and Catharine Janeway were a hardworking, God-fearing couple whose only ambition in life was to eke out an existence for their ever-increasing family. William worked as an apprentice surveyor, often gone for weeks dealing with surveys for new roads and bridges. When he was home, he worked his small acreage, tended to his sheep, chickens and his two draught mares. While he was away, Catharine ran the household, and with help from the boys, cared for the farm. Although they were poor, they loved their children and they believed the hand of the Almighty would guide them through troubled times. So far their faith had paid off. Carolyn had been saved from the croup, Will from nearly drowning in the peat bogs and Mary from being burned during a lightning storm that destroyed their barn, a year ago almost to the day.
“Carolyn, please set the table. Papa will be in from his chores shortly and he'll be hungry,” Mama said. Carolyn got up reluctantly but said nothing.
Mary worked steadily at the sink, but something moving caught her eye through the kitchen window. It was Papa running to the house, holding his hands over his face. His hands were soaked with blood!
Mary screamed. Her mother ran to the window and gasped. When he stumbled through the door, each child in turn became motionless and silent as though frozen in place. Catharine grabbed her apron from the hook and ran to her husband. “Oh my God, William!” she cried. His nose was hanging broken and he was bleeding badly. Before he could explain how the colt had reared up and kicked him, his pregnant young wife, overcome with emotion, fainted on the kitchen floor.
“Catharine!” he screamed as he bent over her. “Help me carry her to the bed,” he shouted at the children. “Will, run to Packard's farm and tell Lyle to get the doctor quick. Mama needs help real bad.”
Little Mary had been watching everything. She stepped down off the stool, backed into the corner, crouched down and buried her face in her knees. Emma began to cry.
The next morning Papa called all the children, including Emma, to the table. He had bandages on his face. “We lost Mama in the night. The baby came sudden—far too soon for your mama. She wasn't strong enough.” He paused to steady himself, and then continued reluctantly. “The doctor was too late to do anything. The baby's gonna live but it's small and sickly. He thinks it isn't quite right so they're sending it to Glasgow. Just as well I expect.” He continued, but spoke quietly. “I love you all and I'll try to take care of you, what with Mama gone now.”
A week later, Papa gathered his children in the kitchen once more. He looked tired and drawn, the dark rings under his eyes making his face look even more pale. The older children could feel his tension, but little Emma continued to prattle in her crib. He scarcely knew how to begin.
“Carolyn, well, you're near old enough to fend for yourself.” He hesitated, then took a big breath. “Doc thinks it's best if the rest of you go to the London Fields Hackney Home. They'll take good care of you.” William put his head down and covered his face with his hands. “Don't be thinkin' this is easy, cause it ain't,” he said.
“Between 1870 and the depression of the 1930s, more than 80,000 children from the British Isles journeyed to Canada in an extraordinary but almost forgotten odyssey. They were known as the “home children,” but beneath that benign description was a story of lonely and forlorn youngsters to whom a new life in Canada meant only hardship and abuse.” 3
November, 1889
THE LONDON Fields Hackney Home was a government-run Christian Juvenile Home-for-the-Homeless that looked after children from infancy to age fourteen. The home was always short of money and operated on a minimal budget, subsidized by grants and charitable organizations. Needless to say, the overworked and underpaid staff were not likely to be overly sympathetic and kind to their young charges. This was not a happy place for anyone. Abruptly removed from their childhood home and still grieving for their mother, the Janeway children suddenly found themselves among strangers in a grimly austere and dingy building on a narrow crowded street. They had never been in a city before.
Within four weeks of the Janeways' arrival at the orphanage in November 1889, Will ran away, telling absolutely no one of his plans. Mary was devastated. With no idea where he had gone, she tearfully wondered if she would ever see him again. Valiantly, the three remaining Janeways tried to protect one another, but there was more to come.
Taken from an original broadsheet advertising Mrs. Birt's Sheltering Home. Courtesy National Archives of Canada, C-4690Vol. 32 File 724 Part 1.
In early January and without any warning, Mary and John were separated from Emma and sent to the “Sheltering Home” on Myrtle Street in Liverpool. Their days were filled with routines that never varied, the regimentation unfortunately too common in institutional settings. A Protestant-run home for orphans, fatherless, motherless and destitute children, the Sheltering Home was entirely supported by voluntary contributions. Here again, there was barely enough to provide food and shelter, another bleak and dreary existence for the remaining siblings. Everything at the home was run according to very strict rules. Even the visiting hours were clearly defined and adhered to with absolute strictness. All the orphans were under Mrs. Birt's care. Her goal was simple—to find homes for them in Canada. Both Mary and John, but Mary especially, fretted over the forced separation from their baby sister. It was not until Emma turned four, almost two years later that the little family was reunited.
Interesting editorial copy of the late 1880s extolling the virtues of the Sheltering Home and its program. Financial security was considered to be of the utmost importance. Courtesy National Archives of Canada, C-4690 Vol. 32 File 24 Part 1.
Almost two and a half years after her arrival at the Sheltering Home, Mary filled her battered little red valise once again. All three of them, plus others at the Sheltering Home, had been lined up one day and herded through a physical check-up given by a doctor from the Liverpool Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest. Vaccinated, pronounced in good health and free from all disease and defects, the Janeway children were about to become little immigrants. It was a frail, hesitant seven-year-old child that boarded the S.S. Carthaginian bound for Canada along with her brother and younger sister that cold, dreary day in March of 1892.
Two hundred and twenty-nine souls were on board that steamship—one hundred and eighty-six adults, thirty-seven children and six infants. Only twenty-seven were cabin passengers; the rest were to be put in steerage, the dark, unventilated bowels of the ship. There they would spend their journey across the ocean, crowded together beneath the deck of the ship. All of the orphans, including Mary and her siblings, were steerage passengers, packed below along with the other poor less fortunate emigrants, a total of 202 people about to embark on a grim journey to the New World.
A sketch to represent the S.S. Carthaginian, based on the ocean liner city of New York by James G. Taylor (New york History Society). This ship was launched in the late 1880s. Sketch by John Duncan.
A search of passenger lists located William Janeway, Mary's older brother. The rest of the Janeway children were not indexed and could not be found. It is speculated that Mary and her
