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Margaret Humphreys | |
|---|---|
 Humphreys at Oranges and Sunshine premiere, in May 2011 | |
| Born | 1944 (age 79–80) Nottingham, England, United Kingdom |
| Occupation(s) | Social worker, author |
Margaret Humphreys, CBE, AO (born 1944) is a British social worker and author from Nottingham, England. She worked for Nottinghamshire County Council operating around Radford, Nottingham and Hyson Green in child protection and adoption services. In 1986, she received a letter from a woman in Australia who, believing she was an orphan, was looking to locate her birth certificate so she could get married.[1]
In 1987, she investigated and brought to public attention the British government programme of Home Children. This involved forcibly relocating poor British children to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the former Rhodesia, and other parts of the Commonwealth of Nations[2] often 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,[3] some as young as three,[2] about 7,000 of whom were sent to Australia.[4]
Saving money was one of the motives behind this policy. 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 10% of that, ten shillings, in an Australian one.[4]
- ^ "Margaret Humphreys CBE, the Home Children Scandal, and the Lost Children of the Empire". LeftLion. Retrieved 7 July 2019.
- ^ a b see Website of the Child Migrants Trust, retrieved 19 June 2006.
- ^ Humphreys, Margaret (1996). Empty Cradles. Corgi. ISBN 0-552-14164-X.
- ^ a b see "British children deported to Australia", BBC Inside Out, retrieved 19 June 2006.