They were told they were going somewhere better. Most never saw their families again.

In the 17th century, King James I began shipping orphaned and delinquent children across the ocean to the British colonies. The first group was a hundred street children, sent to Virginia as workers. They were the beginning of something far larger.

Through the Victorian era, the practice continued. Unaccompanied children were sent to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Zimbabwe. Many of them had been born in workhouses, or handed over to institutions after their parents fell on hard times. Some were orphans. Others still had mothers and fathers who never agreed to let them go, and in many cases never even knew they were leaving. The children themselves were given no choice.

Decades later, a social worker in Nottingham stumbled onto the scheme and opened a wound that had never properly closed. Her work became a search: helping traumatised adults find the parents they had been separated from as children.

In this program, we follow the story of the lost children of the empire, and the long, quiet effort to bring them home.