Annie MacPherson
Annie Parlane MacPherson (1833 – 27 November 1904) was a Scottish evangelical Quaker and philanthropist who founded Home Children, sending poor and orphaned children to Canada and other colonies. Biography. 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 East End of London in 1868 she opened the Home of Industry at 60 Commercial Road in Spitalfield. She influenced members of the  Scottish Christian Union, a temperance association of women, independent but affiliated to the British Women's Temperance Association, such as Mary White and Anne Bryson, who took her ideas back to influence women activists in Glasgow. In the 1870s, she organised for Home children to be sent to Canada from her home in London, and 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. In 1873 she established a home in Liverpool called "The Sheltering Home". MacPherson died in 1904.