My Guest Post on Beetley Pete's blogsite #ChildMigrants

I was thrilled this week when Bentley Pete published my guest post about child migration

 https://beetleypete.com/2020/01/09/guest-post-liz-lloyd/

It is an introduction to other posts on that subject on this site.

One of the Allen line ships on which children travelled to Canada

To read more about Walter Shires who was sent away in 1885 go to A New Life in Canada

To find out about another family of girls who accompanied the Chuter sisters in 1887 go to
British Home Children

To see more photographs connected to Ada Sink and her sisters go to
She Would like to know her Birthday 

The story of three brothers migrated in 1903 Three Boys Migrated to Canada

The life of a Barnardo Boy

A family split apart by the Poor Law in 1911

She would like to know her birthday ~British Home Children #Canada

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.

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.

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.

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.

Three boys migrated to Canada

This is a little of the story of George, Albert and Walter Tickner.

In March 1903 the Local Government Board wrote to each Poor Law Union on the subject of the emigration of orphaned and deserted children.  Masters of the workhouses were instructed to prepare lists of children desirous of being emigrated.

Children in Guildford Union Workhouse were asked if they wished to emigrate and in April 1903, the minutes of the Board of Guardians report that three brothers, George, Albert and Walter Tickner, who had been at the workhouse for 5 years, wished to go to Canada.  

They were sent to Nova Scotia, Canada on the SS Siberian which sailed from Liverpool on the 30th May 1903 and arrived in Nova Scotia, Canada on the 12th June 1903.

The Tickner brothers are listed in the 1901 census in the Guildford Union as paupers.  They were the children of Alfred and his wife, Elizabeth Glover, whom he married in 1890 at St John’s Farncombe, Surrey.  He was aged 24 and a labourer, son of James Tickner, also a labourer. Elizabeth was aged 22 and a machinist living in Busbridge, her father was Charles Glover, a dyer.  Alfred made his mark, Elizabeth signed her name. Their first child, Alfred Charles, was baptised at Farncombe on the 28th September 1890, but died aged ten months and was buried in Nightingale Cemetery, Godalming on the 13th July 1891. The 1891 census lists Alfred, Elizabeth and Alfred Charles living in Farncombe Street. Alfred was born in Godalming and Elizabeth born in Worcester.   Albert Tickner was born on the 22nd October 1893 and baptised at St John’s Farncombe on the 28th January 1894, Walter Charles was born on the 19th July 1895 and baptised at Farncombe on the 6th October 1895.  On the 6th October 1896 Alfred Tickner, was buried in Nightingale Cemetery, aged 30, a labourer of Bridge Street, Godalming. Three and a half months later a daughter, Beatrice Kate, was born on the 26th January 1897 and baptised on the 12th February 1897 at St Peter and St Paul Church in Godalming.

Elizabeth was left with a newly-born daughter and three boys.  In 1899 Elizabeth Tickner married Richard Symes (registered in Guildford).  A new marriage possibly meant there was no room for the boys and they were sent to Guildford Union Workhouse.  A newspaper report in the West Surrey Times suggests other family members didn't want the boys to be sent abroad.

The brothers were sent to Canada, after at least 3 years’ residence in the Workhouse, as part of Dr Middlemore’s child emigration organisation. After a short time in the Middlemore Home in Birmingham, they were sent to a Receiving Home in Canada.  George was aged about 12, Albert about 9 and Walter about 8.  In 1872 John Throgmorton Middlemore founded the Children’s Emigration Homes after he saw poor children on Birmingham streets and felt they should have a better and healthier life abroad away from being paupers. In 1893 he started to send children to Nova Scotia and over 5,000 children were sent with Middlemore to Canada. The children came from local workhouses and reformatories in Birmingham and some children were sent by Guildford Union Workhouse. Many organisations participated in sending emigrants until government legislation stopped it in 1948.  In 2010 the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown apologised for the United Kingdom’s role in sending over 130,000 children to former colonies.

After a short time, George was placed with Forbes MacDonald in Upper River, Victoria County, where he was reported doing well; Albert was placed with John Franklin Forbes in Goshen, Guysborough County and after problems with his first placement, Walter’s second home was with Roderick McCharles of West Side, Middle River, Victoria County, a family who adopted him.

Like his father, Alfred Tickner, George died in his 30s.  He was married to Margaret McQueen and living in Cape Breton Island, when he succumbed to complications from diabetes and died on 12th May 1928.

©Elizabeth Lloyd

Highland Clearances?

Harris, Isle of Rum by Tony Page

I have often wondered, whether my MacKinnon ancestors, whom I have traced to late 18^th century Inverness-shire, were living there in abject poverty as a result of the Highland Clearances?  Had they been moved on from the Highlands by a landowner throwing them out of their homes so that large sheep farms could be established?

It would seem from a recent DNA match that I have made via Ancestry, that this was not the case.  I have established that they came from the Isle of Rum and they probably left around 1770 because of the collapse of the Kelp trade and over-population of the island.  My family moved across to the mainland and found work in subsistence farming.  Meanwhile, Rum was becoming increasingly overcrowded.  About 450 tenant farmers were given notice to quit their homes.  They were persuaded to move to Canada.  On 11 July 1826, about 300 of the inhabitants boarded two ships, the Highland Lad and the Dove of Harmony, bound for Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, Canada.  In 1827, the remaining residents boarded the St Lawrence with a group of inhabitants from the Isle of Muck.

The islanders did not find a land of milk and honey.  The land in Canada was inhospitable and it took many years for them to establish themselves in their new country.

Hugh Miller, who visited Rum, described the abandoned island;-

"The evening was clear, calm, golden-tinted; even wild heaths and rude rocks had assumed a flush of transient beauty; and the emerald-green patches on the hill-sides, barred by the plough lengthwise, diagonally, and transverse, had borrowed an aspect of soft and velvety richness, from the mellowed light and the broadening shadows. All was solitary. We could see among the deserted fields the grass-grown foundations of cottages razed to the ground; but the valley, more desolate than that which we had left, had not even its single inhabited dwelling; it seemed as if man had done with it for ever. The island, eighteen years before, had been divested of its inhabitants, amounting at the time to rather more than four hundred souls, to make way for one sheep farmer and eight thousand sheep. All the aborigines of Rum crossed the Atlantic; and, at the close of 1828, the entire population consisted of but the sheep farmer, and a few shepherds.”

It is estimated that 70,000 Highlanders emigrated, mainly to the colonies in North America and Australia and New Zealand, between the 1760s and 1803, and that over 150,000 were forced off their lands from 1783 to 1881.  It is impossible to measure whether their life opportunities were improved by emigration or how many seized the chance of a new life, but they had hard lives and sorrow, both before and after their emigration.

Sunset, Rum by Nell Roger

Read more at: http://www.scotsman.com/heritage/people-places/small-isles-of-scotland-a-short-history-of-rum-muck-canna-and-eigg-1-3992119 

http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/the-highland-clearances-1-465248