Empty Cradles (Oranges and Sunshine)

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Once she had found out the extent of the cover up, she and a small band of workers spent 12 hour days working to reunite children (now grown up) with their parents(if they were still alive. For three decades (1940s - 1967), thousands of English and Irish children were taken from their homes and shipped to Commonwealth countries (namely NZ, Canada, Rhodesia and Australia) to populate the colonies and provide (slave) labour to farms. The work of The Child Migrants Trust is ongoing and relies on donations to support adults, who were once child migrants, in numerous ways. The novel seeks to know the extent of these deportations that spanned decades and saw children as young as three exiled and abused. The author of this book started the Child Migrant's Trust to help reunite these children with theri mothers.

But most of all for Margaret Humphreys, who innocently and naively stumbled upon this tragedy and pursued it with tenacity. My heartfelt sympathy goes to each and every one of those of my peer group who suffered this outrage, wherever they are. Most were not orphans, as they were told, and were raised in institutions where horrendous conditions and abuse existed. I have passed that warning to my children who are now in their 30s and 40s and they passed the same to their own children. Margaret Humpreys, a social worker in England is also a very brave woman who took on the bureaucracy to help English child migrants also now known as the Lost Children, who were taken to all parts of the then British Empire, but mostly to Australia never to see parents or relatives again.EMPTY CRADLES is a powerful testament to an ordinary woman's astonishing dedication, compassion and stubborn courage. This book was an amazing insight into a long and ill conceived period of social engineering presided over by several governments and many powerful institutions and probably the most absorbing and informative books I have read in a long time. I have for many years known I had an older brother taken from my mother in the 1950's and witnessed her hurt and fear about the shame she was to carry with her about this till the day she died.

I was absolutely shocked to read that this could have taken place, that the UK could have been involved in something so appalling. As always, I feel that the book does hold so much more than the film, but either is good – we need to know about these events and the suffering. I usually look at the parts of the book I need to to do my job and then I move onto the next book, but this book was different. A self-author is never likely to sing their own praises, but Oranges and Sunshine lacks both the style and clarity to evoke empathy and feeling from readers for its creator. Many were told that their parents were dead, and parents were told that their children had been adopted.

In 1986 Margaret Humphreys, a Nottingham social worker, investigated a woman's claim that, aged four, she had been put on a boat to Australia by the British government. to face life in dire conditions, slave labor, subservient positions, all under the guise of Charity and furthering the United Kingdom in it's colonies! Rather like watching Schindler's List or Hotel Rwanda, it's dark and brutal, touching and emotional, and I loved it for that, but it's a heavy, difficult story to get through. The Bible verse that came to mind that fits your life's journey of perseverance, compassion and grace is Isaiah 40:31, "But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. Friends have recommended that I seek out the film, suggesting Emily Watson is able to provide the heart and compassion that Humphries gave to the child migrants, but could not conjure in her own portrayal.

At first incredulous, Margaret Humphreys soon discovered that this woman's story was just the tip of an enormous iceberg.It seems that for some of the children there were eventually some happy endings of one kind or another. For numerous children it was to be a life of horrendous physical and sexual abuse in institutions in Western Australia and elsewhere. She also discovered that many of these children were sent to remote farms run by religious organizations, and that this “new life” was, sadly and shockingly, filled with neglect and abuse, the children often working as slaves.