Empty Cradles (Oranges and Sunshine)

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A remarkable book about unspeakable pain inflicted on generations of British children by government policies and volunteer or charitable organisations entrusted with their care.

The Bible verse that came to mind that fits your life's journey of perseverance, compassion and grace is Isaiah 40:31, "But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. For numerous children it was to be a life of horrendous physical and sexual abuse in institutions in Western Australia and elsewhere. Empty Cradles is a harrowing memoir which details the uncovering of an appalling part of British history: Child Migration Schemes.

My maternal grandmother, I discovered, after many years, had an illegitimate child who ended up in Australia. Margaret Humpreys, a social worker in England is also a very brave woman who took on the bureaucracy to help English child migrants also now known as the Lost Children, who were taken to all parts of the then British Empire, but mostly to Australia never to see parents or relatives again. The author of this book started the Child Migrant's Trust to help reunite these children with theri mothers. Many around them also suffered in similar ways, or silently bore some of their tragedy which remained unspoken. The justification was to ‘populate or perish’ and ensure British colonies retained a population of ‘desirables’, fair-skinned Europeans.

She founded the Child Migrants Trust (CMT) in 1987 and has worked tirelessly to promote public awareness of the needs of former child migrants- to reclaim their identity and reunite with their families. She was and is blessed to have a loving and supportive family who shared her with this cause, but the emotional strain of taking on endless stories of pain and abuse, the death threats, and the sheer amount of work almost killed her. The book started with an interview between a child migrant and a social worker and documented a 23 year crusade to achieve freedom, reunion and rehabilitation for thousands of child migrants.In 1986 Margaret Humphreys, a British social worker, investigated a woman's claim that at the age of four she had been put on a boat to Australia by the British government. As she began to make enquiries MH was met with institutional amnesia and flat-out hostility from the charities and church organisations. I have for many years known I had an older brother taken from my mother in the 1950's and witnessed her hurt and fear about the shame she was to carry with her about this till the day she died. What she discovered was that actually 150,000 children has been deported through the children migration scheme. It reminds us that no matter how badly we feel about ourselves, and how difficult life is, it’s important to know, and keep remembering, that we can develop the inner strength to cope with the life that we actually have.

I was living in a children’s home because my parents were dead, and was put on a boat with other children and sent to Australia. It is inconceivable, that from the start of the Child Migration Scheme in the 1930's until the end in the late 1960's, 10,000 children were taken from England and shipped off all alone to places half way around the world! Margaret's work lead to the exposure of this little known scheme and helped many people reunite with the families they left behind years earlier. Margaret Humphreys was a social worker in Nottingham who happened to receive a letter from a woman living in Australia, saying, in essence, "I was sent here as a child and would like to know if I have any family left in England.

Updated to add: Margaret didn’t do it alone, but she is the one that started the ball rolling and make people notice what was happening.

Margaret Humpreys stumbled on the cover up by accident, unable to believe that children were sent thousands of miles away without parental permission.Margaret Humphreys is the Director and founder of the Child Migrants Trust, supported by Nottinghamshire County Council. For those who might be tempted to think that this is distant history and that we have moved beyond such ugliness, it's fair to note that the last children were sent in 1967.