"Between 1873 and 1933 more than five thousand immigrant children from the Children's Emigration Homes of Birmingham, England, were settled in rural communities in Ontario and the Maritime provinces. This book explores the history of these Homes, an English juvenile emigration agency founded in 1872 by John Throgmorton Middlemore, the son of a successful, Nonconformist businessman. Created in the nineteenth century by educated, recently rich and influential Nonconformists, Birmingham's social environment supported and fostered Mr. Middlemore's vision to help destitute children find a positive future. It has been a common belief that the one hundred thousand British juvenile immigrants known as home children who were settled in Canada by over fifty agencies, were exploited for economic gain and relief of the British public purse. But care must be taken in coming to this conclusion: reality is far more complicated. This book recounts the history of the Middlemore Home/British Home Children movement, and makes the case that the reality of the Canadian experience often differed from popular perception."--