Citation

Kelly J. J. Hist. Child. Youth 2016; 9(2): 233-246.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2016, Johns Hopkins University Press)

DOI

10.1353/hcy.2016.0048

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

In the absence of statistics, court records, or biographical narratives, the shadowy practice of kidnapping children in eighteenth-century Ireland for transportation to the British Crown's American colonies can be reconstructed from reports and commentary in the contemporary press and a select number of other sources. Inextricably bound up with the phenomenon of indentured servitude, an indeterminate number of children were kidnapped in Ireland's main port cities and towns, Dublin especially, and carried across the Atlantic in the half century prior to American independence. The trade was intermittent and almost certainly small, but it aroused deeply held fears for the safety of children. The failure of parliament to provide for a specific penalty ensured that those caught in the act (women primarily) were subject to popular sanction. Yet it was not domestic opposition, but the decline of indentured servitude in the wake of the American War of Independence that brought it to a close.

Language: en