Quarrier's and the Child Emigrants: Scottish Children Sent to Canada, 1872–1938

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

The history here rests mainly on Marjory Harper's chapter on child emigration in Adventurers and Exiles, which draws on Quarrier's annual reports and case files. Those reports were fundraising documents, and Harper warns that the happy letters printed in them cannot be taken at face value. The modern material comes from the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry and from parliamentary records. This story deals with the abuse of children. It names no child migrant and no survivor, and it attributes findings about abuse to the inquiry.

A boot-maker's rescue work

established Quarrier was born in Greenock in 1829. His father died when he was three, and by the 1860s he owned a prosperous boot and shoe business. Encouraged by Annie Macpherson and backed by the businessman Thomas Corbett, he opened an orphanage in Renfrew Lane, Glasgow, at the end of 1871. In 1878 he opened the Orphan Homes of Scotland near Bridge of Weir, a village of cottage homes that grew to about fifty houses with its own church, school and workshops.

established Harper shows from the case files that admissions came from almost every part of Scotland, not only Glasgow. Some children were orphans. Many had a living parent who was ill, disabled, widowed, imprisoned or judged unfit, and others were referred by ministers, parish authorities or the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children after neglect or cruelty. Some Catholic children were admitted, but Harper describes the homes as vehemently anti-Catholic, and this brought disputes with Catholic families and clergy.

Why Canada?

established Quarrier did not invent child emigration. Maria Rye took her first party of girls to Ontario in 1869 and Annie Macpherson, the evangelical daughter of a Scottish Quaker, took 100 children in 1870. Thomas Barnardo began sending his own parties in 1882 and became the largest sender, responsible for more than a third of all children sent from Britain to Canada between 1870 and 1930. Smaller Scottish homes in Edinburgh, Stirling and Aberlour sent around 650 children, but Quarrier's dominated the Scottish scene.

established For Quarrier the argument was practical as well as moral. In his first annual report he wrote that emigration freed places so that he could take in "a fresh set" of children each year. To those who said he was draining Scotland's labour, he replied that "not the labour market, but the crime market" would feel the effect. Within seven years about 400 of the 700 children he had received had gone to Ontario.

Fairknowe and the placing of children

established For fifteen years Quarrier used Annie Macpherson's receiving homes at Belleville and elsewhere. In 1888 he opened his own, Fairknowe, a large house on sixteen acres in Brockville, Ontario, run by his daughter Agnes and her husband. Staff advertised in local papers and churches for farmers who would adopt a younger child or employ an older one under indenture, and were meant to supervise each child until the age of 21. At home, children were selected on age, health and character, and Quarrier's reports insisted a boy "must wish to go". Relatives' consent was sought, and was sometimes the hardest part.

established In practice, Harper explains, few young children were adopted. Most under-nines were boarded out with foster families paid by the home until they were eleven or twelve. They then moved to unpaid households where they worked for their board, clothing and schooling, and only at school-leaving age did they earn wages, often after another move. Siblings were frequently separated, and children sent alone by train with a name tag to a distant farm described deep loneliness.

Praise at the time

established The homes' reports were full of grateful letters, and escorts described well-fed children on prosperous farms. When Ontario tightened its rules in 1897, after the death of a Barnardo boy, its officials singled out Quarrier's work for praise. In 1917 a Canadian chief inspector called Fairknowe "an efficient distribution home", according to the inquiry. Some former emigrants sent money back or brought out younger siblings.

shared Harper treats this evidence with suspicion. The letters were formulaic, annual reports were posted to children's Canadian addresses, and only cheerful letters were printed. In her words, "we do not need to read many of these letters before we smell a very large rat."

Criticism at the time

established Opposition came from several directions. Canadian critics complained that Britain was dumping the children of its slums on Canada, and the very term "home child" was an insult. In 1882 a custody dispute over a Catholic boy took Quarrier to court; he won, but the Glasgow Herald argued that his lack of accountability meant "Mr Quarrier himself is the Orphan Homes Institution". In 1883 the same paper attacked a system in which parents signed away their children to "irresponsible" individuals and no independent inquiry could follow them to Canada.

established Harper's case files show the dangers. A widowed mother who asked for her son back was overruled and the boy was hurriedly sent to Canada. When a runaway was found after a horsewhipping, Fairknowe returned him to the employer even though Canadian immigration officials had advised removing him. Harper concludes that receiving homes put too much faith in indentures that employers could ignore.

established Quarrier resented outside control. He treated Ontario's 1897 act as a personal insult and stopped sending children. His family resumed emigration after his death, judging that the new rules protected children. After three home boys took their own lives in Canada in 1923, a British delegation under Margaret Bondfield visited in 1924 and recommended that children under fourteen should not be sent to private homes or farms. Harper notes that emigration was then restricted to over-fourteens.

The end of the Canadian scheme

shared Sources differ on the end date. The inquiry says Quarrier's migration to Canada continued until 1932, with a break during the First World War. Quarriers' own history, as summarised by Children's Homes, says small parties went until 1938, after Fairknowe was sold in 1934.

The later reckoning

established In 2010 the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, told the House of Commons that the UK was "truly sorry" that former child migrants "were allowed to be sent away at the time they were most vulnerable", and announced a £6 million Family Restoration Fund. Canada designated 2010 the Year of the British Home Child; in 2017 its House of Commons adopted a motion of apology, though no Canadian government has issued a formal apology.

established At the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry on 3 December 2019 the Scottish Government said it was "extremely sorry for the suffering they experienced", and Quarriers, Barnardo's and other organisations also apologised. Separately, in January 2020 the inquiry found that children had been abused in homes run by Quarriers, Aberlour and Barnardo's in Scotland between 1921 and 1991, and recorded a "particularly frank and clear apology" from its chief executive.

established In March 2023 the inquiry's chair, Lady Smith, found that "the system itself was abusive" and called child migration "a shameful chapter in our history". The second volume, in September 2023, found that Scottish sending bodies, mostly voluntary organisations, used flawed selection, obtained consent deceptively and provided weak aftercare, and that these flaws were evident by the late nineteenth century. It placed the greatest blame on successive UK governments for failing to end the practice.

shared Harper, writing in 2003, cautioned against "demonizing the Victorian philanthropists" for lacking modern child care in an age without a welfare state, while accepting the movement's grave failings. The inquiry's view is starker: the dangers were clear at the time.

• William Quarrier was born in Greenock, the port from which his first emigrant party sailed in 1872.
• Fairknowe in Brockville still stands, converted into flats.
• Quarrier refused to send children to Canada for several years rather than accept Ontario's inspection rules.
• Child migration was not formally removed from Scottish legislation until 1995, according to the inquiry.
• Canada marks British Home Child Day on 28 September.

• Myth: all Quarrier's emigrants were orphans. Many had a living parent.
• Disputed: how many children were sent. There is no single exact total; figures run from 6,607 (to 1923) to about 7,000 (to 1938).
• Disputed: when the emigration ended. Sources say 1932 or 1938.
• Myth: the Canadian government has formally apologised. The 2017 apology was a House of Commons motion.
• The happy letters in the homes' annual reports are not typical. They were selected for fundraising.