Abstract
Using the example of George Green and British child migration of the late nineteenth and twentieth century, this article aims at reconceptualizing ‘voice’ for the study of marginalized historical figures. Young people are particularly revealing subjects for the reconceptualization of voice: they were and are perceived as pure yet malleable, loud yet mute in the historical record. Criticizing the use of voice as a self-explanatory metaphor, charged with a liberal, democratic ideal, this article addresses four inherent analytical problems: the search for authenticity, the neglect of voices’ non-narrative dimension, the neglect of non-verbal voices and the one-dimensional interpretation of silences. The case of George Green lends itself to a demonstration of the epistemological potential of the analytical concept of voice as it touches on various aspects of voice: legal voices, vocal practices and sound as well as silences in the production, recording, archiving and excavation of marginalized voices.
In November 1895, about seven months after his arrival from Britain, Everett George Green died at the age of 16 in Ontario, Canada. The constable, who saw Green shortly after his death, described the boy's corpse graphically as ‘almost covered with sores of different kinds from head to feet’. 1 Green's employer, Helen Findlay, was charged with manslaughter by cruel treatment and neglect. The trial caused great furore in Canada. Curious spectators crowded the courtroom, and the media covered the trial meticulously. 2 The case gave cause for the Canadian public to discuss the child migration schemes, which had brought British youngsters to Canada since 1869. The media picked up the eugenic discourse at the time and questioned whether Green and other child migrants made for desirable members of Canadian society, as Findlay's defence argued that Green died not from cruel treatment but of inherited diseases, that he had been bodily sick and mentally retarded. 3 The jury disagreed in the first instance. 4 Only in a second trial the following year, when Findlay was no longer charged with manslaughter but with common assault, she was found guilty and sentenced to one year's detention in a reformatory. By then, the media attention had faded. 5 In the years following, the Canadian provinces introduced legislation to regulate child migration. Rather than focussing on child migrants’ welfare, the new laws were meant to prevent the immigration of minors considered unhealthy in mind or body. 6
According to Canadian historian Joy Parr, following his death, ‘more Canadians knew about him [George Green] than about any other of the children brought by British charitable agencies’. 7 Today, Green's name appears in many studies about the history of the British child migration schemes. Green's fate is described as a cynic catalyst for nationalist and eugenic efforts to curb the influx of cheap labour in the form of British youngsters, and he has become a symbol for the suffering caused by child migration. 8 The case of George Green offers different actors a narrative to use for their cause. It is open to interpretation, in part because Green himself was silent in all these debates. So far, Green has been a token to be talked about rather than a voice to be listened to. Does Green himself have a voice that historians are able to listen to?
Like most young people, Green talked and sang, cried and screamed. Such utterances by children and juveniles, however, are rarely recorded and transformed into archival records. As a result, the history of childhood as an academic field often deals with adult actors, with how they saw and treated children. 9 Where children themselves come into focus, agency has long been the most important analytical category. The agentic individual – rationally and independently directing their path of life – is the opposite of what the child is constructed as in Western society. More recently, scholars have therefore criticized the concept's epistemic value for studying the history of children. 10 The concept of voice, I think, can help fill this epistemological gap.
As an analytical concept, voice gained traction in Subaltern Studies with Gayatri Spivak's essay ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’. 11 This is somewhat ironic considering Spivak's emphatic ‘No’ to the rhetorical question she posed in the title. Nevertheless, searches for marginalized voices have since been undertaken in various fields of historical research, including childhood history. 12 This research is part of a trend in childhood history to focus more on young people's perspectives and experiences. 13 For historical research, the indispensable analytical value of voice as developed in Subaltern Studies lies in its renewed focus on the development of the historical record and the historian's role as well as in its ability to tune our ears to expressions of marginalized actors. However, it deserves further theoretical reflection to fully reach its potential. The conceptualization of voice varies greatly and is rarely clear-cut. 14 Voice is often used as a self-explanatory metaphor, charged with a modern democratic ideal and the assumption of a liberal subject. 15 Thus, the search for historically marginalized voices is framed as a moral undertaking, aiming at finding a voice and thereby empowering the historical subject. Such framing, however, belittles the epistemological value of studying marginalized voices.
I want to argue that voice is a useful concept to gain insight into child migrants’ experiences and broader social dynamics if it is used as an analytical concept rather than a loaded metaphor. Walter Johnson has criticized that scholars’ attempts to ‘give back’ agency to historical actors suggest a form of redress, which writing history cannot provide. The same could be said about attempts of ‘giving back’ a voice. 16 While advocacy groups explicitly say they want to ‘give a voice’ to child migrants, 17 the gesture is controversial among historians. Greg Dening has called the humanities ‘the great unsilencing art’ and stated his ambition as ‘fill[ing]’ ‘the silence of those who for one reason or another had no voice’. Similar to Johnson, Martin Dusinberre criticized this position, stating that ‘[e]levation should not be for the global historian’, and Spivak considered any attempt of Western humanities scholars to make the subaltern speak a continuation of Western domination (one could, analogously, think of adult domination). 18
The gesture of rendering certain people audible is not a phenomenon that emerged with late-twentieth-century scholarship and should therefore be historicized. Making the marginalized heard was a common charitable and reformist gesture among nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century British philanthropists. In explaining and advertising their mission, child rescuers claimed to make the children's ‘cry’ heard. This ‘cry of the child’-trope also figured in child migration agencies’ appeals. 19 There was a religious aspect to the trope: equalling the English poor children's cry with the cry of the Children of Israel in Egypt, the cry was elevated from that of an individual or a certain social group to that of God's people as a whole. 20 The biblical reference also pointed towards God and Christianity as guidance in responding to the cry. As a rhetorical tool, the metaphor conveys authenticity, immediacy and bolsters a sympathetic conception of the child as weak and in need of adult help. Historians should study this gesture as a historical phenomenon and isolate it from the analytical concept of voice.
Reading about the abuse George Green and other child migrants suffered, the idea of being able to give something back is tempting. However, history is about the present, albeit through the filter of the past. The voice dominating this article is certainly not Green's but mine: the voice of a twenty-first-century historian. Instead of trying to democratize the past, to posthumously empower subjects, my goal is to learn about the structural patterns amplifying and silencing voices in the past and the present. For such an undertaking, exploring the ifs and maybes of young people's voices and vocal practices is more important than finding a single explanation or finding authenticity. Rather than providing the complete picture by adding marginalized voices, this approach raises awareness for the inevitable gaps and blanks in history and historical research. I see the analysis of young people's voices in the past as neither a moral gesture towards these individuals nor an end in itself; I see it as a heuristic tool, allowing historians to reach a more complex understanding of certain aspects of history. Constituting voice as an analytical concept rather than an end in itself, I will address central problems in the current conceptualization of voice and show the epistemological potential the idea of voice offers if it is reconceptualized.
At first glance, Green is not an obvious example for studying a young person's voice. There are no known, accessible ego-documents by Green, and according to his first employer, he ‘was quiet, always quiet’.
21
During the court proceedings against Findlay, several neighbours testified that they had seen Findlay physically abuse Green and had heard him cry in pain. Mr. W.H. Horne, a neighbouring farmer, for example, recalled: I heard the boy cry and thought I heard a blow and I looked up to see what was the matter; they were working in the barley field, Miss Findlay had a fork in her hand and the boy was making away from her and she was scolding him and following him up with the fork in her hand.
22
Young people are particularly intriguing subjects for a reconceptualization of voice: they were and are perceived as pure yet malleable, loud and chatty yet ‘mutes’ 27 in the historical record. In this article, I will use George Green as an example to disclose the complex web of social forces behind and interpretations of young people's voices and vocal practices in the past and the present, illustrating both the difficulties and the epistemological possibilities of historians’ search for marginalized voices. The case of George Green and the history of British child migration more generally lend themselves to a discussion of voice as an analytical concept because they touch on various facets of voice: minors’ legal say in matters affecting them, everyday vocal practices, sound and silences. Moreover, in the process of migration, a number of records were produced about individuals, who, in all likelihood, would have gone unnoticed by historians otherwise. The child migration schemes’ bureaucracy and the controversy surrounding the practice throughout the time they existed created a rich source base that historians can work with, even if the number of ego-documents from child migrants themselves is small. 28
This article is a narrative about an individual's life and experiences, an analysis of structural patterns amplifying and silencing certain voices, as well as an exploration of a research concept. After briefly introducing the historical context in which Green emigrated to Canada and providing some particularities of his case, I will turn to the concept of voice, identifying and discussing four problems I see in how voice is usually thought of and conceptualized: the search for authenticity, the neglect of the non-narrative dimension of voices, the neglect of non-verbal voices and the one-dimensional interpretation of silences. All these problems can be turned into opportunities for future research.
In the late nineteenth century, the British child rescue movement drew on earlier, scattered examples of child migration and set up government-supported schemes, which brought economically and socially disadvantaged youngsters to the British settler colonies, most of them to Canada and Australia. 29 Between 1869 and 1970 30 , close to 90,000 British children and juveniles 31 were trained as farm labourers and domestics in private homes, farm schools and orphanages overseas. The schemes intended to give young people a future as productive Christian citizens of the Empire and to populate the British colonies. Moreover, they brought financial relief to government and philanthropic welfare efforts in Britain. The Canadian and Australian governments, as well as their farmers, supported the child migration schemes as they brought cheap labour and white stock to the colonies. 32 Initially, child migration agencies focused their work on Canada and placed child migrants individually on farms or, in rare cases, in urban households. In the 1920s, child welfare concerns on the one hand and economic downturn and xenophobia on the other hand prompted the Canadian government to enact a ban on the immigration of unaccompanied children under the age of 14. 33 Following this ban, agencies shifted their operations to Australia, where some had already been active. After the Second World War, child migrants under school-leaving age were placed in institutions, farm schools and orphanages. This shift happened at the very point in time when British child welfare turned against institutionalization and, for that matter, against family separation. British government officials recognized this discrepancy but feared alienating their Australian partner. Child migration eventually slowly died out because parents and local officials in Britain refused to send young people abroad. 34
Nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century British social reformers’ conception of childhood was born out of images and narratives developed during Enlightenment and Romanticism. Enlightenment philosophers, most famously Rousseau, opposed the Christian doctrine of the original sin and cultivated the idea of childhood innocence. Romantic thinkers went a step further, discovering childhood as the basin of true being and morality. 35 The idea of childhood innocence led to a fetishizing of children's vulnerability and put parents into the focus of social reforms. Considered blank slates, the environment in which children were brought up was thought to determine the adults they would become. Consequently, children constituted both a risk and a potential for society and the state. Left with those whom middle- and upper-class reformers considered unfit parents, in an environment of (real or imagined) crime and immorality, lower-class children were believed to grow up a burden for the British people. If, however, they were taken ‘out of the gutter’, separated permanently from their families, and brought up in a morally sound environment with a good work ethic, they would turn into productive citizens. 36 The Custody of Children Act of 1891, aptly dubbed the ‘Barnardo's Act’, after the evangelical philanthropist Thomas Barnardo, strengthened the power of government agencies and welfare organizations to intervene in the family. It legalized Barnardo's practice of ‘philanthropic abduction’, emigrating children under the age of 16 without their parents’ consent if these were deemed unfit. 37 To understand the history of Green, it is important to point out that while social reformers had adopted this new conception of childhood, modified ideas about original sin in the form of heredity ills were powerful in British and Canadian society. Discussing the case of Green, a journalist of the Hamilton Times wrote: ‘The offspring of the vicious and the vile cannot be a good mixture for our population’. 38
Barnardo's charitable organization, the Dr Barnardo's Homes (today: Barnardos), ran the biggest and longest running child migration scheme. Green was one of 733 minors the agency sent to Canada in 1895 alone. 39 The emigration party, which brought Green to Canada, also included his younger brother, Walter. In 1886, Catherine and Charles Green had left their two sons as well as their older daughter, Margaret, to the care of the Edmonton Poor Law Union's Old Parish School, before the children were admitted to Enfield Farm School in Northern London. Charles died two years later. In 1894, Catherine persuaded then 17-year-old Margaret to leave the Farm School and take a paid job. In response, the parish returned George and Walter to their mother's care as well. Too poor to take care of her sons, Catherine asked for the two boys to be admitted to the Dr Barnardo's Homes in July 1894. Not even a year later, they were sent to Canada. After their arrival in April 1895, George and Walter were both employed at W.A. Cranston's farm, south of Toronto. After the customary one-month trial period, however, Cranston sent the boys back to the Dr Barnardo's Homes’ Receiving and Distribution Home in Toronto. He found that because George was blind in one eye, he was not suitable for working on his farm. Subsequently, George was sent further north, to Findlay's farm in the town of Keppel. 40
When he was sent to Canada, George Green was believed to be 15 years old, even though he was already 16. 41 At that age, Green was among the older ones who emigrated under the Dr Barnardo's Homes’ migration scheme. 42 Some historians prefer the term ‘juvenile migrants’ for migrants age 14 and older. 43 Until the beginning of migration schemes specifically for juveniles in the 1920s, however, the term did not exist. 44 I will use ‘child migrant’ as an umbrella term for all minors sent abroad under the British child migration schemes. A binary division between ‘child migrants’ and ‘juvenile migrants’ captures neither the gradual differences between various age groups, nor the divergence between the ideals and the realities of childhood and youth. Since the early twentieth century, youth or adolescence is considered as a distinct life phase in Western societies, and, while often included in childhood history, the history of youth is a booming research field of its own. Even before the intellectual discovery of youth, however, there was a period of transition between childhood and adulthood, the form and length of which depended on different social factors such as gender and class. 45 The way child migrants were perceived, treated and thought of themselves, however, often ran counter to ideas about childhood and youth. Several employers, for example, made child migrants of school age work full time – regardless of legal or contractual obligations –, 46 denying them a childhood, which was increasingly seen as a period of protection and guidance, of play and learning. 47 Green was no longer a child in some ways: he no longer had to attend school 48 and was appertain to wages for his full-time work, although he might not have had any cash, as accumulated wages could be paid at the end of an indenture period, which would not have been prior to Green's 16th birthday. 49 Green was not a ‘teenager’, an actor in mass consumerism, a figure that would emerge later, in the post-Depression era. 50 Legally, Green was still a minor, under the control of his employer and the Dr Barnardo's Homes. The agency had negotiated the terms of his indenture, and he was not allowed to leave his position without permission from the Dr Barnardo's Homes or his employer. Moreover, his voice was and is perceived and treated as that of a dependent person in the making and a historically marginalized figure. There was a notable shift in how the Canadian media portrayed Green's age throughout the trial against his employer. Initially, he was depicted as the vulnerable child, ‘an innocent, simple Barnardo waif’. 51 As the trial progressed and the newspaper reports took over the defence's line of argument, however, the attribute ‘boy’ no longer evoked sympathy and signified innocence, but stood for childish weakness and youthful impertinence instead. In its headline, one newspaper described Green as ‘A Repulsive Boy: Disobedient, Dirty, Unable to Work, but a Big Eater’. 52 In the historiography, Green is labelled a child, a ‘lad’ or ‘boy’, rather than a ‘young man’ or a ‘juvenile’, invoking sympathy with a helpless figure in need of protection. 53
In the collected volume Children's Voices from the Past, the editors ‘take children's “voices” to mean […] what young people actually thought, felt and did rather than what they were expected or assumed to think, feel and do’. 54 This quest for authenticity assumes that there is an authentic core hidden under layers of social pressure and cultural distortion. Such assumptions are based on the idea of a liberal subject and the modern Western construction of the child as pure and primal as well as malleable and impressionable. 55 In searching for the authentic voice, historians imprint their own cultural predisposition, their own notions of childhood and youth, on their research object. As David M. Rosen has shown, researchers’ notions of childhood heavily influence their quest for the authentic child. In analysing the discourse about child soldiers, Rosen demonstrated that if a child's actions were seen as positive and fit the observer's idea of the innocent child, the child was presented as an active agent; if not, the child was presented as a manipulated victim – even if this interpretation was at odds with the child's self-perception. 56
Jo-Ann Wallace drew an analytical distinction between ‘the child’/‘childhood’ as theoretical constructs and ‘children’ as ‘real historical beings who cannot as yet be defined outside of those discursive formations’. 57 Just like adults, young people do not exist outside their social context and categorization as children or juveniles. Consequently, there is no ‘authentic’ voice, free from social influences and categorizations. Voice is not the expression of an ‘authentic’ inner self, but of a social being. The language and form that a young person raises his or her voice in are already the result of social influence. As E.H. Carr put it: ‘the individual apart from society would be both speechless and mindless’. 58 When encountering traces of children's and juveniles’ voices, historians should ask not whether these are authentic, but what they can tell about these individuals and their time.
One example challenging notions of authenticity is child migrants’ consent to their own emigration. Confronted with the public interest in Green's case, Barnardo published a newspaper article defending his child migration scheme. In this article, Barnardo claimed that Green emigrated ‘with his own desire’. 59 The Poor Law Amendment Act of 1850, the legal basis on which the late-nineteenth-century government-assisted child migration schemes relied, allowed for the emigration of a child under the age of 16 in government care at public expense under the condition that the child gave their consent. Only after the passing of the Children Act of 1948 could the Secretary of State give their consent instead if the child was considered too young to make such a life-changing decision. Neither Act, however, applied to child migrants like Green, who were sent from and at the expense of private charities such as the Dr Barnardo's Homes. 60 It was nevertheless common for child migration agencies throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century to ask all prospective child migrants whether they wanted to emigrate.
In the speech act of consenting, voice becomes agentic, an act transcending speech. 61 Retrospective judgments of this practice vary, particularly with regard to the degree of agency young people had and the authenticity of their consenting voices. The issue came up repeatedly in recent government inquiries into the sexual abuse of children and juveniles in care, including child migrants in Australia. The witnesses, who often suffered sexual abuse after their emigration, recalled deception, pressure, and a lack of agency. 62 Those who fared well after emigration, on the other hand, tend to stress their own agency. In an interview, a former child migrant identified as Cliff recalled: ‘So Barnardos anyway at least did the right thing by the kids [asking for volunteers to go to Australia] and I certainly remember putting my hand up saying I wanted to go’. In contrast to many of the witnesses in the inquiries cited above, for Cliff, emigration was an escape from sexual abuse. 63 Historians generally agree that many child migrants ‘left before they were old enough to give an informed consent to their emigration’. 64 Like agency, voice illuminates power structures. They affected whether and how children and juveniles could raise their voices, whether these were recorded and archived, and whether they are excavated today. The analytical concept of voice, however, also asks what an action (not) taken or a word (not) spoken expresses. This allows insight into young people's experiences. Dismissing child migrants’ voices as non-agentic, distorted or inauthentic yields no insights. Instead, historians should ask what these voices can tell them.
Historical research has criticized the binary analytical distinction between voluntary and involuntary migration. 65 The circumstances motivating people of any age to migrate are rarely chosen voluntarily. Green was probably familiar with the Dr Barnardo's Homes’ rhetoric portraying Canada as a land of spiritual and economic opportunity. 66 Without a father, he was in a precarious social and economic situation. Green needed to make a living and probably longed for a better life. Other child migrants were tempted by stories about a land ‘where a person was free to pick an apple in the orchard; or pick a ripe tomato from the garden; ride horseback; stroll through the forest’, 67 or, as one former child migrant recalled, a land, where she would ‘have real reindeer to pull my sleigh to school’. 68 Throughout the decades, youngsters voiced their wish for an escape from the dull routine of institutional life or the dire realities of poverty, not knowing what consequences their voice would ultimately have. Because it was considered standard procedure (though not legally required) to have child migrants’ consent, it was important for Barnardo to claim that Green had given his consent in order to defend his child migration scheme. The legal development and the fact that, today, historians reject the practice counters the historical narrative of a linear development of children's rights from protective to participatory rights in the twentieth century. 69 The idea that young people's voices were neglected in the past and progressively listened to in the twentieth century does not capture the complex and contradictory nature of the development.
Sources about young people's voices are sparse. Attending to the non-narrative dimension, the dimension of sound, gives historians an additional layer from which to draw information. So far, most scholarship on marginalized voices has neglected the non-narrative dimension of voices. One reason certainly lies in the lack of sound records, particularly from the nineteenth century and earlier periods. There are, however, some exemplary studies in Australian convict historiography. Alan Atkinson, for instance, studied dialect and vocal practices in Australian nation-building, Catie Gilchrist analysed convicts’ verbal culture and dialects, and Penny Russell used a variety of sound-related attributes of voice to give insight into ‘the politics of hearing and listening in nineteenth-century New South Wales’. 70 These examples show how productive inspiration can be drawn from scholarship on linguistics, orality and music as well as from the field of Sound Studies to examine written sources on aspects of sound and voice.
In the trial against Findlay, James Jeffrey, a local blacksmith's apprentice and, like Green, a child migrant from the Dr Barnardo's Homes, testified for the prosecution. In the fall, he told the jury, he had cut Green's hair and in return, Green had sung two songs for him. Asked about the peculiarity of Green's singing, Jeffrey replied: ‘When he went up too high he would fail. […] He would stop. You have heard people trying to talk when they had a terrible cold, well something like that’. 71 The court did not allow Jeffrey to present evidence about a conversation he had had with Green ‘as to Miss Findlay's treatment of him’. 72 Therefore, Jeffrey's testimony contains no information about Green's voice on a narrative level. Attending to the non-narrative dimension of Green's voice, however, allows insight into Green's physical condition and his experiences.
The way Jeffrey recounted the sound of Green's voice contrasted his earlier depiction of Green on his arrival as ‘[v]ery healthy looking’, making it evidence of Green's ill state of health. 73 Thereby, the reported sound of Green's voice furthered the prosecution's case that Findlay had denied adult help in the form of medical attention to a child in need. Regardless of his physical state, however, singing might have put Green in a heightened emotional state, which led his voice to fail. Some years earlier, child migration agent Annie Macpherson had described a goodbye scene in Montreal, when the newly arrived British boys were about to be sent to their different placements: ‘[F]or the last time as a little band singing, as we looked over the city, the sweet hymn, “Shall we gather at the river?” In parting many of their voices became like my own – very choking’. 74 Leaving the people they had travelled with for an unknown future, several boys’ emotions affected their singing voices.
Child migrants shared and cherished songs they knew from British culture or their time in the care of a child migration agency such as the Dr Barnardo's Homes. 75 Barnardo was an outspoken advocate of using music in childcare institutions. He saw music as a way to educate the youngsters in his care culturally and religiously, while providing a tool for both discipline and pleasure. Music was present in the Dr Barnardo's Homes’ institutions and accompanied farewell ceremonies for child migrants. 76 Alfred B. Owen, the Dr Barnardo's Homes’ representative in Canada, who accompanied the child migration party that Green was in on its way from Britain, recalled seeing Green ‘with a Hymn book in his hand singing a hymn’. 77 This was probably during a church service or the farewell ceremony. For many of the uprooted youngsters, music held valued memories of their lives back in Britain. Being a child migrant was associated with being alien, with the stigma of poverty, growing up in care, and illegitimacy. For the stigmatized child migrants, music provided an acoustic home and a community. Green likely sang songs he and Jeffrey knew from their time back in Britain. These songs would have reminded them of home and the community they shared as ‘Barnardo boys’. While this could have provided some comfort to Green, it might have also thrown him into an emotional state of loneliness and homesickness, 78 leading his voice to fail.
Prior to Green's arrival in Keppel, the Dr Barnardo's Homes had placed two other child migrants at the Findlay farm. According to Owen, there had been no complaints from these boys. 79 This may be right as far as verbalized complaints are concerned. The second boy placed at the Findlay farm, however, had expressed himself in another way: he had run away. According to Findlay, this was ‘because he had stolen a pistol of mine’. 80 Whether his treatment also played a role in his decision to leave the farm, we do not know. If voice is used both literally and figuratively, there is a variety of non-verbal expressions to analyse, including both individual acts and patterns of behaviour. There are some great examples of the variety of expressions historians can use to capture and interpret historical figures’ voices: Greg Dening made a case for the importance of facial expressions and gestures to interpret the spoken word on a narrative level, and Noelani Arista showed how the act of name-giving can be interpreted as a voice. 81
Green did not take any daring actions of the kind his predecessor did. Neither did he hit back when scolded or attempted suicide as some other child migrants did. 82 A behaviour, however, which was discussed in some detail in court, was Green's bedwetting. Green was far from the only child migrant suffering from enuresis. Medical inspections of prospective child migrants prior to emigration usually covered enuresis and – at least in theory – barred young people suffering from it from emigration. 83 Child migrants’ records show that bedwetting could appear and disappear, depending on the situation they found themselves in, as it did in Green's case. Green's first employer testified that Green did not wet the bed, and Findlay recalled he only began doing so some time after his arrival. At some point in summer, she claimed, Green started wetting his pants during daytime as well. In her testimony, Findlay admitted to forcing Green to sleep in the barn for two nights as punishment for wetting his bed. The punishment did not better Green's enuresis, which, apparently, did not surprise Findlay. Although she considered punishment appropriate, she does not seem to have considered bedwetting as a conscious act preventable by the threat of punishment. Neither, however, did she consult a doctor. 84
As an expression, bedwetting is potentially rich in information. However, it was interpreted differently at different times, reminding me, as a historian, of my positionality. The nineteenth century saw a variety of attempts to interpret the cause of and find a treatment for youngsters’ bedwetting. Though often called a ‘dirty habit’, 85 which would indicate a lack of discipline or manners, enuresis was generally seen as having a physical cause. Nevertheless, psychological methods such as punishment were common. 86 During the trial, the Crown prosecutor asked two medical practitioners about the cause of Green's ‘incontinency of urine’. Both gave a medical cause. Dr Allan Cameron reasoned that ‘[b]lows on the back’ were ‘likely’ to have caused it. Under cross-examination, Dr C.M. Lang named ‘depression of the system’ as the cause for Green's incontinence. 87
Since the mid-twentieth century, experts see the causes of bedwetting in a variety of factors, partially organic but more often in ‘emotional disturbance’. 88 Based on the volatility of the condition recorded in child migrants’ reports, in most cases, bedwetting cannot be ascribed to physical causes alone. The fact that several child migrants seem to have developed enuresis or turned worse after emigration supports a thesis Barry M. Coldrey proposed for the postwar period, which is that bedwetting was at least in part caused by the stress these young people experienced through their migration. 89 Bedwetting has been interpreted as an act of delinquency or defiance, as a sign of physical or psychological problems. 90 While, as I will explain in the next paragraph, an intentional act seems unlikely in Green's case, his bedwetting could have been caused by physical as well as emotional problems. Following shifting medical and social conceptions, as an expression, it would have been interpreted differently over time. To claim a psychological over a medical interpretation would therefore be anachronistic.
Sometimes, it is not medical or psychological knowledge contemporaries or historians need to understand the causes of enuresis, but an understanding of young people's perspective. I will use two different examples to explain what I mean by that. Since bedwetting was a reason for deportation back to Britain, in the 1920s, an official from the Church Army, another child migration agency, feared homesick youngsters could strategically wet their beds. 91 Given that the possibility of deportation or even replacement was never mentioned in the court records, and considering his otherwise docile behaviour as well as the discomfort, shame and punishment Green suffered because of his bedwetting, his behaviour was most likely unintentional. So was Isaac Rosenbloom's. In early 1894, Mr. Burke, a farmer in Manitoba, brought 10-year-old Rosenbloom to immigration officials. The boy had arrived in Canada in May of the previous year under a child migration scheme operated by W.J. Pady. 92 Burke told immigration officials: ‘The lad is […] possessed of a most filthy habit, he makes his water and allows his bowels to evacuate in his bed at night and in his pants in the day time’. 93 A doctor inspected the boy. To him, Rosenbloom was said to have explained: ‘there were no conveniences at the farm except he went into the stable, and he was afraid of the horses and it was too cold in the open air. It may be stated here that he is very small for his age 10 years and delicate in appearance’. 94 For a small child, horses are intimidatingly big in relative size. At least in part, Rosenbloom's enuresis was an expression of his fear of horses and the cold. We need to keep in mind young people's literal and figurative perspective in interpreting their voices.
Besides his actions, Green's body itself, ‘almost covered with sores of different kinds from head to feet’,
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could be interpreted as a voice. As the literal bone of contention, the Crown prosecution produced a finger of Green's in court to demonstrate the condition his body had been in at the time of his death.
96
After the death of another child migrant, Arnold Walsh, in early 1906, his employer was accused of causing his death. At his trial, the judge reminded the jury: ‘You must take into account the fact that that boy's mouth is now silent – he cannot come here and lodge his complaints; he cannot come here and say whether he endured ill-treatment or not’. The only way the boy could speak to the jury was through his body: The coffin was brought before the Coroner, and on opening the coffin a sight most disgusting and discouraging offered itself to the eyes of the gazers by. The boy was actually laid in filth, and as I have said, the coffin was too small for the body […]. His head was covered with vermin and there were signs that something had happened to him, whether by blows or acts of violence or otherwise.
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In his attempt to find children's voices in the records of the British Philanthropic Society, Greg T. Smith focused on children's ‘acts of resistance and defiance’, which ‘can be read, indirectly, as voicing discontent with their situation and illuminating their attitudes towards their circumstances and to institutional care’. 99 The sources lend themselves to such a focus, as the Philanthropic Society and others recorded resistance as aberrations from the norm, but rarely young people's norm-conforming behaviour. Given the modern concept of youth, historians expect juveniles in particular to exhibit resistance and autonomy. 100 In focusing only on active resistance and neglecting the analysis of silences, however, historians not only fail to understand the workings of institutional childcare or the child migration schemes, but they also silence a number of children and juveniles. It is a challenge to cast aside the binary categories of active resistance and passive submission as well as the sympathies of a democratic society for the agent resisting oppression. I try to avoid this resistance trap by analysing not only child migrants’ adversarial expressions, but also voices in line with adults’ expectations.
Subaltern Studies and Feminist Studies have made important contributions to our understanding of silence, criticizing the ‘equation between voice and agency, and its inverse equation – silence and oppression’.
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Silence can be both literal and metaphorical, it can mean keeping silent as well as behaving conformed or passively. Silence appears on different levels: when voices are not raised, remain unheard or unrecorded, are not archived or not excavated by historians. Historians need to decipher the cultural meanings of silence and identify the different levels on which it appears in order to listen to young people's silent voices.
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During the trial against Findlay, the Crown prosecutor, A.G. MacKay, interrogated David Gunson, a local Keppel resident: Q. [MacKay] What kind of lad was he [Green]? A. [Gunson] He was a quiet boy. Q. Mannerly or otherwise? A. Rather a mannerly little fellow, I think, as far as talking was concerned. Q. And as far as actions how was he? A. Quiet.
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As the exchange between Gunson and the Crown prosecutor shows, silence can have different meanings. It can follow social norms, rendering it mannerly, or be in rejection of them, making it impertinent and disrespectful. Just like sounding speech, silence is an act of communication and always relational.
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Social conventions and hierarchies affected whom Green could speak to and how. In 1911, the Liverpool Sheltering Home, another child migration agency, sent a Christmas letter to the youngsters they had sent to Canada. The Home asked the young readers to take as their motto for the upcoming new year ‘LEARNING TO OBEY IN SILENCE AND AT A RUN’. The child migrants were instructed not to talk back – ‘Our Father in Heaven asks for
Besides his lack of familiarity with the district and its people, shame might explain why Green did not talk to any neighbours about his treatment. Defending his child migration scheme and the selection of candidates for emigration, Barnardo claimed that Green ‘ought to have been able […] to defend himself and to resist the violence of any woman’. 110 As a male adolescent, being physically abused by a woman was not in line with gender norms of the time. Staying silent about his abuse, Green protected himself from embarrassment.
The Doyle Report of 1875 had put pressure on the Canadian government as well as on child migration agencies to exercise more oversight over the child migrants. 111 For the agencies, inspection visits and written communication were the most important means of supervision. In Canada, the child migrants lived in remote places, scattered over far distances in sparsely populated regions; roads were poor, communication was slow. Inspections and communication were far less frequent than for young people boarded out in Britain. The Dr Barnardo's Homes conducted annual inspections of their child migrants. 112 The agency's inspector, who had visited the Findlay farm several months prior to Green's arrival, had found the circumstances to be satisfactory. Green died just a few weeks before the next inspection had been scheduled, and never had the chance to speak to the inspector. 113 Whether Green was literate was therefore a particularly important question during the trial, as it could help the jury understand if he had been in a position to complain to the agency about the alleged mistreatment. Many child migrants were illiterate; some were too young to have received any literacy training, while others were denied proper education. 114 However, Findlay and Jennie Wriglay, a short-time live-in help at Findlay's house, both testified to having seen Green write. 115 It was certainly in Findlay's interest to claim that Green could write and therefore could have written a complaint had it been necessary. Nevertheless, Green's age and the fact that he had spent several years in government and private welfare institutions in England suggest that he did have at least basic reading and writing skills.
Owen testified that Green had sent him a postcard from his first placement. 116 Like all Barnardo migrant boys, Green had received a booklet, Directions for Lads on Leaving for Situations, with the following instructions: ‘On leaving for your situation, two addressed Post Cards will be given to you. One of these should be sent off as soon as you reach your destination, to let us know of your safe arrival’. After the one-month trial period, the boys were asked to write again, ‘to let us know whether you are happily settled in your place’. If, however, the boys did not write, it was assumed that they were content to stay. 117 This is likely what happened with Green after he went to Findlay's farm. 118 In the Dr Barnardo's Homes Canadian magazine, Ups and Downs, which addressed benefactors and child migrants alike, Owen claimed that the postcards he had received in 1895 ‘show that they [the migrant boys] have […] started life in Canada in a hopeful and happy spirit’. He called those complaining ‘grumblers’ but admitted that, ‘[o]ccasionally, […] we find that a “round” boy has got into a “square” place, and that our judgement of the boy or the place has been at fault’. 119 Not every boy would have been encouraged to share his worries with Owen after reading this.
While the agency gave its charges the means to send a letter, its content could come under the censorship of their employer. 120 In most cases, the only traces of censorship historians can find in the sources are silences, making conclusions highly speculative. There is, however, some more tangible evidence of the oversight employers conducted over child migrants’ letters to their migration agencies. The files of the Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuges and Homes hold several letters to the agency, which consist of messages written by the child migrant and their employer on the same piece of paper. 121 None of these letters contains complaints by the young migrants. Based on Findlay's actions described by court witnesses, it seems unlikely that she would have allowed Green to send a complaint to the Dr Barnardo's Homes. Few trial witnesses ever saw Green outside the farm premises, so is it doubtful that he could have posted a letter without Findlay's knowledge.
Nevertheless, silence is not to be equated with inaction. Rodney G.S. Carter noted that silence can be ‘a form of self-assertion; it can be an active resistance’.
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A quite dramatic example for this is the story of child migrant John Payne's death. Like Green, Payne had been sent to Canada by the Dr Barnardo's Homes. In February 1924, the Toronto Daily Star reported about the circumstances of the 15-year-old's death: Writhing in pain but silent as to its cause, young Payne was found by his employer in his barn about 11 o’clock on the morning […] Payne steadfastly refused to tell what was wrong, but gradually grew worse until Fee [Payne's employer], becoming alarmed, sent for neighbors. Their questioning as to what ailed the boy was no more successful than that of Fee. […] Johnnie Payne passed away in the doctor's office late that night refusing to open his mouth to drink antidotes, and not admitting until near death that he had taken paris green.
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So far, I have discussed the various circumstances that kept Green from raising his voice in any form. There is, however, another level of silencing, which lies in the writing of his history. As I have noted in the beginning, there are no known accessible ego-documents by Green that have survived. There could be ego-documents (such as the postcard Owen mentioned) in the file, which the Dr Barnardo's Homes kept on every young person in their care. However, these files are not accessible to researchers. 124 They are accessible to care leavers or their descendants, but Green does not have any descendants. While Barnardos argues that the restriction is ‘due to the nature and sensitivity of the records’, 125 the practice inevitably leads to a shortage of young people's voices in the corpus of sources from which child migration history is written. Another factor affecting the excavation and assessment of children's and juveniles’ voices by historians is the already mentioned resistance trap. I myself have to confess that I was much more drawn to voices expressing discontent and deviance than to the ones in line with adults’ expectations. Moreover, because the story of Green's death is so captivating and his voice has left so few traces in the records, he has become a tempting projection surface for past and present activists’ agendas. Green became a token in Canada's late-nineteenth-century nationalist and eugenics discourse as well as in Canadian trade unions’ anti-immigrant rhetoric. More recently, Green was used as a reminder against bullying and for social justice. 126
A nuanced and self-reflective interpretation of silences allows historians to listen to the (silent) voices of many more young people, including those, who were content and had no reason to resist, as well as those who, like Green, adopted a posture of fitting in, who did their best to avoid attracting any attention as a strategy of survival. Joy Parr observed that particularly children who grew up in institutions often developed a passivity, which led Canadian mistresses looking for companionship to complain about them as ‘dull’ and ‘unsociable’. 127 While we must not lose sight of the power relationships in which these young people acted, neither must we limit our view on the diversity of young people's experiences or undervalue the complexity of their coping strategies.
Even though there is no accessible ego-document from Green, using the analytical concept of voice outlined in this article, historians can glean insight into his personal experiences and the social dynamics affecting him from the sources available. His consent, a voice that might have otherwise been dismissed as inauthentic, gives insight into his hopes for the future. Attending to the dimension of sound gives clues about Green's emotions, his homesickness, loneliness and longing for the community of Barnardo's child migrants. Green's behaviour and his body, figurative voices, hold tentative clues about his physical or psychological health, his treatment or heritage, but are problematic in their interpretation. Green's silence can be telling on a multitude of issues: his fears and shame, the power structures he was caught in and the inadequacies of Barnardo's aftercare system.
The reconceptualization of voice reveals not just specifics about Green but, more generally, about how young people's voices were treated, amplified or silenced. Green played his part as the silent social inferior based on age and class; but neither he nor any child migrant was completely silenced. Examining the legal role child migrants’ voices played in the migration process calls into question the scholarly narrative of a linear development of children's rights. Analysing the dimension of sound shows that singing was not just a disciplining tool but also an individual expression. Interpreting figurative voices demonstrates the need to historicize interpretations of such voices and the importance of historians reflecting their own positionality. Avoiding the resistance trap and studying silence in its own right helps acknowledge the diversity of young people's coping mechanisms while also highlighting power dynamics; this includes power dynamics in archival practices and the writing of history.
As historians, we should end the quest for authenticity, broaden our perspective to include the non-narrative dimension of voice as well as non-verbal voices and tune our ears to multiple forms of silence in the production, recording, archiving and excavation of marginalized voices. If we do this, we will find the voices of migrant children, despite their marginalization on the basis of age and origin and despite the scarcity of ego-documents. We will gain insight into the perception and use of young people's voices, as well as into the rationales, hopes and fears of youngsters leaving their country of birth, their friends and family. We will also develop a new understanding of broader historical dynamics, such as the construction of childhood and youth as social categories and the agenda of modern historical scholarship.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the editors of this special issue and the anonymous reviewers, who provided valuable feedback on this article.
