A RootsChat Database for British Home Children in Australia

[Berlin-Bob]

When we hear the phrase "British Home Children" we usually think of Canada.  And this is indeed where the the majority of British Home Children (BHC) ended up.

But British Home Children were also sent to Australia and to New Zealand.

The RootsChat database for BHC has over 20.000 records - 781 are records of British Home Children who were sent to Australia, and 9 records are of New Zealand BHC.

Perhaps you would like to add your British Home Children to the database ?

See these topics:
Topic: A Rootschat Database for British Home Children
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=716214.0
and
Topic: DBSIG: British Home Children.
http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=716206.0

For DBSIG access:
 » Reference Library (link at bottom of every RootsChat page)
 » DBSIG - Database for Special Interest Groups
 » Select your interest

And here are the help pages, to show you what is possible, and how to enter your data:
http://surname.rootschat.com/lexicon/dbsig/dbsig-help.php?dbsig_num=2&show=gi#gi

Looking forward to seeing you there ....

Bob

[Neil Todd]

Hello Bob,

While it might be self explanatory for all those families involved directly from Britain, it may not suffice in Australia. Australia is made up with people from many, many Nations and some of those others and I will include myself as well, may need a bit more information on just what "British Home Children" are.

Is it possible to have that on the database, or here?

Neil

[Berlin-Bob]

Hi Neil,

Here is a short (canadian based) description from the home page of our database:

Over a period of 70 years from 1869 to 1939, up to 120,000 British children were sent to Canada to work as indentured farm workers and domestics.

The descendants of what are now known as 'The British Home Children' number up to ten percent of the current Canadian population.

Many children were sent to Canada by various institutions and Childrens' Homes in the UK.

regards,
Bob

Image : one of 16 pages of records for British Home Children sent to Australia

[Dundee]

Hi Bob,

The wildcard * in the surname in advanced search is not working for me 

It just keeps coming up as no records found.  What am I doing wrong?

Debra 

[Dundee]

Oh OK, I have to choose 'soundex'.  Got it.

LOL, no, that doesn't work either.

[Berlin-Bob]

Hi Debra,

Do you get any kind of error message ?

What did you enter in the surname field ?

Here is an example with "starting with"

[Dundee]

I thought I had to use a wildcard as in Car* for the search to work but I see now that I don't.

Thank you.

Debra 

[Dundee]

Just a note regarding documents related to the BHC in Australia.

The National Archives have started to digitise not just incoming 20th century passenger lists, but also the documents in Series B4094 - "Ships' files relating to the Assisted Passage Scheme".

These documents include reports by the onboard welfare officers and matrons and sometimes mention individual passengers/children by name.

They also usually contain separate lists of those children onboard who were from Barnardo's and Fairbridge and also the Dreadnought boys etc.

A couple of examples are here:

Benalla arrived 1925
http://soda.naa.gov.au/record/413700/1

Baradine arrived 1928
http://soda.naa.gov.au/record/414875/1

Searching and viewing is free - just use 'Basic Search' to search for the ship name and year and then scroll through the results for records that have been digitised.

http://www.naa.gov.au/collection/search/index.aspx

Keep checking back if your ship has not yet been digitised and don't forget to choose the right voyage as there may have been a number of different ones during the year.

As usual with these types of records you have to be prepared to see things that you may not like.

Debra 

[KarenM]

Hi Debra,

Thank you for posting those links, very interesting reading!

Karen