Click an image to enlarge

Today… 17/10/14 I went to view the opening day of a new exhibition at the Liverpool Maritime Museum, down on the Albert Dock complex. The exhibition titled ‘On Their Own’ gave an insight to the deplorable migration policy of consecutive British Governments, to settle poor working class children, as a white working class population in all corners of the British Empire. This disgraceful policy had gone on undisclosed from the early 1600’s, when the children were sent to the ‘New World’ British Colonies of America…. and the policy was only stopped in the 1960’s.

I began the day by getting myself a ‘C’ Zone ticket, and catching a bus down town, alighting at Queens Square… As I made my way to the Albert Dock complex, I entered Williamson Square with the Playhouse Theatre on my left…

Playhouse Theatre

as I crossed the Square heading towards Richmond Street and passed the fountains I stopped to catch the early morning light on the block facing the Square….

       
Williamson Square and Richmond Street

I made my way through the market stall holders, setting up their wares in Whitechapel and walked into the Liverpool ONE Shopping Centre…. Turning right when I got to the new Lewis’s building and crossing what was Chavasse Park, but now the walkway to the Albert Dock, and past the new Hilton Hotel (a kiddie fell out of one of the windows a few weeks ago).

Water feature in Chavasse Park
(Hilton on my left out of shot)

As I arrived at the Albert Dock complex, I made my way to the right, and walked down to the Liverpool Maritime Museum, as the morning light was low in the sky, it gave a great cast to the Liverpool ‘Waterfront’ and I decided to take an ‘in-camera’ 180 degrees panoramic stitch shot…

Liverpool Waterfront

I went in the Exhibition… Although I researched this topic extensively, a few years ago, as part of a Liverpool History article I was writing at the time, I found the exhibition to be an excellent example to give a general public awareness, to a subject that is little talked about, and a secretive part of the history of this city we call home.

As I stated in the first paragraph… this policy of sending ‘poor’ British children from working class families and orphanages, began in the early 1600’s and ended as recently as the the 1960’s. At first they were sent to the British colonies in America, but the war of ‘Independence’ put a stop to that avenue, so our Government started sending the Children to Canada, this was followed by South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. In total, hundreds of thousands of British children from ‘poor’ backgrounds were sent abroad, on the pretext of giving them a better life by populating the British Empire across the world. In reality, these children were taken from parents who had deposited their kids in homes for short periods of time, whilst they got on their feet again (financially) only to be told on their return to the children’s homes that their children had been addopted or died, when in fact they had been shipped abroad, to  endure a life of verbal, physical and with many…. sexual abuse, by the very carers who looked after them until they reached working age and left the institutions overseas.

You can hear  part 1 of a 4 part BBC4 production on Britain’s Child Migrants (which I used for my research in 2009) by clicking above If you wish to hear the ALL the 4-30 minute parts, you can visit the BBC4 Page on the subject… Britain’s Child Migrants (better quality)

I found the exhibition very informative with great exhibits which gave a good overview of the life and times of the period, with video footage and actual artifacts of the process. This coupled with materials from Margaret Humphries (a British Social Worker), who located many of the Australian Child Migrants family ties, to re-unite many former Child-Migrants with Parents & Siblings many were told were dead…

More information can be found on the website serving the exhibition at … www.britainschild migrants.com So all in all…. Well worth a visit… and there are many books on the subject, including real life witness stories of the horrors of the whole affair…