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Darkside to Middle Ages wealth + Nightmare of orphans shipped to Australia, elsewhere

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C C Offline
The Dark Side of Being Wealthy in the Middle Ages
http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/160987

EXCERPT: During the Middle Ages, the wealthy were able to live in relative luxury in comparison to the lower classes. However, a new research study has found that even while wealthier individuals during this period had plenty of advantages, in one important aspect they were worse off than those living in poverty: susceptibility to lead poisoning....

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The Orphans Britain Shipped To Australia: A century-long nightmare
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34656346

EXCERPT: Up until the late 1960s the UK sent children living in care homes to new lives in Australia and other countries. It was a brutal experience for many, writes Kirstie Brewer. [...] as many as 100,000 British children to be sent overseas to Canada, Australia and other Commonwealth countries as child migrants between 1869 and 1970. Run by a partnership of charities, churches and governments, the schemes were sold as an opportunity for a better life for children from impoverished backgrounds and broken homes. In reality, an isolated and brutal childhood awaited many of them. [...] They were often given the false status of "orphans" to simplify proceedings - and most never saw their homes, or their families again.

"Child migrants were actively solicited in Australia as a way of building up the white Anglo-Saxon population and to give the growing economy there a boost," explains Gordon Lynch, Michael Ramsey Professor of Modern Theology at the University of Kent. This was not something which happened under the radar - the vast majority of children were sent to Australia with government funding.

[...] One of the biggest failings of these schemes was that staff were often poorly trained and poorly resourced and very few follow-up checks were made, explains Lynch. Eventually, the Ross Report came out in 1956, as the result of a visit to Australia by a British team of inspectors, commissioned by the Home Office. "It made grim reading and said that children who'd already had disruptive backgrounds and been subjected to traumatic experience in the UK were really the last people who should be sent overseas," says Lynch. Confidential appendices, containing the worst of the findings, were not publicly released until 1983.

But despite the report, children continued to be shipped overseas. According to Lynch, the reality became "an uneasy truth" - the Home Office weren't prepared to publicly go against the Commonwealth Relations Office (who were in charge of the schemes) so they tried to discourage local authorities from continuing to send children overseas instead. "Furthering the British Empire was still very much a priority and there was also a fear of going up against not only the Australian government, but the Catholic Church," he explains. The Australian government soon countered the Ross Report with its own glowing review of all the homes under criticism.

Sexual abuse was a harsh reality for many of the children under the care of these schemes....


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