Empty Cradles (Oranges and Sunshine)

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Yes, you are right, there is much that we don’t know and it often takes many years for things to be uncovered. INDEPENDENT"The secrets of the lost children of Britain may never have been revealed if it had not been for [the actions of] Margaret Humphreys.

The author (a social worker by profession) finds herself involved in reuniting families and before long, the trickle of cases becomes a flood. Part of me wishes that I had such strength to bring to light the stories I have heard and would wish to correct, but part of me is also glad that I have not pushed to the extent she has when I consider I have not had a partner to help share such a burden with me, nor the clarity of a simple story told by many. Margaret Humphreys soon discovered that as many as 150,000 children had in fact been deported from children's homes in Britian and shipped off to a "new life" in distant parts of the Empire—the last as recently as 1967. Who would have believed what atrocity happened to children who were sent to other countries as migrant "workers" and enslaved in the countires that they were sent to, told that their parents had either passed away, and in many cases were told that nobody wanted them. Humphreys, there aren't many individuals that should be admired and respected in our world today, but what you did for all those involved in this "robbing of childhood," is beyond words.Such a shameful act of how both the English and Australian governments organized it, how religious organisations managed to get away with hiding monsters who held positions of power and abused it in the worst possible way and only came to light when one of these children approached Margaret in the 1980’s and she started to investigate the allegation.

My father argued with them that we were supervised at night by my aunt, who sat nearby nodding earnestly, so there was no need to take us into care. The justification was to ‘populate or perish’ and ensure British colonies retained a population of ‘desirables’, fair-skinned Europeans. This story will tug at your heart strings and make you wonder how in the world could such an atrocity have happened in a "civilized" country. The way she followed her instincts to help people, do good and bring the hidden secret of child migration to the forefront of a nation's conscience.We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.

When I was very young, about 7, I would walk two blocks with my two younger sisters to go to church. We will discover many more things our Governments have done which as citizens we trust them as being Right,, And yet many things in the past and even now are far from Right… The more we discover the more we learn.So suddenly Margaret Humphreys had become the champion of all these now middle-aged and elderly child migrants. 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. When you think of that raped child being eight years old, and then ten and fifteen and then being a young man and going to work for the first time, and finding a girlfriend and going to work for the first time; and finding a girlfriend, becoming a husband and a father – all those phases of life that we go through – and this is his baggage; this is what he takes with him through all those changes.

In 1986 Margaret Humphreys, a Nottingham social worker, investigated the case of a woman who claimed that, at the age of four, she had been put on a boat to Australia by the British government.In 1986 Margaret Humphreys, a Nottingham social worker, investigated a woman's claim that, aged four, she had been put on a boat to Australia by the British government. A self-author is never likely to sing their own praises, but Oranges and Sunshine lacks both the style and clarity to evoke empathy and feeling from readers for its creator. Post war Britain had overflowing orphanages, so the government and "social agencies" decided to pack unwitting children off to the "colonies", Australia, "Rhodesia", South Africa and even New Zealand.