Happy Families?: Scottish Presbyterian Missionary Children’s Homes, 1900s–1950s

Abstract

This article focuses on two residential institutions in Edinburgh – Home House and Cunningham House – established in the first half of the twentieth century by various branches of Scottish Presbyterianism, to cater for the children of their missionaries operating overseas. These homes served to mitigate the common Protestant practice of family separation, whereby children often returned to countries of origin for all or some of their education. These Scottish homes replicated other Protestant institutions for missionary children. At the same time, they were smaller and more intimate in scale, and Presbyterians played on this to accentuate the homes' role in providing a substitute family for the residents. It argues that the Edinburgh homes can be understood from two equally important vantage points, drawing on insights from the history of emotions and the history of childhood. On the one hand, adult narratives played up notions of happiness and domestic stability for the children. On the other hand, children's narratives indicate considerable emotional ambiguity and navigation. As such, Cunningham House and Home House acted as important sites of emotional management perceived and experienced variously by children and adults.