Labouring Children: British Immigrant Apprentices to Canada, 1869-1924

Between 1868-1924, 80,000 British children, most of them under fourteen, came to Canada to be apprenticed as labourers and domestic servents. Joy Parr’s study of these children, first published in 1980, became a significant resource for courses in women’s history, family history, immigration history, and labour history. Out of print for several years, Labouring Children now has a substantial new introduction in which the author examines the historiography of the history of childhood, particularly in the light of recent literature on sexuality and the post-structuralist critique. She also considers recent popular historical views of children and their relationship to professional history.