Annie MacPherson

Annie Parlane MacPherson (1833 – 27 November 1904) was a Scottish evangelical Quaker and philanthropist who founded Home Children, sending poor and orphaned children to Canada and other colonies.^[1]

Biography

She was born in Campsie, by Milton, Stirlingshire, and educated in Glasgow and at the Home and Colonial Training College in Gray's Inn Road, London. After her father died, she moved to Cambridge, but soon after, returned to London. Touched by the poverty in the East End of London in 1868, she opened the Home of Industry at 60 Commercial Road in Spitalfield.^[2]

She influenced members of the Scottish Christian Union, a temperance association of women, independent but affiliated to the British Women's Temperance Association, such as Mary White and Anne Bryson, who took her ideas back to influence women activists in Glasgow,^[3] and Margaret Catherine Blaikie, who established the Emigration Home for Destitute Children in Lauriston Lane, Edinburgh.^[4]

In the 1870s, she organised for Home children to be sent to Canada from her home in London, and also had arrangements with Dr Barnardo's Homes in London, Quarriers homes in Scotland, and Smyly homes in Dublin, Ireland^[5] similar to arrangements with English and Scottish homes.^[6]

In Canada, she had set up a number of Homes, Marchmont, Galt in Ontario and in Knowlton Quebec ^[7]

The Doyle Report of 1875 into the emigration of children from these homes cast a shadow over the process of exporting children although it acknowledged the benevolent motives of MacPherson and others.^[8] Her sister, Louisa MacPherson, married Charles Henry Birt, and helped her sister in her mission.^[9]

In 1873, she established a home in Liverpool called The Sheltering Home.^[10]

MacPherson died in 1904.^[11]

References

1. British Home Children descendants Annie Macpherson . Archived from the original on 25 July 2011. Retrieved 6 July 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) British Home Children.
2. "Home Children Guide - Annie Macpherson". Library and Archives Canada. 9 September 2020. from the original on 14 December 2015.
3. Smitley, Megan K. (2002). 'Woman's mission': the temperance and women's suffrage movements in Scotland, c.1870-1914. Glasgow: University of Glasgow. p. 140.
4. "Mrs. Margaret c. Blaikie (Wife of the Rev. Professor Blaikie, D.D., New College)". The Woman at Home. Warwick Magazine Company. 4: 263–65. 1895. Retrieved 21 July 2022.   This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
5. Young Immigrants to Canada 26 August 2011 at the Wayback Machine Smyly Homes of Dublin, Ireland.
6. The golden bridge: young immigrants to Canada, 1833–1939 By Marjorie Kohli
7. Gods answers, a record of Miss Annie Macphersons work at the Home of Industry, Spitalfields, London, and in Canada by Clara M.S. Lowe, (Introduction by )Rev. John Macpherson, LONDON: JAMES NISBET & CO (1882)
8. . Families of British Home Children. 16 September 2007. Archived from the original on 22 March 2012.
9. "Louisa Birt". retirees.uwaterloo.ca. Retrieved 6 March 2019.
10. "Sheltering Home for Destitute Children, Liverpool, Lancashire". www.childrenshomes.org.uk. Retrieved 15 December 2021.
11. "Macpherson, Annie Parlane (1825–1904), promoter of child emigration : Oxford Dictionary of National Biography - oi". oxfordindex.oup.com. Retrieved 6 March 2019.