Kingsley Fairbridge

Kingsley Fairbridge

Kingsley Ogilvie Fairbridge (5 May 1885 – 19 July 1924) was the founder of a child emigration scheme to British colonies and the Fairbridge Schools. His life work was the founding of the "Society for the Furtherance of Child Emigration to the Colonies", which was afterwards incorporated as the "Child Emigration Society" and ultimately the "Fairbridge Society".

Fairbridge was born in Grahamstown, South Africa, and educated at St Andrew's College, Grahamstown, until the age of 11, when the family moved to Rhodesia. His father was a surveyor in Umtali (the present day Mutare, Zimbabwe). He had no further schooling until he prepared to enter Oxford University in 1908 at the age of 23. At 13 he became a clerk in the Standard Bank of South Africa at Umtali, and two years later tried to enlist for the Boer War, failing because of malaria, which he had contracted in Mashonaland. Fairbridge then took up market gardening and early in 1903 visited his grandmother in England for about 12 months. The visit deeply affected him, as he observed the contrast of malnourished and impoverished children living in the London slums with the under-populated open spaces of Rhodesia.

On his return to Africa, Fairbridge worked for two and a half years for a Mr Freeman who was recruiting locals to work in gold mines near Johannesburg. During this time Fairbridge started developing the idea of a scheme to bring poor children from London to South Africa where they could be trained as farmers.

Fairbridge applied to the Rhodes trustees for a scholarship, feeling that once in England he would find ways of developing his scheme. He was informed by the Rhodes trustees that if he passed the Oxford entrance examination his application would be favourably considered, and in 1906 he went to England to be privately coached. After his fourth attempt, he succeeded in passing the required examination. In October 1908 Fairbridge entered Exeter College, Oxford, with a Rhodes Scholarship. In 1909 he published an anthology of poetry entitled Veld Verse and Other Lines. He began to write on child emigration until he was advised by a friend that speaking would be more effective. Fairbridge was rebuffed by the British South Africa Company, which informed him that they considered Rhodesia too young a country in which to start child emigration. The Premier of Newfoundland, however, provided support for the concept.

On 19 October 1909, Fairbridge addressed a meeting of 49 fellow undergraduates at the Colonial Club at Oxford, and at the end of the meeting a motion was carried that those present should form themselves into a society for the furtherance of child emigration to the colonies. They formed the "Society for the Furtherance of Child Emigration to the Colonies", which later became the Fairbridge Society. The next two years were spent trying to interest people in the project and raising funds. He obtained a diploma in forestry in 1911, and in December of that year married a former nurse, Ruby Ethel Whitmore, who had been encouraging and helping him for some time.