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Record #2850
Name :
: George Everett GREEN (1880 - 1895)


Father
:
Mother
:
BMD and other details
Date of Birth
: 8 Feb 1880

Marriage (1)
:
Marriage (2)
:

Date of Death
: 9 Nov 1895   Notes : Starvation, Abuse and Neglect
Abode (1) : Place of BirthEngland, Middlesex, Tottenham
Abode (2) : Place of Death / BurialCanada, Ontario, Township of Keppel
Sailing Information
Date of Arrival
: 1 Apr 1895
Country
: Canada

Ship
: Parisian

Placement Family
:
Homes / Agencys
Institution (GB)
:

Agency
: Barnardos
NotesGREEN, GEORGE EVERITT, agricultural labourer; b. 8 Feb. 1880 in Tottenham (London), England, eldest son of Charles Green, tailor, and Amelia Green, laundress; d. 9 Nov. 1895 in Keppel Township, Ont.

Following the death of George Everitt Green in 1895, more Canadians knew about him than about any other of the children brought by British charitable agencies to work in the dominion as agricultural labourers and domestic servants. Green?s circumstances showed the immigration program at its worst, and his case, widely covered in the national press and in Britain, became the most compelling set piece in polemics created by Ontario child savers and the Canadian labour movement in their advocacy of reform of the system.

Until he was six, Green lived with his older sister, Margaret, his younger brother, Walter, and his parents in lodging-houses in the Tottenham suburb of London. In 1886 the parents deserted their children, who were admitted to the Old Parish School and then to the Enfield Farm School run by the Edmonton Poor Law Union, a local government institution. Their father died in January 1888. In May 1894 their mother induced Margaret, aged 17, to leave her job at the farm school for a place in service, and in retaliation the union discharged the boys into their mother?s care. Within a month Mrs Green was unable to pay the rent on her room, and she and the boys began to sleep rough. In July 1894 George and Walter were admitted to the East End Juvenile Mission of Dr Thomas John Barnardo at their mother?s request. George was described in the admission documents as well conducted, but with a cast in his left eye and a peculiar appearance. Eight months later, on 21 March 1895, the brothers embarked for Canada in a party of 167 boys.

George was sent on 3 April to a bachelor farmer in Norfolk County, Ont., who returned him to the Barnardo receiving home in Toronto within the trial period of a month because the boy?s defective vision meant that he could not drive a team. On 7 May, Green was dispatched to a second place, near Owen Sound, to live with a single woman, Helen R. Findlay. Since her brother?s death the previous summer, Findlay had run the family farm alone. Before that time, two Barnardo boys had been placed on separate occasions with the Findlays. Neighbours who saw Green soon after he arrived described him as clean, healthy, quiet, and backward. Findlay, who after her brother?s death had been observed doing field and barn work the community regarded as inappropriate for women, they viewed with suspicion.

Seven months after his arrival on the Findlay farm, on 9 Nov. 1895, George Everitt Green died. A coroner?s inquiry found that his death resulted from ?ill-treatment at the hands of Ellen R. Findley, and from her not giving him proper care and treatment, food and nourishment during his sickness in her house,? and Findlay was charged with manslaughter. In the ensuing trial, neighbours reported that for several months they had observed the boy inadequately clothed and fed, forced by physical violence to do work beyond his strength, and made to sleep in the barn as punishment. None, however, had seen fit to break community solidarity and attempt to assist him. Medical testimony was conflicting. Green had been unable to move from his bed for a week before his death. His frame was emaciated, his limbs gangrenous. His body bore wounds caused by physical abuse. An autopsy of his lungs showed a previous history of tuberculosis. The question for the jury became did Green die as a result of criminal neglect and physical assault by Helen Findlay, or were her actions reasonable chastisement of an inadequately prepared farm servant and his infirmities a consequence of hereditary or pre-emigration conditions? The jury was unable to reach a decision. No further record of the case has been found.

George Green's story has been editorialized as a part of a book entitled "Legends in Their Time: Young Heroes and Victims of Canada?," by George Sherwood and Stewart Sherwood, 2006, 260 pages. Chapter 9: George Green: A Home Child in Ontario, from which George's life is herein set forth.

Barnardo headquarters, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

George Green stood on the deck with an excited group of boys. They were in the fog-enshrouded iceberg corridor just off Newfoundland and they could see the massive castle-like shapes floating by the ship. Perhaps it was a good luck omen for a boy who hadn't enjoyed a great deal of fortunate n his 15 years. Born in the slums of East London, blind in one eye, George was part of a remarkable program that saw over 100,000 young children taken from the rat-infested streets and courts of the urban centres of England and Scotland and set to Canada to be taken in by families who lived in the land of opportunity.

The Industrial Revolution that transformed the economy in the nineteenth century also drastically changed the society. In particular, the poorer rural people who migrated to the cities would feel the cruel pinch of privation. Captured in print for posterity by Charles Dickents, the plight of children in Victorian England has been well-documented. Youngsters not shipped off to poor houses or toiling in the mines and factories, were witness to a brutal existence in slums teeming with rats, gin parlours and brothers. Open sewage flowed through the streets where destitute children were reduced to begging, stealing and prostitution in their daily struggle to survive. Desperate mothers literally sold young children to strangers for the price of a glass of gin -- it was better than enduring one more mouth to feed when there was already an inadequate amount of food to share. During the mid-to-late 1800s, a child, born to one of the 30% of the British population living in poverty, had a life expectancy of 36 years. There was once chance in four that he or she would be dead before being able to "celebrate" a first birthday. Although efforts were being made by the British government to ensure that every child receive an education to the age of 14, these reforms were meaningless in places like Whitechapel (hunting grounds in London for the notorious Jack the Ripper). Yes, young children were sent to school from the ages of four to six, but only because it was a cheap alternative to paying neighbours to look after them. But once a child reached the age of six, he or she was an essential cog in the slum family. Single mothers needed the older children to care for their younger brothers and sisters, to do cooking scrubbing and washing while the wage earners struggled through their fourteen-hour day, to take family possessions to the pawnshop or to find any employment that would bring a few pence more into a starving household. Statistics from the day show that half the children under 14 years of age who were living in the poorer districts did not attend school and that 20% of all children in these districts that did attend also worked. It was a cruel existence, but unfortunately, an all too common existence in Victorian England.

If the slum-infested streets were breeding grounds for rats, they were also breeding grounds for a new type of social reformer. Appalled by the unspeakable images of suffering and prompted by a Christian conscience that demanded action, middle and upper-class reformers, both men and women, sough to eradicate the worst of the abuses. Temperance movements, aimed at eliminating drunkenness and spousal and child abuse, became part of the mainstream of national policies. William Booth founded the Salvation Army to wage a war for the body and souls of the downtrodden. The Social Gospel movement preached an active commitment to charity work and direct involvement with the victims of the system. Evangelicalism demanded improvements in the workhouses, orphanages, factories, jails and hospitals. Everywhere, there was an impulse to rescue the oppressed.

In this milieu, stepped Thomas John Barnardo. Although not the first, he was certainly among the most famous of the reformers who came up with the ingenious method of saving the slum children. If the city was the symbol of depravity and corruption, the countryside represented purity, simplicity and a higher moral order. What a better solution to the dilemma of dirty little urchins, unwanted and unloved, running through the streets of the vilest slums, then to sweep them up, clean them up and ship them off for a fresh start! Thus was born the movement known as the "Home Children." From 1830s to the 1930s, children were taken from shelters, orphanages and homes to be given a new life overseas in either Canada or Australia. Theoretically with the approval of the parent or parents (although none of the reformers were overly zealous in complying with this provision), children would be sent to eager households to start a new life. This was viewed as a win-win-win situation where everyone involved would benefit. England is afforded a safety valve. The most desperate, the most deprived, the most hopeless, and potentially, the most dangerous youngsters are taken out of the hellholes that defined their lives. Canada would receive hundreds of thousands of eager and able farmhands and domestic helps who were all English speaking and who would all serve to strengthen imperial ties between colony and mother country. And the children would be offered the opportunity to escape form the poverty cycle and become productive contributors to a thriving economy. All of this, while at the same time rescuing children from near certain damnation and purifying their souls for eternity! At least that was what the propaganda said. Sometimes it proved to be the case.

This was why George Green and his brother, along with 237 other boys were shipped from England to Canada in early March 1895. His widowed mother could not afford to care for herself, let along two growing boys. With a dull sadness but a firm resolve, she took them to 18 Stepney Causeway, where a sign outside the "always open" door proclaimed: "NO DESTITUTE BOY OR GIRL EVER REFUSED ADMISSION." Barnardo was ready to receive his two new charges. When George's mother signed the legal document, agreeing that her boys would be sent to Canada and that she would never agains attempt any contact with them, she trudged away with a heavy heart. For George, it was not only the end of his old life but the beginning of the end of his very existence.

A thorough medical examination by the attending House Medical Officer revealed that George was in good health. He was blind in one eye and the other eye was crossed inward, but other than that (and the usual fleas and bites) he was in sound condition. George was then taken to be photographed. This was a very important procedure for Barnardo since he would use "before and after" photos to nudge potential contributors to dig even deeper into the their pockets to support the noble enterprise. After this, George was given a thorough scrubbing, a short haircut, a spanking new uniform and a number. He returned to the studio for the "after" shot and was then escorted to his assigned bed and locker.

Bugle call at 5:30 a.m. aroused George to early Morning Prayer, which was followed by a thirty-minute drill in the wall-enclosed courtyard. Breakfast in the common room with all the other boys was served on the long plank tables framed by wooded benches. Meals were simple -- porridge and bread for breakfast, soup at mid-afternoon and a supper that would typically consist of bread, a fresh fruit and a cup of cocoa, but on Sundays after worship, you could always count on a meat dinner. After breakfast came classroom instruction a trade shop session, chores (such as scrubbing the floors and making your bed) and exercise, all punctuated throughout the day and evening by prayers. At 9:00 p.m. lights were out, and George and the other 15 boys in his dormitory fell into a sound sleep.

This was George's routine until that fateful day in March when he was given his personal travel bag and marched "two by two" with the other boys to board the "Barnardo Special" -- the train that would take them to the steamship. It had been a pleasant enough time for George. The day-to-day repetition was comforting, accommodations were better than anything he had ever experienced and the people were kindly towards him. Even though there were not demonstrations of affection, he was never mistreated and there was always food. He would miss this reassuring existence and couldn't help but feel apprehensive about leaving England forever.

The boat trip did nothing to alleviate his misgivings. George was one of the unfortunate ones who suffered terribly from seasickness. The steerage accommodations were cramped, dank and unsanitary. Hundreds of boys were crammed into the lower berth in accommodations designed for about the number of passengers. The pervasive smell of body odour, urine and vomit did little to ease the seasickness, and the constant dampness aggravated by the precarious health of the youngsters. He wanted to lie down and die, but the supervisor who accompanied him made him stand at attention, sing a hymn and drink tepid tea. It seemed like a voyage that would never end. Perhaps that explains George's added enthusiasm when when he saw the icebergs off Newfoundland -- they were nearing land his new home.

Finally at 5:00 a.m. on March 29, he and the others were awakened, told to wash up and come up on the deck to retrieve their luggage. They had arrived at Quebec City. Going down the gangplank, George knew that Barnard had three homes in Canada -- in Peterborough, Toronto and Winnipeg. He didn't know anything about any of them and was still uncertain as to where he would be sent. After another medical examination, he was lined up and had a number placed on his back and herded towards a train with a large group of boys. He happened to hear someone say "Toronto" and he now knew his destination. George arrived late that night and was taken to 214 Farley Avenue. An address was to serve as his legal guardian until he reached the age of 18, an administrative convenience since Barnardo himself did not reside in Canada. All George had to do now was wait for a placement.

It would not be long in coming for George. Farmers were anxious to get strong young boys to work with them on their farms especially with spring seeding on the horizon, and a 15-year-old was big enough to do a man's job, yet young enough to provide three years of cheap labour until he turned 18. Within days, a request for George was processed. If you wanted a "home child" you sent in your application with a letter from your clergyman. There was no time, there was no need for an interview. The sooner the boy was placed, the sooner Barnardo could bring over another. The doctor at 214 Farley had examined him, proclaimed him fit for farmwork and sent him to Norfolk County to work on W. A. Cranston's farm. The solitude and loneliness was the most severe adjustment for George. Raised in the cities he had never imagined such total darkness as that which engulfed him on the spring nights. He could walk as far as he could see and never encounter another human being. In London, England, on a typical day, he would come into contact with hundreds of people. On the Norfolk County farm, his only contact was the bachelor farmer, Cranston. And the work! For a boy who had known only rats, dogs, and cats, these cows were intimidating. He was a strong boy, but the piling of wood, the cleaning of stables, the building of rail fences, the clearing of rocks, the plowing of fields -- all were strange and difficult, almost impossible tasks. But Cranston was patient and kindly and George was eager to learn and please. Shy, painfully quiet, but always polite and obedient, George struggled to fit in. It was a hopeless effort. After a trial period of four weeks, Cranston sent George back. He said that the boy was strong and healthy, clean and polite, but his vision made him totally unsuitable for farmwork. He couldn't even manage a team of horses and would never be able to adapt.

Discouraged, humiliated and throughly embarrassed, George returned to Farley Avenue. Failure compounded his shyness and it was impossible to get him to talk to strangers. But George was soon given a second chance. A 41-year-old spinster, Helen Finlay, had requested a homeboy to work on her farm in Big Bay Keppel new Own Sound. She had emigrated from Scotland with her parents and brother 26 years earlier, but with all three of them now dead, she desperately needed help on her 100-acre farm. With 30 acres of oats, hay and vegetables, 18 cattle, 12 hogs, 11 sheep and three horses she could not manage with just the one servant girl, Mary Brown, to help her. She needed a strong capable worker and she needed him now.

When the stage pulled into Big Bay Keppel on Georgian Bay, about 20 kilometres from Own Sound, that fateful day on May 7, it was difficult to determine who received the greater shock. Helen Finlay gazed at a boy who was blind in one eye, crossed in the other and seemed stupid, slow and surly in his silence. The accompanying letter, stating that he was deficient in eyesight but capable of doing the chores, did little to assuage her misgivings. For George, it was even more traumatic. He was greeted by a tall, severe "Amazonian" (as one neighbour described her) woman with a strong sharp chin, iron grey hair and weathered skin. Her steely frown did nothing to encourage the poor boy to respond in any way but a nervous mumble. It was an inauspicious introduction to an experience that could only be described as six months of unspeaking torture.

George cried in his room that night. It would certainly not be the last time in his too short life, but it was an early indicator of the misery he was enduring. The isolation and loneliness seemed even more engulfing. He knew that he had displeased Helen Finlay, but she spoke so fast and demanded so much. He wanted to please but was always a few steps behind. And the duties she outline for him were impossible. He knew he could never handle all the work she insisted had to be done. He also knew that there was no escape. And inspector was supposed to visit once a year, but given the remote distance and Canadian weather conditions, these overworked employees could not be relied upon. Even if they did visit, the inspections were perfunctory and the children infrequently consulted. If Helen Finlay decided to keep him, he was here until he turned 18 and had bleak hope for support or sympathy from anyone. He had never felt so alone in his life.

Helen did decide to keep him. After three weeks, she signed a document placing George Green under her unchallenged authority for three years. When he turned 18, he would be given $75 and his freedom. Until then, he was her beast of burden on the farm.

From that point, Helen's contempt and disgust for poor George accelerated. Frustrated by his inability to complete the chores, she became aggressively demanding and visibly angry. Complaining frequently to him and to anyone who would listen, she railed on about being saddled with a defective cross-eyed humpback. He was skinny and weak, she bitterly asserted, and his teeth did not meet because his lower jaw protruded. He walked funny and he was left-handed. He was an imbecile who was surly and unresponsive. He couldn't do anything right. To a neighbour, William Shier, she was heard to explode in rage: "I wish the brute would die or get better." This was not the help that Helen had expected.

George was living in a nightmare. Mary Brown, the young servant girl, knew he was a good boy, but he was not fast enough to suit her mistress, Helen Finlay. William McKinley, a neighbour who dropped by the farm one day saw a strong and healthy boy who seemed eager to please, but was incredibly clumsy. Around Helen, George became even clumsier and slower. Terrified of her, he was paralyzed in his responses. While loading a cart one day, he accidentally hit Mary with one of the pieces of wood. Enraged, Helen grabbed the log and beat George with it. On other occasions, people saw George running in the field crying with Helen in hot pursuit, wielding an axe handle and screaming at him. She prodded him with a pitchfork, kicked him with her boots, grabbed him by the neck and shook him, threatened him constantly, verbally assailed him and was always striking him with the nearest available weapon. She actually told a neighbour that she enjoyed beating him.

George's only friend in the world was Mary Brown. Mary wanted to help him when Helen kicked or beat him. She watched in horror one day when Helen smashed him across the back of the head with her nail-studded slipper. As George lay on the ground bleeding, she stood helplessly back. As much as she liked George, she did not dare defy Helen.

The abuse even invaded George's one sanctuary -- his room. One night, Helen dragged him from his bedroom and threw him into the stable with the hogs. For two nights he lay in wide-eyed terror waiting for the dreaded footsteps. His diet was mash bran porridge with an occasional slice of bread, which he often had to eat standing up. With fall and winter approaching, he could never feel warm in his torn, ragged summer clothes. George was weary. He was a broken child who was too weak to drag himself into another day of taunts, threats, beatings and torture. Physically, emotionally and spiritually he was drained.

One cold November morning, his body finally joined his spirit in death. Doctor Allan Cameron, the coroner from Owen Sound, was called to a scene that would haunt him the rest of his life. In 40 years of medical practice, including working in the slums of Glasgow, Doctor Cameron had never encountered such squalid conditions. The room was filthy and foul smelling. The only furniture was two boards on which the frail body of George lay and a straw mattress with a ten-inch hole carved out in the cnetre. It was soon evident that this mattress was both bed and toilet for George in his last days. Weakened from the beatings and diarrhea, malnourished with visible wounds. George lay on the straw with the hole and himself reeking feces. It was a cruel, sad death that Doctor Cameron after an autopsy, concluded was the result of a combination of neglect, beatings and starvation. Helen Finlay was charged with murder, later reduced to manslaughter, and would stand trial for her brutality.

The headlines of the Owen Sound Times on November 14, 1895, were an indication of the sombre mood that greeted the trial:

ANOTHER KEPPEL TRAGEDY
A BARNARDO OY DIES UNDER SUSPICIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES
HELEN FINLAY, HIS EMPLOYER ARRESTED

As the trial progressed, the quiet community was rocked by the testimony of the witnesses. More than a dozen neighbours took the oath and described the savage beatings and cruel mistreatment they had seen. Two other doctors, in addition to Doctor Cameron, provided appalling details about the condition of George's room when they found him and the heart-wrenching conditions of the body. Yet when Helen Finlay took the stand, she blithely contradicted the eyewitnesses to her brutality -- she never mistreated him, perhaps just shouted at him because he was so slow. Furthermore, she asserted, George's room was the not squalid fetid accommodation described by the doctors. It was clean and tidy. Helen's testimony probably had little impact on the outcome, but the defence strategy that followed completely turned the trial upside down.

In a surprise move, the defence secured an order to exhume George's body for an examination by their doctors. The grave and the coffin were both filled with water, bu that did nothing to deter the medical practitioners from arriving at their conclusions. They testified that the body of the Barnardo boy was tainted by heredity. It was a defective body before any encounter with Helen Finlay. One of the doctors, who had refused to examine the boy when he was alive because he regarded him as a London slum urchin, did not even examine him after his death. Yet this did not dissuade him from arriving at his reasons conclusion: the boy had hereditary defects consistent with the offshoot of syphilis. It was his bad background that created this cursed misfit. The change in mood was evidenced by the front-page coverage in the Own Sound Times of November 21, 1895:

'Nothing extraordinary has transpired during the past week in the Big Bay manslaughter case.... The greatest crime is being perpetrated against Canada by the dumping of the diseased off -- scouring the hot-beds of hellish slumdom of England amongst the rising generation of this country. From the vilest and most pernicious surroundings these exports of Barnardo are sent into homes where young Canadian children are growing up.... It is nothing less than damnable that the future of Canada should be blighted by the dumping of the Barnardo waifs on her shores to live in crime or die with abuse, and in either case leaving a trail of immorality behind.'

Pent-up resentment and hostility, which had been seething for years, bubbled over the surface. The late nineteenth century was witnessing the increasing urbanization of Canada. The rural community felt its influence waning under the onslaught of the immoral and disease-ridden urban centres, as they were viewed at the time. The myth of a pastoral country that was superior in all ways to its evil cousin, the city, took firm hold and the home children provided an easy target in the pulpits, the press and the parliament of Canada. By December 19, Helen Finlay was no longer on trial -- the jury was deadlocked and unable to reach a decision. She was set free.

But the trial of George Green and all the home children was just getting started. The Toronto Evening Star chose as its headline, "A REPULSIVE BOY." In smaller print the subheading was 'DISOBEDIENT, DIRTY, UNABLE TO WORK, BUT A BIG EATER." The House of Commons, our national parliament, referred to them as the offal of the most depraved characters in the cities of the Old County. Criticism even found its way into an icon of Canadian literature, Anne of Green Gables:

"At first, Matthew suggested getting a Barnardo boy. But I said 'no' flat to that.... no London street Arabs for me..."

Public opinion rallied against the home children, but economic considerations kept the program alive. George Green may have been a more dramatic victim of the abuse endured by tens of thousands of those youngsters, but many of the children would acknowledge that their lives were better as a result of their forced migrations. Canada received up to 100,000 worthwhile and contributing citizens from the 1930s to 1939.

Today the descendants of home children enrich the fabric of Canadian life from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Yet when a ship arrived in Canada with 28 youngsters in July of 1939 (just before the outbreak of the Second World War), it marked the final voyage of an experiment with the lives of children that cannot help but reduce our nation to a sense of remorse and shame. That may be of slight solace to George Green -- a boy whose body and soul searched so desperately for peace during a brief lifetime. 
ContributorsCreated : 2007-11-05 23:09:44 / From original database

Last Updated : 2009-07-23 11:39:14 /

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Surnames starting with:   A  B  C  D  E  F  G  H  I  J  K  L  M  N  O  P  Q  R  S  T  U  V  W  X  Y  Z  10 Entries        
IDNameDOBPlace of birthArrivals & ShipsDest.AgencyFamily links
19537 ARNOLD, Leonard1910ENG, LND, Tottenham Aug 1926 : Pennland CAN British Immigration and Colonisation Association  
17325 BARR, Henry Ernest1887ENG, MDX, Tottenham Mar 1903 : Canada CAN Barnardos  
3380 GANNEY, Edgar Samuel1898ENG, MDX, Tottenham Jul 1910 : Virginian CAN MacPherson Homes  
3379 GANNEY, Frederick1896ENG, MDX, Tottenham Jul 1910 : Virginian CAN MacPherson Homes  
2850 GREEN, George Everett1880ENG, MDX, Tottenham Apr 1895 : Parisian CAN Barnardos  
2745 GYERTSON, Henry Arthur1913ENG, MDX, Tottenham Apr 1929 : Cedric CAN Waifs & Strays  
3386 HANKS, Charles1897ENG, MDX, Tottenham Jul 1910 : Virginian CAN MacPherson Homes  
14127 HARPER, Sarah Jane1886ENG, MDX, Tottenham Jul 1899 : Lake Huron  Barnardos Tynti  
14706 JOLLY, George Stephen1891ENG, MDX, Tottenham Apr 1904 : Southwark CAN Barnardos  
14708 JOLLY, Herbert Cyrus1890ENG, MDX, Tottenham Apr 1904 : Southwark CAN Barnardos