When 10-year-old Rose Shapcott and her brother Fred, 14, were orphaned and put into a Barnardo’s children’s home in 1891, little did they know they would end up being separated and sent thousands of miles away across the Atlantic.
The siblings were sent to Canada as part of the British Home Children child migration programme, which saw about 100,000 impoverished children from Britain sent to overseas colonies including Canada, between 1869 and the 1940s.
These children were separated from their families and sent off to Canada as a source of cheap labour, often suffering mistreatment at the hands of those who took them in, said Rose’s great grandson Malcolm Farrow.
Farrow said Fred was sent to Saskatchewan first and then Rose asked to be sent over when she was 17, thinking they would be reunited.
Instead, she was sent thousands of miles away to Peterborough in Ontario and went on to have “a very sad life”, Farrow revealed.
Rose ended up getting married but Fred managed to get her back to England as he was concerned about her.
She had a baby boy illegitimately, but he was put into care due to having a disability. At one point, Rose was admitted to an asylum in England when she began struggling with her mental health, Farrow explained.
Eventually, she returned to her husband in Canada, without her son, and died in 1916.
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
