ABSTRACT
Perceptions of childhood in Britain were quite different where more affluent children were concerned. The category of the expatriate child encompassed a range of circumstances, from the displaced child of impoverished parents who was sent to a ‘working home’ in a British possession such as Canada, South Africa, Australia or New Zealand; to the English child born in India but, like Rudyard and Trix Kipling, shipped back to the moth-erland for fostering and education, on the theory that the tropical climate was physically and morally threatening to the young. The religious revival primarily associated in the eighteenth century with schismatic sects breathed new life in the nineteenth century into the established church as well, especially through what was known as the Oxford Movement. Even in an era unusually devoted to the betterment of the lot of its young people, and whatever the class, location or gender of the child in question, ‘growing up’ has never been trouble-free.
