Notes Parents: George Frederick Cartwright and Mary Elizabeth Williams, married 1885, Kingston, Surrey, England.
A death registration was found for Mary Elizabeth Cartwright: Year of Registration: 1905; Quarter of Registration: Apr-May-Jun; Age at Death: 36; District: Kingston; County: Middlesex, Surrey; Volume: 2a; Page: 213.
[EDITORS NOTE: No death certificate found for George Frederick Cartwright. However a Violet M. Stevens and George F. Cartwright were married in Guildford, Surrey, England during March quarter 1934; and the death of a George F. Cartwright, 63, was registered in the March quarter, 1938 in Lambeth, Surrey, England.]
In 1910, Beatrice Cartright, 13, arrived at Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in a group of 85 Barnardo girls en route to Peterborough, Ontario, Canada.
From Leader-Post (Saskatchewan), March 31, 2010/P. Roth:
"REGINA ? It might be looked upon as a sad moment in history when thousands of penniless children were sent from the U.K. to Canada to work as farm labourers or domestic servants.
But Holly Schick isn't ashamed to say she's one of an estimated four million Canadians who are descendants of the home children. She isn't proud of it either.
"It's kind of a sad piece in history. They were very much looked down upon by people here," said Schick, a member of the Saskatchewan Genealogical Society, who's invested countless hours towards tracing her grandmother's roots and the history of home children in Canada.
"When you think about it, they were a major force in who we are now."
The federal government has designated 2010 as the year of the British home child.
From 1869 to the late 1940s, religious and philanthropic organizations brought around 100,000 children between the ages of nine and 14 to Canada from the U.K. to make new lives for themselves, rather than live in the slums.
Many of them were labelled as orphans, even though two-thirds had parents, who were simply too poor to care for them.
They were sent to live with Canadian families, often as farm labourers or domestic servants under the U.K.'s Child Migration Scheme, and became known as home children.
Some became victims of abuse, but many of them did well for themselves, including Schick's grandmother Beatrice Cartwright, who has since passed away.
With the passing of her mother and re-location of her siblings, Cartwright's father was too poor to take care of her at their Wimbledon home.
So she was sent to one of Barnardo's Homes in England, where she lived for two years prior to arriving in Ontario at the age of 13 to live with a family near Uxbridge and help look after their children.
She was among approximately 70,000 home children who arrived in Ontario, with another 12,000 sent to Quebec.
A few home children eventually made their way to farms in Saskatchewan, but the majority remained in Ontario.
According to Schick, Cartwright had a good life and was treated like a member of the family.
She eventually married and moved to Saskatchewan to farm with her husband near Lemberg, where she raised five children.
As a result of the move to Canada, Cartwright lost all connection with her family in England. Her past was virtually erased, which Schick said left deep wounds for many of the home children.
"It looked like a real good idea to everybody, but it was a major shock to the system," said Schick, who travelled to England to tour the former residence of her grandmother at Barnardo Homes.
"She had a good life here, but lost a lot too. It must have been sad and a challenge. She didn't talk a lot about it ? most of them didn't."
Last month, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown apologized on his country's behalf for shipping out 150,000 home children to lives of servitude in Commonwealth countries. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has also done the same.
Schick said the apology was appreciated.
"I think, for the most part, the organizations that collected those children and sent them to Canada had the best interests of the children at heart. But looking back, it's one of those things you don't realize the end results of it and the potential problems until it's too late," she said."
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