Margaret Humphreys(born 1944) is a social worker in Nottingham, England, who in 1987 investigated and brought to public attention the British government's practice, between 1947 and 1967, of resettling poor British children in Australia, Canada, and other parts of the Commonwealth of Nations without their parents' knowledge. Children were often told their parents had died, and parents were told their children had been placed for adoption elsewhere in the UK. According to Humphreys, up to 150,000 children are believed to have been resettled under the scheme, some as young as three, up to 7,000 of whom were sent to Australia.

The children were allegedly deported because it was cheaper to care for them overseas. It cost an estimated £5 per day to keep a child on welfare in a British institution, but only ten shillings in an Australian one.

Background

Humphreys' research began in 1986 when, as a social worker, she received a letter from a woman in Australia who said that, at the age of four, she had been sent on a boat from the UK to a children's home in Australia, and who was looking for help in tracing her parents in Britain.

Humphreys' investigations led to the exposure of the child migration scheme and to the establishment of the Child Migrants Trust, initially financed by Nottinghamshire County Council, and later by the British and Australian governments. The aim of the trust is to reunite child migrants with their parents. A key feature of the work of the Child Migrants Trust has been a sustained attempt to develop public awareness of this previously obscure chapter in the social history of all the countries concerned.Britain's involvement started in the seventeenth century when children were sent from London to boost the population of Virginia-the first British outpost in America.Child migration continued over the next three hundred and fifty years. In 1998, a British Parliamentary Committee on Child Migration began an inquiry into the policy, and published a report in August that year, which criticized the policy in general, and particularly certain Roman Catholic institutions in Western Australia and Queensland where child migrants were housed, and where they were allegedly abused. The Western Australian Legislative Assembly passed a motion on August 13, 1998 apologizing to former child migrants.

Humphreys was awarded an honorary Master of Arts in 1996 by Nottingham Trent University in recognition of her work, and in 1997, she was named a Paul Harris Fellow by the Rotary Foundation of Rotary International.In 1998,Humphreys accepted an honorary Master of the University degree from the Open University.

Notes

See also

• Congregation_of_Christian_Brothers
• Kingsley Fairbridge

References

• Website of the Child Migrants Trust
• About the Child Migrants Trust
• "British children deported to Australia", BBC Inside Out.
• "A child migration timeline", The Goldonian.
• "Key milestones of the Child Migrants Trust", House of Commons
• Humphreys, Margaret. Empty Cradles. Corgi, 1996. ISBN 0-552-14164-X