Child Emigrants to the Cape Colony Part 3 cont

CFS ANNUAL REPORTS

The Cape committee submitted annual reports to the CFS in London, and in 1836 and 1837 the feedback was good: the scheme appeared to be working satisfactorily. During the period 1833-1839, about 800 children were sent to the Colony. However, a combination of the factors mentioned above was undermining the scheme and would eventually threaten the very existence of the Society. The catalyst was as unexpected as it was disastrous.

TRUBSHAW INCIDENT

On 2 April 1839, The Times reported an incident in London concerning ‘a shabbily dressed boy, about twelve years of age’ who was brought before the Marylebone magistrate ‘on a charge of having stolen a purse containing some halfpence belonging to a poor woman who keeps an apple-stall in the New Road’. The boy gave a false name: his real name was discovered to be Edward Trubshaw. He proceeded to tell the court that he had been sent out to the Cape of Good Hope, by the ‘Juvenile Society’ (the CFS). He stated: ‘I was half-starved and knocked about shameful. They sold me, and a good many more’. The magistrate exclaimed, ‘Sold you! What do you mean? Apprenticed you, I suppose?’ ‘No Sir’ said the boy, not apprenticed, they sold me … to a Dutchman who came and looked at a lot of us … he bought me for 10 guineas.’ Trubshaw had later run away from his master and had worked his way back to England by ship.

The press pounced on the suggestion that children ‘were being disposed of like so many sheep at Smithfield’. Reports of the case created a major sensation, and complaints against the CFS with accusations of slave-dealing and cruelty, flooded in. The Society tried valiantly to defend itself, but the power of the press was all too apparent. People known to be patrons of the CFS were attacked in the street and stones were thrown at members of the London committee.

Captain Brenton, aghast, saw the impending ruin of all his efforts. As the storm raged around him, he became seriously ill and died on 6 April 1839. It was rumoured that he’d taken poison, but an inquest returned a verdict of death by natural causes related to a heart condition. On the day of his funeral, a woman among the crowd shouted that ‘under the pretence of benevolence he had been dealing in slaves’: the unkindest cut of all.

INQUIRY

                 

The CFS South African scheme was doomed. A Government inquiry was set up to investigate the condition and treatment of the children sent to the Cape Colony. Though largely vindicated by the report which followed the Society lost public support in England and there was a reluctance in the Cape to receive further indentured children.

Sir George Napier, Governor of the Cape

The Governor of the Cape, Sir George Napier, remarked in February 1840, that ‘although deeply regretting that an institution which promised well has been overthrown, as regards the Cape of Good Hope, by the evident disposition … on the part of many persons in England to pay implicit belief to every foolish report or misrepresentation to its discredit, I cannot but hope that the colony will be spared the pain of encountering any further inquiry through the continued operation of the Children’s Friend Society’.

The motives of the CFS in sending the child emigrants to the Cape were sincere, but the Society lacked awareness of colonial conditions. Moreover, they assumed that employers in the Colony would share the CFS ideal of moral upliftment of the children. Most employers regarded their apprentices simply as useful labour in a time of shortage of that commodity.

The 1840 Report revealed few genuine cases of corporal punishment by masters, and the majority of the children interviewed made no complaint of ill-treatment. Most of those who stated their wish to return to England felt that they weren’t learning a proper trade in the Colony. The artisan apprentices working for carpenters, masons, blacksmiths, wagonmakers etc had better prospects than the indentured farm labourers.

FUTURE SCHEMES

Although the Cape scheme ground to a halt, largely due to prejudice and the emotive topic of slavery, the child emigrants were given an opportunity to change their circumstances, and some chose to remain in the Colony after their apprenticeship was over. Among 69 apprentices whose indentures had expired by 1840, 41 boys and 12 girls were still living in the Colony and were self-supporting; some of the girls had married. 

Despite the failure of the CFS at the Cape of Good Hope, the concept was later adapted for other successful child emigrant schemes. In 1858 about 50 children were sent to Algoa Bay from Rotterdam. By that time, influenced by the CFS experience, the laws governing indentured labour at the Cape had been modified.

As for the boy Edward Trubshaw, whose allegations had precipitated the crisis which brought the CFS to its knees in 1839, he continued his inglorious career and was later sentenced to transportation from England for theft.

To be continued 

Child Emigrants to the Cape Colony Part 2

Aims of the CFS

The Children’s Friend Society’s intention was to provide agricultural and other employment to pauper children between the ages of eight and sixteen, estimating that in London in 1830 there were not less than 15 000 juveniles who were totally destitute.

Initially, sending the children overseas wasn’t envisaged and Brenton himself was not in favour of that concept. His aim was to remove the children from their disadvantaged backgrounds, to rehabilitate them, provide them with training, and subsequently to indenture them in various occupations until they were able to become industrious, self-supporting citizens in their own country.

Circumstances altered the case. A labour surplus in Britain meant that the CFS had difficulty placing their charges in suitable situations. At the same time, the abolition of slavery in the British colonies in 1833 brought about an acute labour shortage at the Cape of Good Hope. Sending the children to the Cape appeared to be a solution to these problems. It was also in the interests of Empire to increase the British population of the Colony.

Action

In October 1832 the CFS began advertising in the Graham’s Town Journal for masters at the Cape who might require the services of juvenile emigrants as apprentices. At a meeting of the Society the following January, it was decided that twenty of the children then living at the West Ham asylum should be sent to the Cape on the Charles Kerr. According to reports in The Times, these boys were present at the meeting and ‘all held up their hands in favour of emigrating’ (as if they knew what emigrating meant). Half the cost of sending the group to the Colony would be borne by the Government.

The experiment was successfully carried out and Brenton began approaching the Poor Law guardians in various London parishes to contribute financial aid towards sending their paupers out to the Cape, The Times announcing in March 1833 that the Parish of St Marylebone had advanced £200. Soon afterwards, a second ship, the Maria, left London for Algoa Bay (Port Elizabeth), with another batch of twenty boys.

This pattern continued and public support was indicated by the donations received by the
CFS. By May 1834, 213 boys had been sent to the Cape Colony. In the same year, the Society attracted the attention of the Princess Victoria (she would become Queen in 1837). Under her Royal patronage an institution for female juveniles was established at Chiswick and girls joined the ranks of indentured children being shipped to the Cape.

The young Queen Victoria

Victoria visited the Chiswick asylum and recorded her favourable impression in her journal: ‘it is a most interesting and delightful establishment … it is for poor vagrant girls who are received under the age of fifteen and Miss Murray says that they have never had a girl six months who did not become a perfectly good child. When they have become quite good and can read and write and do work of all kinds necessary for the home they are sent abroad … where they are apprenticed and become excellent servants’.

An example of the 'tough love' of the Victorian era: the pious iron fist in the silken sentimental glove. What is the definition of a 'perfectly good child'? One who is forced by circumstance to submit to the power of those in authority and to be 'sent abroad' regardless of personal wishes?

To be continued

Child Emigrants to the Cape Colony Part 1 cont

Naval battle

After the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815 and throughout the Regency and early Victorian eras there was a spectacular increase in Britain’s population, especially in the cities. The urban crime rate rose to new heights; gaols were full. A wide chasm existed between rich and poor. The spectre of the workhouse hovered over the poorer echelons.

Conditions in the metropolis of London (with an estimated 1.1 million inhabitants in 1797) led to thousands of vagrant children living on the streets and turning to theft or other criminal activities for survival. There were also juveniles who, as paupers, were under the guardianship of the Parish. Many of them were put out to work, ostensibly as apprentices but actually as unskilled child labourers. The system was open to abuse. 

Much is heard of the wickedness of the Regency years but there were individuals who had a social conscience and made efforts to improve the lot of the underprivileged. Influenced by the missionary and evangelical movements, they believed that ‘philanthropy was an expression of piety, benevolence a moral obligation’. One such philanthropist was Edward Pelham Brenton, the founder of the Children’s Friend Society.

Captain Brenton

Brenton, a Captain in the Royal Navy, retired on half-pay at the end of the War. Though offered another command, he had no wish to serve during the Peace, and dedicated his life  to improving the situation of the working classes, particularly the children of the poor. 

In 1829 the notorious Hibner trial made a sensation in the British press. The story had a profound effect on Brenton. In the Memoir written by his brother, Sir Jahleel Brenton, Captain Brenton’s own words are quoted:   

A woman named Hibner, a tambour worker … had murdered two of her little female apprentices. These unhappy children were poor orphan parish girls of St Pancras. She had six of them bound to her and the testimony of the survivors, corroborated by indisputable evidence, exposed to the public a scene of tyranny and cruelty … I immediately made myself acquainted with the process of binding parish apprentices, the motives of the guardians of the poor in getting rid of them, as well as those of the generality of tradesmen who apply for them.

 [The trial proceedings can be accessed at www.oldbaileyonline.org under the keyword Hibner] 

Brenton, with the support of like-minded patrons, began his crusade by founding the Society for the Suppression of Juvenile Vagrancy in 1830, and establishing an ‘asylum’ at West Ham Abbey near Bow in Essex, where twenty boys of ‘a forlorn and neglected condition’ were received. In 1833, this institution was relocated to Hackney Wick and named the Brenton Juvenile Asylum. The Society for the Suppression of Juvenile Vagrancy was given a more positive title - The Children’s Friend Society (CFS).

WORKHOUSES AND PRISONS

Brenton was a man of strong religious beliefs who expressed his views forthrightly Describing himself as ‘the uncompromising enemy’ of the workhouse system, he pointed out its many flaws. Workhouses were ‘receptacles of misery …fraught with the very germ and essence of all moral depravity …’ Those who, though not ‘vicious’, were driven by circumstances to take refuge in the workhouse, were crowded together with the most depraved and were inevitably influenced for the worse. The workhouses too often relieved the poor with money, irresponsible parents spending this on gin and leaving their children to beg.

Equally critical of prisons, Brenton wrote: 

Coldbath Fields Prison

'The House of Correction in Coldbath Fields has within its walls some hundreds of children and young people, whose offences are mostly trivial, and grew out of want and idleness.

Many poor little boys are shut up among thieves for robbing orchards and fruit gardens’. Conversely, ‘at our little Asylum at West Ham our boys are reclaimed and happy, without police, or iron bar, or flogging'.

However, it was clear that vagrant children were frequently enticed into organized crime: 

... in the neighbourhood of St Giles … a very large house was let out at 4d per night to pickpockets and thieves, chiefly from 10-16 years of age, who were seen every morning sallying forth in groups of three and four, having previously arranged their routes for the day. 

Oliver Twist asks for More

Is this scenario sounding familiar? Of course it is: shades of the Artful Dodger, Fagin, Bill Sykes and company. Charles Dickens began writing his novel Oliver Twist seven years after the founding of the CFS.

To be continued