BRITISH HOME CHILDREN IN CANADA
  • Home Page
  • This site is maintained by Home Children Canada
  • Home Children Canada website
  • The Sending Organizations
    • Barnardo's >
      • Dr. Thomas Barnardo >
        • Dr. Barnardo bio
        • Articles of Association Barnardo
        • DR. Barnardo's Funeral
        • Barnardo's medical credentials
        • Various articles
        • Home for the Homeless 1888
        • Broughall Legacy Letters
        • THE DOCTOR'S CHILDREN 1995
        • The Barnardo Publications >
          • The History of the Publication
          • Our Darlings - Barnardo's >
            • Barnardo's "Our Darlings"
            • Winter in Canada
            • Coloured Plates
            • Monotints
            • Articles of interest
          • Barnardo's "Night and Day"
          • Barnardo Boy's Mag
          • Taken out of the Gutter
      • Barnardo Homes in Britain >
        • Promotional material
        • Boys Garden Village - Barnardo
        • Babies Castle - Barnardo's
        • Watts Naval Training School
        • William Baker School - Barnardo
        • Barkingside
        • Stepney Causeway
        • St. Christopher's Babies Home
        • Teighmore, Channel Islands
        • Other British Homes
        • Vintage post cards
      • Barnardo shipping lists
      • Immigration Parties
      • Russell Manitoba - Barnardo's
      • Toronto Barnardo Homes
      • Hazelbrae Barnardo Home
      • Winnipeg Receiving Home
      • Barnardo's Musical Boys
      • E A Struthers Day Book 1905
      • Crime or Misdemeanors list
      • Promotional post cards
      • Toronto Maternity Home
      • Indenture Contracts
      • Various Barnardo Doc's
      • Barnardo Government Reports
      • Alfred B Owen
      • Excursion's to England
      • Good Conduct Medals
    • Application Fees for children
    • Agreements and indentures
    • Hotel Dieu, Kingston, Ontario
    • Catholic Emigration - 10,000 emigrated >
      • Catholic Emigration Records
      • St. Georges Home - Ottawa
      • Monsignor James Nugent
      • Father Hudson
      • Father Seddon
      • St. Vincent Rescue Home
    • Annie Macpherson - 8,000 emigrated
    • Ellen Bilbrough and Robert Wallace
    • William Quarrier- Brockville Ont 7,200 immigrated
    • Quarriers - Scotland
    • Louisa Birt - 6,000 emigrated >
      • Louisa Birt files (some)
    • John T Middlemore - 5,000 emigrated >
      • Middlemore Placement Lists
      • Guthrie House, London, Ont
      • Fairview Nova Scotia
      • Middlemore Letters
      • Who was John Middlemore
    • Maria Rye - 4,200 emigrated >
      • Maria Rye-Niagara on the Lake
      • Maria Rye Children's Letters
      • Inspections of Rye Children
    • National Children's Home 3,600 emigrated
    • Janet Wallis - Hurst Home
    • Fegan's >
      • Fegan's Home in England
    • Mr. Gold, Melbourne, Quebec
    • Shaftsbury Homes
    • various British organizations
    • Selling Insurance to BHC
    • Visitor Reports
    • John Joseph Kelso
    • 1911 Census of Canada
    • Elinor Close-New Brunswick
    • Vimy Ridge Training Farm
    • Fairbrige Farm Vancouver
    • Inspection of children 1893 to 1894
    • Emma Stirling of Hillfoot Farm >
      • Hillfoot Farm - Emma Stirling
      • The du Pont Inscription
      • Grace M Fagan - A Stirling Girl
      • Florida Humane Association
      • Emma & Bailey’s Bluff
      • The Wm Bingham Estate
    • Bristol Emigration Society
    • Grosse Isle
    • MRS. MARGARET BLAIKIE'S
    • Dakeyne Boy's Farm
    • Salford Catholic Protection Society
    • Ellen Smyly
    • St. Patrick's Home in Ottawa
    • Stanley Boys Home
    • W. J. Paddy
    • Charlotte Alexander
    • Chase Farm School
    • Bristol Union Children 1905
    • Manchester & Salford Boys' and Girls' Refuges
    • Church of England, Waifs & Strays 4,468
    • Miss Brennans Home - Montreal
    • House of Providence, Kingston Ontario
    • The Salvation Army
    • G.C. Cossar
    • Mr T. E. Sedgwick
    • Overseas Settlement Committee
    • The Children's Friends Society
    • Church Army
  • Requesting Children's Records
    • BHC's records
    • Barnardo Home Records
    • The Children's Society Records
  • Beacons of Light BHC Tribute
  • BHC Registry, over 82,000 children registered!
  • Ups and Down's Magazine
    • Ups and Downs 1895 - 1896
    • Ups and Down 1897 - 1898
    • Ups and Downs 1899 - 1900
    • Ups and Downs 1901 - 1902
    • Ups and Downs 1903
    • Ups and Downs 1904
    • Ups and Downs 1905
    • Ups and Downs 1906
    • Ups and Downs 1907 June
    • May 1910, 1913 & May & Aug 1912
    • Dec 1915 Ups and Downs
    • July 1939, Dec 1940, Dec 1942, Dec 1946
    • Our Old Friends Directory
    • December 1945 Ups and Downs
    • some articles
    • Names of child in the Ups and Downs
    • Pictures of Children 1903
    • Alfred Jolly
  • How to Research Your BHC
  • BHC Fact Page
  • First World War Casualty Index
  • BHC Burial Index
  • The Park Lawn Cemetery Monument
  • Children's Trunks & Bibles
  • Receiving Homes in Pictures
  • Ships the BHC Came On
  • History of the BHC - Film
  • 2016 BHC Memory Quilt
  • The 2010 Memory Quilts
    • BHC Memory Quilt (Ont)
    • BHC Memorial Quilt (Ab)
  • Service in the Wars
    • First World War Causalities
    • Second World War Service
    • Served in Both Wars
    • Lives Shortened
    • First World War service
    • Lists of boys who served
    • Individual Service Stories >
      • Private William Francis Conabree
      • John Mash
      • Sydney James Bevan
      • Alfred Mist
      • Cecil Bennett
      • Links to stories of BHC WW1 service
      • Newspaper clips - BHC service
  • BHCARA Upcoming Events
  • British Home Child Books
    • BHC Books for Children
    • Historical Books
    • True stories of BHC
    • Fiction Stories
    • Vintage Books
    • Downloadable Books
    • Kenneth Bagnell
    • Perry Snow - Neither Waif nor Stray
    • The Bitter Cry of Outcast London
    • Farm Life in Canada
    • PDF's for downloading
    • Films
    • BHC Articles >
      • Silence
      • Better Life or the Empire Fodder
      • EMIGRATION WORK IN CANADA 1905
      • THE EMIGRANT GIRLS HOME IN CANADA 1877
      • Kennington Cove
      • The Barnardo Boy
      • BHC to Nova Scotia
      • Personal Discovery 1935
      • The Land of the Lost Children
      • Rye's Western Home
      • Church Apologies to Child Migrants
      • Life in the Workhouse
      • Woman Miners
      • Victorian Child Labourers
      • Evicted London
      • Historical News Articles
      • Articles in the British Press
  • The Hazelbrae Memorial
  • Stories of British Home Children
    • Collection of various stories >
      • Reunited Families
      • Other mentions of children
      • Gone too soon
      • BHC Obituaries
      • BHC Mug Shots
      • Our Lost Children
      • 1901 census
      • First World War deaths
      • The darker stories
      • Discontented Maids
      • Lost Children
      • Quotes from BHC
      • Links to other BHC stories
      • BHC Posters
      • British Home Children Burial Records
      • Shorter BHC Stories
    • Stories A to M >
      • The Bagley Family
      • John Bolton
      • James Arthur Ball
      • The Bates Family
      • Hilda Blake
      • Charles Bradbury
      • Joseph Barnett
      • The Lost Children
      • Augustus Bridle
      • Percy Brown
      • Rev A. H. Brace
      • John & Benjamin Butterworth
      • The Brocklebank Family
      • William Joseph Carter
      • John Cawsey
      • Two Gun Cohen
      • Fifi the Clown
      • Henry Richard Cooper
      • Violet Elizabeth Chaffee
      • Edith Cherryholme
      • BHC Centenarians
      • Arthur Clarkson & Lily Wood
      • Albert McCarthy
      • Ronald Chamberlain
      • Anthony (Tony) Chambers
      • Cherryholme-Gizzard-Sharpe Family
      • Herbert Clifford
      • James E Cowell
      • George Daintree
      • George Martin Day
      • Esther & Elizabeth Dawson
      • Leslie Henry Baden Fielding
      • Charlie, Ted and Bill Elliott
      • Wallace Ford
      • George Frost
      • Gladys Fudge
      • Annie Garwood Letters
      • John Lydiet George
      • Annie Gevaux
      • Albert Edward Gill
      • Arthur Mcgregor GODSALL
      • Harry Gossage
      • George Everett Green
      • Robert "Robbie" Gray
      • Elsie Hathaway
      • Books and mentioned children
      • Stewart Harris
      • Cyril Hewitt
      • Margaret Healey
      • George Hollingshurst
      • The St. George's Memorial
      • Walter Leigh Lockett/Rayfield
      • Sydney Howarth
      • Bill Holtum
      • Tom Isherwood
      • General information - Heritage
      • Edward Jones
      • Cecelia & Ethel JOWETT
      • Frederick John Kempster
      • George Marlow Leeson
      • George & Annie McMaster
      • Edgar Evan Marselle
      • Will, Elsie & George Maybury
      • The Mintram Family
    • Stories N to Z >
      • Herbert Owens
      • Fred W. Palmer
      • Lizzie Poole
      • Liela Eliza Preston
      • Nellie Page
      • Francis James Preston
      • Edmond Roberts
      • Dr. John R. Seeley
      • Frederick Robert Shaw
      • Ellen, Martha & Rachel Birch
      • Walter Tompkins
      • Gipsy Simon Smith
      • Robert Rankin and George Nelson
      • Kate, Sarah & Jamie Stewart
      • The Stacey Family
      • The Richardson Sisters
      • Albert Stone
      • The Lois Stanford Collection
      • The Taylor's and Usher's
      • Charlie & Matthew Tyler
      • John Vallance
      • Arnold Walsh
      • The Ward and Seymour Family
      • Joe & Bob Waterer
      • Richard Weston
      • Hilda Williams
      • Walter Wilson
      • Children's Placement Lists
  • Documented Immigration Process
  • Making the Canadian Flag
  • Apologies to BHC & Families
    • Australian Apology
    • British Apology
    • Canadian Apology
  • Political Bigotry
    • Apology Petitions - Canada, Britain and Australia
    • Frederick Nicholls
    • Dr. C. K. Clarke
    • House of Commons Reports >
      • Paying Agents in England
      • Traveling Immigration Agent Reports
      • Immigration Stats
      • Bonus's Paid for Children
      • Propaganda in the press
      • MISS EFFIE BENTHAM
      • Diseased Savages Quote
      • Child Saving Conference 1894
    • John D. S. Campbell
    • Canadian recognition >
      • The Canadian Goverment
    • Britain's will never be slaves
  • Migration Legislation
    • Pauper Children Emigration Bill
    • British Legislation
    • Canadian Legislation
  • The Doyle Report 1875
  • Home Child Interviews
  • Collection/Penny Boxes
  • LAC and Heritage Canada
    • Deported Children >
      • Report of inspection of Home children
      • Inspection reports of Workhouse Children >
        • costs of Inspection Reports
  • Order your official BHC Pin
  • Lori Oschefski
  • Contact us
  • GRIMES, Arthur
  • HCC War Service Index Submission Form
  • Hazelbrae Indexing Forms

Dr. C. K. Clarke (Charles Kirk), 1857-1924 

From  "The Little Immigrants" by Kenneth Bagnell

Dr. C. K. Clarke, the superintendent of an asylum and a man whose name was to be given a generous place in Canada's medical history - Toronto's Clark Institute was named after him - once lectured to a group of students at Queen's College in Kingston and was warmly applauded as soon as he began to attack the inferiority of British waifs in Canada.  "A pretty strong proof that the general public has not awakened to its responsibilities in regard to the problems of heredity" the doctor said, "is the fact that in Canada we are deliberately adding to our population hundreds of childdren bearing all the stigmata of physical and mental degeneracy.  And this is being done openly and apparently with the consent of many who are really anxious to prove themselves philanthropists.  I refer to the children who are brought to Canada in order to benefit themselves and the country.  It is asserted that these children pass a medical examination and are invariably of healthy type.  Could anything be more misleading, more untrue?".  Dr. Clarke a man with large, bright eyes and a soft voice, went on recall that a few months earlier he had been on a train on which some of the children were being taken to the farms.  For days afterward, he said, he was depressed, recalling the signs of degeneracy that were so obvious in the entire lot of them.  "It is almost criminal neglect on the part of the authorities," he concluded to waves of applause, "to allow this sort of immigration to be permitted.  And while some may assert that asylum and jail populations have not been materially increaded by such importations, they should remember that those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind.  The next generation must be considered, bu the harvest has already commenced - a juvenile criminal here, an insane person there"  

The next day, the Mail and Empire of Toronto declared that his address should be reprinted in every paper in the country.



Dr. C. K. Clarke
 (Charles Kirk), 1857-1924 
From: Archeion - Ontario's Archival Information Network

Picture
Charles Kirk (C.K.) Clarke, M.B., M.D., LL.D. was born in Elora, Ontario on February 16, 1857 and died January 20, 1924, in Toronto, Ontario. C.K. Clarke was the only son of Emma (Kent) Clarke and Lieutenant-Colonel the Honourable Charles Clarke, Member of the Legislative Assembly, 1871-1894, Speaker of the Assembly, 1880-1885, and Clerk of the Assembly, 1901-1907. C.K. had two older sisters—Jennie and Emma. Jennie married a son of Dr. Joseph Workman, Superintendent of the Toronto Asylum. Emma married Dr. William Metcalf, who had been medical assistant to Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke, and, from 1882 until his violent death at the hands of a patient in 1885, was Superintendent of Kingston Asylum. Clarke married Margaret DeVeber Andrews in Toronto, October 1880 (deceased December, 1902). They had four sons and two daughters: Charles Marshall Clarke (1881-1940), Emma deVeber (Goldie) Clarke (1882-?), Margery Workman Clarke (1884-?), Harold Metcalf Clarke (1885-1925), Herbert Secord Clarke (1887-1938) and Eric Kent Clarke (1894-1958). Clarke’s second wife was Theresa Gallagher, whom he married in August 1904 in Kingston, Ontario. His residence in Toronto was at 55 Wellesley Street.

C.K. Clarke was educated at Elora High School and Toronto University (M.B., 1878; M.D., 1879). He received an honourary LL.D. from Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario in 1906. He was Clinical Assistant to Dr. Workman at the Toronto Hospital for the Insane, 1874-1878, and Assistant Physician of the same institution from 1878-1880. He was Assistant Superintendent at the Hamilton Hospital for the Insane, 1880-1881, Assistant Superintendent at Rockwood Hospital for the Insane, Kingston, 1881-1885, under Dr. Metcalf, Superintendent, Rockwood Hospital, Kingston, 1885-1905, Superintendent, Toronto Hospital for the Insane, 1905-1911 (replacing Dr. Daniel Clark), Medical Superintendent, Toronto General Hospital, 1911-1917 and Medical Director, Toronto General Hospital from1917-1918. Clarke first became a member of the University of Toronto’s teaching staff in 1889, while still the Superintendent of Rockwood. 

He was also Professor of Mental Diseases at Queen’s University until coming to Toronto. In 1906, Clarke became the first Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto. He later served as Dean of the Medical Faculty at the University of Toronto from 1908-1920. 

On March 15, 1887, in connection with the Hospital for Insane, Kingston, the medical staff gave the first of a series of lectures to the student nurses. This was the earliest attempt in Canada to provide formal psychiatric training for nurses caring for the mentally ill. The first class graduated in 1889. One of the students, Miss Theresa Gallagher, eventually became Head Nurse and Dr. Clarke’s second wife. Also at Rockwood, Clarke introduced an infirmary for acute cases, occupational therapy, established non-restraint and had convalescent homes and outdoor treatment of cases of tuberculosis put into existence. He steadfastly tried to destroy any resemblance between an asylum and a prison, and would eventually succeed in reducing the stigmatic designation by having Ontario’s asylums renamed ‘hospitals for the insane’. Clarke was appointed Co-Editor of the American Journal of Insanity, 1904, becoming the first Canadian to hold the position. He was appointed Royal Commissioner to investigate and report on conditions at the Provincial Asylum for the Insane at New Westminster, British Columbia, and then Royal Commissioner investigating methods of treatment of the insane in Europe, 1907. Further, Clarke was Vice-President of the Canadian Hospital Association from 1907-1908.

Prompted by his despair at witnessing the severe overcrowding at mental institutions, Clarke, beginning around 1895, began to keenly focus on the disproportionate rate of admissions amongst immigrant populations. Thus began one of the two obsessions that seemed to dominate the last three decades of Clarke’s professional life, alongside his ongoing perception of political interference in hospital affairs. In 1905 he lobbied for more and better-trained psychiatrists as medical inspectors of potential immigrants. In addition, he began publishing articles on the ‘defective and insane’ immigrant. This produced an ‘unpleasant controversy’ amongst some politicians and resulted in the (brief) taming of Clarke’s campaign. But by 1907 Clarke’s attitude towards immigrants was hardening. In his annual report, the word ‘evil’ had crept into the text, and the term ‘medical inspection’ had been replaced with the words ‘getting rid of them’. 

In December of 1909 Clarke persuaded the Board of Trustees of Toronto General Hospital to establish an outpatient service, Canada’s first psychiatric clinic. It was called the ‘Ward Clinic’ and Dr. Ernest Jones (later Freud’s biographer) was its first Medical Director. The clinic was modeled after one in Munich operated by pioneering German psychiatrist, Emil Kraepelin, originator of an early scientific classification of mental diseases. The Toronto clinic closed for a year upon Jones’s return to England, but was reopened in 1914 for the study of “feeble-mindedness” with Dr. Clarke as Director. Clarke’s daughter, Miss Emma deVeber Clarke, was the Social Service Nurse. C.K. Clarke also had the responsibility, in 1915, for organizing the University’s No. 4 Overseas Hospital, consisting of 1,040 beds, and supervising a clinic for venereal diseases. In 1918, he became consultant in psychiatry to Military District No.2 (Toronto and Central Ontario). The year 1918 also saw Clarke, Dr. Clarence M. Hincks, and Dr. Helen MacMurchy (and others) found the Canadian National Committee for Mental Hygiene (CNCMH). 

From its inception until the time of his death, Clarke was Medical Director of the CNCMH, later (1950) re-named the Canadian Mental Health Association. One of the main objectives of the Committee was mental examination of immigrants, including children, to ensure a ‘better’ selection of newcomers. This prompted a major research project on Canadian immigration. Additionally, mental hygiene surveys were undertaken at the requests of the provinces of Manitoba in 1918, British Columbia in 1919, and Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia in 1920. Dr. Clarke, alongside Dr. Hincks, was one of the principal investigators. Dr. Clarke wondered why a country as young as Canada should have to bear such a heavy burden of mental illness and mental deficiency. He believed that this was due to the malign consequences of importing insane and defective immigrants into Canada and a significant rate of export of the “better class” of Canadians to the United States. Clarke saw this as a serious menace to Canada’s nationhood. Clarke thus persuaded the government to introduce a restrictive immigration policy that led to the amending of the Immigration Act of 1919 and extended the list of prohibited persons to include mental defectives, the mentally ill, psychopaths, and alcoholics as well as those who had committed crimes involving ‘moral turpitude’. In the year following the new Act, Clarke spent a month in St. Johns personally supervising the landing of some four thousand immigrants and advising and instructing the Inspectors on how to examine them. From his Toronto clinic he drew statistical findings about immigrants that are now seen as dubious and unrepresentative, but which were then readily received in many quarters. On May 24, 1923 Dr. Clarke was invited by the Royal Medico-Psychological Association of Great Britain to deliver the fourth annual prestigious Maudsley Lecture. He devoted a major part of his address to the ‘crisis’ caused by the migration into Canada of large numbers of mentally ill and intellectually subnormal adults and children, many of them British. 

At crucial stages during the 1920s Clarke’s two chief acolytes, Farrar and Hincks, encouraged the introduction of the eugenics legislation that was enacted in Alberta and British Columbia. Clarke had been urging his medical colleagues and successive governments, for the better part of 25 years, to support the establishment of a psychiatric institute in Toronto; this, one of his most cherished ambitions, was realized a few months before he died. On October 12, 1923, he took part in laying the cornerstone for the Toronto Psychiatric Hospital. Clarke also arranged for one of his protégés, Dr. C.B. Farrar, to become its first director and his direct successor as the University’s Professor (and Chair) of Psychiatry. During the 1920s two of Clarke’s children were also active in the field: Emma DeVeber Clarke was supervisor of mental hygiene nursing for the city while Dr. Eric Kent Clarke worked briefly as a psychiatrist in Toronto’s health department before emigrating to the United States; their physician brother, Harold, had emigrated previously. C.K. Clarke died of cardiovascular disease in 1924 and is buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto. In addition to his many passionate professional pursuits and publications, Clarke wrote prose, limericks and ornithological observations. He also played violin and cello and, in later years, he was one of the three non-professional players in the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Despite having lost two fingers in a hunting accident, he built boats, a house and a pipe organ. In 1890, with Dr. William Gage as a partner, he won the Canadian Doubles Tennis Championship. Clarke was commemorated as the namesake of the Toronto Psychiatric Hospital’s successor institution, the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, when it opened in 1966. The Clarke Institute merged with three other specialized mental health and addiction institutions in 1998, becoming the College Street Site of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. Selective 

Bibliography: 

bibliography: Charles Kirk Clarke: A Pioneer of Canadian Psychiatry by Cyril Greenland. University of Toronto Press for the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry, 1966. Dictionary of Canadian Biography, entry for C.K. Clarke by Ian R. Dowbiggin. forthcoming. Keeping America Sane: Psychiatry and Eugenics in the United States and Canada, 1880-1940 by Ian R. Dowbiggin. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997. “’Keeping This Young Country Sane’: C.K.Clarke, Immigration Restriction, and Canadian Psychiatry, 1890-1925”, by Ian R. Dowbiggin. The Canadian Historical Review, 76:4, December 1995. Our Own Master Race: Eugenics in Canada, 1885-1945, by Angus McLaren. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1998. Who’s Who in Canada, International Press Ltd., 1922. 

Picture
Links and information on Dr. Clarke

Immigration and other evils: A profile of Dr. C. K. Clarke and the eugenics movement in Canada

Biography of Dr. Clarke

http://www.biographi.ca/EN/009004-119.01-e.php?id_nbr=8077 
Web Site Hit Counter
Web Site Hit Counter

 ​© 2022 Home children canada
CONTACT US ​

info@BritishHomeCHILDREN.com
BHC Facebook Group
Subsribe to the BHC Newsletter
Picture