Recent content by Janis McCahill

I have read Patricia Skidmore's books as well as several other books. The British Home Children group I belong to has put together this list of books http://britishhomechild.com/british-home-child-books/

I thought further about your query and thought about the children's placements. I have researched several dozen Middlemore children so I am only going by what I have found. The children that were placed came from all different Christian backgrounds. Although Patricia says in her book that Roman...

In her book Great Canadian Expectations: The Middlemore Experience (pg 54) , Patricia Roberts-Pichette states that "Saturday was a holiday and on Sundays they attended Sunday School at either the Wycliffe Chapel or St Luke's Church." This is an article from the Birmingham Daily Post 09 November...

Looking at the first 10 years (c1872-82) of the Middlemore Homes it is difficult to pin down any exact details as to how the children were selected, and indeed Middlemore says that two boys were sent away as the were not of the right class, but what was the right class? Would disabled and weak...

Middlemore reports in this article some of the problems he has encountered Birmingham Daily Post 11 February 1875

Birmingham Daily Post 26 April 1873 First group of children leaving

His ideas may have come from several examples that settled children in Canada before or about the time he did: Miss Rye 1869, Miss MacPherson 1870, Reverend Stephenson 1873. It is said that he did differ from the other organizations because he was not "driven by religious fervour" but altruism...

I have information on Wolf Brookstein's wife Mary's family if you still need it.

That is a question I cannot answer. The Middlemore paperwork in the early days of the Immigration Homes was sparse. It did not indicate the boy's circumstances in Birmingham only the circumstances once he was placed in Canada. I could only assume by researching the family and the information in...

I have researched several children that were sent by the Middlemore Home. Each family had its own set of unique circumstances for placement of the children. One family I researched sent one boy into care in 1873. They had had 10 children in total - 5 boys and 5 girls. 4 boys and 1 girl died in...