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    Listen to the Child
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    Listen to the Child
    Unavailable
    Listen to the Child
    Ebook332 pages4 hours

    Listen to the Child

    By Elizabeth Howard

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Based the true story of Annie MacPherson, one of the first Victorians to ship children from the poor streets of London to the open fields of Canada.

    Rich in detail and character.

    It’s 1875 and London’s East End heaves with child prostitutes, hawkers, beggars and thieves. Annie rescues as many children as she can but feels overwhelmed.

    A solution is offered that sounds perfect – Canadian farmers need workers; their wives want housemaids. Shipping children to this land of plenty offers them a future.

    Widow, Mary Trupper, is wary, but the promise of a good life for her children is strong.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHookline Books
    Release dateOct 26, 2016
    ISBN9780993287497
    Unavailable
    Listen to the Child
    Author

    Elizabeth Howard

    Elizabeth Howard is a teacher and a medium. She has written four books and has 30,000 downloads on her first book, "Easy Answers for Life". Her books feature true stories taken from real life but with a supernatural twist interwoven into the tale.

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    Reviews for Listen to the Child

    3.5/5

    3 ratings3 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I really wanted to give this 4 stars, but I just can't. I didn't ever get over my dislike for the main character and I wasn't satisfied with the ending at all.

      This is a historical fiction novel and the author went for a very realistic take. The story is based on an English practice in the 1800s of sending 'orphans' from the streets of London to new homes in Canada where they would be treated as family while learning to work and becoming productive citizens. About a quarter of the way in, I googled it and it is very much true and unfortunately, resulted in very few happy endings.

      The ending of Listen to the Child is terrible and/or non-existent, depending on how you look at it. Because I had googled the story I figured that not every character in the book would have a happy ending, I just didn't expect the mix of endings Ms Howard gave us. I don't want to spoil the book anymore than I already have, but guard your heart if you can!

      I think I could go on for hours criticizing the real life history this book is based on, which isn't fair. I've already mentioned the main things I didn't like, so I'll leave you with the thing I really did like, the kids. The children in the story are the best part; they are mostly believable, they are written well enough that I cared about them and wanted to know what happens next, all the way until there was no 'next' left in the book!

      Definitely glad I read this, if only because I now want to find some less tragic writing on this thing I didn't even know about! How do history books leave things like this out?
    • 4/5
      Based on the true story of the Home Children, a child migration scheme under which poor and orphaned British children were shipped to Canada to work for families on farms or as housemaids, this is the fictional story of six of these children.Starting in London's overcrowded East End in 1875, Elizabeth Howard describes vividly the dire conditions in which the children's families struggle to survive. The opportunity to send a child to Canada, which Christian charity workers proclaimed to be the land of plentiful, "the paradise", is a tempting opportunity to give children a chance at a future. But as the story follows the children's journey to Canada and their dispersal among Canadian families, the reality is often much harsher.Historical fiction is still a genre that I only pick up occasionally, but I was really intrigued by the book's premise because I didn't know the first thing about this very extensive program. The book is well written and seems very well researched (I actually looked up more information about the Home Children after reading this). It was fascinating reading, but I wouldn't go as far as saying that I 'enjoyed' it because I found the subject matter incredibly sad. There's little humour in this. I also really disliked Constance, a young charity worker, who prepares and accompanies the children to Canada. Her attitude and reasoning were infuriating at times.However, Elizabeth Howard portrayed all the characters, including the children, in a very credible manner. Their behaviour and their thoughts were completely believable. It took a little while to get fully invested, as there was a lot of switching about at the beginning when the characters were introduced. Once the small group of children was established, it turned into a heart-wrenching story as it became clear that the advice to Listen to the Child was unfortunately not often followed.Well worth reading, but keep tissues close by.
    • 4/5
      In the eighteenth century life for many families living in London’s East end meant a constant struggle against poverty and destitution. With the possibility of ending up in the workhouse an ever present danger, most parents did everything they could to avoid this fearful fate. Some worked at menial, repetitive and very poorly paid jobs, often involving even the youngest of their children in order to scratch enough of a living to survive. It wasn’t that they were lacking in love for their children, they were just desperate and couldn’t allow sentiment to get in the way. Others turned to begging, thieving, hawking or prostitution, enterprises which also involved their very young children, especially as pre-pubescent, virgin girls attracted a considerable financial award. Overcrowded living conditions and poor diet, combined with an inability to pay for healthcare, meant that most of the children were unhealthy, and education for all of them was virtually non-existent. London’s final major cholera epidemic, which killed more than five thousand people, disproportionately affected this disadvantaged population of the city. The only people who appeared to care about the fate of the families, and particularly the children, were Christian charity workers. One of the leading figures involved in these efforts, and a contemporary of Br Barnardo, was Annie MacPherson, an evangelical Scottish Presbyterian. She set up “The Beehive”, a refuge for children, a place which offered food, lodgings and some basic training to equip them with some skills to enable them to earn a living. However, the level of need was overwhelming and, faced with trying to help so many destitute families, she became desperate to find better ways of helping these deprived children. On discovering that Canadian families were desperate for young people to help with domestic and farming work, in exchange for some education and a promise to raise them as Christians, she set up a scheme for sending orphans and street children to Canada. From the early 1870s until her death in 1904, she resettled approximately 12,000 children in this way. I find it interesting that, whilst most people have heard of Dr Barnardo, few have heard of her significant contribution to charitable work.Listen to the Child is a story about the start of that mass emigration and is told through the eyes of six of these children, their families and the social workers involved in promoting the scheme. It starts with descriptions of the conditions the children and their families faced in London and explored the various reasons people were facing this level of poverty. It highlighted the fact that not everyone involved in these radical plans was in favour of sending children into “the unknown”. However, the overwhelming number felt that the scheme offered wonderful opportunities for a better life and approached the task of recruiting children with a zealous passion. Some of the social workers played on the emotions of the parents in order to persuade them to agree to either all, or some, of their children being sent away in order to ensure a “better life” for them. Although many of the children were excited about all the promises of a “green and pleasant land”, of plenty to eat and an escape from the dangers posed by living on the streets, none of them had any idea of just how far away Canada was. Nor could they have understood the implications of being separated, in effect forever, from their relatives. Vetting and supervision of the Canadian families involved was almost non-existent and the reality many of these children faced was a life of exploitation, punishingly hard work, cruelty, abuse and loneliness. The intentions of the charity workers may well have been good, but the expression about the road to hell being paved with good intentions has seldom felt more appropriate! I have known about, and been critical of, these schemes for many years and, whilst I recognise that conditions for a small percentage of the tens of thousands of children who were shipped off to Canada until the 1930s (and Australia until the late 1960s!) did improve, this re-telling of the horrors faced by so many of these “exported” children was captured very vividly in this moving and very disturbing novel. As I read it I felt angry, yet again, that these were government-sanctioned schemes; that so little ongoing responsibility was taken to ensure the safety of these already vulnerable children, and that when reports began to emerge that there were problems, children were still left with abusive foster parents or in unsatisfactory children’s homes. Towards the end of the story, when it had become clear that some children were being abused, one of the characters urged the social worker responsible for their care to “Talk to them alone, and listen – don’t care what the family tell you – listen to the child.” Although conditions for vulnerable children have improved since Victorian times, reports of abuse being ignored remain all too frequent so it is clear that this is an admonition which still holds true.I think that the number of thought-provoking themes in this short novel would make it an ideal choice for reading groups.