Manchester Libraries’ Local Image Collection is a unique collection of over 80 000 images illustrating the history of the city. A new website is being developed (the current site being an interim one but still an up-date on the previous site which began back in 2004) and hopes to launch soon. What is more the new site will have around 10 000 new images, scanned by volunteers, from what is known as the Town Hall Photographers Collection.
Whilst many of our images are fascinating in themselves it is often the stories behind them that help bring them to life. This is the aim of our new Behind the Image Blog.
This image features a group of children standing expectantly outside the Town Hall in April 1910 with Lord Mayor Charles Behren. From newspaper reports of the time it seems that they are children from the Manchester and Salford Boys and Girls Refuge just before their emigration to Canada. Known as British Home Children, from the 1860s to 1948, around 100 000 children were sent to Canada to work in farms and as domestics by various organisations. The children had come to these organisations when their parents fell on hard times and were, in fact, not usually orphans. Today the scheme is well recognised as controversial primarily because many children were mistreated.
According to an article in the Manchester Evening News (14th April 1910 p.6) these Manchester boys would be going into farm work. It is interesting that the article refers to criticisms at the time but it appears these were rebuffed by the Secretary of the Refuge. An article the day before, again in the Manchester Evening News, refers to two members of Chorlton Poor Law Union (another organisation involved in relocating children to Canada) resolutely sticking to their guns in criticising the fact that young children were being put to work in Canada, a form of cheap labour. They do, though, appear to have been lone voices.