Comments on: Annie Macpherson & The Gutter Children

By: Dawn Tibble

Dawn Tibble — Sun, 19 Jan 2025 13:43:26 +0000

What about sad story of our past. It’s even sadder to read the attitude of budisonata. It is this type of attitude that is causing a perpetual cycle of stigma, lack of empathy and division between the “have and the have nots”. Many ended up in the slums from outside of London due to changes in industrial development which resulted in mass unemployment. Weren’t the pavements of London supposed to be paved with gold? And then there’s the exploitation with pitiful wages, slum landlords and harsh employers.Jump forward 160 years and we still struggling with this problem through the attitudes of those like budisonata.

By: Penelope Hammond

Penelope Hammond — Mon, 04 Sep 2023 18:52:57 +0000

My grandfather was sent to Canada with his two older brothers (10, 8, 6) in 1880 by the Annie Macpherson Home. They were born in Lea Bridge, Hackney. Their father died in June 1880 (the mother, two years earlier) and by mid-September, 1880 , they were ‘trained’ and sent to Ingersoll, Ontario and none of them ever returned to England. I suspect their grandmother took them to the Tower Street location (closest to their home) and signed for them to go to Canada, despite the fact that she was illiterate like most working class women at the time. No document has survived, but the Annie Macpherson Home records are held by the Barnardo organization. Records from later years have pictures and notes. Here is what I have found about Macpherson in Hackney.

Below is an advertisement from the Charities Digest, Welfare Association, Great Britain – (Classified Register of Charities), the 1890 Edition, page 620:
Home of Industry [Founded?] 1869 – 29 Bethnal Green Rd. E. Training House,
2 and 4 Tower Street, Hackney

Object- To carry on general ______ mission work, e.g. sewing classes for widows and mothers, evening classes for factory girls and matchbox makers; also to receive destitute children and train them for emigration to Canada. Admission is by application to Miss Macpherson, at the homes. Applicants for training for emigration to Canada must be orphans or destitute, and aged, boys-10 to 14 years; girls, for emigration, under 10; for service in England, 10 to 16. Payment varies according to circumstances. Preference is given to orphans, fatherless or motherless. Crippled or deformed children ineligible. Management: By Miss Macpherson and a council of seven gentlemen. Income: (1887-8) charitable contributions L8,129 pounds sterling. Inmates: In training during 1887 – 60 to 200. Banking: London and County Bank, Shoreditch. Treasurer: J.E. Mathieson, Esq., Mildmay Park. Lady Superintendent: Miss Macpherson. Secretary: Miss Stock.
p. 614 Length and cost of Passage by steamer to Canada – 9 to 10 days Lowest fare L4.00

By: Dianne Cosway

Dianne Cosway — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 19:53:49 +0000

My father in law came over to Canada with the Annie Macpherson organization. What orphanages were associated with Annie Macpherson?

By: Susan Wilson

Susan Wilson — Sat, 01 Oct 2022 00:29:58 +0000

My Grandmother was shipped to Canada through Annie McPherson . My grandmother Bertha Lillian Kilby . Later Cooper was from Bethnal Green . Married my Grampa Anthony Wilson a Ontario, Canadian . Never did I once ever hear about her background but my Dad new . Bertha was never a very talkative person or really happy . Thanks Susan Wilson

By: Margaret Ashcroft

Margaret Ashcroft — Sat, 05 Jun 2021 20:13:50 +0000

We are hearing today about the native children who died at the residential schools.There has been less fuss made of the 100,000 children who were sent to Canada and the equal number sent to Australia. No one in government stands up and speaks of the life and deaths of these children. There was no excuse for sexual abuse but it happened with these children too. It was a very sad time for most of these children and equally sad today to hear of all the children buried without records.

My dad was a Barnardo boy sent to Canada when he was 12 years old. There has been no compensation for any of these children and most of them dug in and became independent Canadian citizens. I do not think there will ever be a drive to find all the little graves of our children from Great Britain who died of the diseases prevalent at that time and without antibiotics to help them survive.

By: Robert Bennett

Robert Bennett — Sun, 23 Aug 2020 10:44:29 +0000

Equally thought provoking comments by Budisonata, Lee Smith and Hugh Curran. There are never easy answers to these questions and it’s conveniently easy to look at the situation then and now through prisms of opposing views from Left and Right.

By: Hugh Curran

Hugh Curran — Mon, 03 Aug 2020 20:42:16 +0000

Budisonata wrote: “But the worst exploiters of the poor were the poor themselves.” That itself is palatable to certain conservatives. But look underneath this statement about the “poor themselves” one can find the same sentiments on right wing radio or journals about the “worst exploiters of “blacks are blacks”. On the surface, these are plausible sentiments but the circumstances that caused the ghettos or the slums of London are left un-examined. Why and how were African Americans driven off their farm land in the south and forced to move into ghettos in northern cities that created enormous inequalities. The same is true of England where hundreds of thousands of displaced Irish after the famine were forced to migrate to cities to eke out an existence. The famine was largely human prolonged as a result of non-government help because of laissez faire policies. This, at a time in the late 1840-1850s when young Irish men were 40% of the British military. The poor had no training, no means of support and no means of birth control due to lack of necessities as well as a christianity that discouraged birth control. Blaming the victim(s) is an old game while the causes are ignored.

By: Lee Smith

Lee Smith — Wed, 15 Jul 2020 13:54:04 +0000

I’ve always found it slightly annoying that people in the modern western world accuse the poor of breeding like rats despite their poverty according to Budisonata above. People say it about famine struck areas in Africa for instance. The thing is then and now the human urge to re-procreate is one of our strongest. The species would not have flourished otherwise. So what people in the nice comfortable modern world are saying is that the poor should give up sex. The poor of the Victorian slums should have abstained also apparently! So you have people who had nothing at all and no future beyond a horrible early death should have given up that one pleasure in life that was free. Something even well looked after Catholic priests fail to do. It’s easy to be judgemental from afar but not so easy when your life on Earth is already hell.

By: WILLIAM ABRAHAM

WILLIAM ABRAHAM — Mon, 15 Apr 2019 14:02:23 +0000

Hi Interesting to see. My ancestor was sent to Canada at 8 with his little sister through Annie Macpherson after their parents both died. Indentured until 21 and a fairly horrific process from what I can see. I would love to track down their records. Thanks for posting

By: Budisonata

Budisonata — Sun, 14 May 2017 18:20:57 +0000

The social commentators at that time were against the immigration of children to Canada and other realms of the empire. They want to give the impression that things were better back in England. That is a disgraceful revisionism of history. As mentioned in the article Victorian London had up to 30,000 street kids, many of whom were social orphans, meaning they had living parents who abandoned, abused or neglected them. These kids run away from their homes due to their intolerable and very violent home life. A lot of parents were alcoholics who just used their kids like farm animals to earn money. Irresponsible and cruel parents who bred like rats, having 10-12 children in a one room slum without running water, heating, cooking facilities and toilets. Most of these kids were starved, beaten, left to freeze and made to work as young as four. As a horrific example of how things were back then, a prospective tenant was inspecting a room to let when he noticed an awful stench coming from a closet. On closer inspection, he found huge mounds of shit left there by the previous occupants. Because these women popped out babies year after year, they fed the babies gin and opium called among other things Mother’s Helper to keep them quiet. Opium had a double edge. It kept the babies quiet and took away their appetites. The worst exploitation occurred not in the satanic mills and factories but in the homes. Children as young as four were made to work 10-14 hours a day, locked in their mother’s knees, and were slapped if they fell asleep. A six- year old was roused at four to walk eight miles to her work carrying bricks and walked the eight miles homes after six in the afternoon. The memoirs of a ten year old recalled her mother kicking him down the stairs if he didn’t carry the buckets of water fast enough. If you didn’t work, even if you were a child, you were fed only bread and water. Those are the lucky ones. I could go on and on. It’s always convenient to blame the greedy capitalists and the ruling aristocrats for the appalling poverty. Academics, authors and historians tend to brush away the more unpalatable truth about the poor. They sanitize history and idealise the poor. But the worst exploiters of the poor were the poor themselves. We like our history and reality that are easy to swallow.