Children shipped to Canada ‘treated like slaves’

MORE than 100,000 British child migrants sent to Canada were often treated like American civil war era ‘slaves’ by their bosses, an inquiry has heard.

Witness Judy Neville, 60, said a number of participants in a UK government scheme were abused and overworked upon arriving in the country.

The children were sent from Scotland and other parts of the UK to work as domestic servants or as farm hands from the late 19th century until 194 .

Miss Neville, a Canadian citizen and descendant of a child migrant, told the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry yesterday not enough people in both her country and the UK know about the programme.

Giving evidence by video link from Ontario, Miss Neville said: ‘Many of these children were treated no better than the slaves in the south during the civil war. Many ran away. Many committed suicide. They endured terrible conditions.’

The inquiry is hearing about the abuse of children sent to

Canada, Australia and New Zealand from Scotland as part of the historical child migration scheme.

Miss Neville discovered her grandmother Mary came from Glasgow to work as a domestic servant in Canada aged 13 and that large numbers of British youngsters settled in Canada.

She later found out many of the children were sent to work on farms and were maltreated. Miss Neville added: ‘It was something that we didn’t learn about. It’s something that wasn’t in our history books.’

Miss Neville also said she had documents which showed a British child called George Green had died nine months after arriving in Canada.

She claimed the papers tell how the coroner described George’s death as being the ‘worst’ case of neglect he had ever seen. The inquiry, in Edinburgh, continues today.