Letter: Shipped out to drudgery

Sir: The article on the shameful secret of Britain's lost children (13 July) was most interesting, but I believe this practice started much earlier.

When I was chief chemist to a Canadian company in the 1950s our laboratory cleaner told me that Barnardo's had shipped him out from Britain with a party of other children to start a new life on Canadian farms. He said that in practice the 'new life' was one of unpaid drudgery on a remote rural farm until he was old enough to look for work as a labourer for himself. Judging by his age, which was well over 60, he must have been shipped just after the beginning of this century.

Yours sincerely,

LAURENCE R. PITTWELL

Caversham,

Reading

13 July