ABSTRACT
The outbreak of war led to the immediate suspension of child migration. For the next five years, the Fairbridge Society continued to accept applications for emigration but its operations were now severely
The suspension of child emigration meant that the numbers on the farms in Australia and Canada declined steadily as children left for employment. At Pinjarra, the war even brought new tenants as Guildford Grammar School near Perth, displaced from its own home by the Army, moved temporarily down to the Fairbridge farm. 10 These new circumstances also accentuated a conflict that now broke out between the London headquarters of the Society and the management of the farms in Australia. The problems resided in the pre-war years and the struggle for control of the farms between the Fairbridge Society in London and the committees in Australia, particularly those at Pinjarra and Molong. Such struggles also involved the welfare of the children on the farms.
