In this article we bring the records of Liverpool‐based child emigration agencies into conversation with the archives of ‘Home’ children held at Libraries and Archives Canada, the Archives of Ontario (Toronto) and the Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto Archives. Our aim is to provide the first study to consider why the North West emerged as the British centre of child emigration during the period 1860–1930, and examine the shared emigration infrastructure between its institutions and agents with those in Canada, through which we hope to advance comparative transnational research into child separation as a feature of welfare systems since the late‐nineteenth century. Our key claims are the following: (1) that children and their families DID challenge, resist and question the system, though not always expressed through their limited ability to give consent to emigration; (2) that the purported welfarist impulses of child emigration schemes were frequently in tension with the everyday administrative and financial concerns that characterised exchanges over child migrants between state and institution, bespeaking a broader economy of child emigration schemes that has thus far been under‐examined in the scholarship.

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ABSTRACT:Manchester's processional tradition began in the nineteenth century and every Whit weekend, until the 1960s, Catholics and Protestants organized separate large celebrations. This article argues that the Catholic Whit celebrations peaked in importance between the two world wars and that this was related to the impact of Manchester Corporation's wider investment in urban redevelopment. It is a story about religion and the self, which reveals important details about the cultural meanings of the inter-war city and contributes to an emerging field of cultural geography that explores the relationship between space and faith.

Liverpool and Manchester have come to typify twentieth-century urban decay and their demise is strongly associated with the perceived decline of local government after 1918. By the 1930s, contemporaries had stereotyped northern cities as places of poverty and deprivation, in comparison to the prosperous south. The divide was reinforced by economic historians who focused on regional variations in unemployment and economic depression. This article challenges stereotypical images of interwar Liverpool and Manchester by illustrating the ambitious programmes of urban redevelopment implemented by their Corporations in response to political and economic instability. Grandiose projects such as the Wythenshawe Estate, Mersey Tunnel and Manchester Central Library aimed to stimulate employment and to boost local economies and morale. Redevelopment was promoted heavily to present new images of Liverpool and Manchester. Crucially, urban transformation was marketed as a way to communicate with the newly enfranchised, classless citizen and suggests similarities with broader strategies employed by the Conservative party to engage with the mass electorate. The level of ambition and innovation demonstrates that local municipal culture thrived and Liverpool (with close American links) is shown to have been at the forefront of innovations in civic design and urban planning.

From the 1870's, children in the care of charities or state provided institutions, including workhouses and industrial schools, were subject to the practice of emigration to Canada, separating them from their parents and wider family. This was achieved ostensibly to secure the child's welfare, and provide opportunities in Canada beyond the poverty of the industrialising cities of the north of England. Using original archive material, this article examines the legal rights of parents of children identified for emigration, and how charities and state institutions obtained the authority to emigrate children. The lack of a clear basis for assessing child welfare led organisations to consider a broad range of moralistic considerations regarding the characterisation of parents and the child's circumstances in deciding whether a child should be emigrated. Despite these negative perceptions, it will be demonstrated that some parents exercised considerable agency in seeking to resist emigration of a child, and in attempting to maintain the familial relationship.