Annie MacPherson

Who is Annie MacPherson?

Annie Parlane MacPherson was a Scottish evangelical Quaker and philanthropist who pioneered child emigration to Canada.

She was born in Campsie, by Milton, Stirlingshire, and educated in Glasgow and at the Home and Colonial Training College in Gray's Inn Road, London.

After her father died she moved to Cambridge, but soon after returned to London. Touched by the poverty in the eastend of London in 1868 she opened the Home of Industry at 60 Commercial Road in Spitalfield.

In the 1870s, she organised that Home children were sent to Canada from her home in London also had arrangements with Barnardo's Homes of Dr. Barnardo in London, Quarriers homes in Scotland, and Smyly homes in Dublin, Ireland similar to arrangements with English and Scottish homes. In Canada she had set up a number of Homes, Marchmont, Galt in Ontario and in Knowlton Quebec

The Doyle Report of 1875 into the emigration of children from these homes cast a shadow over the process of exporting children although it acknowledged the benevolent motives of MacPherson and others.

Her sister Louisa MacPherson married Charles Henry Birt, and helped her sister in her mission.