“Les Miserables” Children of Great Britain in Canada: Maria Rye’s Migration Programme

Abstract

In this paper, the author explores Maria Susan Rye’s emigration society. She initiated the relocation of British children from workhouses and orphanages to Canada in 1869. Documentary and narrative sources have rarely been used to explore this “inconvenient” topic of British history. Few works by Western researchers of child migration appeared only at the end of the twentieth century. In the article, the author analyses controversial events in the history of Great Britain and Canada in the nineteenth century. The purpose of the work is to consider the reasons for resettlement, Rye’s migration plan, the attitude of the British public towards it, its practical implementation in the Dominion, and the living conditions of minors in Canada. The author notes that the pauperisation of the British population was a major factor in the juvenile emigration in the context of industrialisation and demographic growth of the cities. Rye’s plan was to take children from slums and place them in Canadian families. The author pays special attention to Andrew Doyle’s mission. He was commissioned by the British government to investigate the activities of Rye, her colleagues, and the living conditions of the migrants. The author demonstrates that Doyle exaggerated the abuse and lack of supervision of children in order to discredit Rye’s project and impose the workhouse system on Canada. She concludes that the informal control of migrants practised by Rye should have been supplemented by legislative protection of the rights and interests of British minors in Canada.