I came across the following article in the Illustrated London News whilst looking-up some material regarding the collision and subsequent sinking of the Avalanche and Forest off Portland Bill during the night of the 11/12 Sep 1877.
The Emigrant Girls Home Canada - 1877
We lately published an interesting letter from a lady who accompanied
Miss Maria Rye with her last party of seventy. emigrant children from London
to Canada; and we now give an Illustration of the house in which they are
lodged and taken care of while Miss Rye is making arrangements for placing
them in household service or apprenticeship with respectable homely families
in that country. Writing from Toronto on Sept. 7, the correspondent of
the Standard supplies the following description:-
" At the mouth of the Niagara river, where its curiously green deep
waters lose themselves in Lake Ontario, lies the quaint old town of Niagara.
A large and comfortable hotel, facing the lake and exposed to the cool
northerly breezes, attracts thither a large number of Americans and Canadians
during the three or four months of summer; but at other times and in other
respects the old capital of Upper Canada must be a decidedly quiet place
of residence, though to many persons this feature is fully compensated
for by its cheapness, its charming climate, and the amazing fertility of
its fruit orchards. The Niagara district is the fruit garden of Canada;
and the hundred upon hundreds of baskets and boxes of peaches, pears, plums,
and grapes which the steamers bring across daily to Toronto in the height
of the season are among the pleasantest sights - and smells - in Canada.
It is not, however, in the luscious fruits of Niagara that I wish to interest
your readers, but in a certain square brick building standing about a mile
out of the town, which, it not architecturally attractive, yet with its
deep verandas and jalousies looks comfortable and well cared for. Neither
outside nor inside; does it in any way betray the fact that its walls were
originally those of the gaol of the district for it stands in a garden
and orchard where the trees are literally breaking under the weight of
peaches and plums, and the vines are loaded with hundred-weights of grapes;
and its general appearance, as well as all its internal arrangements, were
completely changed when it passed into the hands of its present owner and
was adapted for its present use - the receiving-house, the 'Western Home,'
as she calls it, of the young children who are intrusted to Miss Rye for
deportation from England to Canada. Cleanliness, space, and airiness are
the characteristics of the house that most strike the visitor on first
entering; and the arrangements, if simple and inexpensive are admirably
adapted for their several purposes. To anyone who knows what is the life
of a child in a London slum or an English workhouse, the picture presented
and the contrast suggested by those twenty-five children -the latest arrived
batch - whom I saw the other day, clean, ruddy, and happy, shouting up
and down the verandahs, was certainly very striking indeed; but, instead
of sending me away contentedly thankful that Miss Rye's labours had wrought
such a happy change in these and hundreds of their predecessors in this
� Western Home,' it the rather incited me to ascertain what, if any are
the real objections which lie against Miss Rye's scheme and her system
of carrying it out. The children, if I understand the process right, are
derived from two sources - from workhouses, the guardians of which are
willing and are authorised to intrust orphan and other children to Miss
Rye; and from the streets and wretched tenements of London, whence waifs,
orphans, deserted children, drunkards' children, and such like, find their
way to her Home or receiving-house in Peckham. On arrival in Canada the
whole batch is almost invariably brought to Niagara for rest, for study
of their characters, for washing after the voyage, and for perfecting the
arrangements for placing them in families, which have usually made applications
for all of them long before their arrival. After the lapse of a week or
two the concourse is dispersed, the children are sent or taken to their
new homes, and their new life begins'
There has been some controversy in official quarters upon the merits
of this system: and Mr. Doyle, an Inspector of the Local Government Board,
who was sent out to Canada, reported that it had in many cases not proved
satisfactory. It appears that in the six years terminating with 1876, Miss
Rye had landed at her establishment in Niagara 1100 children from the streets
and workhouses of England, and it reflects credit upon the sanitary and
dietary regulations to which her numerous charge has been subjected that
during this entire period the death rate in this number specified amounted
only to fifteen. She is reluctantly compelled to admit, however, that sixteen
of the workhouse girls fell, and that a considerable number besides had
displayed violent temper and extreme insubordination, resulting in a frequent
change of situation and sometimes in their return to the Home. Nor is this
fact strange, when their previous lack of firm but gentle discipline is
taken into account. She also admits having lost sight of twenty-eight girls
under fifteen years of age.
Notwithstanding these partial failures and disappointments, we receive
the testimony of the Toronto correspondent of the Standard
in favour
of Miss Rye's proceedings. We in Canada," he says, " know something of
her work, and we in Canada are to a great extent satisfied that it is a
good work, and fairly well done. It is true she is overtaxed; it is true
that, single-handed, she is not equal to the labour and expense of doing
the whole thoroughly. No one person, man or woman, however much his or
her heart may be in the work, can possibly supervise the collection of
the children in England, their exportation, their reception here, the selection
homes for them and keep up also a careful systematic supervision over them
for many years. Miss Rye has done wonders; her energy and enthusiastic
devotion to her self-imposed have triumphed over difficulties which would
have swamped an official craft long ago; and she can have the satisfaction
of feeling that she has rescued from a life of wretchedness, and probably
of sin, hundreds of children, who have a useful and, on the whole, happy
career open to them. Nobody in Canada ever expected that the mere passing
through Miss Rye's hands would be a more efficient detergent than the waters
of baptism; that with her workhouse clothes the workhouse girl would 'shed'
all her moral delinquencies, not only those acquired by herself, but those
inherited from, perhaps, generations of ignorant or vicious. parents. Children
brought up, or 'dragged up,' as most of these have been, cannot be expected
to show either a morality or a capacity above the average; and, though
there have been some very black sheep in the flock, the experiment of importation
has been, on the whole, very satisfactory. This is the verdict of the Canadian
public.
As regards the children themselves, I believe that their position is,
in nine cases out of ten, good and satisfactory. No one in his senses ever
expected that these waits and outcasts were to be placed on beds of roses;
that their days were to be passed in happy romping among the peach-trees
of their Western home; that they were to be free from toil, and subject
to none of the rough usage that falls to the lot of the children of the
poor all the world over. Occasionally, no doubt, they have fallen into
bad hands, and been subjected to the caprices of cruel or grasping mistresses.
But let us have no goody' philanthropy in this matter. Think what these.
children were, and what they would inevitably have developed into if left
to chance and the work house and then let anyone ask himself whether the
lot of at least nine tenths of them is not immeasurably better now."
jalousie = a blind or shutter made of a row of angled slats to keep
out rain etc. and control the influx of light. [French (as jealousy)] COD
Peckham is now a suburb of London, but would probably have been described
as Surrey in those days
