Rosemary Collins and Sarah Williamsreport on data releases and genealogy news
Findmypast adds free British Home Children collection
Family history website Findmypast (findmypast.co.uk) has announced a new collection of nearly 39,000 records of the ‘Home Children’ who were sent from Britain to Canada.
Between 1869 and 1948 roughly 100,000 children were sent from Britain to Canada by charitable organisations. About 12 per cent were orphans, while others had living parents but came from children’s homes, workhouses or impoverished families. Some found loving homes, but many were victims of abuse or exploitation. An estimated four million Canadians today are descended from former Home Children.
Findmypast has launched the new collection, available at findmypast.co.uk/page/british-home-children, in partnership with organisations including The National Archives at Kew, the British Library, Library and Archives Canada and the charity Home Children Canada.
So far it consists of four collections – ‘Canada, Home Children Inspection Reports’, recording inspections of children’s foster homes in Canada between 1913 and 1932 (25,534 records); ‘Canada, Home Children Board of Guardian Records’, containing details of children in the workhouse system in England who were then sent to Canada (10,649 records); ‘Lancashire, Liverpool, Children Sent to Canada 1883–1925’, featuring registers of children sent from Liverpool to Canada (466 records); and ‘Britain, Children’s Legislation Correspondence’, which consists of government correspondence around the passing of the 1908 Children Act (2,062 records).
The first three collections have been indexed by name, and all four include digitised images of the original records. They are free to access, although users need to register with the site. More collections will be added in the future.
Sarah Bush, Findmypast’s 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.”
Historic newspaper website launched
Family history website MyHeritage (myheritage. com) has launched a new site for digitised historic newspapers, OldNews. com (oldnews.com).
The website is similar to existing newspaper collections such as the British Ne
