Empty Cradles (Oranges and Sunshine)

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As many as an estimated 150,000 children had in fact been deported from children's homes in Britian and shipped off to a 'new life' in distant parts of the Empire - the last as recently as 1967. Margaret Humphreys (born 1944) is a British Social Worker who exposed the scandal of Britain's child migration schemes. I am one of three children but even we could not fill the gaping wound of having her first and newborn baby son taken from her. For me the stories have always been diverse, the needs of the people involved varied, and the journeys seemingly individual and private despite their occasional similarities. Margaret Humphreys, a British Social worker literally fell into a hornets nest when she discovered the Child Migration Scheme.

Margaret Humpreys, a social worker in England is also a very brave woman who took on the bureaucracy to help English child migrants also now known as the Lost Children, who were taken to all parts of the then British Empire, but mostly to Australia never to see parents or relatives again.

An excellent account of a social worker in England discovering a shocking secret covered up for years by the British and Australian governments. Empty Cradles is at least as fascinating as a work of psychological examination as it is a work of historical narrative. It is totally inconceivable that a government can send its most vulnerable, children in care, thousands of miles away ripping them from their homeland, some as young as three. One friend of mine who had been adopted got Margaret Humphries to trace her parents - that's a whole other story, but it did have a quasi-happy ending.

The untold cost lies in the following generations of children who feel so deeply the hollowness of a parent or grandparent who cannot tell a vital part of their own story. She gradually discovered, to her horror, and the horror of the British and Australian public in general, that as many as 150,000 children had been sent (without parent or guardian) from British children’s homes, starting in the 1920s, to a “new life” in Canada, Australia, Rhodesia or New Zealand. As I mentioned in my review, Margaret Humphreys is just an incredible woman and shows us what is possible when someone decides to fight against injustice. EMPTY CRADLES is a strong indictment of government, as well as charitable and religious organisations.The criminally cruel migrant scheme which removed thousands of British children from everything familiar, including, in some cases, family members who wanted them and were told that they'd died, and plunked them down in foreign countries, is now more known. There is possibly still a lot of work going on to help the children who are now men and women coming into their twighlight years of life. Up to 150000 children some as young as three years old had been deported from children's homes in Britain and shipped off to a 'new life' in distant parts of the Empire right up until as recently as 1970. As I read these pages, with the snippets and details of many individual stories, I was reminded of so many people I have met over my years of working in various institutions in Australia where untold stories were ever lurking just below the surface. Indeed, well over 1,000 families have been reunited after decades of separation thanks to the Child Migrants Trust.

During the 20th Century, over 130,000 children were deported from Britain to distant parts of the Empire and to Commonwealth countries such as Canada, Rhodesia, Australia and New Zealand – the policy only ended in 1970. For some there were positive opportunities but for many there were slavery-like conditions on farms and in domestic service. Margaret Humphreys reveals how she gradually unravelled this shocking secret; how she became drawn into the lives of some of these innocent and unwilling exiles, how it became her mission to reunite them with their families in Britain, and how her lonely crusade led to the founding of the Child Migrants Trust.Post war Britain had overflowing orphanages, so the government and "social agencies" decided to pack unwitting children off to the "colonies", Australia, "Rhodesia", South Africa and even New Zealand. The author of this shocking non-fiction tale, Margaret Humphries, was originally a Nottingham social worker who, in 1986, began investigating the claim of a woman who stated she’d been transported to Australia on a boat, unaccompanied, at the age of four years old. We will discover many more things our Governments have done which as citizens we trust them as being Right,, And yet many things in the past and even now are far from Right… The more we discover the more we learn.