We know very little about the girls who arrived at the Guthrie Home in London, Ontario before it closed in 1893. But the records of the Inspectors who visited them in their new habitation, for some a home, for others a place to endure, provide a few phrases about the experiences of these lonely girls.
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| SS Parisian |
In 1881, wheelwright, Benjamin Sink was living with his wife Jane and their three little girls in Farthing Lane, Wandsworth, but Benjamin came from Ockham, Surrey where most of his family still lived. By 1883 the lives of Ruth, aged 7, Beatrice, 6, and Ada Sink, aged 3 had been turned upside down. Their mother Jane had died and Benjamin was imprisoned in Wandsworth jail. The family in Ockham took in the three girls, but their grandmother was 64 and nearly blind so they were soon given up to the Union Workhouse in Guildford.
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| An earlier group of Middlemore girls who arrived in Canada in 1877 |
Miss Spottiswood, the only female Guardian on the Poor Law Board, was a wealthy educated woman who had taken some of the workhouse teenagers to work as staff at her home. Each summer she invited the children to a picnic in her garden at Shere and she arranged for Christmas visits to a pantomime. Always anxious to give young people a better start in life, she had studied closely the migration of "orphans" to Canada where they would be employed as farm servants in homes around the country. Despite the misgivings of some of her fellow Guardians she began to entrust children to Mr Middlemore's organisation to start a new life in Canada. So in June 1884 the sisters set out from Liverpool on the Allan Line steamship Parisian, with 115 other girls from various parts of Britain.
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| Guthrie House |
At first they were taken to Guthrie House in London, Ontario and then they were taken to their new "homes" or a habitation where they would work very hard until they were 21. Along with Alice and James Hart, who were also from Guildford, they were placed with families who had requested a young person. Beatrice and Ada seem to have been lucky in their positions but Ruth, whose name was misspelt by the government inspector, was not so happy.
It is recorded in Ontario that Mark Smallpeice, Clerk to the Board of Governors of Guildford Poor Law Union, requested feedback on the children's situations, as did other workhouse Boards and thus we have it on record that Beatrice, "would like to know her birthday if possible," that Ada, "thinks she has a brother in the Union, (Guildford Workhouse) while poor Ruth is so unwell she has been returned to Guthrie House. We do not know whether Beatrice discovered her birthday or whether Ada really had a brother "in the Union (workhouse)".
Update
Thanks to Maureen Salter, a descendent of the Sink family, I now have a little more information.
Beatrice Sink was adopted by the Burton family and took their surname. Later she married a cousin of her adopted family.
Ada also went to a caring home in Ontario where, at the age of 6, she was adopted by Ephraim Snell. Sadly in 1893 she died of typhoid fever.
The children's birth father Benjamin Sink died in Richmond Workhouse, Surrey in 1938.
There is no record of a brother in Guildford Union Workhouse, and we do not know whether Beatrice was given her correct birthdate.
