Boarding Out at Home and Abroad: Rescuing and Rehabilitating Scotland's Destitute Children from the 1860s to the 1960s

Abstract

For centuries Scotland's vulnerable children have posed a persistent problem to the 'care authorities', which at various times have been the church, philanthropic societies and, increasingly since the early twentieth century, the state. The plight of pauperised, orphaned, abandoned, abused, wayward, sick or disabled children has been addressed not only through institutional confinement, but also through variations on the modern concept of care in the community, albeit a community generally at some distance from the child's birthplace. The practice of boarding out city children in rural Scotland, which was prevalent from the early nineteenth century until the 1960s, and the more ambitious policy of overseas relocation, which was followed from the 1870s until well into the twentieth century, each involved sending children to areas with which they had no previous connections and that were often both geographically and culturally alien. This comparative investigation of the domestic and transatlantic manifestations of boarding out in the Highlands and Canada explores the philosophy that inspired the practice and the mechanisms by which relocation was achieved. It also analyses the repercussions of an increasingly complex and controversial policy for the sponsors, for the children themselves, for the households to which they were sent and for the areas into which they were expected to assimilate. The increased media and scholarly scrutiny to which child migration has been subjected in recent years has spawned a number of publications, ranging from sensational polemic to academic analysis. Particularly helpful, in a Scottish context, is Lynn Abrams' study of child welfare and protection, The Orphan Country, while the voices of the uprooted, which at the time were largely silent or suppressed, have added an extra dimension to a historiography that was initially dominated by the promotional literature of sponsoring institutions. In addition to utilising scholarly publications and migrants' recollections, this study draws on contemporary press reports, parliamentary investigations and eyewitness accounts. Domestic cases are documented through local government and educational records, including registers of applications for poor relief (which often initiated the process of removal), published lists of children boarded out by various Glasgow parishes, poor law inspectors' visitation reports and the school log books of the host parishes. Settlement overseas is discussed in the annual reports and individual case files of orphanages and rescue homes, notably Quarrier's Orphan Homes of Scotland, but also including lesser-known institutions such as the Whinwell