The publicity photographs show children smiling into the camera and waving from the decks of ocean liners bound for new homes thousands of miles away, but their subsequent stories tell of lonely, isolated and brutal childhoods that were a shattering consequence of Britain’s child migration schemes.

Between 1865 and 1970 an estimated 100,000 British children were sent to Canada, Australia and other Commonwealth countries as child migrants, some as young as four years old. These initiatives were run by a partnership of charities, religious organisations and governments, and claimed to offer boys and girls the opportunity of a better life in Britain’s Empire overseas. Most never saw their homes, or their families, again.

On Their Own: Britain’s child migrants will tell the heart-breaking true stories of child migrants and how the schemes changed their lives. In bringing this exhibition to a major London museum for the first time, the V&A Museum of Childhood will also explore the complex moral backdrop to these schemes.

The exhibition will feature detailed first-hand stories, photography and personal items which belonged to child migrants, in addition to video and audio packages which recount this period of history. More than a million people in Canada alone are believed to be descendants of child migrants, and about 2,000 former British child migrants are still alive today across all the Commonwealth countries involved.