When London Shipped Poor Children to America

Not Just the Tudors

History Hit

History

4.8 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 30 January 2023

⏱️ 45 minutes

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Summary

In 1618, almost 100 impoverished children from London - some as young as eight - arrived in Jamestown, Virginia to labour in the growing colony. It was the first example of transporting children to colonies that would continue into the twentieth century.

In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb finds out more from Dr. Deborah Albon whose groundbreaking research traces the lives of these children from urban poverty, through incarceration in Bridewell to, if they survived the Atlantic crossing, a life no less miserable in the New World.

**WARNING: This episode contains some graphic descriptions of violence against young people**

This episode was edited and produced by Rob Weinberg

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Many of you will know that the first permanent settlement by the English in America was
0:09.3	that at Jamestown in Virginia in 1609. You might know about the extreme hunger of the
0:15.6	colonists and their relationships with the indigenous Americans. You might know of the
0:20.9	transportation of the first 30 enslaved Africans on a ship called the White Line to Virginia
0:27.6	in August 1619. But did you know that a year before the White Line set sail, another group
0:36.7	was transported to Virginia from the city of London, nearly a hundred impoverished children.
0:44.7	And that this was the first example of a practice of transporting children to far colonies
0:50.3	that would continue until the 20th century. These were poor children who had been apprehended
0:56.1	in the city on the order of London's mayor, before being incarcerated in Bridewell and then
1:01.7	shipped across the Atlantic to work for Virginia's new colonists. This is a sobering story, indeed.
1:08.9	Talking to us today about it is Dr. Deborah Orgman. She's an honorary research fellow at the University
1:16.0	of Rahampton and has written extensively about the sociology and history of early childhood.
1:20.3	She recently completed a master's in Tudor studies and her groundbreaking research that
1:25.7	we're featuring today was written up as her thesis. Above all, she's sought to explore
1:30.8	what we can know about the children who were transported and their experiences.
1:35.0	Deb, thank you so much for joining me on not just the Tudors.
1:44.4	Pleasure to be here. It's an absolute delight to have you on. We've worked together and having
1:50.2	already had a career as an academic, you decided to do the masters in Tudor studies that I
1:55.4	was running some time ago and did some fabulous work. This is what we're going to be talking
2:00.6	about today. It's the culmination of your masters degree, the thesis in which you have done
2:05.8	something that is truly original. The children we're going to be talking about have been until
2:12.4	now largely overlooked and they also travelled earlier than the more famous transportations,
	...

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