle Fareman, who traveled to Australia 0:15:15.680 --> 0:15:18.440 to do more research, and Bell Fareman was a journalist 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:21.160 who was going to write articles about what they discovered. 0:15:21.680 --> 0:15:24.840 While she was in Australia, Humphries meant more people who 0:15:24.840 --> 0:15:28.120 had been sent to Australia as children, and once they 0:15:28.120 --> 0:15:31.080 were in Australia, they had wound up in institutions and 0:15:31.120 --> 0:15:34.000 all of them believed that their parents had died. They 0:15:34.000 --> 0:15:36.520 had no birth certificates, they had no other ties to 0:15:36.560 --> 0:15:39.600 their home, and many of them weren't even sure of 0:15:39.640 --> 0:15:43.840 what their own birthdays were. Eventually, Humphries worked to establish 0:15:43.840 --> 0:15:47.120 the Child Migrants Trust to help reconnect these now grown 0:15:47.240 --> 0:15:50.520 children with their families back in Britain. This became an 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:53.680 actual organization and working there became her full time job. 0:15:54.960 --> 0:15:58.200 Many of the children's records were destroyed as schools closed 0:15:58.240 --> 0:16:01.400 down or charities ceased to oper rate. Some of these 0:16:01.440 --> 0:16:04.160 records were falsified or even lost when the children were 0:16:04.160 --> 0:16:07.600 originally sent to Australia, and one of the difficulties that 0:16:07.640 --> 0:16:11.080 arose was that once children were reconnected with their birth parents, 0:16:11.480 --> 0:16:14.400 they had trouble traveling to Britain to meet in person. 0:16:14.880 --> 0:16:19.040 With no birth certificates or other documentation, they couldn't get passports. 0:16:20.520 --> 0:16:24.400 Humphries really worked just she worked herself to exhaustion repeatedly 0:16:24.520 --> 0:16:27.760 doing all this. She also got as the allegations of 0:16:27.800 --> 0:16:32.359 abuse became more public. She got death threats and multiple 0:16:32.720 --> 0:16:37.160 death threats, threats to her family. Um Like, she really 0:16:37.360 --> 0:16:42.600 continued to do this work as people were uh showing 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:45.920 up at her hotel rooms trying to break in because 0:16:45.960 --> 0:16:50.240 she was speaking out against abuse that children had suffered 0:16:50.280 --> 0:16:53.560 at the hands of religious care institutions. The whole thing 0:16:53.640 --> 0:16:58.560 is pretty horrifying. Um. In addition to many many trips 0:16:58.560 --> 0:17:02.200 to Australia, she also traveled to Canada and to Zimbabwe, 0:17:02.320 --> 0:17:05.960 which was during the time of the migrations known as Rhodesia, 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:09.199 to meet with former child migrants in both of those places. 0:17:09.920 --> 0:17:13.520 And we haven't talked as much about child migration to Rhodesia, 0:17:13.640 --> 0:17:16.960 but based on the accounts that she heard there, most 0:17:17.000 --> 0:17:19.320 of the child migrants that were sent to Rhodesia were 0:17:19.359 --> 0:17:23.080 sent to school and treated as a privileged class, although 0:17:23.119 --> 0:17:26.320 they still did not know who their families were. The 0:17:26.359 --> 0:17:29.480 migration to Rhodesia seems to have been orchestrated, at least 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:32.520 in part to make sure that there was an ongoing 0:17:32.600 --> 0:17:37.399 white upper class in British African territory. A documentary drawing 0:17:37.480 --> 0:17:40.879 from Humphrey's work came out in It was called Lost 0:17:40.960 --> 0:17:44.720 Children of the Empire. A drama followed which was called 0:17:44.840 --> 0:17:47.760 The Leaving of Liverpool. And as each of these aired 0:17:47.920 --> 0:17:50.880 in Australia and in Great Britain, people just came out 0:17:50.960 --> 0:17:53.639 of the woodwork in both places trying to connect with 0:17:53.680 --> 0:17:57.520 their lost children and their lost parents. Humphries also wrote 0:17:57.520 --> 0:18:00.480 a book which was originally called Empty Cradles. It is 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:03.879 now retitled as Oranges in Sunshine after the movie that 0:18:03.960 --> 0:18:08.760 was made based on it. Kevin Rudd, who was then 0:18:08.800 --> 0:18:12.640 the Premiere of Australia, publicly apologized for the child migration 0:18:12.680 --> 0:18:16.119 in two thousand and nine, saying we are sorry sorry 0:18:16.200 --> 0:18:18.520 that as children you were taken from your families and 0:18:18.560 --> 0:18:22.200 placed and institutions were so often you were abused. Sorry 0:18:22.240 --> 0:18:26.240 for the physical suffering, the emotional starvation and the cold 0:18:26.240 --> 0:18:30.679 absence of love, of tenderness of care. Prime Minister Gordon 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:35.119 Brown apologized for the program also in he said to 0:18:35.280 --> 0:18:37.959 all those former child migrants and their families, we are 0:18:37.960 --> 0:18:41.560 truly sorry they were let down. We are sorry they 0:18:41.560 --> 0:18:43.760 were allowed to be sent away at the time when 0:18:43.800 --> 0:18:47.480 they were most vulnerable. We are sorry that, instead of 0:18:47.520 --> 0:18:50.639 caring for them, this country turned its back, and we 0:18:50.680 --> 0:18:52.800 are sorry that the voices of these children were not 0:18:52.880 --> 0:18:56.679 always heard, their cries for help not always heeded. And 0:18:56.680 --> 0:18:59.119 we are sorry that it has taken so long for 0:18:59.160 --> 0:19:01.679 this important day to come and for the full and 0:19:01.800 --> 0:19:06.680 unconditional apology that is justly deserved. Uh, that's so long, 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:12.600 Like literally twentysomething years. Margaret Humphreys had been trying to 0:19:12.640 --> 0:19:15.879 get someone to acknowledge what was going on before the 0:19:15.920 --> 0:19:21.240 official apology came, and in that same statement, Brown announced 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:24.040 a six million pound fund which has kept the Child 0:19:24.040 --> 0:19:28.480 Migrants Trust working to connect children with their families. Humphries 0:19:28.560 --> 0:19:31.520 and the Child Migrants Trust continue to do this work today. 0:19:31.800 --> 0:19:34.240 She was actually named to the Order of Australia. She 0:19:34.359 --> 0:19:36.840 was the first British citizen outside of the Royal family 0:19:36.880 --> 0:19:40.399 to be so named. She was later named the Commander 0:19:40.440 --> 0:19:44.159 of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Thanks 0:19:44.160 --> 0:19:47.040 called The Midway for making us have to talk about 0:19:48.440 --> 0:19:50.920 I do love that show, but especially with Christmas episodes, 0:19:50.960 --> 0:19:54.440 there's always just this like some kind of social or 0:19:54.560 --> 0:20:00.280 historical horror that stabs you in your heart part while 0:20:00.280 --> 0:20:04.040 you're watching See I'm safe because I'm I'm phobic about 0:20:04.080 --> 0:20:08.240 all babies and childbirth. Things I don't watch Call the Deadlights, 0:20:10.119 --> 0:20:13.919 so I am safe for these cruel, cruel episodes. Do 0:20:13.960 --> 0:20:16.240 you have a spot of a listener mail for us? 0:20:16.480 --> 0:20:19.520 I do have a spot of listener mail. Uh, and 0:20:19.560 --> 0:20:22.680 it is about time capsules. It's from John. John says, 0:20:22.720 --> 0:20:25.639 first off, love the podcast. Now let's talk about time capsules. 0:20:25.800 --> 0:20:28.159 Time capsules are actually the reason why I started listening 0:20:28.160 --> 0:20:31.119 to your podcast. Well an art project that deals with 0:20:31.160 --> 0:20:33.879 time capsules, about six hundred and ten of them. I 0:20:33.880 --> 0:20:36.720 currently work in the archives at the Andy Warhol Museum 0:20:36.800 --> 0:20:40.320 as an imaging technician. Starting in nineteen seventy four and 0:20:40.400 --> 0:20:44.520 until seven, Andy Warhol field containers made like cardboard boxes 0:20:44.560 --> 0:20:47.360 with different items from his life. He had a few 0:20:47.400 --> 0:20:49.879 possible plans for them. One was to turn all the 0:20:49.920 --> 0:20:52.600 items into an art show someday, and another was to 0:20:52.680 --> 0:20:56.280 sell each box off as a piece of art, but unfortunately, 0:20:56.280 --> 0:20:59.600 he unexpectedly died before any of that could happen. They 0:20:59.600 --> 0:21:05.200 consist of newspapers, photographs, artwork, letters, invitations, uncash checks, an 0:21:05.200 --> 0:21:08.520 inflated birthday cake, a picture of Rob Low wrapped only 0:21:08.520 --> 0:21:10.840 in a stuffed animal snake, probably the best thing ever. 0:21:11.520 --> 0:21:15.560 John Michelle Bosciot's birth certificate, and countless other items, including 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:17.159 stuff from when he was a child growing up in 0:21:17.200 --> 0:21:21.120 Pittsburgh until his death. In these boxes contain more than 0:21:21.240 --> 0:21:24.840 three hundred thousand items. The museum has been working to 0:21:25.000 --> 0:21:28.520 archive and catalog everything they're in these time capsules. There's 0:21:28.560 --> 0:21:31.360 a great This American Life about the project. My job 0:21:31.400 --> 0:21:33.639 at work, My job is to work at trying to 0:21:33.680 --> 0:21:37.080 digitize this entire collection of items. A pretty cool job, 0:21:37.720 --> 0:21:39.480 if I must say. But I do spend a lot 0:21:39.480 --> 0:21:42.359 of time just mind loosely scanning things. So I started 0:21:42.400 --> 0:21:44.720 to listen to podcasts. It was a few months in 0:21:44.800 --> 0:21:46.879 before I found yours, but when I did, I was hooked. 0:21:47.160 --> 0:21:49.600 That's exactly what I was looking for. My favorite episode 0:21:49.640 --> 0:21:52.080 being The Night Witches, well one of my favorites. When 0:21:52.119 --> 0:21:54.560 I saw the Time Capsule Capsule episode, I've perked up 0:21:54.600 --> 0:21:57.080 with delight. I didn't think that you would touch on 0:21:57.119 --> 0:21:59.720 Andy Warhol, but it was still exciting for me. Thank 0:21:59.760 --> 0:22:03.600 you for providing me with such joy through history. And 0:22:03.640 --> 0:22:07.920 then He finishes up with an episode suggestion, I had 0:22:07.960 --> 0:22:11.119 no idea that that was even a thing. Well, I 0:22:11.160 --> 0:22:14.280 feel stupid because I really love Andy Warhol, and you know, 0:22:15.720 --> 0:22:18.640 curse Valerie Salonas for robbing us of the eventual plan 0:22:18.760 --> 0:22:21.000 for this one. But I had completely forgotten about it 0:22:21.040 --> 0:22:23.480 as well, So it was a nice like, oh my gosh, 0:22:23.520 --> 0:22:28.080 I totally forgot that. Yeah, I. Um. We've gotten quite 0:22:28.119 --> 0:22:32.399 a number of letters from people about specific time capsules 0:22:32.520 --> 0:22:35.800 or specific projects of this nature. Um, and some of 0:22:35.800 --> 0:22:38.080