24th February 2010
The British Prime Minister has apologised for the U.K.'s role in sending more than 130,000 to the former colonies of Canada & Australia. Britain is the only country in the world with a sustained history of child migration. Only Britain has used child migration as a significant part of its child care strategy over a period of four centuries.
The reality of this policy was to remove children, some as young as three years old, from their homes, from their mothers and fathers, from all that was familiar to them, and to ship them thousands of miles away from their home country to institutions in distant lands within the Commonwealth. Many of these children were removed without their parents' knowledge or consent.
One such young man was Ernest Gronow born in Hendon, Middlesex in 1894. Ernest set sail on the 9th Sept 1909 from Liverpool on the SS Corsican, bound for Quebec. He arrived on the 17th September 1909, his final destination Ottawa, Ontario. He travelled along with 16 other young boys between the ages of 11-15 under the Catholic Emigration Association.
According to the Census taken on the 31st March 1901 Ernest Gronow was a inmate of the Guardians of the poor, of the Hendon Union Schools. [RG13/5336 folio 127. page 4] His birthplace is recorded as unknown. At the same time a Mary Gronow, probably his sister is also in the same institution. I don't know what happened to Ernest or what his life became in Canada, or even if he stayed in Canada, if anyone knows what became of him please get in touch. According to the 1911 Canadian Census a Ernest Gronow was living in Labelle Quebec.
The British Prime Minister has apologised for the U.K.'s role in sending more than 130,000 to the former colonies of Canada & Australia. Britain is the only country in the world with a sustained history of child migration. Only Britain has used child migration as a significant part of its child care strategy over a period of four centuries.
The reality of this policy was to remove children, some as young as three years old, from their homes, from their mothers and fathers, from all that was familiar to them, and to ship them thousands of miles away from their home country to institutions in distant lands within the Commonwealth. Many of these children were removed without their parents' knowledge or consent.
One such young man was Ernest Gronow born in Hendon, Middlesex in 1894. Ernest set sail on the 9th Sept 1909 from Liverpool on the SS Corsican, bound for Quebec. He arrived on the 17th September 1909, his final destination Ottawa, Ontario. He travelled along with 16 other young boys between the ages of 11-15 under the Catholic Emigration Association.
According to the Census taken on the 31st March 1901 Ernest Gronow was a inmate of the Guardians of the poor, of the Hendon Union Schools. [RG13/5336 folio 127. page 4] His birthplace is recorded as unknown. At the same time a Mary Gronow, probably his sister is also in the same institution. I don't know what happened to Ernest or what his life became in Canada, or even if he stayed in Canada, if anyone knows what became of him please get in touch. According to the 1911 Canadian Census a Ernest Gronow was living in Labelle Quebec.
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