Marjorie Too Afraid to Cry. Patricia Skidmore

      Winifred stood on the platform and tried to see the purpose of everything. The horrid man told her that the children would stay in Newcastle for a day or two, and then they would send them to the Middlemore Emigration Home in Selly Oak on the outskirts of Birmingham. She wrote that down right away, not wanting to lose track of where they were. Birmingham was so far away. She would never be able to visit them. She wanted to smack that man when he told her that it was men like John Middlemore that made this country great. He told her Middlemore’s first home for children had opened in 1872 and they had been emigrating children of the poor ever since. He told her that Middlemore Homes now worked closely with the Fairbridge Society and assured her that Kingsley Fairbridge’s plan was sound. He opened a book and read from it:

      Every year tens of thousands of boys and girls seek admission to the labour market only to be told that there is no need of them, and they are flung back on to one or other of the great human scrap-heaps which lie at the gates of every one of our great cities — derelict little vessels on the Ocean of Life, children doomed to a blind alley existence and the squalor of the slums.[1]

      He said her children would go “from these slums to sunshine.” The man was daft. Obviously, he had never seen her children play in the sun down on the Whitley Bay sands — a site to gladden any mother’s heart with its fresh air, sea breeze, sun, and sand. Her children had all the ingredients for a healthy life; she just needed a little more help from her husband. That damn letter — that was not the kind of help she needed.

      The Prince of Wales is featured in this Fairbridge Society appeal for funding, which appeared in the The Times on March 11, 1925. This funding was to provide “for intensive training of 200 happy little embryo Empire builders.”

       Online newspapers, 17th to 18th century, Burney Collection, Newspapers, Gale Group.

      A Christmas Charities poster that appeared in The Times, December 14, 1931.

      Winifred could have strangled that wretched man too, when he told her, “Your children are being given a chance.” His lip curled as he continued. “Children like yours have no future here. The country has no need of all this flotsam and jetsam. It is the best thing for the children, your family, and the entire country. Do your duty, woman.”

      It is not our fault that we are poor, she thought, her frustration growing by the moment. There are no jobs. Maybe they would have a better chance; there was little work around here for their men, let alone their children. That was her only hope, that he might be right. Will they keep their promise and send her information on where she can write to them? Would the Fairbridge Society send her children to Canada or to Australia?[2]