Twentieth century policies affecting Gypsy/Traveller communities in Scotland: archival research

6. The Charities

Introduction

When this report was commissioned, one of the aims of the invitation to tender was to examine how 20^th century policies affecting Gypsy/Travellers in Scotland “may have also resulted in the forced removal of children from Gypsy/Traveller communities.”^302] There has already been significant work done on the role of charities vis-à-vis child welfare in Scotland because of the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry (SCAI) including commissioned research on ‘Residential Care’, ‘Child Migration’, and on ’Quarriers, Aberlour, and Barnardo’s’.^[303] Although there were individual witness testimonies given to the SCAI by individuals from Gypsy/Traveller communities, there was not a specific part of the SCAI dedicated to the experiences of children from Gypsy/Traveller families in Scotland. In 2019 the Inquiry did announce, however, that they were “keen to hear from anyone in the Travelling Community who experienced abuse whilst in care.”^[304] Nevertheless, from the small number of witness testimonies that do exist and that were accessed online and analysed during the research, we can begin to build the beginnings of a picture of Gypsy/Traveller children and child welfare in Scotland.^[305]

This present report has already highlighted the disproportionate number of Gypsy/Traveller children in industrial schools in 1917. Numerous other studies have demonstrated that children from Gypsy/Traveller families are, and have historically, been placed into care in disproportionate numbers in comparison with the wider population.^[306] This would imply that the conclusions of the SCAI are highly relevant for Gypsy/Traveller families in Scotland. This is confirmed by the overall themes present within the small number of SCAI testimonies that were given by witnesses from Gypsy/Traveller families. Many of these themes also resonate with other parts of this report, and indeed with the experiences of marginalised communities elsewhere: intergenerational experiences of child welfare policies; the high numbers of children in care; the experience of multiple children’s homes; and the experience of abuse.^[307] The history of the charities landscape vis-à-vis children and families in Scotland is made up of a patchwork of national and local philanthropic efforts, some of which had more contact with the other named key stakeholders named in this report (national government, local authorities and churches) than others. Key in this landscape was the Royal Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (RSSPCC).

The Royal Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (RSSPCC)

The RSSPCC was the primary family welfare agency in existence in Scotland from when it was founded as the Glasgow Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in 1884 until 1968.^[308] During this time the RSSPCC was one of the primary voices, if not the foremost voice, in policy and practice on the well-being and care of children in Scotland. Although it was affiliated to the English branch of the organisation, the Scottish society adopted an approach that was different to its counterpart in England. In the latter case, the policy was to avoid committing children to industrial schools and to try to keep the family together where possible.

Previous research has demonstrated that in Scotland, during the early part of the 20th century, the RSSPCC took advantage of the legislation that existed to initiate proceedings in industrial schools cases.^[309] The RSSPCC had a central executive committee that was responsible for recruitment, pay and conditions, and for producing documents such as Notes for Guidance, and Annual Reports, whilst a local management committee oversaw the work of its officers. Research suggests that for at least a portion of its earlier history, RSSPCC Inspectors were often former policemen or military personnel.^[310]

“The aim to be kept in view in dealing with tinker children is to ‘detinkerise’ them, if I may coin a word, and save them from a life of vagrancy…^[311]”

The archival evidence collected for this report demonstrates, as with other key stakeholders already discussed, a strong push towards the assimilation of Gypsy/Travellers families in Scotland, sometimes with the loss of the children from those families used as a threat. For example, Ninian Hill, the General Secretary of the SNSPCC from 1905 to 1912 gave evidence, using the word ‘vagrant’ at points as a euphemism for Gypsy/Travellers in Scotland, to the 1918 Departmental Committee on Tinkers highlighting:

“The Society’s Officers have been actively engaged, warning vagrants that they must settle down and send their children to school. The great lever of enforcing this has been, not so much the fear of prosecution and imprisonment, as the fear that their children would be taken from them and sent to industrial schools.

From my study of the problem I am strongly opposed to the establishment of any institution especially set apart for tinker children as has been proposed. Any such institutions would in my opinion tend to conserve the tinkers as a class… The aim to be kept in view in dealing with tinker children is to “detinkerise“ them, if I may coin a word, and save them from a life of vagrancy…. The wisest policy, in my opinion, regarding tinkers is one combining firmness and kindness.^[312]”

In the records analysed for this report, we saw clear evidence that Gypsy/Traveller children in Scotland, and their families, were subject to high levels of monitoring. During the 1930s, memoranda from RSSPCC Head Office twice requested - in 1930 and in 1936 - that local branches across Scotland provide a report on school attendances of children from travelling communities. We found narrative evidence for the figure of the RSSPCC Inspector, often referred to as the ‘Cruelty Man’ or the ‘Cruelty Inspector’ including that of Duncan Williamson, a Scottish Gypsy/Traveller storyteller who, when looking back to his childhood in the 1930s, noted that:

“But there was also the law that children were taken away from their parents if they did not attend school. If we had left school without the 250 [sic] attendance, we would have been arrested. It was law. The School Board would have come along, the Cruelty Inspector, he said, ‘Have your children been in school?’

If Father had said, ‘No, they’ve never been in school.

‘Okay, then, just a moment.’

The Inspector walked to the first old traditional phone box. He phoned up a taxi. And then you were gone! You never saw your parents again, never. There were hundreds of children taken off, some went to Australia, some to Canada, some went around the world, no one ever saw them again. And parents were never informed. They were taken to Industrial Day schools - not only travelling children. If you were in a settled community you would be able to attend school some days in the weeks through all the school terms. But the travelling people travelled to find work, and never sent their children to school most months of the year. And anyone over the age of five without the attendance quota was taken off - you never saw them again. I had cousins who were taken away, whom I never saw again. My Aunt Nellie’s lassies.^[313]”

We should note that the RSSPCC did not itself migrate children out of Scotland. Rather the RSSPCC had the authority to remove children to local authority, or other institutional, care and it was from there that child migration took place.

From the research collected, we can begin to see that the RSSPCC played a critical role in the monitoring and surveillance of Gypsy/Traveller families, and in breaking them apart through the enforcement of education policies that were reflective of ‘settled society’.^[314] The lack of understanding for the cultural and economic lifestyles of Gypsy/Traveller families was mobilised in these instances to remove children, instead of finding alternatives to keeping families together.^[315] We would also note that we found documentation of at least one RSSPCC officer liaising with local police regarding the presence of Gypsy/Travellers in a local area.^[316] In addition to this, in general in the court processes regarding the situation of individual children there would have often been police reports heard alongside testimony from RSSPCC inspectors.

Other Charities

The SCAI identified that - between 1921 and 1991 - vulnerable children in Scotland in the care of the Aberlour Child Care Trust and two other residential institutions - the Scottish-based Quarriers in Renfrewshire and Barnardo’s - had suffered significant abuse.^[317] The SCAI was also aware that in addition to this, children were abused in a substantial number of institutions in Scotland, and that some children were the subjects of child migration programmes that also resulted in experiences of abuse.^[318]

Given the 100-year closure period on individual records, and without specific names, it was difficult to identify with certainty how many Gypsy/Traveller children in Scotland were part of these experiences.^[319] However, given the weight of other evidence, it is our assumption that Gypsy/Traveller children were over-represented in the child welfare system in Scotland. Specifically, given the discussion in Chapter 3 regarding the substantial over-representation of Gypsy/Traveller children in Scotland’s industrial schools in 1917, surmised from the numbers given in the Gentleman and Swift report,^[320] it would be particularly unusual if this was the only child welfare mechanism where a disproportionate number of Gypsy/Traveller children were found. It is much more likely that Gypsy/Traveller children were also over-represented within other child welfare mechanisms, as is the case in other countries, such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States where child welfare policies have been linked to wider policies of assimilation vis-a-vis Indigenous peoples.^[321]

For Scotland, in addition to the institutions named below – Aberlour Trust, Barnardo’s, and Quarriers - there was also a patchwork of other ‘child welfare’ organisations including other orphanages and charitable organisations, industrial Schools, and ragged schools. There was also the ‘Mars Ship’ which was moored in the River Tay, off Woodhaven Pier, across the river from Dundee (1869-1929), and which could take up to 400 boys at a time. The 1895 Departmental Committee report directly calls for Gypsy/Traveller children to be sent to such Training ships, while archival evidence confirms that there were Gypsy/Traveller boys who lived there.^[322] One example is the case of Harry Smith, recorded in the logs of the Mars Ship as a ’Traveller’. When the ship was sold for scrap in 1929, Smith was transferred to Aberdeen Industrial School.^[323]

Few children were identified as being from Gypsy/Traveller families in any of the archival records that the research team examined pertaining to child welfare charities. We would propose that this was as the result of several different factors that are also related to the wider research findings of this report. First, as per the findings from the Shaw Report, organisations such as children’s homes often did not retain full records for any children, one of the reasons for the introduction of the Public Records (Scotland) Act 2011. Second, even when records were kept, the Gypsy/Traveller identity as an ethnic or cultural identity may not have been seen as something distinct enough to record. There may have been a feeling that, in not stating that a child was from a Gypsy/Traveller family, the child would subsequently lose their identity as a Gypsy/Traveller. While we did find evidence that is of use in this report, the lack of categorisation severely hampered our ability to specifically locate Gypsy/Traveller children within the archival record.

The Aberlour Trust

The Aberlour Orphanage and Child Care Trust was founded by Canon Charles Jupp, a Scottish Episcopal clergyman, when he opened an orphanage in Aberlour in 1875.^[324] Although the orphanage originally only took in children from Scottish Episcopal families, this eventually expanded to include those who weren’t from such families. The result was a concomitant increase in the numbers of children in the orphanage, which eventually provided space for around 600 children. Their archives are held at the University of Stirling, which include admissions registers, copies of the Aberlour Orphanage magazine - colloquially known as the ‘Blue Book’ - and other reference materials, such as literature on Aberlour reunions and published works outlining the history of the Orphanage. Along with these materials, we were also able to examine select records of children that lived at Aberlour.

The archival documents examined for this research revealed that Gypsy/Traveller children were likely present at Aberlour. We know this from witness testimony to the SCAI, which is supported by preliminary analysis of detailed individual admission records focusing on those children with commonly known Gypsy/Traveller surnames. One admission record, for example, from 1914 is that of a brother and sister from a Gypsy/Traveller family, Isabella (aged 4) and Charles (aged 21 months), who the RSSPCC inspector James Wallace noted “[t]he Parish Council are anxious to have them placed beyond the reach and influence of their parents.” They are documented as having ‘no settled residence’, and their father is a ‘pedlar’, which is a word that in some historical contexts was used as an alternative to the word ‘tinker’. The admission letter goes on to state that:^[325]

“[t]he Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children recently took proceedings against the parents, with the result that one of their children Thomas aged 12 years was committed to Oakbank Industrial School and that a Custody Order in favour of this [Old Deer] Parish Council was obtained for the two children Isabella and Charles.”

Admission records also reveal the case of another family in 1918, whose daughter was referred to the Orphanage because her mother was unable to look after her, while her father was a Private serving in the Manchester Regiment.^[326] Helen, aged 9, was subsequently admitted to Aberlour. A note on her admissions schedule states that, similarly to other children in the orphanage’s care:^[327]

“It is intended that the child shall be given up if requested when the father returns to civil life.”

It is our assumption that Helen is from a Gypsy/Traveller family not only because of her surname, as one common in Gypsy/Traveller communities in Scotland, but also because Helen’s birth certificate (which is present in the Aberlour Orphanage archives) notes both her mother and father’s occupation as ‘pedlar’. The Orphanage application form records her father’s former occupation as ‘Hawker’, which again is a word that, in some historical contexts, was used as an alternative to the word ‘tinker’. Helen’s birthplace was recorded as being 300 yards south of a farm. This evidence is suggestive of our conclusion that Helen was likely to have been part of a Gypsy/Traveller family. Further research is required to find out the extent to which other Gypsy/Traveller children were resident at Aberlour.

Barnardo’s

Research done on behalf of the SCAI traced the history of Barnardo’s in Scotland, confirming its place as a key institution in the history of child welfare here.^[328] Barnardo’s also took part in child migration schemes, migrating children to Canada from the mid-1880s to 1939, and to Australia from before 1920 until post-World War II.^[329] Enquiries were made early in the research process to specifically consider whether Barnardo’s held the records of any Gypsy/Traveller children in Scotland that may have either been in a Barnardo’s home or may have been migrated out of Scotland. Unfortunately, without knowing specific names, Barnardo’s was unable to identify individual children from Gypsy/Traveller communities in Scotland within their records as they hold the records of 500,000 UK children who have been supported by Barnardo’s, recorded on handwritten index cards. There was also no indication in these records as to whether a child was from a Gypsy/Traveller family. Further research undertaken by Barnardo’s in June 2023 still resulted in not being able to identify any records from a policy or organisational standpoint that mention Barnardo’s being involved in any specific treatment or care of Gypsy/Traveller communities during the 20th century. Children admitted at that time typically came either directly from family/relatives, from the workhouse, or via self-admission. Further, for the most part at this time, Barnardo’s was also only admitting children from a protestant background. Archivists did, however, inform the team at that time that they were aware of one Gypsy/Traveller child in England, Simon Smith, who emigrated to Canada via Barnardo’s at the age of 12, and whose story is available online.^[330] Once again, further research is required to find out the extent to which other Gypsy/Traveller children were resident in Barnardo’s homes in Scotland.

Quarriers

Quarriers was established by William Quarrier in 1871 when Renfrew Lane Homes was opened for ‘orphaned and destitute children living in Glasgow’.^[331] Children and young people often came into Quarriers because of parental poverty, the death of one or both parents, parental desertion, illegitimacy, a child or young person being unable to be cared for by extended family or being placed there by the local authority (and later by social workers). Previous researchers have also noted that in the Renfrew Lanes Homes some of the children were:

“found by Quarrier and his helpers…; some were brought… by missionary women and policemen; others turned up on the doorstep by themselves. Preference was given to orphans, then the children of widows, and lastly the children of what were called in those days ‘dissolute parents’ who were willing to hand them over into Quarrier’s care.^[332]”

Two further Quarriers homes were opened in 1872, and on 2 July of that same year the first children were migrated to Canada from Quarriers homes, at first to a ‘receiving home’ in Belleville, Ontario and later to a ‘receiving home’ that Quarriers established called Fairknowe, in Brockville, Ontario.^[333] A night refuge was opened in Glasgow in 1873, whilst the Orphan Homes of Scotland were opened in Bridge of Weir on 17 September, 1878.^[334] By 1 November, 1901 there were 1,168 children resident in the homes.^[335] Quarriers was completely funded by private philanthropy and so did not fall under any statutory regime, something that helped to pave the way for Quarrier’s child migration policies. Altogether, 6,987 children emigrated to Canada through Quarriers.^[336] Without specific surnames, or the knowledge that being a family member brings, we were only able to locate one child from a Gypsy/Traveller family in Scotland who had been sent to a Quarriers Home. However, we would refer the reader to widely reported family research by Dr Lynne Tammi-Connelly, an academic from a Gypsy/Traveller community in Scotland, for further discussion.^[337]

Chapter Summary

What took place in child welfare charities across Scotland was not separate from the TE but rather formed another part of the societal context that permitted and encouraged the assimilation of Gypsy/Travellers in Scotland. Archival materials that were examined for this report often mentioned housing and child welfare within the same document as can be seen with reference to the stakeholders examined in chapters three, four and five. Our research examined the work of multiple charities - including the RSPCC, the Aberlour Trust, Barnardo’s and Quarriers - each of which has their primary focus as child welfare, and each of which was operating in Scotland during the time frame that is the focus of this report. Across the range of material, we examined we found evidence of child removal, and of placement in industrial schools and in military training ships. There was also evidence to suggest that Gypsy/Traveller children in Scotland were over-represented in child welfare institutions, and the research team also discovered evidence of Gypsy/Traveller children in care. We know that Barnardo’s and Quarriers had child migration programmes, but without the names of individual children, or records displaying the identities of Gypsy/Traveller children, we could not confirm their passage overseas. While we acknowledge the work already being carried out by researchers on this topic, there is critical need for further research and investigation.