FindmyPast launches global British Home Children database

From FindmyPast (www.findmypast.co.uk):

First global collection for tracing British Home Children launched by Findmypast

• New collaboration between Canadian and UK organisations sees creation of first major collection of records pertaining to Home Children.
• Over 130,000 British children were sent to British Overseas Territories as part of forced migration scheme between 1860s and 1970s.
• Offered for free, the records will allow estimated 4m+ descendants of Home Children to trace their ancestors for the first time.
• Collection launched on Findmypast at Rootstech, in collaboration with The National Archives, British Library, Library and Archives Canada, and Home Children Canada.

A major new collection of Home Children records has launched today on family tree website, Findmypast, which will allow millions of descendants of British Home Children to trace their ancestors for free – many for the first time.

Created in collaboration with organisations across the UK and Canada, including The National Archives, The British Library, Library and Archives Canada, and Home Children Canada, the new collection features a vast and varied range of records which tell the stories of those who were part of the forced child migrant scheme in place from the 1860s up to the 1970s.

The collection, launched at Rootstech, will be a growing repository with records added on an ongoing basis. It currently includes workhouse records, Juvenile Inspection Reports, Home Children Board of Guardian Records and emigration reports, while future updates are likely to see historical newspapers, migration records, workhouse and institutional records, periodicals and military records added.

Over 130,000 children, now known as ‘British Home Children’, were sent across the Commonwealth, in particular to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Only 12% of these children were ‘true orphans’ - many came from charitable homes, workhouses, or destitute and struggling families. They were usually fostered into families when they reached their destinations to be used as unpaid domestic or farming labour.

However, abuse was widespread in a system which offered little protection to the children and few investigations into the care they received from their foster families. Many were relocated several times during their childhood, and often separated from their siblings.

Historically, descendants of Home Children have struggled to trace their roots, with most records held in private archives and inaccessible to the public. This collection will provide an open-access, centralised set of resources for descendants to trace their forced migrant ancestors back to the UK and their birth families and add them directly to their family tree on Findmypast.

Sarah Bush, Findmypast Managing Director, said:

“We’re extremely proud to launch this groundbreaking new collection, which will allow millions more people to uncover the stories of their forced migrant ancestors. It’s an incredibly poignant and complex part of our Commonwealth history, and these records will shed light on the lives and experiences of the British Home children, which have so often been overlooked or concealed.

“At Findmypast, we believe that every story matters, and we hope to offer renewed hope of discovering ancestors and even new connections to families across the globe – easily and completely for free.”

Roger Kershaw, Head of Strategic Operations and Volunteers at The National Archives, said:

“Many of the children dispatched from the UK to Canada were from children’s homes and had their past erased before being used as cheap labour, with boys working on farms and girls as domestic servants.

“Records from The National Archives reveal some of the government decisions leading to the emigration of children as young as one-year-old, including correspondence from the Home Office, Ministry of Health, Local Government Board and Colonial Office, with those bodies leading the policy, such as Dr Barnado’s.

“We are pleased to be able to contribute to this collection which will provide new avenues for research into the story of the British Home Children.”

Lori Oschefski, an expert on British Home Children, President of the charity Home Children Canada, and a descendant of a Home Child herself, said:

“This new database is significant because it fills crucial gaps in our understanding of Home Children's histories. These gaps hindered comprehensive research efforts, but now, with access to previously unavailable data, we can uncover deeper insights into the experiences and journeys of Home Children.

“As the daughter of a Home Child, I cannot overstate the importance of this new collection for our community. While I conducted significant research for my mother before her passing, accessing records was challenging, and the information in this index was unavailable to me. This collection will revolutionize the search for information on British Home Children, offering understanding, closure, and peace of mind to millions of affected descendants whose personal histories were stripped away by migration programs.”

Discover the collection for free on Findmypast: https://www.findmypast.co.uk/page/british-home-children 

Chris

Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, on Threads at @scottishgenesblog and via Mastodon at https://mastodon.scot/@ScottishGENES.

The Scottish Cemetery in Kolkata

Things seem a wee bit quiet on the Scottish front just now, so here is another blast from the past, this time an article I wrote for the former magazine, Discover My Past Scotland (Issue 5, April 2009), looking at a recce made in 2008 of the Scots Cemetery in Kolkata by what was then the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. (I have updated links and terminology):

The Scottish Cemetery in Kolkata

Chris Paton take a look at efforts to preserve a fascinating Scottish colonial legacy in the heart of India.

In November 2008, a team of experts from Scotland travelled to Kolkata, in the Indian province of West Bengal, at the invitation of the Kolkata Scottish Heritage Trust and the Indian National Trust for Arts and Cultural Heritage. Their purpose was to survey a unique cemetery which has been in existence for almost two hundred years in order to help design a project to help rescue it from ruin. With over 1600 graves, the site has a special connection to Scotland, for the majority of those buried within its grounds are Scots who lived and worked in India during British imperial rule.

The team, comprised of architects James Simpson and Laura Bishop, Clare Sorenson and Steve Wallace from the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, and archaeologists Tom Addyman, Kenny McFadden and Amanda Gow, set out to assess the damage to the cemetery, which has been overgrown and virtually abandoned for decades, with a view to developing a plan for its restoration. Joining them on location was local architectural practice, Manish Chakroborti.

Kolkata
Known as Calcutta until 2001, the West Bengal city of Kolkata was founded on the banks of the River Hooghly in 1690 as a trading post for the English East India Company. Soon after its foundation, thousands of British migrants were making there way to the settlement to partake of the economic opportunities that soon followed, particularly during the 18th and 19th centuries, when the city was the centre of the Company’s opium trade, with the locally grown opium crop shipped to China after auction. Kolkata remained the capital of the British Raj until 1911.

The Scottish Cemetery was established in Kolkata about a mile and half from the original British cemetery site at North Park Street, and was opened shortly after the construction of St. Andrew’s Church at Dalhousie Square in 1818. The kirk, now part of the Church of India, was the first adhering to the Church of Scotland to be built in India, and was raised to cater for an ever growing Scottish contingent within the Kolkata population. Amongst its worshippers were migrants from Dundee who came to develop and work within the city’s fledgling jute industry, building new jute mills and facilitating the export of raw materials from India back to the Highland city for processing. Other settlers from Scotland included industrialists, soldiers, and missionaries. Between eighty and ninety per cent of the burials are believed to be of Scots, with the remainder comprising of Christian Bengalis, and adherents to non-Anglican faiths, such as members of the English and Welsh dissenting churches.

The survey
Prior to the survey team’s arrival, a concerted effort was organised locally to clear away much of the overgrown site of its dense foliage, such as the thick branches of bunyan trees, which can grow some twenty feet in just a year. When the Scottish delegation arrived, it concentrated on the study of one particular quadrant believed to contain the oldest burials, and examined approximately four hundred graves within it, careful to avoid the dangers of rats and snakes resident on the site. An old cemetery plan from the 1930s showing the lay out was used as a guide to the work, and in addition to work on the graves, a full survey was also carried out of the cemetery’s lodge.

The trip represented the first ever overseas trip for the Royal Commission on Ancient and Historic Monuments of Scotland (now Historic Scotland), and an interesting project for the body within its centenary year. For architectural historian Claire Sorenson, the work asked of her was similar to that carried out many times before on similar sites across Scotland. “It was astonishing how Scottish much of the place felt. Many of the monuments were constructed from Aberdeen granite, with others from brick and lime mortar, and many were in good condition, despite the deterioration of the site. On several stones, however, the lead inscriptions had since been picked out, and the iron railings removed.”  

Whilst many graves from mill workers, missionaries and soldiers were identified, the recce also provided Claire with a glimpse into some of other professionals who once made a living in the former Indian capital. “Of particular interest to me was to find the names of so many Scottish masons recorded on the stones, but also the names of the many doctors from Scotland who were laid to rest in the grounds”.

With photographer colleague Steve Wallace, the monuments were extensively photographed, with most of the images recorded now available to view on the Historic Scotland's Canmore database at https://canmore.org.uk. From a genealogical point of view, the images provide a great deal of information for those who may have ancestors buried there. A good example is that of James Miller, who died in Calcutta on November 2nd 1918, with his stone recording that he was ‘aged 27 years, dearly loved and only son of Alexander & Jeanne Miller, Inverkeithing, Scotland’.

Whilst the cemetery was believed to have commenced its burials in the early 1820s, it is thought that the last bodies to be interred there were done so during the 1960s. The monumental styles discovered by the survey team ranged from very ornate classical monuments and urns to the most simplistic inscribed headstones. Amongst some of the more interesting discoveries on the site were the graves of a Glasgow iron master named Boyle, a director of Calcutta’s zoological gardens, and the Reverend John Adam, noted as a ‘late Missionary to the heathen…’. Within the site, James Wilson of Hawick is also believed to lie, who in addition to introducing a paper currency and income tax into India was also the founder of the Economist magazine in Britain.

Future plans
The initiative of architect James Simpson, a former member of the RCAHMS, the work of the Kolkata Scottish Heritage Trust (https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/SC344642) is designed to further cement the historic links between Scotland and the famous Indian city. With the survey now complete, the results are being analysed with a view to turning what is currently a derelict abandoned site into a useful green space environment in India which also respects the locale’s uniquely Scottish heritage.

Simpson’s aim is not just to restore the site, but to create work for the current generation of residents in the area. “It is hoped that we can establish a centre for training locals in the traditional skills needed for such delicate repairs at the cemetery, but we are in urgent need of funds to help put these projects into practice”.

To find out more about how the survey team got on during their recce, a fascinating daily blog outlining their activities in Kolkata is available online at https://scottishcemeterykolkata.wordpress.com.  

* For further information on Scots in India visit the Families in British India Society at www.fibis.org; various vital record register sets from the British Library concerning India are also available on FindmyPast. 

Chris

My new book Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records is now available to buy at https://bit.ly/IrishLandRecords. Also available - Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.