JEX HOME CHILDREN
JEX HOME CHILDREN CANADA
JEX ALBERT GEORGE BORN 1909 ENGLAND, became one of the Home Children sent abroad by Barnardo's and other Orphanages of the time for a better life. He sailed on the Ship Melita in 1923 from Southampton on 7/4/1923 and arrived in Quebec Canada 15/4/1923. They were registered as Barnardo's Party (132 boys and 12 girls).
Blaxhall, Suffolk: The 30-year quest to explain the mystery of little Albert’s father
By Steven Russell of the EADT
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
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LITTLE Albert Jex had the kind of start in life you wouldn’t wish for a child. The product of a mysterious and hushed-up liaison, he was taken under the wing of the Dr Barnardo’s charity at the age of three because his mother was blind and had no way of earning a living.
Very quickly he found himself welcomed by a lovely foster family and enjoying a happy childhood deep in rural Suffolk. But, just before he turned 14, came more upheaval. Albert was among the 30,000 or so British youngsters dispatched to Canada between 1880 and the Second World War to work on farms and forge a new life for themselves.
There was, it’s true, a sense of adventure about leaving. His mother was on the quayside to bid farewell and a band played Till We Meet Again – a popular song whose chorus finished with Every tear will be a memory, So wait and pray each night for me, Till we meet again.
It was the last time he saw his mother.And what of his father? Though Albert overcame prejudice on the other side of the Atlantic, married and raised three children of his own, he died never knowing the identity of his father.
It was a mystery that niggled at daughter Dorothy, who was an adult before she realised there was this gaping hole in her dad’s family history. For 30 years she painstakingly pieced together the puzzle – banging her head against the brick walls of ignorance, deliberate silence and institutional obstruction. Finally, one day, she was able to sit back and see the full picture.
This, then, is the story of Albert George Jex.
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A NEW LIFE BECKONS: Albert Jex in 1923, a few days away from his 14th birthday, prepares to leave England for Canada. Picture courtesy Dorothy Shier
100,000 British Home Children were sent to Canada by over 50 British Child Care organizations. These 4-15 year old children worked as indentured farm labourers and domestic servants until they were 18 years old. The British Child Care organizations professed a dominant motive of providing these children with a better life than they would have had in Britain, but they had other ignoble and pecuniary motives. They rid themselves of an unwanted segment of their society and profited when they sold these children to Canadian farmers. Siblings in care in Britain were separated from their families and each other. Siblings were separated from each other when they were sent to Canada. Most never saw each other again. Many spent their lives trying to identify their parents and find their siblings and most were unsuccessful. An unknown number of children ran away from their indentured labour in Canada to the United States. Millions of Americans may be descended from British Home Children. The 4-5 million Canadian/American descendants of the British Home Children have 20 million British Grandparents, Uncles, and Aunts.