'Making them good and useful'

Long before Dr Barnardo’s and the Fairbridge Society began exporting children to the corners of the empire, Britain already had a long history of forced child migration. In 1820, colonial authorities opened the first juvenile penal institution anywhere in the world. For the next 30 years, more than 3500 boys were sent to be shaped into useful colonial workers. This article repositions juvenile transportation as the beginning of a long history of child-migrant institutionalisation in the colonies and as distinctly different in its ideological approach from adult transportation. It looks at the language of rescue, reimagining and re-forming as critical steps in the process of transforming urban delinquents into ‘good and useful members of society’.