Echo of Dickensian England heard in Ontario courts.

WINDSOR -- An echo of Dickensian England is being heard in the Ontario Courts. A Windsor man who was one of 30,000 British children shipped to Canada in the 1930s, often as farm labour and domestic servants, is suing Barnado's Homes, Britain's largest children's charity for 400 million [pounds sterling], as a class action on behalf of 3,000 to 5,000 surviving grown children in Canada.

Cherie Blair, is president of the charity. While it is held in high esteem in Britain, Barnardo's and the home children program has been the subject of unfavorable articles, books and dramatizations in Canada over the past 50 years.

Barnardo's is the largest and most prominent of the 50 British organization that participated in a scheme encouraged by the British government to reduce poverty at home by sending children from large families, orphanages or children living on the streets to the overseas dominion. Known as "home children", the boys were usually sent to farms and the girls into domestic service. Between 1870 and 1967, a total of about 300,000 British children were shipped to Canada, Australia and New Zealand, over 100,000 to Canada. The children were almost all under 14 at the time they were shipped, some as young as five. Canada received its last home child in 1939.

The class action suit on behalf of 86-year-old Harold Vennell alleges that Barnardo's sent children from Britain to Canada even though their parents were still living in Britain. In many cases, the parents did not consent or even know that their children were being shipped out. Vennell became a "Barnardo boy" at age seven, when he became ill with rickets and his single mother was unable to care for him. He said he was shipped at age 14 to an Ontario farm where he worked 18 hours a day, seven days a week, was abused and was given meagre food. Harvey Strosberg is his attorney.

"Doctor" Thomas Barnardo (the degree was self-conferred) was the most prominent, aggressive and influential figure in this child migration movement. His aggressiveness in finding and shipping children brought him into conflict with the Catholic Church. Some parents alledged kidnapping. To counter this the British government passed the Child Migration Act of 1890 that enabled Barnardo's and other organizations to transport children without parental permission.

The schooling for most of the home children was minimal. They worked long hours and many received poor and minimal food and clothing and were subject to many abuses.

In 1924 a British parliamentary committee visited Canada to investigate reports of deaths, and suicides among the home children. Canada passed a law forbidding the entry of child migrants under the age of 14.

According to Barnardo's web site, the program was introduced because "it was cheaper to place a child in Canada than to care for a child in a home in Britain and it was believed it would give children a fresh start away from overcrowded slums." In a recent statement, Barnardo's said the child migration scheme was not a proud part of its history. It offered the home children access to their records and information about their families, including why they were unable to be cared for by their families.

Two years earlier, the British government offered $1 million over three years to assist living home children with travel, documentation and subsistence for a visit to the United Kingdom of up to two weeks. The British government admitted to the "misguided policy." of successive governments'.

The National Archives of Canada has a special program to help former home children locate their roots and relatives in Britain and Canada.

-- Dickensian echo