Protecting those who no one one wants to protect

Andrew Simpson's blog post Protecting those who no one one wants to protect ............. on the streets of Manchester & Salford in 1880 is required reading for those interested in home children. It starts "History  is messy, and it can be easy to portray the children's charities as imperious, and driven by their own narrow view."

Simpson quotes Gilbert R. Kirlew writing in 1889 for the Manchester Statistical Society,“that in the great majority of cases the parent or parents of these children were drunken or vicious, and becoming the employers of their own children for the time being they provided them with the capital to become street hawkers, and expected, at least, 40 per cent in return for the outlay and labour involved”.

Were their prospects better in Canada?

In addition to material on the focus on the Chorlton area the blog has a surprising number of other posts relating to Canada.