Library Data

Catalogue by titles / Empty Cradles: One Woman's Fight to Uncover Britain's Most Shameful Secret

Documentation presentation
ISS/IRC Code	COM-ADOPT 037
Partner
Title	Empty Cradles: One Woman's Fight to Uncover Britain's Most Shameful Secret
Author	HUMPHREYS Margaret
Generic unit

General information
Date published/issue	00-00-1994
Date received	00-00-0000
Place published
Editor
Publisher	Transworld Publishers LTD, 61-63 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA, United Kingdom
Distributor
Page	325
Price
ISBN	0385 404522
Type of material	Book
Language of document

Document information
Document description
Country concerned	AUSTRALIA CANADA ZIMBABWE
Index	Secrecy-origin Foster-care Substitute-family Child-rights Consent Identity-origin Institution-child Adoption Abuse Neglect
Free text	Margaret Humphreys is the founder and Director of the Child Migrants Trust, supported by Nottinghamshire Council. In this book she tells the unbelievable story of the thousands of British children sent by boatloads mostly to Australia but also to Canada and other destinations early on at the beginning of the Twentieth Century under the Empire Settlement Acts of 1922 and 1937, through to the mid-sixties. The author describes her battle over a number of years to have the British and Australian governments' agencies, charities and church run children's homes responsible for those migrations to admit to them and help the now adults who grew up far from their families, without information on their background, and who had to sometimes live through terrible abuse and neglect in their new countries to find their true identity and families. Domino Films supported the work of Mrs. Humphreys and the Child Migrants Trust and produced a documentary called Lost Children of the Empire with the participation of a number of adult child migrants living in Australia. The Leaving of Liverpool was a dramatization re-enacting the lives of a couple of such children who were taken to Australia.