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

On 11 May 1833 the ship Charles Kerr cast anchor in Table Bay after a three-month voyage from Cowes, England. It wasn’t the vessel’s first visit to the Cape of Good Hope, but on this occasion she was carrying human cargo. No, not slaves in the usual sense of the word, but twenty boys sent out by the Children’s Friend Society and destined for employment in the Colony.

Table Bay

We can imagine the excitement mingled with trepidation among the young emigrants at their first view of the beautiful Bay and its shipping, with Cape Town nestling at the foot of the majestic table-topped mountain. Most of the children had never been farther afield than London and its immediate environs. Their lives had begun in narrow streets and mostly in dingy, crowded tenements. Until a short while previously there’d been little likelihood of a change in these circumstances. Now they’d embarked on an adventure, leaving behind familiar faces and places, and crossing the ocean to a distant land.

Between 1833 and 1840, over thirty ships would follow in the wake of the Charles Kerr, bringing further groups of children, girls as well as boys, to the Cape Colony.

How and why did this come about? What destiny awaited them in the Cape and how did they cope with being uprooted and subsequently transplanted in foreign soil? Could your ancestor have been among them?

17th c London

There was actually nothing new in the idea of sending vagrant or pauper children to Britain’s colonies. As early as 1618, 100 juveniles were despatched from England to Virginia, and a second batch soon followed. The children had no say in the matter. Homeless, unprotected by parents or any charitable authorities, they were rounded up in the streets of London and herded into gaols before being shipped off to enforced exile in the American colony. There they would be bound to unknown masters whose treatment of the young apprentices was not subject to official regulation. Few of these child migrants would ever return to the country of their birth. 

This practice, whether sanctioned by government or carried out illegally, continued for two centuries. It was a means of ridding England of an unwanted surplus population, as well as providing much-needed labour in her colonies.

To be continued