The History of Oriental Home (1888-1942)

Abstract

Long before 1888, when the Woman’s Missionary Society (WMS) of the Methodist Church established the Chinese Girls’ Rescue Home (later renamed Oriental Home) in Victoria, British Columbia, child prostitution existed as a “Chinese Problem” in local Chinatowns. In the late nineteenth century, child prostitutes were in great demand for the “flesh trade” that thrived in North American Chinatowns. At the time, Chinese immigrants were discouraged from bringing their wives and families to North America. This created a great demand for child prostitutes to be brought from China to North America. Consequently, human trafficking of these “Chinese slave girls” or “yellow slaves” plagued cities along the west coast, notably San Francisco, California, in the United States up to Victoria, British Columbia, in Canada. When the founder of Oriental Home, John Endicott Vrooman Gardner (1863-1943), came to Victoria from San Francisco, he saw the plight of child prostitutes, rescued them, and arranged for them to stay at the Chinese Girls’ Home under the auspices of the WMS. These Chinese girls at the Home were eventually joined by Japanese children and women whom the matron, Miss Kate Morgan, began to take in for safekeeping and education. Later, the Home residents also included Japanese “picture brides” who experienced marital problems with their husbands with whom they had been matched for arranged marriages after having only exchanged photographs. To reflect this broader undertaking, the Chinese Girls’ Home was renamed Oriental Home in 1909. The Home came under the auspices of the United Church of Canada when Methodists merged