‘What Frightful Children!’: The Disobedient and the Unruly in British Overseas Child Migration, 1939–45

This article examines the movement of British evacuee children and adolescents to Dominion countries during the Second World War. While these evacuees were spared from exposure to the violence of war, such as the bombing of major British cities, their move to safety came with certain demands on their behaviour. These young evacuees were expected to act with ‘ambassadorial dignity’ in all ways; they were to be polite, courteous, chaste, law-abiding and, above all, grateful to their host family and the country that took them in. But acting with ambassadorial dignity was a task beyond what many evacuees were willing or able to carry out. Their failure – or refusal – to act as expected was often interpreted as a form of disobedience. This article uses case studies of evacuee children and adolescents to illuminate the many ways that disobedience was conceptualized by adults in charge of these evacuees. Specifically, this article focusses on sexual disobedience, evacuees who rejected the standards of chaste heterosexuality expected of them, and bodily disobedience, where overweight bodies of pubescent girls were seen to pose a threat to the future of the ‘British race’ as envisioned by adult administrators of this evacuation.