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The following charges were made against Miss Rye and her work before the Poor Law Guardians at Islington, on the 20th of March. As garbled accounts are given by some of our papers, Miss Rye's friends in Niagara think it better that a full statement, both of the charges and replies, should be given to the public. The charges are made by a Mr. Grainger, who married a Miss Martin. This person was employed by Miss Rye as an assistant, but was discharged. She has declared that she will ruin the work, and her hus- band seconds her determination. Hence these charges. It may be mentioned, that after reading Miss Rye's reply, the board passed a vote of entire confidence in Miss Rye and her work, and declared that the charges made were in no way sustained by proof — only one voice dissenting. 121254 CHARGES. 1. That it behoves the guardians to be satisfied that children sent to Canada are in any way benefited. It is allowed that the girls intrusted to Miss Rye are friendless. Greater care should therefore be taken with them, because in a strange country they cannot ask the assistance of frionds as in this country, should they stand in need of it. And not only on this account, but also because of their extreme youth, which is far below the age at which we might expect girls to use the means of self -protection. Further- more, it is argued that the girls are required in this their native country, where the laws for their protection are more efibctually carried out, and where, owing to the density of the population, cases of cruelty are more easily detected. It is scarcely necessary to add that our Saviour has spoken definitely on the sacred responsibility not only of young children, but particularly of the fatherless intrusted to our care. 2. That it is a question whether the ratepayers and Britieh iiublic are not paying too dearly for the said object. Miss Rye demands ,£8 per head and an outfit. But, according to the St. Catharine's JohtimI, her total cost is under <£4 a head. The public, moreover, subscribe largely towards what is considered a praiseworthy object, but has not the slightest idea of its real workings. Miss Rye has thought fit not to publish any accounts of her emigration schemes. This, her last one, is ostensibly for gutter children. I would therefore put it to the guardians, whether it is a commercial success to any one but Miss Rye ? and I would further ask them, what means they have taken to ascertain the real cost ? 3. That the chances of children benefiting are small. The num- ber of people in Canada, out of a population of four millions, willing to "adopt" children, is certainly not greater than in a population approaching thirty-five millions. Such cheap — becaiise unpaid — labor is desired in this country, but cannot be had. It is granted that some of the children may be benefited, but it has not been jjroved that a large proportion would not have been eqiially benefited ia this country. The w^ork in Canada is harder, as shown by Canadian statistics, which point out that two-thirds of the women in lunatic asylums are farmers' wives. It is a well known fact that the work that a servant has to do in Canada is almost treble that of a servant in this country. The climate is of all climates the most trying, and the privations and general hardships incidental to a new country are greater than in that of an old one. 4. That the Canadians have their own orphans. This point is a most important one, because it determines the position of the English orphan. The Canadian orphanage* are established in the principal towns, and those children that are placed out are not allowed to go beyond the reach of their several committees. Every care is taken in the selection of the proper homes, where the children are frequently visited, and are under the laws of their country. The English orphan is, however, preferred in those homes where there is no interference from without. They — the English orphans — have no friends to inter- fere. A child is sent by Miss Rye hundreds of miles away, to people she htib only communicate* I with by letter and is never likely to see. The English child, therefore, occupies a second place, not being on the same footing as a Canadian orphan, or under the same laws. 5. That the protection and religio\is instruction of English orphan^ in Canada is uncertain. The children and funds being legally made over to Miss Rye in this country, she is an entirely independent power in Canada. The property is in her name. In 1871, the Town Council of Niagara (an old, tumble-down place, including the neighborhood, of a total of 800 inhabitants, and ten miles from the ''Falls,") were at issue with Miss Rye on the subject of taxation. She demanded exemp- tion on the plea that it was a charity, upon whinh the Council claimed the power of investigation, and of visiting the Home like any other charitable institution. They were informed by their legal adviser that, as the children and funds were made over to her in another country, they could not interfere. She now pays taxes as a private individual, being assessed on her property. The fate of thousands of orphans is entirely in hdr hands. She scatters them over an immense area, where they are dependent upon their masters for protection and religious in- struction. 6. That the work imposed on them is at their masters' descretion. The children — one of whom, according to Miss Rye, had, aged 10 years, to milk 10 cows morning and evening, besides attending to other house- hold duties — are so entirely in the hands of their masters that, con- sidering the nature of the country, they must frequently be made to undertake work unfitted for their tender years, some being as young as six years old. The children of the female sex are exposed to the bru- talities of men who are shut out from all civilii:ing agencies. In such a large and thinly populated country neighbors are too far apart to meet often, and are dei>endent on each other for assistance. They say, "the last man to quarrel with is your neighbor ; keep on good terms with him at any price." The child, unless returned as incompetent, remains her master's property until of age. If there is so great need of cheap labour, why, it is asked, should Canadians not import coolies and negroes instead of orphan girls ? 7. That the testimonials of two references cannot be relied upon, particularly in the United States, where many of the children are sent. It is at all times a diffic\ilt matter to decide whether a man is qualified io be trusted with a child. In America bribery and intimidation are rife, which, coupled with the general desire to oblige a n^eighbor, would enable many bad men to obtain children. 8. That the letters from the children are worthless, being written by their master's sanction if not by his request — on his paper, with his pen and ink, and posted probably by himself, and certainly at his cost. It is a significant fact that, besides publishing no accountfi, Miss Rye has carefully guarded every avenue by which cases of knovm ill treat- ment, taken up not by herself but by philanthropic Canadians, might reach the British public. 9. That all reports emanate from Miss Rye. She alone possesses a clue to the whereabouts of all the children taken out since she began the scheme. A band of interested people, desirous of notoriety or of something considered more substantial, lend their names when needed by Miss Rye. Many visitors, passing hastily through the place, have inspected the "Home," and certainly it makes a fine mansion residence for Miss Rye. A batch of children are dispersed abroad in the course of a fortnight or three weeks at the outside, at as little cost as possible to the institution. The Ht. Catharine's Journal (published in the neigh- borhood), lately most strongly condemned Miss Rye and her scheme, the immediate effect of which \^as to produce the ignorant and untruth- ful letter from Mr. Arthur Clayden, beginning, "As I see by the papers Miss Rye is in England"— a most remarkable coincidence. 10. That the Local Government Board should be solicited to send out a proper person, who has a knowledge of North America and of farmers in that country, to report truthfully on the working of the whole system, and particularly of the children sent out by the Islington Guardians. This is the only method of instituting a proper inquiry. I need scarcely add that parties interested in the carrying on of what is believed to be a profitable business should not first be warned to be on the alert. I am, Gentlemen, Your obedient Servant, ALLENDALE GRAINGER. To THE Board of Islington Guardians. 8 MISS EYE'S EEPLY. To the Chairman of the Islington Board of Guardians. Sir, — I have the honor of acknowledging copy of a letter addressed by Mr. Allendale Grainger, of G5 Cromwell Road, Holloway, London, to your Board, relating to the emigration of pauper children (especially girls) to Canada. First of all, I thank you extremely for giving me this opportunity of answering the most extraordinary statements con- tained in that letter, and the still more insulting and mischievous insinuations which it unfolds, for I feel that the spirit of fair play, as shown in your conduct to me, forms a very strong contrast to the spirit involved in the closing of Mr. G.'s letter, which counsels that parties interested in the work shall not first .be warned of your inquiry, for fear we should be on the alert. I use the term ire advisedly, because that expression gives me an opportunity of explaining who and in what position my fellow-workers and kind friends in this work in Canada are. And first, I must name my friend and honorary co-secretary, Miss Geraldine Alia way, a lady who for the last four year has not only given me her services gratuitously, but has lived on the spot and in the house all those years with those poor ignorant and certainly untrained children, and to whose self-denial, wonderful judgment and good common sense, I am in a very large way indebted for the success of my work. At the commencement of my work for these children, after consulting legal authorities in Canada, it was considered advisable for me to select and nominate resident Canadians who, with me, should be appointed the legal guardians and custodians of the childi-en ; and I was fortunate enough to secure for the Niagara district as co- guardians with myself, Henry Pafiard, Esq., Mayor of the town (a man who has been Mayor of Niagara seven years in succession), and Robert N. Ball, J.P., a man of iiTeproachable character, and whose family has resided in the district for very many years. For St. John's, New Brunswick, the custodians of the children are, with myself, Hon. J. Boyd, J. P., Hon. T. Daniells, J. P., Mr. Attorney-General King; and Rev. Canon Scoville. At Chatham, where (D.V.) I am proposing to place some lads this spring, the custodians are to be F. Scane, Esq. , Solicitor, and Mr. McCrea, Police Magistrate. In the jirinted papers I have already placed in the hands of every member of your Board, I have reprinted the terms upon which the children are placed out in their various homes in Canada, these conditions being enforced by indentures embodying these terms, and also securing educational and religious privileges to each child, and are signed, necessarily, by the gentlemen already named, by myself, and the person taking a child. In our own district especially we have also the great assistance and personal help of our Hector, the Rev. Dr. McMurray, who is also our rural Dean, who rarely if ever fails to be present when the children are li placed out, and who with his own pen has filled with and for me many scores of those indentxires. At Newcastle we have a similarly kind co- worker in J. Robson, Esq. , Reeve, who has assisted me to place out in his district over 100 children ; and at Mount Forest, I am deeply indebted to Sydney Smith, Esq., J. P., who with his family has helped me to place some 50 more. Reference is made in Mr Grainger's letter to the wonderful protection afforded by English society to women and children, and to the rarity of cases of cruelty in the country to such persons. I beg to refer to a society formed for the very express pur- pose of protecting women and children in EngLand, the pages of whose reports are black and sickening enough to make us as English people hide our faces, and silence for ever our condemnation of other couiatries on this matter; for as a nation we are guilty of wife-deseition, wife- beating, of child-selling and child neglect, to an .extent that has no parallel in any other civilized nation under the sun. In the eighteen months I have had 150 little girls throu;;li my London Home, picked up from the streets and back slums. One ot eight years old was brought in perfectly intoxicated ; another of the same rgj had a broken skull and a dislocated arm, broken by the kicks of a drunken father ; one of ten years had not slept in a house fur a month ; and two sisters, of much the same age, found on a heap of shavings in a room by them- selves, deserted by both parents, were so uearl}' dead that <^ther twelve hours would have ended for ever their brief struggle for life. And so on ad nauseam. Why, the moral of my whole life an lian character. The next statement is that I have guarded every avenue by which cases of known ill treatment, taken up not by myself but by philanthropic Canadians, reach the British public. To this I reply, the only three children I have ever had ill treated have been Nancy Nye, Holbom ; Sarah Saxby, Peckham ; Constance Branch, Lambeth. The first child was only away from the Home 3 months, and was returned by the people who took her at the end of that time in a very emaciated condition. This was the first case of bad treat- ment, and I took no action in the matter, not knowing exactly what ought to have been done. We nursed the child, and she was all right again at the end of six weeks, wheij we found her (in 1871) a new home with T. Robson, Esq. , of Newcastle, where she is now living, and who has provided for her by will. I produce her photograph. The next child ran away from her home and complained to me of her treatment ; the people with whom I had placed the child complained of her also to me ; and thirdly, the neighbors complained of the master and mistress. I consequently placed the matter in the hands of the local magistrate oi Lobo, who first investigated and then dismissed the case. I was not satisfied with the decision, and myself removed the child, irho is now living with Mr. Edwards, Postmaster of Lobo. The third child was beaten by her mistress while the latter was in a passion. A neighbor saw the ill treatment and at once went to her clergyman. Rev. Henry Holland, of St. Catharines, who communicated with me, as also the Police Magistrate, Mr. Burns, before whom tho case was tried. I was present when the mistress was sentenced ; she was fined ^0, and I took the child back with me to the Home. The statement that all reports emanate ^from me, and that I alone possess the clue to the whereabouts of the children, is not correct ; for we have a very powerful and independent press in Canada, which would speak very plainly to me and about me if there were any necessity. I do not possess alone the clue tr whereabouts of the children. We keep full accounts of tho plac - ut of the children in duphcate in the Home in Niagara; we have a third copy here in London, which I now produce ; and we send, as you are well aware, & T5^ 14 .1: ''I ill further copy to every Board of every child we have ever taken from any union. Who the band of interested people are who surround me, and are desirous of notoriety or uf something more substantial, I must leave you to discover, for I can give no clue to this wonderful and disgraceful insinuation. Mr. Arthur Clayden, of whom I person- ally know nothing, and never saw even when in Canada — though I know as a fact that v.ith Mr. Arch and Colonel Denison he did visit my Home in Niagara, and who is now charged with ignorance and untruthfulness in the following letter which I here produce — thus answers for himself ; and as he has seen my Home and Mr. Grainge?' has not, I would venture to suggest that the opinion of Mr. Clayden^ is worth at least as much as that of Mr. Grainger, [Copy.] — "Mr. Allendale Grainger insinuates that there was a connection between my letter on your work and the St. Catharine.^11 Journal. If I had the pleasure of knowing that gentleman, I would take the trouble of informing him that when that letter was written I did not even know of such a paper, and even now I am utterly ignorant of what the paper has said about you. If Mr. Grainger is a gentleman, I hope he will at once withdraw and apologize for this gratuitous assumption. You are at full liberty to make what use you like of this letter ; and I will conclude with an expression of my unabated confidence in your noble mission." The last request of this paper is, that the Local Govt. Board should be solicited to send some proper person to Canada to report truthfully on the working of the whole system. To this I can have no possible objection — having myself urged the matter many times at Whitehall — as I have everything to gain and nothing to fear from any examination that is honestly and fairly conducted. I could summon within a few days' notice to Niagara as fine a body of young people as could be shewn anywhere in the world, or copies of the children's addresses could be had and every child visited in her home. And I say publicly, gentle- men, without fear of contradiction, that neither this Board nor ar r other Board of Guardians in London, or indeed in F.ugland, no, not with your array of officers, overseers and inspectors, could shew such children here in England as I can in Canada. Do you think any woman would work as I work, would or could live the life I live, with- out some such glorious result — some such harvest for some such seed- sowing ] No ! It would not be possible to continue such work unless the reaping and sowing were almost in due proi^ortion. And I thank God this day, and say it without fear of contradiction, that my work is a glorious success, and has in all ways exceeded my most sanguine expectations. And this I know, that if you saw with my eyes and knew the colonies as I do, every workhouse school in the country would be doomed, and every child planted in those glorious new lands, where plenty, and health and wealth is the heritage of all. I do not ask you in one sense to believe in me — that is a very small matter — but I do ask you to believe in the question; and if this paper of mine shall have aroused you to extend the work farther and place it on a firmer basis, I shall consider myself in some way repaid for the pain which this unjust and ungenerous attack has caused me. In concluding, I shall give you a short summary of my work last year, as this will probably give you some idea of what is involved in my undertaking. I left the Home in Niagara in February, 1873, and travelled night and day to Portland, to take ship for England. When I reached Portland the 15 ships advertised were not in port; this necessitated my going en to New York. I then crossed the Atlantic, and remaining in England until the 26th of June, recross.ed the ccsan with 65 children, having previously dispatched 71 souls on the 1st May. In September I was again in Quebec, nearly 600 miles from the Home, to meet the third and last party of children for the season, numbering 58. With these children I returned the 600 miles to the Home, and after placing out the whole of the children, at the end of October I went into the West, visiting the children in the neighborhood of Mount Forest, where I have about 30 little ones under the care of Sydney Smith, J. P., who for a very long time has mosrt kindly assisted me in the work. There the children came to tea with me, and we had a very happy little gather- ing. After a week spent in Mount Forest I went on to Arthur |; saw the six or seven children I have there, went on from there to Fergus, from there, to Guelph, from Guelph to London, in all of which places I have children, and visited nearly all of them. From London I went to Port Stanley, Sherwood, Petrolia, and lastly to Chatham, returning by Woodstoo »: — on the same errand to all places. On my return to Niagara, I made up my book from memoranda gathered on the journey; made copies of the placing out of the children foi^ the year ; made another journey East, making in all rather more than 6000 miles of railway work within the year in Canada alone ; when I crossed the Atlantic for the third time, and came back to Eng- land to dive into your slums and the siils and sorrows of your great city. But this is not quite all. Do not misunderstand me, because I speak so brightly and happily of my Canadian work, that there is no dark side to the picture. Alas ! how could it be otherwise, knowing what we do of these poor children and their parentage, to say nothing of the weak- ness and sinfulness of human nature. Here is my "Black Book" — the Book of the replacement of my children, and the causes that have brought them back to the Home. You will see by this book that up to December, 1873, I have had 181 children returned to me, or have been removed by me for various causes, some for very trivial reasons, others for gross wickedness and immoralities. Many of the children, as you will see, have been placed by me 3, 4 and 5, and one 10 times over. To use the words of a friend, this part of the work is a kind of "cheerful despair." But as we know, if we do not bear with these children no one else will ; we persevere, and by and bye, heie too we shall have our reward. In conclusion, the question is often asked me, " Why do these Canadians take these children ?" I think there are three chief reasons. First of all, people in Canada marry very early in life ; the young people follow their pai'ents' example ; and at 45 or 50 many an excellent and well-to-do couple find themselves alone, and their children settled perhaps 100 miles or more from the old home- stead. Such people are constantly writing me, " Can't you give us a little girl. We don't think we are too old to bring up a second family ; little ones about a place make it chet^i'ful ; they save steps, and we could do well for her." Yes, and they do well for them, the child sharing in the hopes, the cares and the pleasures of the home, as well as in the work. Secondly, some persons want the children for actual domestic service, and oifer them mvich better homes than workhouse girls can get into here iu England. Thirdly, there are some few godly persons, who have sympathy with the work from Christ-lilce motives — 16 who say, we have no poor, and there is very little active work that we can do for the Master ; we should like to help your or rather the Lord's work ; bring us over these children from their misery, and we will make us households like flocks of sheep." And verily the pro- mise is literally fulfilled — they take tue beggar from the dunghill and set him among the princes. This, gentlemen, is the work I am trying to do, and this the work in which I again ask your kind co-operation. As far as your own schools are concerned, I desire to bear testimony to the very admirable way in which your childien are managed. I have only had two of your children returned to me at the Home, viz., Chansy and Howes, and neither of them for what could be considered bad conduct ; but the whole system of the education of pauper girls is false and rotten, and in a very short time we shall have a Government report that will prove that while in our large district schools we have a maximum of exi)ense we have a minimum of resVilt, And I say that no girl can grow up into a decent, an affectionate and a faith- ful 'woman without home influence ; and that for the foundling, the pauper, and the deserted child this is an absolute impossibility in Eng- land, but it is a good hope and an almost absolute certainty in Canada. I thank you for your patient attention to my remarks, and tnist my explanations will have proved satisfactory. MARIA S. RYE. March 25th, 1874. I' M I V