Canada Home Children Inspection Records (National Institute)

Government Inspection Reports
In the earliest years of child immigration there was no Canadian government requirement for inspection of the children in their placement situations. From 1879 the government was obligated to inspect children from workhouses and report to the relevant Board of Guardians. After 1920 inspection was a requirement for all children. Many agencies did conduct more or less thorough inspections, usually only reporting statistics to the government. Reports of such inspections are in the child’s agency record, if it has survived.

Board of Guardians Inspection Register
A single roll of film at LAC (T-537) contains a name list and inspection register for children from specific British Poor Law Unions. It was compiled sometime between 1886 and 1897 with later information added, then abandoned in 1920. The data in it is quite sparse before 1897. Later information gives the usual name of child, year of arrival and age, but may include the name of the originating Union, name of the sponsoring person or agency, and dates of inspection in Canada. It is clear from references on the pages that other registers have been lost.

Juvenile Inspection Reports
Inspections of home children are documented on a series of cards starting in 1920, with a few as early as 1913, one card per child. A fairly complete set of cards was produced until 1932, with images available on LAC microfilms T-15420 to T-15427 in alphabetical sequence by child’s surname.

Each card includes name; age or date of birth; date of arrival; name of ship; name of home or Union; dates and results of inspections; name and address of employer(s). Many include follow-up comments.


 * Students will note from a number of our sample documents in this module that microfilming which took place in the 1940s and 1950s is often of uneven or poor quality. Unfortunately, many original papers and sources were destroyed after the filming.

Example of Boards of Guardians Inspection Report Reid, John D. Researching Canada’s Home Children. Heritage Productions and the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa (2005).

Provincial Inspection Records
Immigration was designated a shared federal and provincial responsibility under the British North America Act (1867), but only a single example of a provincial record of inspections has been identified. Within the government of Ontario a Department of Immigration functioned between 1874 and 1899. At the Archives of Ontario (AO), RG 11-7 “Report of Inspection of Home Children” consists of an inspection register for children sent to Ontario in the several years preceding 1875 and 1886 inspections, microfilm MS 6917. The series, in which this file is found, is sometimes referred to as the Hawke Papers.

As described by AO, the register includes the following headings: name; age; place of birth (city/town or in some cases only country is given); if the child had been in a workhouse and where; year of immigration; whether arrived with Miss Rye or Miss Macpherson; religion; name and address of employer or guardian; wages per month; nature of employment; remarks on conduct. The following Ontario communities are shown as placement destinations: Newcastle, Brantford, Mount Forest, Guelph, Chatham and London. While most children listed in the report are English, a few were Irish or Scottish.

Central Registry Files
References to home children are scattered throughout the central registry (general) files of the federal Department of Agriculture from 1869 to 1892 in LAC’s RG 17, and from 1892 in RG 76 (Immigration). The earlier files of RG 17 were not microfilmed and have mainly been destroyed; only a cover letter might remain (available only at LAC).

Most likely to be useful are the Immigration Branch Central Registry files (RG 76, B-1-a) covering 1892 to the 1940s. The contents include correspondence between the Immigration Branch and many of the agencies; annual reports and information booklets; some inspection reports and correspondence about individual cases; reports dealing with statistics, procedures and policy; and lists of children arriving on various ships. These files are microfilmed and available through Interloan.

A file number that appears on the Soundex Card Index can lead you to these Central Registry files for possibly more details. Search LAC’s Government of Canada Files database. You want to enter “76” in the Record Group box and the file number in the Keyword box. The results might not add specifics about your home child, but supplemental information may give you helpful clues. For example, knowing who came on the same ship might lead to the descendant of someone else who was on the same voyage.

If you do not have an individual file number for the child, you can still search Central Registry files by the name of the agency, or home or whatever you know about your child.

Closed Files
If you search LAC holdings you will come across microfilms for several agencies which handled child emigration. For example, the Barnardo’s Home fonds extends from 1870 to 1936 on 242 microfilm reels. The description relates to the activities of Barnardo Homes, Marchmont Children’s Homes, Liverpool Sheltering Home, Home of Industry and Macpherson Home.

Access to these files is restricted, requiring the researcher to obtain written authorization from Barnardo’s in England. LAC advises that this permission is rarely granted. Furthermore, the files are not complete. It is far better to work through Barnardo’s After Care Centre to obtain the files you need, and be thankful that LAC has a microfilm copy as insurance should anything happen to the repository in the UK.

There is a partial exception for the Middlemore Homes files, some of which are available at LAC and need personal enquiry about access terms.

Search Results of Government of Canada Files for RG 76, File 252093 Reid, John D. Researching Canada’s Home Children. Heritage Productions and the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa (2005).



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Information in this Wiki page is excerpted from the online course Canadian: Immigration Records offered by The National Institute for Genealogical Studies. To learn more about this course or other courses available from the Institute, see our website. We can be contacted at [mailto:wiki@genealogicalstudies.com wiki@genealogicalstudies.com]

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