Many of the charitable workers in British slums were evangelical protestants who advocated emigration to improve the spiritual as well as the physical health of their wards.
The cover of the 1913 biography of Annie Macpherson, a Quaker pioneer in the juvenile emigration work, portrays her in the Biblical garb of the Mother Mary pointing the way for children in Edwardian clothing west toward the setting sun in Canada. It was upon Macpherson's urging that other British evangelical protestant children's institutions began to experiment with juvenile emigration. Branches of her own home were located at Belleville, Galt and Stratford, Ontario, and in Spitalfields and Bethnel Green, East London, England. Her sister, Louisa Birt, founded the Liverpool Sheltering Home particularly to aid the orphans and widows of sailors. The Canadian branch of the Sheltering Home was in Knowlton, Quebec.
