Another fascinating nugget of Bermuda's complicated social history is explored in Jocelyn Motyer Raymond's recently published book, Saturday's Children. Few people realise that in the mid-1800s, English children were shipped to Bermuda from London's workhouses to work as indentured servants with Bermudian families.

The story of their unexpected turn of fate, brought movingly alive by their beautifully written letters home provides us with yet another angle on the contradictory mix of societal harshness and compassion which prevailed at that time.

Mrs. Raymond, a development psychologist by profession, stumbled almost by accident on Bermuda's participation in the emigration scheme some years ago, while reading for her Ph.D. Although she was to subsequently discover that local historian W.E.S. Zuill had, in fact, written an article about it in 1968, the story had sparked little interest. The horror stories surrounding such emigrations to other colonies, particularly Australia and Canada, had not yet surfaced and, in any case, the subject of child abuse was not the highly emotive issue then that it has become now.

But as the book's subtitle, `A Journey from Darkness into Light', suggests, the Bermuda experiment was actually a remarkable success. For anyone knowing anything about the workhouses of Victorian Britain, the reason for this is not difficult to fathom.

In her descriptions of life in these institutions, Mrs. Raymond, a former journalist with The Royal Gazette , evokes vividly the sense of despair engendered by a Draconian system which, as she says, "attacked poverty by attacking the poor''.

Economic and social chaos resulting from the Industrial Revolution brought former agricultural workers flooding into the towns. As Mrs. Raymond explains, the workhouses, although commendable as the first national experiments in institutional care, were "designed to be the last resource for those who had exhausted every possible effort to stay alive in the outside world''.

Bermudians may be surprised to learn that as slavery ended in Bermuda, English children were still being employed in the cruelest of occupations; chimney sweeps were forced higher up the sooty surfaces by the simple methods of burning straw beneath them or pricking their feet. In the mines, young girls on all fours, naked to the waist with iron chains fastened to belts between their legs, would haul tubs of coal for sometimes 16 hours a day.

Mrs. Raymond points out that, although the workhouse was a preferable fate, it was only marginally so. Personal freedom was a luxury denied to all who entered their doors, entire families were split up and, as she discovered, one girl, dead by the age of 15, had never set foot outside the workhouse.

Not surprisingly then, the children of the St. Pancras workhouse were delighted to be given the chance to go to an island called Bermuda.

Mrs. Raymond's story of how this was engineered by a Bermuda merchant, B.C.T.

Gray, through the London parish of St. Pancras makes compelling reading. The fact that all arrangements were made without obtaining permission of the Poor Law Board, or complying with maritime regulations regarding the children's passage, was to lead to furious rows in Britain's Parliament.

On Bermuda's part, Mrs. Raymond notes that the recruitment of the children, some 15 years after emancipation, when whites were already fearful of the increasing black population, was part of Bermuda's drive for European immigrants.

The Bermuda children, setting off on the James with Captain W.B. Burrows, were lucky to be on that vessel, for as Mrs. Raymond relates, they were "accommodated aboard ship in unaccustomed style, and their food was of a quantity and quality they had never seen in the workhouse''. Eventually, though, the captain had to answer for his actions at the ensuing inquiry into the British/Bermudian schemers who were considered to have taken the law into their own hands.

The first of three groups set sail for Bermuda in 1849, all having received the consent of their families, and kitted out with clothes, soap, a supply of stationery, some pocket money and, of course, the obligatory Bible.

Despite the generally poor conditions prevailing in the workhouses, the immigrant children had received education which, from the evidence of their letters home, suggests that a high standard in English had been achieved.

Mrs. Raymond points out that while the children were expected to work hard, Bermuda was a community where master worked alongside his servant and seems to have treated them well. One child, working for a Mr. Trimingham, was given his own sailboat, and young James Combley's master, Henry Tucker, even sent him back home on an all-expenses paid holiday to see his family.

Mrs. Raymond lists almost 50 people, the youngest being 10 years old, who made the three trips to Bermuda. More would have undoubtedly followed, had it not been for The Morning Chronicle reporting that Captain Burrows had been required to answer to London authorities for his failure to comply with the terms of the Passenger Act in transporting the children overseas.

Mrs. Raymond has meticulously researched the official inquiry which followed.

This found that although the directors of the St. Pancras workhouse had failed to meet the legal requirements for emigration, the children's welfare had obviously been improved by their removal to Bermuda. Their punishment was a strict warning not to repeat the experiment.

All in all, the emigration was declared by all to be "a rescue and a blessing''.

As Joycelyn Raymond concludes, although there was "flagrant disregard'' for two laws specifically designed to protect young emigrants, "in this particular instance the two wrongs seem to have made a right''.

PATRICIA CALNAN