A THEMATIC HERITAGE STUDY ON AUSTRALIA’S BENEVOLENT AND OTHER CARE INSTITUTIONS Thematic Study

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© Copyright Commonwealth of Australia, 2016 The Commonwealth of Australia has made all reasonable efforts to identify content supplied by third parties using the following format ‘© Copyright, [name of third party]’

Disclaimer The views and opinions expressed in this publication are A Thematic Heritage Study on Australia’s Benevolent and those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those Other Care Institutions – Thematic Study is licensed by of the Australian Government or the Minister for the the Commonwealth of Australia for use under a Creative Environment and Energy. Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence with the While reasonable efforts have been made to ensure that exception of the Coat of Arms of the Commonwealth the contents of this publication are factually correct, the of Australia, the logo of the agency responsible for Commonwealth does not accept responsibility for the publishing the report, content supplied by third parties, accuracy or completeness of the contents, and shall not and any images depicting people. For licence conditions be liable for any loss or damage that may be occasioned see: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ directly or indirectly through the use of, or reliance on, the This report should be attributed as “A Thematic contents of this publication. Heritage Study on Australia’s Benevolent and Other Front cover Care Institutions – Thematic Study, Commonwealth of Group of Dr. Barnado children in uniform. Sam Hood Collection Australia, 2016” Part II. Digital Order No. a220015. Courtesy of the State Library of New South Wales. Acknowledgements | Thematic Study iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Australian Government Department of the Environment This report has been produced with funding provided by the Australian Government.

Australian Heritage Council This report has been produced for the purpose of assisting the Australian Heritage Council in its work to assess places for inclusion in Australia’s National Heritage List.

Context Pty Ltd The work to produce the contents of this report was undertaken by Context Pty Ltd. The project team produced the thematic heritage study in accordance with a scoping brief provided by the Australian Government.

Project team members include:

Louise Honman

Dr Georgia Melville

Jill Barnard – author, history essay

Dr Anita Smith – advisor

INFORMATION

If you have found material in this heritage study distressing because of your past connections with benevolent institutions assistance can be found by contacting one of these services Respect 1800 737 732 or Blue Knot Helpline (Adults Surviving Child Abuse) on 1300 657 380. iv Foreword | Thematic Study

FOREWORD

he Australian Heritage Council is pleased During the early colonial period in Australia, a system to publish this thematic study for places of care was informed by British attitudes and shaped associated with Australia’s welfare heritage. by a concern that limited resources should not be given to those who were able bodied or ‘undeserving’. TUnlike places which have heritage value because In eighteenth century Britain every ‘decent’ man was of their architectural or scientific characteristics, places expected to provide for himself and his family. which include benevolent or other care institutions are expected to be valued because of their human stories A system of qualification for assistance according to and their consequential impact both on individuals and on whether a person was ‘deserving’ or ‘un-deserving’ families and wider communities. began to shift in response to the challenges faced by colonial authorities. The harsh realities of a remote colony This study has informed the Council’s consideration of the meant that, in practice, the needs of the population as heritage value of benevolent institutions and the setting of a whole needed to be taken into consideration as the the Council’s workplan for assessing places for possible colony faced starvation, extreme remoteness and a lack inclusion on the National Heritage List. of social and built infrastructure.

The study of benevolent and other care institutions in the The social impact of the economic depressions of the context of Australia’s welfare history is a complex story. 1890s and the 1930s caused another shift in approach. It reveals a past that presents the best and worst of us. Both public and private systems of care were clearly There are positive stories of well-intentioned assistance overwhelmed by the impacts of economic depression. and other stories that are more confronting. The history Governments began to provide financial support directly does, however, reflect our society’s recognition of the to individuals. need to protect and provide for the vulnerable and disadvantaged. These changes were also informed by other political and social reform movements. In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century Australia was recognised worldwide as a social laboratory working towards the adoption of new social ideas such as the introduction of the aged pension, female suffrage and the eight hour day.

Looking back on history we can see more clearly the mistakes that have been made. Our understanding of the causes of disadvantage has also developed. A clear example of this is our improved understanding of mental health and illness. Recent national apologies to the Forgotten Australians and former child migrants and Australia’s Indigenous peoples has also provided recognition of past trauma and damaging or misapplied policies.

A Thematic Heritage Study on Australia’s Benevolent and Other Care Institutions is a first step towards providing a better understanding of the heritage of places associated with this theme.

Dr Carmen Lawrence Chair, Australian Heritage Council

June 2016 Contents | Thematic Study v

CONTENTS

Introduction 1 Concluding remarks 45 Course and pattern of National threads and voices 46 welfare history 7 Reflections 48 Next steps 49 1788–1850 Convict era 8 Ideas, attitudes and beliefs 8 Bibliography 51 Major trends and influences of Books 52 the period 8 Articles 53 Recipients of welfare 9 ADB entries 53 Providers of welfare 12 Papers 53 1850–1890 Charity and asylums 15 Theses 53 Ideas, attitudes and beliefs 15 Journals 53 Major trends and influences of the period 15 Reports 53 Recipients of welfare 16 Websites and databases 53 Providers of welfare 24 Appendixes 55 1890–1940 Depression and war and the beginnings of Commonwealth Appendix 1 56 welfare provision 26 Thresholds and Indicators

Major trends and influences Appendix 2 69 of the period 26 Places referred to in the text Ideas, attitudes and beliefs 27 Recipients of welfare 27 Appendix 3 73 Providers of welfare 32 National Thematic Framework

1940–1972 Post-World War II and the role of the state in social security 34 Ideas, attitudes and beliefs 34 Major trends and influences of the period 35 Recipients of welfare 35 Providers of welfare 39

1972–2001 New movements 40 Attitudes, ideas and beliefs 40 Major trends and influences of the period 41 Recipients of welfare 41 Providers of welfare 43 Portable hospital, Evans, c.1803. Courtesy of the State Library of NSW. Digital Order no. a1528462

In the early years of the convict settlements in NSW and Tasmania, there was little distinction in terms of welfare between convicts and the free settlers who arrived as marines, gaolers and civil servants. INTRODUCTION 2 Introduction | Thematic Study

INTRODUCTION

he Department of the Environment has In order to structure the essay, a framework grid was commissioned a thematic heritage study established (see Table 1 page 3–5). For each chronological focusing on the topic of benevolent and other period, the historical context, ideas about how welfare Tcare institutions. This topic is part of a wider was provided, the main recipients and providers, the thematic group called Nation Building which seeks to experience of welfare and a typology of places was provide an understanding of Australia’s heritage in provided. This has proved to be a useful tool, but also relation to historic processes which have helped shape highlights the limitations of trying to place society’s major and define our system of governance, public and welfare shifts and changes in a chronological setting when private institutions and other distinctively Australian the major ideas were often competing and overlapping. national characteristics.

The thematic essay is presented within the context of broad events and movements at national, colony and state level in Australia from1788–2001. Convict populations, gold rush immigration, economic depressions and war impacted on prevailing philosophies about welfare and the types of welfare services extended to the Australian population. The essay is organised into broad chronological periods in which prevailing ideas about welfare are examined, along with the impact these ideas had on the sorts of care offered to particular groups within Australian society.

10.18% 14.7%

25.96% 19.3%

8.1% 21.75%

Thematic composition of the National Heritage List

NATIONAL HERITAGE LIST

Ancient Country Forgotten Australians enter the Great Hall, Parliament House, 2009. Photo credit: George Serras, courtesy of Island of Natural Diversity the National Museum of Australia

Peopling the Land

Understanding and Shaping the Land

Building a Nation

Living as Australians

Places within the sub-theme of benevolent and other care institutions are not well represented Table 1. Thematic framework grid for history essay

PERIOD PERIOD PERIOD PERIOD PERIOD

1788–1850 1850–1890 1890–1940 1940–1972 1972–2001

Aboriginal society Gold rushes Depressions of 1890s World War II Whitlam Government disrupted by and 1930s reforms (including single non-Aboriginal people Victoria separates Post-war migration parents’ benefit, Australian from NSW First World War Assistance Plan) Introduction of welfare Economic stability and approaches for Aboriginal Queensland separates Federation–some welfare growth Women’s rights movement people e.g. Aboriginal from NSW responsibilities transfer Rising education levels ‘protectors’, missionaries to the Commonwealth Self-help movement End of convict Government Commonwealth child Convict transportation to transportation (1868) Aboriginal rights movement endowment (1941), NSW (1788–1841), Van Infant welfare movement Land settlement, widows’ pensions (1942), Legislation regarding child Diemen’s Land (1803–1853) pastoralism and agriculture ‘Harvester Judgement’ unemployment and protection Queensland (1824–1839) minimum wage 1907 sickness benefits (1945) Growth of manufacturing, convict settlement; ‘free’ economic prosperity, rise Aged pensions 1908 settlers from 1838 of labour movement HISTORICAL CONTEXT HISTORICAL 1835 Port Phillip District Population growth Victoria settled; Government representatives from 1836 Growth of cities and regional mining towns 1836 South Australian colony established with direct immigration from UK Introduction | Thematic Study 3 4 Introduction | Thematic Study

PERIOD PERIOD PERIOD PERIOD PERIOD

1788–1850 1850–1890 1890–1940 1940–1972 1972–2001 Deserving and undeserving Legislation in all colonies Depressions and wars Widening definitions Greater emphasis on poor regarding destitute children/ place strain on providers of of ‘neglected’ child as support within community differing approaches to services standards in the wider Rejection of the Poor providing society rise De-institutionalisation Law concept for them (introduction Changes in provision of Emphasis on family support of the concept of welfare during 1890s Changing views on Care in Barracks ‘State Ward’) depression appropriate care for those in need of welfare – Assistance in the form Child rescue movement Efforts to support men/ expression of these changes of money, food, clothing from the 1880s widows/families, including in services/institutions or goods returned servicemen, Move towards boarding by settling on the land De-segregation of services out of destitute children in for the disabled some colonies Introduction of legal adoption in all states from Growing awareness of Legislation to separate the 1890s psychological and emotional destitute and delinquent deprivation in institutions children Figures: Oswald Barnett, Father Gerard Tucker Some states redefine Figures: Caroline Chisholm, neglected children as ‘in Rev. Charles Strong, Selina need of care and protection’

SIGNIFICANT CHANGES TO IDEAS/REFORMS TO SIGNIFICANT CHANGES Sutherland, Catherine Spence Figures: E Cunningham Dax PREVAILING IDEAS OF HOW TO PROVIDE WELFARE. WELFARE. PROVIDE TO HOW OF IDEAS PREVAILING

Aged Aged Unemployed Children Recipients of welfare

Infirm Mentally ill Homeless Single parents

Destitute Orphan and destitute Elderly poor Aboriginal people children Orphans Children Disabled Delinquent children Children not seen initially Destitute Mothers as a group needing to be ‘Fallen’ women accommodated separately Aboriginal people Aboriginal people Provision (or lack of) for (in some colonies) newly-arrived assisted and RECIPIENTS OF WELFARE OF RECIPIENTS non-assisted immigrants Immigrants ‘Deserving’ poor PERIOD PERIOD PERIOD PERIOD PERIOD

1788–1850 1850–1890 1890–1940 1940–1972 1972–2001 Government provides for Government subsidisation Expansion in the number of Increased dependence Government and private convict ‘welfare’ of private/charitable agencies assisting people in by governments on bodies providers of welfare the 1930s depression voluntary agencies to Control of girls and women supply services Religious providers New approaches to Ideas about government– of services assisting families in provided versus charitable poverty, e.g. advocacy provision of welfare Child rescuers (rejection of the Poor Government relief agencies/ Law concept) Mutual aid societies/ municipal relief agencies self-help Growth of non-convict/ Some states support ex-convict populations Women as providers widowed parents to keep of services their children at home Discernment of need to with them PROVIDERS OF WELFARE OF PROVIDERS provide charity by religious/ philanthropic organisations Figures: Brotherhood of (Benevolent Society NSW St Laurence, Oswald established 1813) Barnett, Legacy

Incarceration and work Institutionalisation Places of refuge, relief Greater community Targeted welfare and work and charity integration of services assistance and payments THE EXPERIENCE OF WELFARE WELFARE OF

• Factories • Female refuges The rise of the babies’ Often intangible, and Often intangible, and home difficult to attribute to difficult to attribute to • Outdoor relief • Benevolent asylums specific heritage places specific heritage places Institutionalised • Barracks • Immigration depots/ congregate care • Cottage homes • Welfare benefits Introduction | Thematic Study shelters • Gaols (before other • Women’s refuges • Family group homes • Public housing institutions were available) • Lunatic asylums • Soup kitchens • Single mothers’ shelters • Refuges for victims of • Missions • Orphanages domestic violence • Free kindergartens • Missions • Industrial schools

DURING THE PERIOD • Homeless shelters • Reformatories

WITH WELFARE PROVISION PROVISION WITH WELFARE • Missions TYPES OF PLACES ASSOCIATED ASSOCIATED PLACES TYPES OF • Missions 5 In keeping with the broad framework for this history the course and pattern of welfare provision in Australia is discussed over five main periods. To assist the reader the discussion in each period has been arranged under common topics which include ideas, attitudes and beliefs, major trends and influences, recipients and providers. A short period summary is also included at the end of each main period.

Image caption will go here Gold Rush, Gulgong c. 1875. Courtesy of the State Library of NSW. Digital Order No a2823022 COURSE AND PATTERN OF WELFARE HISTORY 8 Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study

1788–1850 CONVICT ERA

Ideas, attitudes and beliefs Major trends and influences of the period or at least 60 000 years, Aboriginal Australians have lived in Australia occupying a range of In the early eighteenth century further legislation allowed geographical contexts, from deserts to coastal the establishment of workhouses – institutions that fringes to rain forests, sustaining themselves literally incarcerated the poor, including children, putting F them to work in rigid, basic and demeaning surroundings. through a complex relationship with their ‘country’ and organised into nations, clans and smaller kinship The poor were separated from family members and groups with strong ties to this ‘country’. While each offered only basic sustenance. The legislation that group had responsibility to care for the country they established these workhouses aimed to make access to occupied, they also regarded the country itself as the assistance extremely undesirable for ‘able-bodied’ people source of cultural and spiritual as well as material life. whose labour could be profitably used by an employer. Resource-wise, Aboriginal people were, for the most There was little room for understanding the causes of part, locally self-sufficient. While some commodities, poverty in society. Individuals were regarded as frequently such as greenstone, were traded, most Aboriginal bringing destitution on themselves through their own groups or clans were able to provide for their material behaviour. Further British legislation in 1834, at the time needs for food, shelter, tools and weapons through that many of the Australian colonies were being settled, adaptation and use of the resources of their local abolished outdoor relief making the workhouse the only area.1 Aboriginal society was organised into clans with source of relief for the poor, apart from that provided by specific roles within those groups related to sourcing, charitable societies. It was thought that if the workhouse hunting, gathering and preparing food, as well as was the only alternative to gainful employment, only caring for children and the elderly. those who were truly desperate for help would accept the workhouse conditions.2 In contrast with this way of life, the British and other mainly European people who settled in Australia from Outdoor relief, it was argued, encouraged the able- 1788 came from societies that were hierarchically bodied to rely on poor relief rather than to work for organised. Wealth was derived from private ownership of wages, creating a class of ‘paupers’. The Poor Laws property, particularly land, and the bulk of the population were resented by those who were charged rates for were expected to support themselves through their the maintenance of the poor and who feared that labour either on the land or, increasingly from the late offering assistance to the poor would undermine their eighteenth century, in industrial enterprises. British laws preparedness to work and by the poor themselves who 3 had long recognised the obligation to assist people who saw the workhouses as places of fear and contempt. genuinely could not support themselves through their The Poor Laws were not formally repealed in Britain 4 own labour. From the beginning of the seventeenth until 1948. Although the Poor Laws were not replicated century, the primary responsibility for this support was as legislation in the Australian colonies, they cast their legally placed with relatives. However, over centuries shadow over the ways in which welfare was provided a system of parish support for the poor, raised through in the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century, rates collected within each parish, had developed via a influencing attitudes to the provision of welfare for those series of laws known collectively as the Poor Laws. The in need and the ways in which this welfare was delivered. Poor Laws bound the people of a parish to support those In particular, the fear that ‘undeserving’ people would take people in desperate straits, by offering ‘outdoor’ relief, advantage of government or privately funded relief was such as food, clothing or shelter or through the provision a dominant feature of schemes for the relief of the poor of institutions known as ‘poor houses’. in the Australian colonies in the early years of settlement and beyond in the nineteenth century. Yet it was tempered by the necessity to make some provisions for those in need of assistance in frontier societies.

2 http://www.workhouses.org.uk/poorlaws/oldpoorlaw.shtml 3 John Murphy, A Decent Provision, Australian Welfare Policy 1870–1949, Ashgate, Surrey, 2011. 4 The National Assistance Act 1948 superseded the existing 1 Peter Read, ‘Aborigines’, in Davison, G, Hirst, J and Poor Law. National Assistance Act 1948 (UK). http://www. MacIntyre, S (eds) The Oxford Companion to Australian legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1948/29/pdfs/ukpga_19480029_ History, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1998, p. 13. en.pdf Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study 9

The foundations of European settlement in what became to the detriment of the welfare of the Indigenous the six Australian states took place between the years residents of Tasmania.5 Free settlers outnumbered 1788 and 1840. The first colonies established – New convicts in Van Diemen’s Land in 1814 when a majority South Wales in 1788 and Van Diemen’s Land (later of the European residents were being fed from the Tasmania) in 1803 – operated as penal colonies governed government store.6 Yet this ‘outdoor’ relief was not freely by a Governor representing the British Government. given to non-convicts. Applicants for rations had to be Queensland’s first European settlement at Moreton recommended by a magistrate as being in need. As the Bay was as an outpost of New South Wales. It was settlement in New South Wales began to succeed, there a secondary convict settlement from 1826 until 1842 was still a need for some distribution of rations to free when the convicts were withdrawn from the Moreton settlers or emancipated convicts. Governor Macquarie Bay settlement and free settlers invited in. Western wrote in 1812 that he ‘would not see Her Majesty’s Australia’s first European settlement was a colony in subjects starve or perish for want of a house on the its own right when it was established under Governor shores of New Holland’.7 James Stirling in 1829. The Swan River Colony was not based on convict transportation, but used a generous system of land grants, based on the number of servants settlers brought with them to the colony, to encourage free settlers and to build up a workforce for them. These grants were abolished a few years later and, in 1850, just as the transportation of convicts to the eastern Australian colonies had finally ceased, Western Australia began to accept convicts from Britain, to serve as a cheap workforce until 1868. South Australia was also established as a province (and from 1842 a colony) of free settlers, under the shared administration of the British- appointed Governor and the South Australian Colonising Commission. Unlike the earlier colonies, which had used land grants to settle people on the land, in South Australia it was planned that land would be sold to those with the capital to buy it. The proceeds of land sales in the colony would be used to finance the immigration of free labourers, selected by the South Australian Commission’s agent, to work on this land. Victoria, then called the Port Phillip District, was the only Australian colony in which the British Government or its representatives had no hand in the initiation of European settlement. The first settlers to encroach upon Port Phillip in the 1830s were explorers from Van Diemen’s Land, eager to search out fresh pastures on which they could make their fortunes. It took little time, however, after the first of these men landed in Melbourne, for the Governor of New South Wales to send a representative, along with land surveyors and a contingent of convict workers, to oversee the settlement on Port Phillip Bay. The Port Phillip District would remain part of the colony of New South Wales until 1851.

Portrait of Edward Smith Hall founder of the Benevolent Recipients of welfare Society in NSW. Courtesy of the National Library of Australia, nla.pic-an2310341 In the early years of the convict settlements in NSW and Tasmania, there was little distinction in terms of welfare between convicts and the free settlers who arrived as 5 Ros Haynes ‘Van Diemen’s Land’, in Alexander, A (ed), The marines, gaolers and civil servants. Of necessity the Companion to Tasmanian History, University of Tasmania, government had to provide for the survival of all from Hobart, http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_ the government stores. In NSW, faced with severe food tasmanian_history/V/VDL.htm shortages in the very early years of settlement, Governor Arthur Phillip reduced everyone’s rations to ensure the 6 Joan C Brown, Poverty is Not a Crime, The Development of Social Services in Tasmania, 1803–1900, Tasmanian Historical survival of the society. Similarly, the first British settlers Research Association, Hobart, 1972, p. 6. (including convicts) in Van Diemen’s Land faced starvation and Lieutenant-Governor Collins’s solution was to issue 7 Quoted in Brian Dickey, No Charity There A Short History of guns to everyone – convicts included – to hunt kangaroos, Social Welfare in Australia, Allen and Unwin, North Sydney, 1990, p. 12. 10 Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study

Convicts in both NSW and Tasmania were used as work while boy convicts were accommodated with men in gangs to help build essential infrastructure such as roads the convict barracks in Hobart. There was concern that and public buildings. From 1810, in NSW at least, they were these children might be ‘morally destroyed’ in these increasingly assigned as servants to free or emancipated environments.11 These sorts of children, along with landholders. They provided a ready supply of labour, as did those who mothers were convicts or those who were the immigrants who began to arrive in NSW from 1810. For fatherless, were admitted to the King’s Orphan Schools. female convicts who had not been assigned as servants, Boys were amongst the convicts transported to Van were between assignments, were pregnant, or were to Diemen’s Land. In 1834, concerned at the at the fate be punished for misdemeanours, ‘female factories’ were of these young boys being incarcerated with hardened established in both NSW and Van Diemen’s Land. Known criminals and finding it difficult to assign them as as factories because the women worked within them, servants, Governor Arthur approved the establishment they also provided accommodation for women and girls of the Point Puer Reformatory in buildings converted and sometimes their children. Though the female factories for that purpose at Port Arthur. Here the convict boys were instruments of control over the women incarcerated received some education, some trade training (through within them, they also offered a refuge of sorts for women working to help build the establishment) and religious as well as a home for their children and served as ‘lying-in’ instruction intended to ‘reform’ them and prepare them (maternity) hospitals for convict and poor women. Eleven to be assigned to employers when old enough.12 Point female factories were established in NSW, Van Diemen’s Puer was only the second juvenile prison established in Land and Moreton Bay (Queensland). The first of these, the world and, while ‘strict discipline was enforced’; the the Parramatta Female Factory, had originally been housed boys were regarded as ‘objects of compassion’.13 In 1844 in a room above the Parramatta Gaol. In 1818 work began a new building at Parramatta opened as a Roman Catholic on a purpose-built female factory at Parramatta. This would orphanage school, with some Catholic children who house women and children until 1848, when it became had been cared for in temporary premises transferred a lunatic asylum.8 In Van Diemen’s Land in 1827, a former to this site. While a lay matron ran the orphan school at distillery formed the nucleus for the Cascades Female first there were Sisters of Charity on the staff. In 1859 Factory. It served this purpose until 1856, when it became the Sisters of the Good Shepherd (the first Australian a prison for women. It then went on to serve a variety of Order of Catholic religious sisters who would become purposes including as an invalid asylum for chronically ill known as the Sisters of the Good Samaritan) took over men and women, and as the site of the Anglican-operated the orphanage and conducted it until 1886, when it House of Mercy for prostitutes and single mothers became a government girls’ industrial school. This Catholic between 1891 and 1904.9 orphan asylum initiated a pattern, replicated later in the nineteenth century in the other Australian colonies, Children in which the desire to provide for the education and upbringing of Catholic children in their own faith led the The impetus to control the behaviour of women and Catholic hierarchy in each diocese to establish a parallel girls also lay behind the opening of the first orphanage system of institutionalised care for children, frequently, in Australia. Phillip Gidley King, appointed as Governor of but not always, partially funded by the state. Catholics NSW in 1800, was horrified by the ‘many girls between perceived government or Protestant-run orphanages as the ages of eight and twelve, verging on the brink of threats to the faith of Catholic children. ruin and prostitution’.10 Together with his wife, Anna, and Anglican chaplains to the colony he opened the Female Immigrants Orphans Asylum in Sydney in 1801. It was not until 1819 that Governor Macquarie established a boys’ orphanage Immigrants formed another group who were often in in NSW, while in Van Diemen’s Land, the King’s Orphan need of assistance in early colonial society. From 1793 Schools for orphaned and delinquent children opened ‘free’ immigrants began arriving alongside convicts to in 1828. Governor Arthur, in investigating the need for New South Wales. In Van Diemen’s Land, land grants orphan schools, was concerned to cater for destitute were offered to encourage immigrants to the colony, children and those from ‘large’ families whose parents though these were suspended in 1831. The transportation were unable to support them. There was also concern of convicts to these colonies did not cease until 1840 to separate children from parents or from circumstances and 1853 respectively. ‘Assisted’ immigration was used likely to lead them into lives of immorality and perhaps from the 1830s to augment the workforce in New South crime. Before the orphan schools opened many children Wales and the British Government instituted a scheme were housed with their mothers in female factories, in the same decade to transport impoverished single women and working men and their families to the colonies, as well as military pensioners to Van Diemen’s 8 Australian Department of the Environment, Australian Land. By 1830 most of the viable land in Van Diemen’s Heritage Database, http://www.environment.gov.au/cgi- ;place_id=106234 11 Brown, p. 23. 9 ibid., http://www.environment.gov.au/cgi- place_id=105932 12 Brown, p. 25. 10 Stephen Garton, Out of Luck, Poor Australians and Social Welfare, 1788–1988, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1990, p. 19. 13 Brown, p, 24. Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study 11

Land had been taken up as grants and there were few From the 1830s colonial governments attempted to opportunities for newcomers with little capital to establish correct the gender imbalance of the colonial populations themselves on the land.14 The immigrants who arrived in by assisting single female immigrants, some of them Van Diemen’s Land during the 1830s had to compete with orphaned and still quite young, to migrate to Australia.15 assigned convicts for employment. With the removal of These ‘boatloads’ of women were not always welcomed. the system of land grants in New South Wales it became Prospective employers were mainly interested in sourcing difficult there too, for those without capital to acquire single men, without families, to work on pastoral stations. land. At the same time, the proceeds from the new sales Single women, arriving without husbands or fathers, were of land were used to fund assisted immigration to the regarded as both ‘vulnerable’ and ‘uncontrolled’.16 colony. Assisted immigrants often came from the poorer classes of British society, arriving in the colonies with few The first European arrivals at the Swan River settlement material resources and no family networks to assist them. in Western Australia were offered generous grants of While immigrant barracks were provided for government- land – 200 acres for every indentured servant over the assisted immigrants who arrived in New South Wales age of ten that they brought with them to the colony. and tents for those who arrived in the Port Phillip These employers were required to feed and maintain District, immigrants were discouraged from remaining their employees and Governor Stirling reinforced in the barracks for longer than a month after their arrival. the responsibilities of employers through a series of Bounty immigrants, whose passages were paid for by proclamations about the obligations of masters and prospective employers in New South Wales and Port servants. The regulations, however, did not allow for Phillip, were not allowed in the barracks, but were able the possibility of landowners being unsuccessful to stay aboard the vessels on which they had travelled to in farming on unsuitable soil, taking some years to Australia for ten days. After that, whether employed or establish themselves or simply releasing their servants not, they were forced to leave the ship. Many immigrants from their indentures. The Governor was soon required in the late 1830s and 1840s therefore found themselves to take measures to assist unemployed and destitute 17 homeless and penniless in a new land. Single female servants. Unemployed male immigrants were offered immigrants and families with young children could be government work, building roads and public buildings, especially vulnerable. in return for rations. Those unable to work were offered rations from the government store, if they could prove with a certificate from the ‘Government Resident’ that they were genuinely in need.18 Although there was no attempt to provide ‘indoor’ relief for the destitute until 1840, when Governor Hutt rented premises as a ‘hospital for the destitute sick’, Governor Stirling hinted in 1831 that he would open up the town of Guildford on the Swan River where ‘discharged servants could each obtain four or five acres of good land and the advantage of mutual assistance’.19 By 1841 Governor Hutt had purchased premises as an immigrant home for those who were not indentured to employers.20

The British Government insisted that the South Australian Colonising Commission take steps to ensure the welfare of early immigrants to South Australia by appointing an Emigration Agent to not only ensure the immigrants’ welfare was safeguarded on the journey to South Australia, but also to provide accommodation on their arrival in the colony, give them advice and assistance in

15 Patricia Grimshaw, Marilyn Lake, Ann McGrath and Marian Quartly, Creating a Nation, 1788–1990, McPhee Gribble Convict [Hyde Park] Barracks, Sydney. New South Wales Publications, Ringwood, 1994, p. 86. c. 1820. Courtesy of State Library of New South Wales. 16 ibid., p. 87. Digital Order No a1120005. 17 Penelope Hetherington, Paupers, Poor Relief and Poor Houses in Western Australia, 1829–1910, University of Western Australia Publishing, Crawley, 2009, pp. 2–3. 18 ibid., p. 10. 14 Shayne Breen, ‘Class’ in Land’ in Alexander, A (ed), The 19 ibid., p. 6. Whether this actually came to fruition has not Companion to Tasmanian History, University of Tasmania, been established yet. Hobart, http://www.utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_ tasmanian_history/C/Class.htm 20 ibid., p. 17. 12 Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study

finding employment or, if they could find none, provide Kintore Avenue, where a number of other institutions work for them. He was also to provide rations and for the destitute would later be established and he shelter for immigrants who were sick or destitute on established a mission station in Adelaide on the north side arrival in the colony and to continue this for immigrants of the River Torrens.24 George Augustus Robinson was who could not find employment or rely on relatives and appointed Chief Protector in the Port Phillip District, along friends to support themselves and their families.21 The with four Assistant Protectors of Aborigines. Protectors Emigration Agent was soon providing temporary shelter established stations based in different locations around for immigrant families in parklands in Adelaide, as well as the Port Phillip District, often moving with the local groups distributing ‘outdoor’ relief to destitute immigrants.22 A with whom they were working, establishing schools, symbol of the hardship that immigrants to South Australia learning their languages and representing them in court. experienced in the early decade was the fact that when They also offered food and clothing to the Aboriginal the colonial government moved to replace much of people within their protectorate. Although it had been the work of the Emigration Agent with a committee, it established by the British Government, the Victorian became known as the Destitute Board. protectorate was abandoned by the New South Wales Government in 1849.25 However, William Thomas, one of Aboriginal Australians the four Assistant Protectors remained as Guardian of the Aborigines in Victoria from 1850, appointed to that position Frontier conflict over resources, disease introduced by by Lieutenant-Governor La Trobe. The protectors’ positions European settlers and settlers’ misunderstanding of in South Australia and Western Australia were abolished in Aboriginal ways of life and the meaning of ‘country’ to the 1850s (though revived later in the nineteenth century).26 Aboriginal people did much to disrupt Aboriginal ways of The British Select Committee was also of the view that life in the districts into which Europeans moved in the first missionaries should be encouraged to Christianise and 40 years after 1788. Actions to ‘help’ Aboriginal people, civilise Aboriginal people. Some Lutheran missions, though sometimes well-intentioned, were misguided, along with an Anglican Native Training Institution, were often aiming to ‘civilise’, Christianise and ostensibly established in South Australia in the 1840s.27 ‘protect’ them. Governor Macquarie, Governor of NSW from 1809 to 1821, established a school for native children in 1814 for the ‘civilisation and education of the Providers of welfare natives’. A small number of Christian missions in New South Wales and Western Australia were very short lived. Government institutions In Van Diemen’s Land, where relations between Aboriginal people and white settlers had deteriorated to the point In the foundation years of the Australian colonies care where martial law was declared in 1828, Governor Arthur was primarily provided by government. This was partially appointed George Augustus Robinson as a ‘conciliator’. as a result of the fact that, as administrators of penal Robinson managed to persuade 134 Tasmanian Aborigines settlements, the Governors of NSW and Van Diemen’s to accompany him to Flinders Island where he established Land wielded great control, and, as the colonies were the Aboriginal settlement, Wybalenna, in 1834. Many administered as outposts of the British Government, of this group died on Flinders Island and in 1847 the the British Government was responsible for funding the remaining 47 were transferred to Oyster Cove, on the fledgling settlements. Although it had been traditional for Tasmanian mainland.23 private and faith based philanthropists to offer charity in Britain, for many years as the early settlements struggled A British Parliamentary Select Committee inquiry into to survive, there were not sufficient numbers of middle Aboriginal Tribes in British settlements abhorred the or upper class people to serve as committee members treatment meted out to Aboriginal people in the Australian of benevolent societies. There were some women, such colonies in the late 1830s. Amongst its recommendations as Anna King, wife of Governor King, who played a role in the committee ordered that Protectors of Aborigines be establishing orphanage facilities. appointed to work closely with Aboriginal people and protect their interests. This committee’s report coincided with the early years of European settlement in South Australia, the Port Philip District and Western Australia 24 Alison Painter, ‘Dr Matthew Moorhouse’, in Professional Historians Association (South Australia) SA 175, http://www. and protectors were appointed in each of these districts. sahistorians.org.au/175/chronology/march/29-march-1876-dr- In South Australia Matthew Moorhouse was the first matthew-moorhouse.shtml Protector of Aborigines. His first office was situated on 25 Michael F Christie ‘Port Phillip Protectorate’, in Brown-May, A and Swain, S (eds), The Encyclopedia of Melbourne, Port 21 Brian Dickey, ‘Social Welfare: the Government Sector’ in Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 2005, p. 558. Richards, E (ed), The Flinders History of South Australia – 26 Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Social History, Wakefield Press, Netley, 1986, pp. 235–236. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their 22 ibid., p. 235. Families, 1997, https://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/ bringing-them-home-chapter-8 23 Glen Shaw, ‘Wybalenna’, in Alexander, A (ed) The Companion to Tasmanian History, Hobart, http://www.utas.edu.au/library/ 27 Wilfrid Prest (ed), The Wakefield Companion to South companion_to_tasmanian_history/W/Wybalenna.htm Australian History, Wakefield Press, Kent Town, 2001, p. 13. Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study 13

Aside from the issuing of rations, the earliest form of Lunatic asylums were seen as necessary to protect society government–provided welfare services in the colonies were from those deemed to be insane – a wide definition which hospitals for those who were too ill or infirm to work and included those with epilepsy, alcoholism and intellectual lacked the resources to fund their own medical treatment. disability and those who had attempted suicide.32 A makeshift hospital was set up in tents at Sydney in 1789 and by 1792 Governor Phillip had built the colony’s first In Moreton Bay the former convict hospital served as hospital at Parramatta. Between 1811 and 1816 Governor a repository for the chronically invalid and vagrant, as 33 Macquarie oversaw the building of what would become well as the insane. In 1844 a Benevolent Society was the Sydney Hospital in Macquarie Street. Colloquially it was formed in Brisbane – committed to assisting the poor, the known as the Rum Hospital because Macquarie paid for it distressed and the aged. Four years later the Benevolent by allowing the builders a monopoly on the importation of Society combined with the hospital as one charitable spirits from India to the colony. Two sections of the original organisation, subsidised by the New South Wales building for the hospital survive today as New South Wales Government. Benevolent cases would be accommodated Parliament House and the Mint Building. While those with at the hospital until the mid-1860s. money could afford to get attention from a doctor privately, the hospitals established in the early colonies not only Private charity catered to those who had been injured through accident, It was not until 1813 that Australia’s first private but also for invalids with chronic illnesses. Gradually the philanthropic organisation was formed in New South early hospitals became repositories for the aged who had no Wales, where there were by then sufficient numbers of family to care for them, as well as for younger, disabled folk interested people to form a Benevolent Society. Seven until purpose-built asylums were constructed.28 Hospitals men – all evangelical Christians – were the founders of were rapidly overcrowded with those too ill or frail to work. the society, which raised funds through donations and Convict hospitals established in Launceston, Hobart and distributed ‘outdoor relief’. By 1818 they had focused other centres in Van Diemen’s Land were available to free the society’s aims as being to ‘relieve the poor, the and emancipated people, though they were supposed to pay distressed, the aged and the infirm and thereby to something for the service. Those who could not afford to pay discountenance, as much as possible, mendacity and were not required to do so. However, to gain admission they vagrancy, and to encourage industrious habits amongst had to be certified as ‘destitute’ by a reputable person, such the indigent poor as well as to afford them religious as a clergyman or magistrate, and required the word of a instruction and consolation in their distress’.34 doctor that their admission was essential.29 Their aims illustrated the approach that many evangelical The New Norfolk hospital, which had been established Christian philanthropists of the nineteenth century by the military, was, by 1827, serving primarily as an adopted – reaching out to others as Christians but invalid asylum.30 The New Norfolk hospital also served believing that it was within the individual’s grasp to as a lunatic asylum from the early 1830s and, after 1848 improve their own lives through hard work, good when the invalid patients were moved out, this became habits and religion. The Benevolent Society distributed its major purpose.31 Before places were made available rations, firewood and clothing to the destitute. By 1821, for the insane at New Norfolk, convicts assessed as with government funding, the society had erected a insane were locked up in penal establishments. Other benevolent asylum to accommodate the really desperate. Tasmanians deemed to be ‘lunatics’, as people with The society would continue to derive much of its funding a mental illness were then known, were sent to New from the New South Wales Government. (The Benevolent South Wales where Governor Macquarie had established Society continues to operate in 2015.) On the other hand, an asylum at Castle Hill in 1811. In 1838 a purpose-built three of the four philanthropic societies formed in Van asylum – Tarban Creek – was constructed at what is now Diemen’s Land in the 1830s were short lived. They were Gladesville in New South Wales and those declared to be refused government assistance by Governor Arthur, lunatics in the Port Phillip District were also sometimes although he was a private subscriber to some of them, shipped off to this establishment before 1848 when and the proportion of the population of Van Diemen’s Land Victoria’s first asylum was opened at Yarra Bend, north willing and able to financially support the societies was of Melbourne. Prior to this, ‘lunatics’ in Port Phillip were too small.35 often held in police watch houses or the gaol.

32 Raymond L Evans, ‘Charitable Institutions of the Queensland Government to 1919’, MA thesis, University of Queensland, 28 Brown, p. 19. 1969, p. 2. 29 ibid., p. 18. 33 ibid., p. 14. 30 ibid., p. 18. 34 Dickey, No Charity There, p. 14. 31 ibid. 35 Brown, p. 14. 14 Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study

These societies’ fortunes revived in the 1850s. Private benevolent societies were also formed in Adelaide, Port Phillip and Queensland in the 1840s. They did not all Period summary 1778–1850 establish benevolent homes, in the way the New South The first European settlers came to Australia, with Wales society did, but focussed more on distributing the idea and values of eighteenth century Britain. ‘outdoor’ relief. Wealth was derived from private ownership and every ‘decent’ man was expected to provide for Perhaps the first individual to identify recently arrived himself and his family. No attempt was made to immigrants as a distinct group needing assistance understand the causes of poverty and individuals was Caroline Chisholm. Deeply held Christian values were seen as bringing destitution on themselves. motivated Chisholm to begin both practical support for and advocacy on behalf of female immigrants in Sydney The fear ‘undeserving’ poor would take advantage of in the early 1840s. She soon extended her work to state or charitable care was soon tempered by the include all unemployed immigrants. Chisholm, a convert harsh conditions and isolation of the colony and the to Catholicism, had arrived in New South Wales with realities of frontier survival. her husband and three children in 1838. Concerned by her observations that the homelessness and destitution As a penal colony the provision of state care centred faced by many single female immigrants threatened to around the ideas of control and containment. lead them into prostitution, Chisholm petitioned Governor Convict men were set to work in exchange for food Gipps for a space in which she could establish a temporary rations and a bed in barrack accommodation. Female immigrants’ home for the women. Though there was factories were established as a way to contain considerable opposition to her scheme, including initial and control women and as a refugee of sorts for reluctance from the Governor himself, she was eventually vulnerable women and their children. The poor, given permission in 1841 to use a portion of the old aged and insane were housed in government-built immigrants’ barracks to establish the Female Immigrants’ hospitals and asylums. Newly arrived free settlers Home, with a ladies committee to supervise it. Chisholm also needed assistance. also established an employment registry which both employers and employees could access for free. She In response to a new environment, isolation and the was proactive in moving immigrants to employment in need to support and encourage new settlement, country districts, often with the ultimate aim of marrying the colonial government developed and maintained the women to ‘good’ husbands.36 In the early 1840s she a system of care and benevolence that, while established a number of country employment centres in rooted in the values of Britain, was unique to early Parramatta, Moreton Bay, Liverpool, Maitland, Campbell colonial Australia. Town, Wollongong, Scone, Bong Bong and Yass, overseen by local committees, where local employers could register their search for employees.37 She advocated for better conditions aboard migrant ships, established an affordable family colonisation scheme and, during the 1850s, convinced the Victorian Government to help build ten shelter sheds along the main routes to the goldfields to provide comfortable and affordable accommodation for travellers to the goldfields with the aim of assisting families to stay together.

36 Grimshaw, et al., p. 88. The ‘Rum Hospital’, built in 1816. Courtesy of the National 37 Anne Summers, Damned Whores and God’s Police, The Library of Australia, nla.cat-vn1405202. Terry, Frederick Colonisation of Women in Australia, Penguin, Ringwood, Charles. & Allan & Wigley. ([186-]). Bird’s eye view of 1975, p 301. Sydney Harbour. Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study 15

1850–1890 CHARITY AND ASYLUMS

he 1850s were a watershed decade for the Ideas, attitudes and beliefs Australian colonies. The Port Phillip District, renamed Victoria, separated from New South Gold rush immigrants were amongst the most vocal in TWales in 1851, and Queensland became a their demands to democratise land ownership in colonies separate colony in 1859. Convict transportation to Van such as Victoria and New South Wales. From the mid- Diemen’s Land was terminated in 1853 and the colony 1850s miners’ associations demanded the government (which had separated from NSW in 1825) was renamed make affordable land available, leading to a series of Tasmania three years later. Each of the colonies, attempts to legislate for settlement by small farmers in apart from Western Australia, achieved parliamentary Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia in the government in the 1850s and, though the qualifications ensuing years. The philosophy that inspired both the pleas for both voting rights and membership of the to ‘unlock the land’ and the ensuing legislation was the legislature varied from colony to colony, this meant belief that with a modest landholding and hard work a that each colony began to frame its own legislation. man could independently support himself and his family. Only Western Australia swam against the tide. Just as In reality many of those who selected land in the 1860s convict transportation was ending on the east coast, it and 1870s struggled to pay off their selection and to make began in the west as a means of boosting the meagre a go of it on the land. labour force and continued until 1868. The Western Australian colony remained small in population in comparison with the other Australian colonies, and Major trends and influences continued under the local control of a Governor representing the British Government until 1890, when of the period it, too, finally achieved responsible government. From the 1850s, cities such as Melbourne, Sydney and The discovery of gold, first in New South Wales and Adelaide grew for reasons other than the increased then in much larger supply in Victoria, at the beginning migration of the gold rush years. As the immigrants of the of the 1850s affected the colonies in a number of ways, 1850s settled down and married, the populations of some most obviously, by attracting immigrants. Australia’s colonies, particularly Victoria, reflected a rise in the number population rose by about 600 000 during the 1850s of children proportionate to the whole population and for to reach over one million by the end of the decade.38 the first time in the colonies’ histories population growth 41 Victoria’s population increased sevenfold and by 1860 was increased more by natural growth than by migration. 45% of Australia’s population lived in that colony.39 Not Despite peaks and troughs in economic growth in all all of the newcomers to Victoria came from overseas. colonies, traditionally the period between 1860 and 1890 in Many were intercolonial immigrants. Although the impact Australia has been seen as a long boom of economic growth of the rushes was greatest in Victoria, where Melbourne with relatively low unemployment. This period saw the rise was transformed into a city and regional gold mining in Australian membership of friendly societies – mutual populations developed, it left its mark on other colonies support societies such as the Australian Natives Association too, as able-bodied men moved to the goldfields, often and the Manchester Unity Order of Odd fellows – for those leaving wives and children behind. In Tasmania, from in regular employment who could afford to put away a small which many of the younger, able-bodied ex-convicts fled sum of money for sickness and funeral insurance, which in search of gold, this created both a shortage of labour were popular forms of insurance in Britain.42 However, these and a disproportionately high number of destitute elderly societies were of little use to workers who were not in ex-convicts in the Tasmanian population. In other colonies, regular and sufficiently paid employment. For many workers, such as South Australia, the exodus of men to the male and female, work could be casualised, seasonal and Victorian goldfields in the 1850s threw many women and poorly paid. Much rural work was seasonal and workers children into poverty.40 in rural industries often returned to cities in search of employment during off-seasons. Women could be especially vulnerable when out of employment.

38 Graeme Davison ‘Population’, in Oxford Companion to Australian History, p. 515. 39 JW McCarty, ‘Gold rushes’, in Oxford Companion to Australian History, p. 284. 41 Graeme Davison, ‘Population’, in Davison, Hirst and 40 Brian Dickey, ‘Social Welfare: the Government Sector’, in Eric Macintyre, p. 515. Richards (ed), The Flinders History of South Australia –Social History, Wakefield Press, Netley, 1986, p. 238. 42 Murphy, p. 48. 16 Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study

Many were employed as domestic servants, living in at funds as well as donations from the public to provide their place of employment. The loss of a job therefore also dormitory accommodation, a free dispensary, hospital implied the loss of accommodation. Women who worked in wards and a school for children on the site. Though it was factories were paid about half the male wage rate.43 meant to offer only temporary relief during a crisis, the immigrants’ home became a permanent fixture, changing its name to the Home for Houseless and Destitute Recipients of welfare Persons in the 1870s.45 It was not until the twentieth century that many of the buildings that comprised the The events of the gold rush era exacerbated the home were demolished, by which time the resident growth in the numbers of some of those groups already elderly men and women had been moved to a former identified in society as needing assistance in the industrial school in Parkville or to the new benevolent pre-responsible government days. These included an asylum in Cheltenham.46 The Royal Park institution ageing ex-convict population in some colonies. However continues to be used for aged health care in the twenty- the dislocation caused by the gold rushes and fresh first century.47 waves of immigration also threw into relief new groups perceived to be in need of assistance – deserted and Following its separation from New South Wales in 1859, widowed mothers, single women and children. From Queensland’s Government actively sought to encourage the 1850s there was a new focus on children in many migration to the colony over the next three decades.48 of the Australian colonies as the proportion of children Queensland’s coast offered a number of ports at which in the colonial populations grew and all colonies passed immigrants could be landed and immigration depots were legislation to exert greater state control over children in established in a number of these. Some immigration the second half of the nineteenth century. depots, such as that built at Kangaroo Point in Brisbane in the 1880s to replace an earlier, more rudimentary Immigrants immigration depot, continued to function as immigration depots until after World War II.49 Less attention was Developing from immigration depots, where immigrants paid to the welfare of the estimated 55 000 South Sea were housed temporarily on arrival in the colonies, Islanders who were brought to Queensland as indentured immigrants’ homes, established by both government and labourers to work on cane fields and cotton farms in private philanthropists, offered not only accommodation, Queensland.50 Although Queensland legislation in the but also sick wards and employment services to 1860s attempted to regulate the system of South Sea immigrants arriving in the colonies in the second half Islander labour and introduce contracts and wages, the of the nineteenth century. Frequently the immigrants’ islanders were generally exploited and paid meagre depots or homes were created in response to increased wages.51 Commonwealth legislation, introduced soon migration; sometimes they were established by private after federation at the same time as legislation to societies responding to perceived needs, as Caroline ensure a ‘white Australia’, put an end to Pacific Islander Chisholm had done in the 1840s in Sydney. Thus, although immigration and allowed for the deportation of those the Western Australian authorities had converted its Pacific Islanders already resident in Australia, though immigrants’ depot to a poor house for women and many did remain.52 children in the 1850s, when immigration to Western Australia began to rise again in the 1880s in the wake of gold discoveries, a new immigrants’ and unemployed women’s home was established in a former barracks in Fremantle.44 The South Australian Destitute Asylum 45 Adelaide Daily Herald, 31 January 1913, p. 6. similarly had its beginnings in the facilities offered to 46 Shurlee Swain, ‘Immigrants’ Home’, in Andrew Brown-May and immigrants to the colony in the 1840s. Shurlee Swain (eds) The Encyclopedia of Melbourne, p. 361. The numbers of immigrants arriving in Victoria in search 47 ibid. of gold in the early 1850s prompted the formation of an 48 http://www.ehp.qld.gov.au/heritage/pdf/is_qhr_migration_ Immigrants Aid Society by citizens and Christian clergy places.pdf concerned at the plight of homeless and friendless immigrants, particularly women and their children. The 49 http://www.ehp.qld.gov.au/heritage/pdf/is_qhr_migration_ society based its immigrants’ home in a motley array places.pdf of buildings the Victorian Government was using to 50 Australian Human Rights Commission, ‘Australian South Sea accommodate newly arrived immigrants near Princes Islanders, A Century of race Discrimination under Australian Bridge on St Kilda Road. The society relied on government Law’, https://www.humanrights.gov.au/erace-archives- australian-south-sea-islanders 51 Australian Human Rights Commission, ‘Australian South Sea 43 Catherine Kovesi, Pitch your Tents on Distant Shores, A Islanders, A Century of race Discrimination under Australian History of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Australia, Law’, https://www.humanrights.gov.au/erace-archives- Aotearoa/New Zealand and Tahiti, Playright Publishing, australian-south-sea-islanders Caringbah, 2006, p. 48. 52 Pacific Islanders Labourers Act, 1901, http://www.austlii.edu. 44 Hetherington, p. 114. au/au/legis/cth/num_act/pila190116o1901262/ Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study 17

Most immigrants’ homes and depots operated as end of the nineteenth century. Benevolent or destitute employment depots as well as offering temporary asylums were designed to be seen as a last resort for accommodation for newly arrived immigrants. In some, the desperate and, in some colonies, such as South however, women who were between employment as Australia, applicants for relief were first offered work for domestic servants could find a temporary home. In New rations before a place in the asylum, to gauge just how South Wales, where Caroline Chisholm had been able desperate they were. A number of the institutions for the to close her Female Immigrants’ Home in 1842, the poor begun in the nineteenth century continued to serve government opened a new home for female immigrants as homes for the destitute elderly well into the twentieth in 1848, in the former Hyde Park convict barracks. The century. Similarly, some immigrants’ homes, established female immigrants home operated here until the 1880s. to meet the needs of newly arrived and down on their luck immigrants, evolved to eventually cater mainly to Destitute, invalid and aged the elderly. This was the case with the South Australian Destitute Asylum established by the South Australian The aged or invalid poor remained a component of the Government in 1851 and with the Western Australian population requiring support in the post-convict era. immigration home, which gave way to poor houses for Indeed, in Tasmania, where transportation had lasted men and women. much longer than in other colonies, there was a residue of aged and destitute convicts, ticket of leave holders In 1849 the Melbourne Argus, reporting on the case of a and Imperial Lunatics’ by the 1860s.53 The solution was to vagrant brought before a magistrate and sent off to the provide institutional, often barracks-style accommodation police watch house, noted that ‘[t]he urgent necessity for for these people. Though there were similarities in the a Benevolent Asylum in this district is becoming every day solutions each colony offered for the plight of the aged or more apparent, from the many objects of charity who are invalid in the nineteenth century, the differing contexts of almost daily brought before the Police Bench.’57 Vagrant each colony inspired some differences. In some colonies, and destitute people, as well as the mentally ill were such as Victoria and New South Wales, benevolent regularly placed in the watch house by magistrates, there societies provided the impetus for the establishment of being nowhere else to place them. Victoria had only been asylums for the destitute, elderly or invalid, though the settled by Europeans for less than fifteen years when NSW Government assumed responsibility for providing the need for an asylum for the aged and infirm poor was for the infirm and destitute in 1862, moving the destitute identified. The Victoria Benevolent Society – composed of elderly out of the Benevolent Society’s asylum in George leading men from Christian denominations represented Street, Sydney into separate male and female asylums in Victoria – raised funds and made plans for an asylum, distant from Sydney at Liverpool, Parramatta and ably assisted by a ladie’s committee. Lieutenant-Governor Newington.54 More often, the provision of shelter for the La Trobe was a member of the committee for the asylum elderly was a government responsibility, acknowledged and the government granted a ten acre site and was grudgingly and with no thought of providing for a prepared to match donations and subscriptions pound ‘comfortable old age’.55 Illness and destitution, even in the for pound. In 1851 the Melbourne Benevolent Asylum aged, was regarded by many as brought on by ‘their own opened in a purpose-built building on a ‘magnificent’ folly and criminality’. Yet there was an acknowledgement site in North Melbourne. With philanthropic aims, the that ‘however blameable’ these unfortunate people were Victoria Benevolent Society hoped that their asylum for their circumstances, ‘they must not be suffered to would also prevent ‘imposture, fraud and vagrancy’ on perish in the streets’.56 the streets of Melbourne and ensure that Melbourne remained a ‘flourishing community’.58 Though gold rush Many of the institutions in which the elderly or invalid immigration meant that the new benevolent asylum found themselves initially accommodated a range of would, in the short term, shelter the mentally ill, orphans, people in need of shelter. These included pregnant and the blind and immigrants, eventually it focussed on the deserted women and their children, immigrants who aged poor as had been intended.59 It remained at North were out of work as well as invalids and the elderly poor. Melbourne caring for these people until 1911, when it As specialised services were developed for members of was transferred to Cheltenham on the southern outskirts many of these groups, benevolent or destitute asylums of Melbourne and renamed the Kingston Centre. In the gradually came to serve only the elderly or invalid by the late 1850s benevolent asylums were also established in regional goldfields towns such as Ballarat, Bendigo and Beechworth, also operated by committees but receiving 53 Naomi Parry, “‘Such a Longing”, Black and White Children in supplementary funding from the Victorian Government. Welfare in New South Wales and Tasmania 1880–1940’, PhD The regional benevolent asylums remained in operation as thesis, School of History, University of New South Wales, aged care or health services in the 2000s. 2007, p. 6. 54 Murphy, p. 35. 55 Brown, p. 53. 57 Argus, 12 July 1849, p. 2. 56 Secretary of the Moreton Bay Benevolent Society, 1851, 58 Argus, 12 July 1849, p. 2. quoted in Evans, ‘Charitable Institutions of the Queensland Government to 1919’, p. 15. 59 http://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM00182b.htm 18 Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study

Built as a landmark building, the Melbourne Benevolent house for men ‘resembled a gaol’ with strict regulations, Asylum proclaimed the city’s philanthropy to visitors including the hours set aside for work, little freedom to arriving in Melbourne from north, south, east and leave the poor house, and the refusal of any visitors.63 west and was, pleasingly, visible to ships approaching But old and invalid men continued to live in the Mt Eliza Melbourne from Port Phillip Bay. Other institutions were poor house, on the shore of the Swan River, until a new less publicly visible. Queensland’s colonial government, Old Men’s Home (later known as Sunset Home) was forced by the rising numbers of benevolent cases built at Claremont in 1904. The women of the women’s occupying a ward in the general hospital in the 1860s to poor house were moved in 1909 to the old convict-built make provision for the destitute aged and invalid, found Fremantle Lunatic Asylum.64 a solution to the problem by removing them to a former quarantine station on Stradbroke Island off the coast In Tasmania, the New Norfolk Invalid Depot, which had of Queensland. Although the move was meant to be sheltered invalid ex-convicts and free immigrants from temporary, the Dunwich Benevolent Asylum remained 1831, was given over completely to the care of mentally on the island until 1946, accommodating the aged poor, ill patients in 1848. From there the invalid men were the blind, invalids, the disabled, as well as those suffering pushed from pillar to post in recycled buildings. Most chronic disease, such as tuberculosis and leprosy.60 of those forced to leave New Norfolk were moved to After the passing of the Inebriates Institutions Act 1896, a former invalid station at Impression Bay, Port Arthur. alcoholics were also sent to Dunwich.61 On the island they Some refused to go to the penal settlement and were 65 were out of sight and mind. left to make their own way in the world. But there were still 450 invalids ensconced at Impression Bay by South Australia’s Destitute Asylum, established by the May 1848 and it remained an invalid depot until 1857. An government and administered by the Destitute Board, invalid home for women and men was also located at the opened in 1852 in former barracks near Government Cascades former female factory from 1869. A second House on Kintore Avenue, Adelaide and catered for invalid home for men only was opened at the former more than just the destitute elderly at first. The Destitute Brickfields Hiring Depot at North Hobart. Board, appointed by the Governor to oversee both the distribution of outdoor relief and the Destitute Asylum, Between 1874 and 1882 men and women from the was composed of representatives of four religious Cascades and Brickfields depots were removed to the site denominations and the manager of the South Australian of the former Kings Orphan Schools at New Town. Here 66 Company. From the 1860s until 1887, the Destitute Board the numbers of the aged peaked at 550 in the 1890s. The also had oversight of destitute children. Many applicants New Town site, which became known as St John’s Park, for relief from the Destitute Board were paid in rations hosted a range of welfare – related agencies including, if they lived in the country or in cash if they were able- the boys’ training school, the New Town Infirmary and the bodied men who could work on such government projects offices of the Children of the State Department. During as rock-breaking. Those who could not, found a place the twentieth century it also housed men and boys with in the Destitute Asylum which was, over the decades, intellectual disabilities. The invalid depot was eventually expanded over several buildings in Kintore Avenue. Life renamed St John’s Park Nursing Home. in the Destitute Asylum was well-regulated, with tasks In the north of the colony, the Launceston Invalid to be completed by inmates and rules prohibiting alcohol, Depot opened in old military barracks in 1858 and was swearing and drunkenness. Residents needed a pass to supervised by the Superintendent of the Launceston leave the asylum and were allowed visitors only twice a Penal Establishments. The Launceston Benevolent week. Refusal to work or conversations with the opposite Society took over the management of the depot, sex were causes for expulsion from the asylum. The renaming it the Launceston Benevolent Asylum in 1895. Destitute Asylum remained on Kintore Avenue until 1917 It closed in 1912.67 when Magill Old Folk’s Home was opened.62 Some aged care facilities were offered by religious The rules were even more punitive at the ‘poor houses’ institutes. In Melbourne, the Little Sisters of the Poor established in Western Australia in the 1860s for both opened a vast home for the aged poor in Northcote women and men. Both ex-convicts and destitute from 1885. Other facilities attempting to offer a dignified immigrants occupied the first poor house, established in the immigration home on the corner of Pier and Goderich (Murray) Streets in Perth. In 1869, after transportation to Western Australia ceased, the Mt Eliza Convict Depot 63 Hetherington, p. 72. became the Mt Eliza Poor House for Men. The poor 64 ibid., p. 153. 65 Brown, p. 53. 66 John Hargrave, ‘St John’s Park’, http://www.utas.edu.au/ 60 Joseph B Goodall, ‘Whom Nobody Owns: The Dunwich library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/S/St%20Johns%20 Benevolent Asylum, An Institutional Biography, 1866–1946’, park.htm PhD Thesis, University of Queensland, 1992, abstract (np). 67 Andrew Piper, ‘Launceston Invalid Asylum’, http://www. 61 ibid., p. 84. utas.edu.au/library/companion_to_tasmanian_history/L/ 62 Dickey, ‘Social Welfare: The Government Sector’, p. 251. Launceston%20Invalid%20Depot.html Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study 19

and independent old age were provided by private the mid-1850s.73 The Melbourne Orphan Asylum and the philanthropy. In Victoria the Freemasons opened the first Geelong Orphan Asylum were matched by St Vincent of a number of cottages for aged Freemasons in 1867 in de Paul Orphanage and St Augustine’s Orphanage. Prahran. Known as the Masonic Charitable Institution, by Each of these institutions received grants of land and the twentieth century there were two rows of cottages, contributions towards the building of the orphanages a hall and a convalescent home on the site in Prahran.68 from the Victorian Government, though government The Old Colonists’ Homes in North Fitzroy Victoria maintenance payments for children were conditional on were founded by George Coppin and the Old Colonists’ the raising of equal or greater funds through donations Association in 1870 to provide homes for the necessitous and subscriptions. In New South Wales the Destitute poor, but initially only for those who had arrived in the Children’s Society established the Destitute Children’s colony before 1851. Except for the first two cottages, Asylum at Randwick in 1856.74 The New South Wales all the cottages in the development were funded by Government fully maintained the children in this donations from prominent Victorian citizens. Cottages establishment.75 Queensland and Western Australia did have been added to the complex in every decade since not see their first orphanages opened until the 1860s. the 1870s, often designed by well-known architects. The Diamantina Orphanage in Brisbane was opened by a The Old Colonists’ Homes complex still provides homes small committee of ladies and rapidly taken over by the for elderly Victorians.69 In South Australia the Adelaide Queensland Government in 1866.76 Shortly thereafter, Benevolent and Strangers’ Friend Society – formed in the Sisters of Mercy opened a Catholic orphanage at 1849 – did not specifically focus on the elderly, but aimed Nudgee. The pattern was repeated in Western Australia to build, buy or rent houses for people.70 in 1868 with the opening of Anglican and Catholic orphanages.77 For the Catholic Church it was important Children that Catholic children be raised within the faith of their parents. While some Catholic orphanages were initiated There had been orphaned or impoverished children in by lay organisations, such as the Friendly Brothers, a lay the Australian colonies since first European settlement charitable association, many were opened at the request and Colonial Governors had made various arrangements of local bishops and were staffed by religious sisters (and to care for these children. Those with mothers were sometimes religious brothers) notably, the Sisters of often placed with them in gaols or female factories or Mercy, who had first arrived in Australia in 1846. in destitute asylums. In Tasmania and New South Wales orphan schools had catered for some children. The As the number of children as a proportion of colonial massive upheaval caused by the gold rushes exposed populations grew in the 1860s, all colonial governments the plight of women and their children in the 1850s as (except Western Australia, which passed legislation in men deserted families to go gold-seeking, sometimes 1874) enacted legislation to exert greater control over even leaving them to travel far away to other colonies. In them. This legislation would expand the number of South Australia, in the early 1850s, destitute women and residential institutions for children in all the colonies by their children came to form a fair proportion of the clients introducing industrial and reformatory schools. Victoria assisted by the Destitute Board in the early 1850s and was the first to move towards establishing industrial and many children and their mothers were accommodated in reformatory schools for children judged to be ‘neglected’ the Destitute Asylum.71 In Melbourne, the Immigrants’ Aid or ‘criminal’. These institutions were not designed for Society, formed in 1853, soon found that the majority of orphans. They targeted children who might be tainted those they were assisting at the immigrants’ home were by association with thieves, prostitutes or life on the women with children and destitute families.72 streets, as well as those already being supported in destitute asylums or immigrants’ homes and therefore The evidence that there were children wandering the at risk of becoming adult criminals. Reformatory schools streets of Melbourne and Geelong in half-starved were to hold youths convicted of minor misdemeanours condition in the 1850s moved charitable societies and adolescent girls who were perceived to be in moral to step in and offer care for these children. Almost danger. The legislation in all colonies made provision simultaneously both Catholic and Protestant societies for children to be committed to either industrial or opened orphanages in both Melbourne and Geelong in reformatory schools (and therefore into the care of the state) via the courts or the police. 68 http://vhd.heritage.vic.gov.au/vhd/heritagevic#detail_ places;4435 69 http://vhd.heritage.vic.gov.au/vhd/ 73 Jill Barnard and Karen Twigg, Holding on to Hope, A History heritagevic/?timeout=yes#detail_places;485 of the Founding Agencies of MacKillop Family Services, 70 Alison Painter ‘Adelaide Benevolent and Strangers’ Friend 1854–1997, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2004. Society’ in SA 175, http://www.sahistorians.org.au/175/ 74 Parry, p. 25. chronology/february/2-february-1849-adelaide-benevolent- and-strangers-.shtml 75 Dickey, No Charity There, p. 44. 71 Dickey, p. 238. 76 The Brisbane Courier, 21 September 1869, p. 3. 72 Argus 8 December 1855. 77 Hetherington, p. 89. 20 Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study

Parents could also seek to have their children placed In South Australia in 1866 Emily Clark suggested to in industrial or reformatory schools if they were the South Australian Government that it should board ‘uncontrollable’ though they were liable to be charged for out destitute children. In the 1870s boarding out was their maintenance if they could afford it. introduced for children committed to state care in Tasmania and Victoria.80 In Tasmania this meant that the In industrial schools the children were to be trained for Queen’s Orphanage Schools, which had been established future employment and turned into decent, industrious as the King’s Orphanage Schools in 1828, were finally citizens. At a certain age (which ranged from 12 to 14 closed, though a number of privately run (Catholic and according to the colony) they would then be placed as Protestant) industrial schools and reformatories continued apprentices with employers, which invariably meant to accept children placed by the government. In Victoria, domestic service for girls and farm work for boys. A the introduction of boarding out meant that government- number of colonial governments established their own operated industrial schools, which had been overcrowded, state-run industrial schools and reformatories, as well unhealthy places, were closed. One, at Royal Park, as licensing charitable, private or religious institutions to remained as a receiving depot for children taken into accept these children and paying maintenance for them. the care of the Department of Neglected Children. New The children who had been living in the destitute asylums South Wales, South Australia and Queensland introduced in South Australia and Queensland, and the immigrants’ boarding out via amended legislation in the 1880s. home in Melbourne were moved from these institutions Nevertheless, a parallel system of religious orphanages, into industrial schools. Some colonies, such as Tasmania, industrial schools and reformatories continued in most relied almost totally on licensed organisations to manage of the colonies. The religious sisters and brothers in the industrial schools and reformatories. charge of Catholic orphanages and industrial schools, for instance, particularly opposed boarding out, distrusting Despite the rhetoric that children would be saved from the standards of cleanliness, ability to impart a good immoral and ‘vicious’ surroundings by coming under Catholic upbringing and education and the motives of the protection of the colonial government departments those people who volunteered to take children, perhaps administering these Acts, there was evidence that many simply to acquire cheap labour and to access the boarding of the children entering care in these institutions were out payment, however meagre it was, to supplement the simply the children of the poor and that many parents, family income. particularly deserted mothers, sought to use the industrial 78 schools for temporary assistance during difficult times. One alternative to both boarding out and congregate-style More than half of the 486 children admitted to Victorian care was initiated in the 1880s by Dr Arthur Renwick, industrial schools in 1867 had living parents who could not Chair of the New South Wales State Children’s Relief 79 support them. Many of these children were the children Board. For those children unsuitable for fostering because of widows or deserted mothers, but there was a smaller of disabilities or diseases, he established cottage homes proportion of children of widowed fathers. at Mittagong and Pennant Hills. By 1900 there were about 150 children at Mittagong, housed in about a dozen There was little to distinguish industrial schools and cottages.81 The Mittagong site eventually became a farm orphanages. They were often large, impersonal buildings home for New South Wales wards of the state, only with little personal space for children. Children slept closing in 1994.82 in large dormitories and days were regimented. Many orphanages of the nineteenth century were constructed Most of the colonies that adopted the boarding out as imposing buildings. This was not just as a means of system for children committed to the care of the state accommodating large numbers of children. Large and relied on voluntary committees of visiting ladies to imposing buildings were intended to communicate the monitor the children’s welfare within the foster homes. level of care offered to the children within the orphanage The success of boarding out in Tasmania, however, has walls. Critics of this method of caring for children, been partially ascribed to the fact that the Secretary of the however, labelled it as ‘barracks-style’ accommodation, Neglected Children’s Department from the late nineteenth not conducive to producing model citizens. They argued century, Frederick Seager, while also using volunteer that children in the care of the state should be ‘boarded visitors, kept a close personal oversight of the children out’ or fostered with respectable families, preferably in the department’s care.83 Benevolent administrators in the fresh air and wholesome surroundings of the of neglected children’s departments in some colonies countryside. The foster parents would be paid a small subsidy to care for the child. 80 ‘Public Charities’ Act 1873 in Tasmania. Neglected and Criminal Children’s (Amending) Act 1874 in Victoria. 81 Parry, p. 134. 78 Shurlee Swain, ‘Making their case: archival traces of mothers 82 Robyn Parker, MP, NSW Minister for Environment and and children in negotiation with child welfare officials’, Heritage, ‘State Heritage Listing for Renwick State Ward Provenance, The Journal of Public Record Office Victoria, Home’, 25 March 2014, http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/ Issue 11, 2012. resources/MinMedia/MinMedia14032501.pd 79 Barnard and Twigg, p. 26. 83 Parry, p. 40. Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study 21

also began to recognise in the late nineteenth century Lady Bowen, wife of the Governor, together with a that poverty alone was causing some families to seek committee of both men and women, opened the Brisbane the assistance of the state in supporting their children. Servants’ Home in Ann Street in 1865.90 Like most such In Tasmania, where the Charitable Grants Department homes, the Brisbane Servants’ Home was intended was established in the 1870s, the first Administrator of only for women ‘of good character’ and respectability.91 Charitable Grants, William Tarleton, informally provided While their committees of management expected their outdoor relief to families to keep their children with them, residents to carry out domestic and laundry work within even as the boarding out system was developed.84 In the the institutions, this was framed as a way of training them 1890s the New South Wales State Children Relief Act so as to be better suited to go out into employment. The was amended to allow for the payment of boarding out servants’ homes aimed to prevent women from falling allowance to ‘deserving’ mothers to keep their children into prostitution, but also to provide a supply of suitable with them.85 Informally, in the 1890s, the Victorian servants for private homes. Neglected Children’s Department was also offering this form of assistance, which the Melbourne Orphan Asylum Female refuges or rescue homes, on the other hand, had been offering to some mothers since the 1870s.86 aimed at rescuing and reforming women who were judged to have already fallen into sin through prostitution, Women vagrancy, adultery or through bearing illegitimate children. Through withdrawal from their environments and through Many deserted, widowed or single women had little hard work and prayer, it was felt that women had a chance choice but to commit their children to institutions or to the to be saved. But female refuges often offered the practical care of the state if they found themselves without male assistance of shelter and food to women, especially support or relatives to fall back on.87 The predominant form single pregnant women, who had nowhere else to go. The of paid work for working class women was in domestic first female refuges in Australian colonies were usually service with low rates of pay and, even if they could established by Protestant committees (though the first support themselves through work, mothers often faced in New South Wales was opened by the Catholic Sisters the dilemma of how to care for their children while they of Charity in 1848) and first emerged in each colony were at work. Although deserted or widowed women as immigrant populations began to grow. For instance, could claim to be deserving of assistance and, in fact, Melbourne’s first refuge, the Carlton Refuge, was opened were legally able to apply for maintenance from deserting by the Anglican Archbishop in 1854 and operated by a husbands through the courts, single women had no such private committee. While those of provincial Victorian safety nets. Two forms of institutions emerged to cater towns followed in the next decade. Brisbane’s first female for single women in the second half of the nineteenth refuge, on the other hand, was opened by Ann Drew, century. Servants’ homes, similar to immigrants’ homes, initially in her own home in 1870.92 offered temporary refuge for domestic servants between employment and for those newly arrived in the colony. In each of the colonies a parallel system of Catholic While in some cases governments operated these rescue homes or ‘Magdalene asylums’, usually on a much facilities, as in New South Wales and South Australia, larger scale than those opened by Protestant committees, in other colonies voluntary charities initiated servants’ was also established in the nineteenth century. Several homes. Apart from orphanages, the first privately of these were operated by the Good Shepherd Sisters. initiated charity in Western Australia was the servants’ The Convent of the Good Shepherd at Abbotsford was home established by the Ladies’ Friendly Society in St established in 1863 just prior to the passing of the George’s Terrace, Perth in 1851. It was soon taken over Neglected and Criminal Children’s Act (1864). Under by the Western Australian Government and combined this Act a girls’ industrial school and reformatory were with the Female Immigrants’ Home.88 Soon after arriving established at the convent, existing alongside the home in Melbourne in 1857 the Sisters of Mercy established for penitent women. The scale of the Abbotsford convent, a similar home for the ‘protection of young virtuous much larger than many of the Protestant refuges that girls who find themselves unemployed’.89 In Brisbane preceded it, perhaps reflects the predominance of Irish women and girls amongst the single female immigrants who arrived in Australia in the nineteenth century. 84 ibid., p. 27. 85 Dickey, No Charity There, p. 79. 86 Swain, ‘The Victorian Charity Network in the 1890s’ p. 358. 87 Twomey, Deserted and Destitute, Motherhood, Wife 90 Find and Connect website, http://www.findandconnect.gov. Desertion and Colonial Welfare, Australian Scholarly au/ref/qld/biogs/QE00460b.htm Publishing, Melbourne, 2002.p. 65. 91 The Brisbane Courier, 18 December 1863, p. 3. 88 Hetherington p. 25. 92 S. J. Routh, ‘Drew, Ann (Anne) (1822–1907)’, Australian 89 Catherine Kovesi, Pitch your Tents on Distant Shores, A Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, History of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Australia, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/ Aotearoa/New Zealand and Tahiti, Caringbah NSW, Playright biography/drew-ann-anne-12893/text23293, published in Publishing, 2006, p. 49. hardcopy 2005. 22 Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study

Female refuges relied predominantly on the commercial Those lunatic asylums established in the Australian laundry work of their residents to support the institutions. colonies rapidly became full and by the 1860s new For many of the refuges that survived, this laundry work asylums were being constructed in some colonies, continued into the second half of the twentieth century. In particularly Victoria, which, by the 1870s had the highest the nineteenth century the refuges were rigidly run, with proportion of population judged to be insane.97 This may strict timetables and they sometimes imposed conditions have been a reflection of Victoria’s higher population on the women who entered them. At the Carlton Refuge compared with other colonies, or perhaps the fact that as in Melbourne, for instance, women were expected to more asylums were made available in Victoria people took stay in the refuge for a full year or risk forfeiting the right advantage of them. Legislation governing the committal to new clothes or being readmitted to the refuge.93 While of lunatics to asylums allowed relatives and friends to women who entered the Good Shepherd convents could take care of those judged to be insane, as an alternative theoretically leave, the girls committed to the industrial to committal to an asylum, so long as they gave a school or reformatory sections of the convent could not ‘recognisance’ to vouch for the patient’s ‘peaceable do so until they had left the oversight of the government. behaviour and safe custody’.98 Perhaps the large numbers Many of the early refuges soon began accepting pregnant of people committed to asylums reflected a dearth or recently delivered single women and thus eventually of people willing or able to care for relatives afflicted offered some form of temporary shelter for infants as with mental illness. Immigrants were overrepresented well as for their mothers. In the late nineteenth and in Victoria asylums in the nineteenth century.99 One early twentieth century some of these refuges gradually Inspector of Asylums in Victoria between 1863 and 1883 transformed into maternity and babies’ homes, with less attributed the ‘more than ordinary amount of insanity’ in punitive regimes for the residents. Victoria to the conditions of solitude, intemperate drinking habits and ‘sudden reverses of fortune’ experienced Private charity often lay behind the first provision of free particularly by miners.100 hospitals for women. The New South Wales Benevolent Asylum, for instance, reverted to being a lying-in hospital in Contemporary theories about the best care for the 1862 after the elderly aged had been moved to government mentally ill in the nineteenth century stressed that the institutions. This became the nucleus of the Royal Hospital patient should be separated from his or her normal for Women in Paddington.94 Melbourne’s Royal Women’s surroundings, thought to be the cause of the mental Hospital began as the Melbourne Lying-In Hospital in 1856, illness, and given activities to occupy his or her time. With established by a group of women led by Frances Perry, the some exceptions, purpose-built asylums in the nineteenth wife of the Anglican Archbishop.95 The Brisbane Lying-In century were placed at some isolation from the general Hospital, later renamed the Lady Bowen Hospital in honour population and set amongst gardens. of Lady Diamantina Bowen who played a part in the ladies committee that established it, began in 1864.96 Despite the best intentions of many of those interested in the care of the insane, this method of treatment was People with a mental illness known as moral therapy.101 The rapid overcrowding of asylums, shortage of money and inadequate numbers In the second half of the nineteenth century purpose- of appropriate staff to care for patients meant that those built asylums for the mentally ill appeared in all colonies. asylums that were built in the Australian colonies in the Britain had passed a Lunacy Act in 1845 which led to the nineteenth century were more like prisons.102 Nevertheless, proliferation of asylums for lunatics across the country. many of the asylums built in the nineteenth century At this stage Australia had only one purpose-built lunatic reflected the prevailing view that patients of different asylum, at Tarban Creek in NSW, to which lunatics form sexes should be separated with dormitories for either sex other colonies as well as other districts were transferred separated by administration and communal areas. if they were not simply kept in gaols with other prisoners. Legislation in the Australian colonies generally ruled that two doctors had to certify that a person was insane before they were committed to an asylum and the same process was needed before the patient could be discharged. 97 Catherine Colebourne, ‘Mental Health’, Encyclopedia of Melbourne, http://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/ EM00960b.htm 98 Dangerous Lunatics Act, 1843 NSW. 99 http://museumvictoria.com.au/collections/themes/13275 100 Catherine Colebourne, ‘Mental Health’ http://www. 93 Kovesi, p. 51. emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM00960b.htm 94 Dickey, No Charity There, p.35. 101 Bernadette Mary Ibell, ‘An Analysis of Mental Health 95 Janet McCalman, ‘The Royal Women’s Hospital’, Care in Australia from a Social Justice and Human Rights Encyclopedia of Melbourne, http://www.emelbourne.net.au/ Perspective with Special References to the Influences of biogs/EM01287b.htm England and the United States of America, 1800–2004’, PhD thesis, Australian Catholic University, 2004, p. 129. 96 https://heritage-register.ehp.qld.gov.au/placeDetail. html?siteId=16535 102 ibid., p. 140. Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study 23

South Australia’s first lunatic asylum, the Adelaide warders served as the initial attendants. The asylum Asylum, had been erected between 1849 and 1852 was ‘curative in name only’ and its internal operations in parkland overlooking the Botanic Gardens on North continued the culture and experience of a penal Terrace. When this institution became overcrowded and institution.106 the locality too busy – by the mid-1860s – a Commission recommended constructing a new asylum modelled on As at many other asylums for the mentally ill in Australia contemporary views of asylum design. Parkside Lunatic in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Asylum opened in 1870 some four miles from Adelaide. experience of care at Woogaroo (later known as Goodna Additions to the asylum in the 1880s reflected the Asylum, then Goodna Mental Hospital and now the development of the idea of providing ‘cottages’ for the Park Centre for Mental Health) depended on the level mentally ill – secluded from the main asylum building of value the colonial government ascribed to it, but also and offering a more ‘domestic’ space.103 The Parkside on the management of the asylum. Dr H Byam Ellerton Lunatic Asylum site, known after 1967 as Glenside Health was appointed Medical Superintendent at Goodna and Services, continues as a mental health and psychiatric Inspector of Hospitals for the Insane in Queensland hospital in 2015. in 1909. He was to remain in this position until 1937, instituting changes to bring the asylum more in line Several new lunatic asylums were built in Victoria in the with contemporary views of the appropriate care for 1860s and 1870s. The Kew Insane Asylum (later known as the mentally ill. Ellerton placed much emphasis on the Willsmere) sought to supplement the crowded facilities at physical environment at the asylum, not only building Yarra Bend Asylum, and was designed to accommodate more wards, but also replacing wooden fences with wire 600 patients. It was a substantial and elegant complex fences and turning the asylum grounds into gardens.107 of buildings, perhaps to indicate the benevolence of the Victorian Government towards the insane. It was In the second half of the nineteenth century a number located in extensive grounds isolated from the centre of of efforts were made to provide separate and directed Melbourne. Similar substantial asylums were built in the efforts to accommodate and educate disabled children. 1860s in the mining centres of Ararat and Beechworth, One aim of these efforts was to ensure that disabled and the Industrial School at Sunbury was converted children were trained to live useful lives. The emphasis and extended to form an asylum in 1879. Though each was on education. One innovation in Victoria in the of these institutions would undergo name changes and 1880s was the construction of cottages for the care of modifications to reflect changing views on the care of the intellectually disabled children in the grounds of, but mentally ill, further facilities would be constructed for the secluded from, the Kew Lunatic Asylum in 1887. Prior care of the mentally ill in Victoria in the twentieth century. to this these children had been housed with mentally ill adults in the asylum. This is thought to be the first time Perhaps reflecting their smaller populations, Western that the intellectually disabled were segregated from Australia and Queensland were the last colonies to make the mentally ill in Victorian institutions.108 Though there separate provision for the mentally ill. Western Australia’s were high hopes that these children would be educated first purpose-built lunatic asylum was constructed by to be useful to society, subsequent overcrowding and convicts at Fremantle. Although ‘lunatics’ had been inadequate staffing meant that by the early years of the accommodated with immigrants and the destitute in a twentieth century little had been achieved in terms of former warehouse at Fremantle from 1856, it was not educating these children and the cottages reverted to until 1865 that the convict-built Fremantle Lunatic Asylum being a repository where the children were locked away opened.104 Although it housed both convict and free from society.109 Residential schools for blind and deaf patients, the British Government financially maintained people were established in each of the colonies in the the asylum at first. The Fremantle Asylum continued to second half of the nineteenth century by private charitable house the mentally ill until 1909, when a new institution committees. Sometimes these catered for wards of the was built at Claremont. state as well as privately entered children.110

The gaol was the home of Queensland’s ‘insane’ people until 1864.105 In that year the Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum was established in fairly rudimentary buildings and provided conditions similar to a gaol. There was no hospital on the site, the windows were barred and the patients ‘slept on narrow bed boards on the floor’. Prison

106 Evans, p. 40. 107 Mark Finnane, ‘Woolston Park 1865–2001: a retrospective’, Queensland Review, vol. 15, no. 2, 2008, p. 44. 103 South Australian Heritage Database, http://apps. planning.sa.gov.au/HeritageSearch/HeritageItem.aspx?p_ 108 http://vhd.heritage.vic.gov.au/#detail_places;12309 heritageno=24961 109 http://www.kewcottageshistory.com.au/ 104 Hetherington, p. 33. 110 Find and Connect website – various entries. http://www. 105 Evans, p. 39. findandconnect.gov.au 24 Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study

Aboriginal Australians Providers of welfare

Some colonies in the second half of the nineteenth In the 1840s some Australian colonies had passed century moved to restrict Aboriginal people to missions legislation placing the responsibility for maintaining and reserves. In Victoria, the Central Board for Aborigines, relatives on family members.118 The NSW Deserted Wives established in 1860, attempted to confine Aboriginal and Children Act (1840) (which covered Queensland people to five reserves, some of which were conducted by and the Port Phillip District) placed the responsibility for missionaries. Some of the reserves were self-supporting, wives and children (legitimate or not) on husbands and though rations were also distributed. Reserves were also fathers. The Maintenance Act passed in South Australia established in New South Wales. Christian missionaries in 1843 also placed the responsibility for care of wives were largely responsible for administering South Australia’s and children on husbands and fathers, but extended this Aboriginal reserves, established in the second half of responsibility to mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers and the nineteenth century. They had negligible assistance children of ‘poor and destitute persons’. The legislation 111 from the colonial government. Not all Aboriginal people allowed for Justices of the Peace to rule that relatives pay within these colonies lived on the reserves. In New South maintenance that they could ‘reasonably afford’.119 This Wales, for instance, in 1880 about 80% of the state’s legislation was further strengthened in the second half Aboriginal population supported themselves, largely of the nineteenth century in some colonies. The belief 112 through participation in the pastoral industry. Queensland that individuals were responsible for their own and their Aboriginal people were largely confined to missions and family’s support and that individuals often brought on 113 reserves in the late nineteenth century. The Queensland their own misery through intemperance, idleness and Industrial and Reformatory Schools legislation of the 1860s bad habits underscored much of the thinking of both sanctioned the removal of Aboriginal families from their government and private philanthropists in the second 114 families on the grounds of ‘neglect’. half of the nineteenth century and coloured the ways in which relief from destitution was delivered. The fear of In the Northern Territory, which was administered by encouraging people to sink into ‘pauperism’ is said to South Australia from 1865, most land had been alienated have restrained governments in the Australian colonies by pastoralists in the second half of the century and from assisting the poor and destitute and instead saw Aboriginal people supported themselves on subsistence them leaving this work to voluntary societies, which, wages or rations working on these stations.115 Only one though motivated by Christian ideas of charity, also mission, the Lutheran Hermannsburg Mission, operated. employed means to discourage dependence on welfare. In Western Australia the New Norcia mission had been But it is not true that governments left the work of caring established by two Spanish Catholic priests, Dom Jose for those who needed help entirely to philanthropic and Benito Serra and Dom Rosendo Salvado in 1847. Salvado, charitable organisations. The governments of all the the first priest at New Norcia, established schools for colonies did provide services for the destitute aged, Aboriginal children at the settlement. Elsewhere in chronically ill, and orphaned and destitute children in the Western Australia Aboriginal people worked on pastoral period between 1850 and 1890, though this assistance stations in the north of the colony and were increasingly varied according to the circumstances in each colony. dispossessed of their land in the south. Concern at In New South Wales and Victoria much of the work atrocities committed against Aboriginal people in of delivering relief from distress was left to voluntary Western Australia led the British Government to establish benevolent societies or religious charities but the work, an Aborigines Protection Board in 1886.116 The Chief especially in New South Wales, was subsidised by Protector of Aborigines appointed under the legislation government grants. In other colonies, such as Tasmania, attempted to remove Aboriginal and ‘half-caste’ children South Australia and Western Australia, the state was the from their families, but, with little legislative power to do major provider of welfare services. This included providing so, met with little success until new legislation in 1905 ‘outdoor’ relief, in the form of rations or, as in the case made the Chief Protector of Aborigines the legal guardian of Tasmania, cash payments for those who ‘deserved’ it, of every Aboriginal child under the age of sixteen.117 but also ‘institutionalised’ support in immigrants’ homes, orphanages, destitute asylums and, in Western Australia, ‘poor houses’. 111 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Bringing them Home, Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families, 1997, Chapter 8. 112 Parry, p. 155. 113 Bringing them Home, Chapter 5. 114 ibid. 115 ibid., Chapter 9. 118 Dickey, ‘Social Welfare: the Government Sector’, p. 236. 116 ibid., Chapter 7. 119 Maintenance Act 1843, South Australian Numbered Acts, 117 ibid. http://www.austlii.edu.au. Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study 25

Private or philanthropic bestowers of charity also varied in the kind of ‘outdoor’ relief they offered. Crowds of up to 1200 lined up outside the Sydney Benevolent Society to Period summary 1850–1890 120 receive weekly food parcels. In Victoria visiting societies By the end of the 1850s the colonies of Victoria such as the Melbourne Ladies Benevolent Society, of and Queensland had separated from New South which there were several branches in the suburbs by the Wales and convict transportation was coming to an 1880s, used middle class volunteer women to assess the end. The discovery of gold caused a massive influx merits of each application for help through home visits. of migrants, with the population reaching over one Small amounts of money, food orders for local shops, million by the end of decade. firewood or sometimes a recommendation for a child to be placed in an orphanage might be the result of one of The massive increase and movements in population these visits to a family in distress.121 The St Vincent de during the gold rush saw an increase in the number Paul Society, a Catholic lay organisation, also used home of those requiring care and a change it how it was visits as a method of providing assistance. provided. The exodus of men to the gold fields left deserted mothers and children dependent During the latter half of the nineteenth century private on government and charitable welfare at home, charities, such as benevolent societies, sometimes while those that travelled to the gold fields required followed the lead of the New South Wales Benevolent care. New infrastructure was needed to provide Society in establishing benevolent asylums for those care for migrants. Immigrant’s societies were in need of shelter. Most of these private charitable or established and colonial governments built benevolent societies operated on a subscription system. immigration depots where newly arrived migrants In subscribing funds to the society, members were then were provided accommodation, sick wards and able to nominate a certain number of recipients to receive employment services. assistance from the organisation or be admitted to its institutions. While many of these benevolent societies The large number of neglected or ‘criminal’ children were non-denominationally based they were underpinned in Melbourne led to the government establishment of by the Christian convictions of their members. Similarly, industrial and reform schools. These schools reflected in some colonies in the mid to late nineteenth century, an approach to the care of children which focused on Christian values underscored the response by some employment readiness and the separation of children individuals and emerging city missions to respond to from undesirable influences in society. Religious the needs they perceived around them by providing orders established orphanages or homes as places temporary shelter for the homeless or unemployed, of refuge for women and children. The barracks style free medical treatment for the poor and refuges for of care for children was criticised and an alternative women. Increased populations in the second half of the ‘boarding out’ with families was proposed. Boarding nineteenth century raised the number of adherents to out was introduced in the 1870s. some religions. Methodists, for example, who had formed a small proportion of the population in the first half of Consequently the institutions that previously the nineteenth century, doubled their proportion of the housed children in care were closed or given over Australian population between 1851 and 1901.122 From the for the care of the increasing number of mentally mid-nineteenth century the ability of Catholic bishops to ill patients and the aged and infirm, including persuade Irish and European religious orders to establish ex-convict and ticket-of-leave convicts who had foundations in some of the Australian colonies, and the no other means of support. growth of the Australian-formed Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart enabled the Catholic Church to extend and develop a parallel system of education, welfare and health services in many of the colonies.

120 Murphy, p. 38. 121 Shurlee Swain, ‘The Victorian Charity Network in the 1890s’, PhD Thesis, Department of History, University of Melbourne, 1976, passim. 122 James Jupp (ed), The Australian People, An Encyclopedia of the Nation, Its People and their Origins, Cambridge Randwick Asylum. Source: The Illustrated Sydney News University Press, Melbourne, 2001, p. 325. 26 Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study

1890–1940 DEPRESSION AND WAR AND THE BEGINNINGS OF COMMONWEALTH WELFARE PROVISION

Major trends and influences Between 1914 and 1918 Australia was at war. Over 58 000 Australian men were killed during World War I, and about of the period four times that many were wounded or suffered illness.126 These huge losses cast a shadow over the newly formed When the six Australian colonies came together to form nation. The desire to recognise and reward the sacrifices the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 the country made by Australian servicemen and their dependants had just survived a tumultuous decade. In the early during the war led the Commonwealth Government to 1890s the long economic boom that many Australian legislate for pensions for disabled ex-servicemen, colonies had enjoyed ended as the price of wool – the widows of ex-servicemen and their dependent Australia’s major export – fell, British banks began to children even before the war had ended. One aspect refuse further loans to Australian colonies and British of the repatriation plan was the effort to establish ex- investors began to withdraw their funds from Australian 123 servicemen as earners and providers through Soldier banks. Unemployment rose, particularly in the cities Settlement Schemes in the 1920s.127 Over 37 000 and particularly in Melbourne where it was estimated ex-servicemen were settled on the land through this that 28% of trade union members were out of work 124 scheme, though many ultimately were unable to make in 1893. At the same time as thousands suffered in a living from the land. the eastern states, Western Australia, which achieved responsible government in 1890, experienced gold Australia descended into economic depression again from rushes, attracting an increase in population, many of the late 1920s. As in the lead up to the 1890s depression, whom had left behind the spectre of unemployment Australian governments had borrowed heavily from British in the eastern states to try their luck on the Western investors in the 1920s. Worsening economic conditions Australian goldfields. The new Commonwealth globally meant that these sources of funds not only dried Government did not immediately assume responsibility up, but British banks began to demand repayment of for the provision of welfare services to Australian loans from Australian governments. Once again, there citizens. This continued to be administered within was massive unemployment and consequent misery states and was still frequently the work of voluntary, for thousands of Australians. Thirty percent of workers charitable or religious organisations. However, an early were estimated to be unemployed at the height of the Act of the Commonwealth Parliament established the Depression in 1932.128 Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Court to arbitrate on industrial relations matters that crossed state Despite the severe impacts of two depressions and World boundaries. One early decision of the first president of War I, in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth this court was the Harvester Judgement, set down by century Australia and New Zealand were dubbed by some Justice Henry Bourne Higgins in 1907 in a case involving overseas observers the ‘social laboratory’ of the world. H V McKay’s Sunshine Harvester Factory in Victoria. The In Australia this reputation was gained by the democratic Harvester Judgement set a new precedent in the concept forms of government adopted in the colonies in the mid- of a minimum living wage, suggesting that wages should nineteenth century and the achievements of the trade be paid according to what was a decent amount for a union movement in such areas as the eight hour day, the man and his wife and family to live on. Though Higgins’s achievement of the idea of a minimum ‘living wage’ and judgement in this case was later overturned by the High the beginnings of a system of social welfare supported 129 Court, the concept of the basic wage – based on the cost by the state. These beginnings of a social welfare of supporting a family – gradually came to be accepted as system were the aged and invalid pensions introduced the basis for determining the wages of Australian men, by the Commonwealth Government in 1909 and 1910 but not women, during the twentieth century. In 1919 respectively. Many of the ideas behind these democratic Higgins set the basic wage for women at 54% of the and welfare achievements had been imported into male basic wage.125 Australia by nineteenth century immigrants from Britain and were being debated and introduced overseas. They were not particularly unique to Australasia.

126 http://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/enlistment/ww1/ 127 Murphy, p. 109. 123 Jenny Lee, ‘Depressions’, Davison, Hirst and MacIntyre (eds) 128 Lee, p. 184. The Oxford Companion to Australian History, p. 183. 129 Francis G Castles, ‘Social Laboratory’, in Davison, Hirst and 124 Lee, p. 183. MacIntyre (eds) The Oxford Companion to Australian History, 125 Murphy, p. 93. pp. 592–593. Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study 27

Ideas, attitudes and beliefs Recipients of welfare

The hardships suffered by much of the Australian The aged and invalid population during the 1890s helped to force the beginnings of a rethink about the provision of welfare in From the mid-nineteenth century each of the Australian Australia, just as the Commonwealth began to take its colonies had offered institutions for the destitute aged first steps. The fact that many quite deserving people and invalid – similar to poor houses. The proportion suffered during the Depression despite the fact that they of ageing Australians within the Australian population had lived hitherto thrifty and morally upright lives began increased by 60% in the 1890s; twice the growth rate of to challenge the notion that people brought misery on the population in general.130 Amid the economic crisis of themselves through their own actions and blurred the the 1890s, there was growing pressure on the existing lines between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor institutions catering for the destitute aged. In Queensland which had held sway amongst both governments and in 1897 the government began paying an allowance of some charitable organisers during the nineteenth century. five shillings a week to the aged who remained out of the Now for the first time, many hardworking people were Dunwich Asylum. This was a cheaper way of supporting first to seek charitable assistance as their savings were these people than had they been placed in the asylum.131 wiped out. Their exposure to this experience helped to The Victorian, South Australian and New South Wales reframe questions about how this charity was delivered. Parliaments each conducted inquiries into the condition of The sheer inability of many established charitable their aged poor in the late 1890s with the result that both organisations to cope with need during the 1890s helped Victoria and New South Wales introduced pensions for the to pave the way for the introduction of the idea of a aged in 1900. Although there were economic reasons to national welfare system. The introduction of pensions introduce pensions, there was also a recognition by some for the aged in Victoria and New South Wales at the Members of Parliament that an aged pension was ‘a gift’ turn of the century and in Commonwealth Legislation in to those ‘who have for a fair period assisted to create our 1908 was a reflection of the beginnings of change in the civilisation, aided in the development of the resources of mentality of entitlement to support. the country and helped to bear the public burdens of the community by the payment of taxes’.132 Both the NSW During the 1890s the belief in the power of a rural ideal as and Victorian pensions had certain conditions attached; offering more, in terms of independence and self-reliance Victoria’s more rigorous than those in NSW. Some of these and in terms of health, than life in the cities was revived conditions were replicated in the Commonwealth Invalid once again. Policies to help the urban unemployed during and Old-aged Pensions legislation enacted in 1908. This the 1890s depression were an expression of this idea, gave a pension of 10 shillings a week for men over the as were the Soldier Settlement Schemes of the second age of 65 and for women over the age of 60. The pension decade of the twentieth century. Some child welfare was means-tested and, like the NSW and Victorian aged authorities also continued to prefer to place the children pensions, was based on residency in Australia. To qualify of the urban poor with rural foster families. From the for the pension, one had to have lived in Australia for 25 1880s, particularly in Victoria, there was a stronger thrust years and be of ‘good character’. Men who had deserted to remove children from what were seen as tainted living their wives or families within the previous five years were environments and successive legislation in many of the also denied the aged pension. Aboriginal people, Asians colonies broadened the definitions of what constituted a and aliens (non-British or Australian-born) were excluded ‘neglected’ child or a child in ‘moral danger’. from eligibility.133 The same Act also allowed for invalid pensions to be introduced at a later date. Any person over At the same time the falling growth of Australia’s sixteen who, through accident or being an invalid, was population in the last decade of the nineteenth century incapacitated for work could apply for an invalid pension. and early twentieth century prompted a greater concern The same restrictions applied as did for the aged pension, for preserving infant life and both private and faith based although the claimant only had to have resided in Australia charities and state governments redoubled their efforts for five years. There was an added clause, however, stating to preserve infant life through legislation and through the that the invalid pension would not be paid to those who provision of services for children and mothers. The huge had relatives who supported them.134 loss of life during World War I added further emphasis to the importance placed on helping children to grow up as strong future citizens of the new nation. Finally the 130 Dickey, No Charity There, p. 84. growing numbers of aged people as a proportion of the population, and the increased demand for accommodation 131 Goodall, ‘Whom Nobody Owns’, p. 71. for these people during the depression of the 1890s 132 Select Committee on State Insurance or Old Age and began to force a rethink on the ‘entitlement’ of some Invalidity Pensions Report, NSW Legislative Assembly, Votes portions of society to be supported by that society and and Proceedings, 1896 vol. 5, quoted in Dickey, No Charity not by charity. Many of the immigrants of the nineteenth There, pp. 85–86. century who had reached old age by the 1890s had never 133 Dickey, No Charity There, p. 93. married or had families and there were growing concerns that these ‘pioneers’ should be adequately cared for. 134 Invalid and Old Age Pensions Act 1908, http://www.comlaw. gov.au/Details/C1908A00017 28 Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study

There was no set amount for the invalid pension. Each case During the 1920s the Commonwealth Government was to be determined by the Commissioner of Pensions.135 attempted, and failed, to introduce a national insurance By 1913, 82 943 Australians had taken up the pension. scheme to cover those who might be incapacitated for Nevertheless, the government destitute or benevolent work. The Queensland Labor Government, however, asylums remained for the really poor aged and private succeeded in passing the Unemployed Workers charities continued to offer shelters for the homeless. Insurance Act in 1922. The scheme was intended mainly Moreover, as was pointed out in the annual report of to cover seasonal workers such as shearers and cane the State Children Relief Board of NSW in 1920, poverty cutters whose work left them vulnerable to regular remained a problem for the families of incapacitated or periods of unemployment. Employers, employees and invalid men, who received the invalid pension but had little the government contributed equally to this insurance other income to rely on.136 scheme. While there was support in place for the aged, the invalid and poor families via destitute boards and The unemployed child welfare departments by the 1920s, there was still no formal support system in place to cope with the Severe economic crises in both the 1890s and the 1930s massive unemployment that descended on the Australian threw many Australians out of work. In the 1890s the workforce once again during the 1930s. As in the 1890s, colonial government initially relied on the private and some state governments relied initially on subsidising philanthropic charities to offer sustenance in the form of private charities to distribute relief in the form of food, food rations, though the Western Australian Government sustenance and rations, while other governments such did provide some cash payments to the destitute. In as South Australia continued the system of distributing the 1890s some colonial governments, such as New sustenance through its government Destitute Board.139 South Wales, established labour bureaus where the The unemployed were often required to register with unemployed could register for work and employers could labour bureaus in order to qualify for this sustenance hire them. Victoria’s first labour bureau was established and the process could be demeaning. In Queensland, by the Salvation Army in 1889 and later taken over by 137 for example, applicants for sustenance had to sign a the government. In Victoria during the early 1890s, statement declaring that they were indigent.140 clergyman Horace Tucker and Charles Strong, the founder of the Australian Church, pioneered the idea of village In some states single men were ineligible for sustenance. settlements for the unemployed and their families. The They were herded into unemployed camps, away from village settlements were intended to be cooperative rural the city, such as at the Broadmeadows Army Camp settlements to which the unemployed of the city could in Victoria or Black Boy Hill in Western Australia. The move with their families and work small farms. Tucker Commonwealth Government made available funds for and Strong established such settlements in Gippsland the relief of the unemployed. However, it was left up to and central Victoria between 1892 and 1894, though the state governments to disburse this funding. It was they ultimately failed due to inadequate capital and largely distributed as sustenance, not cash, in exchange 138 mismanagement. Nevertheless, a number of colonial for labour on public works, sometimes administered by governments legislated to settle the families of the urban municipal authorities, as well as state governments. The unemployed in village settlements during the 1890s and work was usually rostered amongst the unemployed to village settlements were established in Victoria, South spread the share. The work provided was hard physical Australia and New South Wales under this legislation. In labour. Amongst the public relief works offered during Tasmania, while there was no formal legislation, a small the Depression was forestry and many young, single village settlement was established at Southport. Alongside unemployed men were directed to forestry camps in the village settlements, some colonial governments also rural areas. Reforestation, swamp drainage and land established labour colonies, such as at Leongatha in reclamation, road construction and the construction and Victoria where unemployed men worked at clearing forests beautification of public parks were amongst the kinds of and farming in exchange for subsistence wages. A similar work offered in return for rations to unemployed men. The labour colony was established in 1896 at Pitt Town in NSW. Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne was one project constructed by unemployed relief workers.141

135 Invalid and Old Age Pensions Act 1908, http://www.comlaw. gov.au/Details/C1908A00017 136 Report of the President of the State Children Relief Board, NSW 1920. 137 http://www.salvationarmy.org.au/en/Who-We-Are/History- and-heritage/Foundation-of-Salvation-Army-social-services/ 139 Murphy, p. 168. 138 Ruth Carter, ‘Tucker, Horace Finn (1849–1911)’, Australian 140 MacIntyre, S, Winners and Losers, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, 1985, p. 75. Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/ biography/tucker-horace-finn-8868/text15571, published in 141 Tony Dingle, ‘Depressions’, http://www.emelbourne.net.au/ hardcopy 1990. biogs/EM00460b.htm Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study 29

Children

From the late nineteenth century in the Australian colonies there was a broadening interest in rescuing children from what were perceived to be circumstances dangerous to their physical and moral development. Inspired by the international child rescue movement, reformers such as Selina Sutherland in Victoria, advocated removing children from slum environments or places of perceived moral danger such as hotels and brothels. The child rescue movement was most strongly expressed in Victoria, where legislation in 1887 included provision to allow privately licensed organisations or individuals to legally apprehend children perceived to be in danger or neglected and act as guardians to these children, as a parallel system of child care to that operated by the state. In some colonies societies for the prevention of cruelty to children were established in the 1890s as part of the broader movement of child rescue.

Between the 1880s and the First World War each Australian Anzac Hostel Ward, 1919. Courtesy of the Australian War colony/state moved to establish government departments Memorial. Photo ID number H13066. specifically devoted to managing, controlling and protecting children, as distinct from including them within the purview of a larger department for the destitute. Queensland was the last to do so in 1911. In the same period, the Ex-servicemen parameters for which a child could be committed to the care of the state were broadened. Legislation in all colonies Ex-servicemen and the families of deceased ex- allowed for the removal of the children of drunkards and servicemen were the recipients of substantial amounts vagrants, and children who were ill-treated or simply not of assistance after World War I, through the newly being properly cared for. Children found in brothels or established Commonwealth Department of Repatriation, licensed premises, found begging or selling newspapers through state government bodies and through self-help unlicensed in the street at night could be taken into the groups, such as the Returned Sailors and Soldiers Imperial care of the state. Much of the legislation also made it League of Australia, later called the Returned Services difficult for parents to retrieve their children once they had League of Australia. Three thousand unemployed ex- been committed to state care. The legislation provided servicemen were given work constructing the memorial that children would be committed to state care through 142 Great Ocean Road in Victoria from 1919 to 1932. the court system and in the first decade of the twentieth Incapacitated returned servicemen and their wives and century each of the states established Children’s Courts. children were assisted through a number of repatriation These segregated cases in which children were being tried, measures established by the Commonwealth even as either neglected or delinquent, from other court rooms before the war had ended. These included pensions and limited access to these court rooms to only those for incapacitated ex-servicemen and their wives and people directly involved. While many children continued dependent children, assistance with building homes to be boarded out (sometimes to their parents), there still through the War Service Homes Scheme, and the Soldier existed a range of institutional residences for children in Settlement Scheme, which, once again, attempted to all the states, some of them licensed to ‘rescue’ children, offer an independent living to individuals and families others approved to accept state wards for whom the through settlement on the land. Some state-funded government paid an allowance. psychiatric hospitals expanded their facilities in the wake of the war, while some, such as Mont Park Hospital in In addition, in some states a parallel system of voluntary outer Melbourne, were established specifically to cater homes still accepted children who were, in the main, for the war wounded. Repatriation hospitals were also not wards of the state. Though subsidised by the state, established to care for war wounded. Many permanently these institutions depended on private subscriptions or disabled ex-servicemen lived out their days in ANZAC donations. The Catholic orphanages and industrial schools Hostels established in each state. These were often also relied on the free labour and religious devotion located in large homes that were donated for the purpose of religious sisters or brothers. Often these were the of caring for returned soldiers. Some of these ANZAC institutions to which parents turned for temporary help Hostels would later become aged care facilities for to care for their children in times of family crisis. Most returned servicemen or war widows. states had adopted a system of boarding out for wards of the state in the late nineteenth century, though some institutions remained, particularly those operated by 142 http://www.environment.gov.au/node/19659 the Catholic Church, which distrusted the boarding out 30 Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study

system’s ability to ensure that children would receive an War I, many new babies’ homes emerged which did adequate religious education. By the 1930s the use of not offer accommodation for mothers once the babies boarding out began to wane in some states.143 In Victoria had been born.145 Using the new ideology of ‘scientific this was due not only to a shortage of suitable foster mothering’, propounded by such people as Dr Frederic parents, many of whom could no longer afford to care for Truby King, these homes could artificially feed infants children on the meagre allowance they were paid, but also with some success and aimed to have babies adopted to heightened concerns that children were endangered out, rather than seeking to assist their mothers to keep in some private homes, where foster parents accepted them. The Methodist Babies’ Home in Melbourne, children for the money and cheap labour they brought in, established by slum reclamation reformer Oswald but did not provide adequate care for them.144 Barnett, was an example of such a home. Mothers were not accommodated and Methodist families were Parallel with the broadening interest in ‘rescuing’ children actively sought to adopt children and rear the babies. An from neglect or moral danger was a burgeoning interest alternative to this kind of approach to single mothers and in the welfare of infants. In part this was a response their babies was offered by the NSW State Children’s to the despair of authorities over the nation’s falling Relief Board in the 1910s and 1920s when it established birth rate during the 1890s. But in Victoria, where the two ‘working mothers’ hostels’ where single mothers, firstInfant Life Protection Act was passed in 1890, the who were themselves wards of the state, could board renewed interest in the care of infants was spurred by with their babies and go out to work each day, leaving the alarming reports of the deaths of infants in the care of children to be cared for at the hostel.146 ‘baby farmers’. Single mothers of illegitimate children often had little alternative but to pay other women to From the 1890s groups of philanthropic women began care for their infants while they worked to earn a living. to focus on providing free kindergartens for the children The widely publicised deaths of some infants in the care of working class mothers. The kindergartens essentially of such women in Victoria led the Victorian Parliament to provided free day care, but also mixed this with the move to require that anyone receiving payment for the education of working class mothers about appropriate care of infants under the age of two be licensed and their nutrition and education for their pre-school age children. premises registered. The legislation gave police the power The earliest free kindergartens were based in working to inspect these premises and the condition of the babies class suburbs and, while offering oversight of the children, therein. Infants found to be neglected could be removed also freed women up to work without worrying about to the custody of the Department of Neglected Children. their children. Feminist Maybanke Anderson established Amendments to this legislation in the following decade the first free kindergarten in Sydney at Woolloomooloo in required the mothers of these infants to pay for their 1895.147 The movement spread to the other states in the support through the department. The other Australian first decade of the twentieth century. Edith Cowan was colonies followed Victoria’s lead in the first decade of instrumental in establishing the first free kindergarten the twentieth century, requiring registration of premises, in Western Australia.148 As many of these early free regular inspections and imposing penalties for breaches of kindergartens provided only limited hours of care, they the legislation. proved to be of limited social use for working mothers.149 At the beginning of the twentieth century, therefore, A number of the older women’s refuges that had been day nurseries began to appear in working class suburbs, established in the mid-nineteenth century began offering offering longer daily hours of care and a greater emphasis longer term care both before and after birth for single mothers and their babies in the 1890s. Others were newly established by religious organisations, such as 145 Renate Howe and Shurlee Swain, The Challenge of the City, the Salvation Army or Catholic religious orders. Women The Centenary History of Wesley Central Mission 1893– could enter the homes during their pregnancy and 1993, South Melbourne, Hyland House, 1993, p. 107. stay on to nurse their babies for up to twelve months afterwards. Some were initiated by members of the 146 Report of the President of the State Children Relief Board, growing middle class of women interested in children’s NSW, 1920. and women’s welfare who hoped to both save the lives 147 Beverley Kingston, ‘Anderson, Maybanke Susannah (1845– of infants and assist single mothers. The survival of 1927)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of babies in these institutions depended fairly strongly on Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu. their mothers being present to breastfeed them in their au/biography/anderson-maybanke-susannah-5018/text8347, first year. The alternatives to breast milk, such as cow’s published in hardcopy 1979. milk, presented huge dangers to infants. After World 148 Margaret Brown, ‘Cowan, Edith Dircksey (1861–1932)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu. 143 Senate Community Affairs Committee, Forgotten Australians: au/biography/cowan-edith-dircksey-5791/text9823, published A report on Australians who experienced institutional or in hardcopy 1981. out-of-home care as children, 2004, http://www.aph.gov.au/ 149 Frances Press and Alan Hayes, ‘OECD Thematic Review Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_ of Early Childhood Education and Care Policy’, Australian Affairs/Completed_inquiries/200 Background Report, Commonwealth Government of 144 Barnard and Twigg, p. 120. Australia, nd p. 17. Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study 31

on the physical health of the children rather than on their The Commonwealth Government contributed its bit education. Gradually kindergartens, with their limited towards the health of mothers and babies with the hours, began to be seen as more the province of the introduction of a maternity allowance in 1912. The £5 middle classes.150 offered per birth was intended to reduce both infant and maternal mortality by ensuring that women could afford to have a doctor in attendance for the births of their children.151 The maternity allowance was not means-tested and was payable to both married and unmarried mothers. It was not extended, however, to Indigenous mothers.

Aboriginal Australians

The early twentieth century was marked by ever greater controls and restrictions on the freedom of movement of Aboriginal people and the removal of Aboriginal children from their families in several of the Australian states. Legislation in all the mainland Australian colonies around the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century sought to restrict Aboriginal people to designated reserves and to control their movements and actions within these reserves. Most of the legislation also allowed the Aboriginal Protector greater control over Aboriginal children, including the power to remove them from their families. Though each of the Acts included the word ‘Protection’ and established Boards of Protection or Aboriginal Protectors, each of the Acts attempted to impose rigid control over Aboriginal people’s lives, including, in the cases of the Sydney, NSW. A family reunion outside Randwick Military Western Australian, Queensland and South Australian Hospital (later known as the Prince of Wales Hospital), legislation, control over the placement of Aboriginal and Source: Australian War Memorial, ID Number H18785 ‘half-caste’ children. The Queensland Act of 1897 gave the Queensland Government the right to move children to orphanages and industrial schools, as did the South Australian Aborigines (Training of Children) Act 1923. In Queensland a number of industrial and reformatory schools Similarly, it was frequently, though not always, specifically designed for Aboriginal children were opened women, many of them doctors, who were behind the from the end of the 1890s. Some were still operating establishment of infant welfare facilities in each of the in the 1960s. In addition, from the early years of the Australian states in the first and second decades of the twentieth century, some Queensland Aboriginal children twentieth century. Again, the first infant welfare clinics were removed from their families and placed in church- were often sited in urban working class neighbourhoods. run orphanages and industrial schools.152 Between 1905 They offered training and advice for mothers on how and 1920 in Western Australia the Protector of Aborigines to best rear their children and, in the 1920s, frequently established a number of ‘settlements’, some based in began to espouse the principles of scientific mothering existing missions and others, such as Moore River, newly – involving strict routines for mother and baby – in order established. Aboriginal people were ‘encouraged’ to move to assist mothers in raising healthy children. While some onto these settlements by such means as the refusal of state governments assumed responsibility for their infant rations if they remained outside the settlement. Children welfare systems by the 1920s, South Australia’s Mothers were removed from their families and placed in dormitories and Babies Health Association remained an independent and schools elsewhere, while those above the age of association until the 1970s. In other states, municipal fourteen were sent to the missions and settlements governments assumed responsibility for providing infant to work.153 In 1915 legislation in New South Wales was welfare centres and proudly pointed to the establishment amended to allow the Aboriginal Protection Board to of new centres as evidence of municipal progress. Infant remove older children – mainly girls – from their families welfare or child health centres gradually spread across on reserves and place them as apprentices or in children’s all municipalities around Australia in the 1930s and homes. Prior to this amendment the board had had to 1940s. In 1939 the Commonwealth Government funded prove to the Children’s Court that Aboriginal children were the establishment in each capital city of one model infant welfare and kindergarten centre, the Lady Gowrie Centres. These were named after Lady Zara Gowrie, the 151 Murphy, p. 103. wife of the then Governor-General. 152 Leneen Forde, Commission of Inquiry into Abuse of Children in Queensland Institutions, Queensland, 1999. p. 51. 150 ibid. 153 Bringing them Home, Chapter 7. 32 Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study

neglected before removing them from their families. Under Australian states. There is some evidence that these the new legislation they did not have to do this.154 By the private or religiously run children’s institutions performed mid-twentieth century in some states there were extreme the role of temporary carers of children at times of family restrictions on the freedoms of Aboriginal people within distress, thus averting the need for parents to surrender the reserves, though not all Aboriginal people submitted to their children permanently to state care.158 While women moving onto reserves and some continued to live outside had always served as the volunteers in visiting societies them. By contrast, though the Tasmanian Government and benevolent societies in nineteenth century, they established the Cape Barren Island Reserve by an Act began to take more active roles as advocates, particularly of Parliament in 1907, formalising the long-established in the areas of women’s and children’s health at the settlement of Cape Barren Islanders, there was no formal beginning of the twentieth century. attempt by the Tasmanian Government to regulate or control the Aboriginal people resident on the reserve.155

Providers of welfare

The depression of the 1890s saw the emergence of a number of new private charitable organisations in the Australian colonies. In Victoria, there were 30 more of these bodies at the end of the decade than there had been at the beginning.156 To the established benevolent and visiting societies and the Catholic orders who had already made their appearance, a number of other groups, most of them originating in Christian denominations, were added. These included the Catholic St Vincent de Paul Society, whose presence in Australia had waxed and waned in the mid-nineteenth century, and City Mission Societies, originating in Protestant congregations, often those of a Wesleyan background. The Salvation Army made its first appearance in Adelaide in 1881 and by 1891 had a presence in all Australian colonies. It has been argued that organisations such as the Wesleyan Mission Societies, the Salvation Army and the St Vincent de Paul Society offered less judgement Kew Lunatic Asylum. Courtesy of Heritage Victoria, of those needing assistance than the older benevolent Victorian Heritage Register. societies and government destitute agencies and that the Christian-based societies discriminated less between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor.157 Private and religious charities continued to provide not These groups followed the examples set by such only immediate and longer term assistance but also independent reformers as Dr John Singleton in ideas for reform, particularly in response to needs they Victoria and George Ardill in New South Wales who, as perceived during the depression of the 1930s. The evangelistic Christians, had helped to establish practical Brotherhood of St Lawrence was initiated by Anglican forms of assistance such as free medical dispensaries Minister Gerard Tucker, the son of Horace Tucker, in 1930 and homes for homeless or unemployed men and women and instigated schemes for the homeless and elderly, as from the 1880s. Groups such as the Salvation Army and well as advocating for slum abolition. Methodist Frederic Wesleyan City Missions established a range or ‘chain’ Oswald Barnett also campaigned for slum abolition, of services – to the homeless, the unemployed and convincing the Victorian state government to establish a prisoners – as well as refuges for pregnant and single Housing Investigation and Slum Abolition Board in 1936. women. Some of them also became involved in child Eventually this would lead to the establishment of the rescue work, establishing children’s homes as well as Housing Commission of Victoria in 1938. In 1932 in New reformatories and industrial schools licensed to accept South Wales, Canon R B S Hammond responded to the wards of the state and children who were privately challenges of unemployment and forced evictions in placed in these institutions. The Salvation Army operated inner Sydney by purchasing land at Liverpool and offering a number of girls’ and boys’ reformatories in several easy terms for families to build their own homes on an acre each of land, paying it off slowly. To qualify for a home at Hammondville, the families had to have at least 154 Parry, p. 276. three children, have an unemployed breadwinner and 155 Parry, p. 117. be facing eviction. By 1937, 110 homes had been built 156 Swain, ‘The Victoria Charity Network in the 1890s’, p. 341. 157 Brown, p. 156. 158 Barnard and Twigg, p. 71. Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study 33

at Hammondville.159 In Western Australia during the Depression, a wealthy businessman, Charles McNess, Period summary 1890–1940 donated money to the Workers’ Home Board for the establishment of a trust to provide homes for the aged, After Federation, the responsibility for the provision ill and permanently incapacitated. The McNess Trust of welfare services continued to be administered 160 Scheme, as it was called, continued until 1968. within the states and was increasingly the work of voluntary, charitable or religious organisations. The First World War stimulated the growth of a number of volunteer patriotic societies across Australia, notable The economic depressions of the 1890s and again amongst them the Australian Red Cross Society. After in the 1920s saw a change in people’s attitudes to the war ex-servicemen came together to form self-help the poor. The weight and impact of economic and and advocacy groups such as the Returned Sailors and social change outside of an individual’s control Soldiers Imperial League of Australia (later shortened to meant that idea of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ the Returned Servicemen’s League) which would become poor no longer seemed reasonable to apply. a strong advocate for the rights and interests of returned The inability of existing charity infrastructure to service people in the twentieth century. Legacy, formed cope with the number of people in need during initially by an ex-serviceman to help other ex-servicemen the depressions paved the way for a national in business, turned its focus to assisting the children of welfare system. deceased servicemen in 1925. The concept of direct payments to those in State governments strengthened their roles as guardians need developed. Aged and invalid pensions of an ever-widening circle of children in the early were established by the Commonwealth in 1909 twentieth century and, in some instances, extended and 1910. By 1911 each state had established a their obligations to assist people even further. In the government department for the care, management 1920s, for example, the Labor Government in New South and protection of children. These departments had Wales introduced both widows’ pensions and child the authority to rescue children from physical and endowment. Some state governments also introduced moral harm and take them into the care of the housing schemes to improve access to decent housing. In state. Throughout the early twentieth century, state Queensland in 1909 the Workers’ Dwelling Act aimed to governments strengthened their roles as guardians provide cheap housing for workers. The New South Wales of an ever widening group of children. Government began building workers’ homes in Daceyville in 1912.161 The Western Australian Government passed Religious and charitable organisations continued legislation establishing the Workers’ Home Board in the to assert their influence and control through same year. the establishment of a range of services and institutions for the homeless, the unemployed, The Commonwealth Government had gone a small prisoners, single mothers, orphans and way to introducing universal benefits for citizens early women. Institutions included children’s homes, in its development with the introduction of aged and reformatories, orphanages and industrial schools invalid pensions, a maternity allowance for mothers licensed to accept wards of the state. and a repatriation scheme for those who had served in World War I and their dependants. But the government’s role in alleviating unemployment and the consequent widespread distress during the 1930s had been limited and it would not be until the conditions of World War II had engulfed Australia that the Commonwealth Government would assume a greater role in the provision of welfare to a much broader sweep of Australians.

159 Melanie Gibbons, Hammondville, The First Eighty Years.1932–2012, A Celebration of Courage, Success and Vision, Parliament of New South Wales, 2012. 160 http://www.housing.wa.gov.au/HousingDocuments/ Centenary%20flashback_Great%20Depression%20 leads%20to%20new%20Housing%20Trust.pdf Oswald Barnett collection. Courtesy of the State Library of Victoria. 161 Garton, Out of Luck, p. 121. 34 Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study

1940–1972 POST-WORLD WAR II AND THE ROLE OF THE STATE IN SOCIAL SECURITY

ustralia was at war between 1939 and 1945. The 25 years following the war have been described War in the Pacific brought the conflict much as a ‘long boom’, a time of ‘uninterrupted growth and closer to home than had been the case during unprecedented prosperity’ and very low unemployment AWorld War I. Women were pressed into levels.164 This was a time when the average school service to ensure that production of food, munitions leaving age rose and a Commonwealth Scholarship and other essential items was maintained. Food Scheme introduced by the Menzies Government in 1951 and clothing were rationed. Travel within Australia encouraged greater access to tertiary education. was restricted and in some urban areas there were housing shortages. The war provided a context within which the Commonwealth Government was Ideas, attitudes and beliefs able to introduce a range of social security benefits, introducing a ‘welfare state’ in Australia. But the war During the Second World War the Commonwealth also stimulated the growth of voluntary organisations, Government put into place a number of social security including 8000 patriotic funds.162 In the immediate measures to provide a ‘safety net’ for Australians. The postwar years there were extreme housing shortages Menzies Government began with the passing of child in some Australian cities. There had been little endowment in 1941, allowing for the payment to mothers home-building during the 1930s depression and the of five shillings weekly for any child under the age of war. Many families lived for years after the war in sixteen (other than her first) born in Australia. A Joint makeshift or shared accommodation. Parliamentary Committee, sitting in 1941 to inquire and report on social security, argued for a break from the old assumption that poverty was the fault of the individual. ‘More modern opinion,’ it said, ‘is that poverty is mostly not the fault of the individual but of the environment in which he lives’.165 When Labor’s John Curtin became Prime Minister he sought, and achieved, the power for the Commonwealth Government to collect income tax, to the exclusion of the states. Although the main purpose of this was to enable the development of a war economy, it enabled Curtin to begin to implement a range of social security measures.166 Within a few years a number of major social security supports had been introduced. The first of these was the introduction of pensions for widows and deserted wives. The pension was means-tested and subject to a ‘good character test’. The maternity allowance, first A girl making a bed in a dormitory at the Home of introduced in 1912, was increased. In 1944 unemployment the Good Shepherd girl’s home. Ashfield, 8 October, and sickness benefits were introduced. This legislation also 1963, J.A. Mulligan, Courtesy of the National Library of allowed for ‘special benefits’ to be paid at the discretion Australia, nla.pic-an24494479 of the Director-General to anyone who ‘by reason of age, physical or mental disability or domestic circumstances’ was unable to earn a living.167 Further attempts by the Australia’s vulnerability during the war convinced Labor Government to extend social security via the health the Labor Government that the country’s population system in the 1940s were not so successful because they and industrial strength must be increased and, even faced opposition to the concept of government intervention before the war was over, it began to plan for a massive into what was seen as a private realm.168 A Bill introducing immigration program. The result was that between 1947 and the 1970s two million European, British and Irish 163 migrants arrived in Australia. The Labor Party remained 164 GD Snooks, ‘Economy’, in Oxford Companion to Australian in power at the Commonwealth level until 1949, when History, p. 204. the Liberal-Country Party won office. It was to remain in power until 1972. 165 Quoted in Garton, p. 135. 166 David Black, Biography of John Curtin,http://john.curtin.edu. au/resources/biography/details.html 162 Melanie Oppenheimer, ‘Voluntary Action and Welfare in Post- 1945 Australia: Preliminary Perspectives’, in History Australia, 167 Unemployment and Sickness Benefits Act, 1944(Cwth). vol. 2, no. 3, 2005. 168 Gwen Gray, ‘Health Policy in Australia’, Australian Policy 163 Barnard, Welcome and Farewell, p. 120. Online http://apo.org.au/commentary/health-policy-australia Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study 35

pharmaceutical benefits on certain prescription drugs, such largely unavailable to Aboriginal people, who were explicitly as the newly developed penicillin, was passed in 1944 excluded in all the social security legislation passed during and again 1946. Doctors across Australia, in an organised World War II. Child endowment was payable only to those manner, refused to write prescriptions using the regulation Aboriginal mothers who weren’t ‘nomadic’ or had children forms devised under the scheme.169 In 1945 in the Hospital ‘wholly or mainly dependent’ on Commonwealth or state Benefits Act, the Commonwealth Government agreed to support.’ Unemployment and sickness benefits and widows subsidise the state hospitals at a rate of not more than pensions were payable only to Aboriginal people who were £500,000 per state per annum, for free treatment of public exempt from the control of the relevant state authority – patients in public hospitals.170 This and a further Hospital meaning those Aboriginal people in South Australia, Victoria, Benefits Act in 1948 were repealed by the Menzies Tasmania and New South Wales who were not living on Liberal-Country Party Government in 1951. Menzies’ new missions or reserves. However, the Director-General of legislation introduced a Commonwealth Government the Commonwealth Department of Social Welfare was subsidy for private health insurance.171 only authorised to pay the benefits to those Aboriginal people he thought were of sufficiently ‘good character’, standard of intelligence and social development.173 It was Major trends and influences not until 1959 that these disqualifications were removed of the period from social security legislation, though benefits were still not payable to those considered ‘nomadic’ or ‘primitive’. In the postwar period ideas began to change about Furthermore, the work test attached to unemployment the appropriate ways in which some groups should be benefits, requiring applicants to prove their genuine need treated and accommodated. Sometimes there were by taking whatever work was offered, meant that Aboriginal gaps between the expression of these ideas and the people living on reserves or missions were required to 174 realisation of them in reality. In the 1950s, for instance, leave their communities in order to access the benefit. the results of British doctor John Bowlby’s research into Given that many rural Aboriginal people were employed as the impact of separation from families on young children itinerant workers, it was difficult to prove that they were not began to circulate. In 1951 Bowlby had concluded that a nomadic. Nor did all Aboriginal workers have access to the child should experience a ‘warm, intimate and continuous minimum wages guaranteed through the industrial award relationship’ with a mother or mother-substitute in system. In Queensland, until the 1970s, the Government order to be able to develop as a healthy human being. controlled the wages of all Aboriginal people covered by Bowlby’s findings threw into question the practise of Protection Acts. When Aboriginal workers were finally separating children from their families and the use of included in the pastoral workers award in 1966, many who large, congregate care institutions for children in out had lived and worked on pastoral stations were forced off 175 of home care. It indicated that cottage-style homes, or these stations. family group homes, scattered amongst the community Throughout this period Aboriginal people in some states in which children could form close relationships with and the Northern Territory remained under the tight others might be more appropriate methods of caring for control of Native Protection or Aboriginal Protection children. These forms of care for children care now began departments. A major way in which this control was to be recommended. Similarly, in the field of psychiatric expressed was in the removal of Aboriginal children care, new ideas about the treatment of the mentally ill from their families to be placed in institutional care. In introduced from Britain espoused breaking down the Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory, size and isolation of asylums, educating the public about legislation gave Chief Protectors or Directors of Aboriginal the causes of mental illness and ensuring there were Affairs enormous powers over the Aboriginal populations adequate trained staff to effectively treat patients.172 of these states and territories, including the guardianship of all Aboriginal children, whether their parents were living Recipients of welfare or not. In practice this meant that children, particularly those who were ‘half-caste’ were removed from their Aboriginal Australians parents and placed in institutions or, increasingly in the 1960s, with foster or adoptive parents in the hope of Ideas about appropriate methods of care and entitlements eventually assimilating Aboriginal people into the non- to social supports did not filter through to the experience Indigenous population.176 of Aboriginal Australians at this time. The self-sufficiency and independence offered by social security benefits was 173 Widows’ Pension Act, 1942 (Cwth), Unemployment and Sickness Benefits Act, 1944(Cwth) , Social Services Consolidation Act, 1947 (Cwth). 169 Garton, p. 136. 174 Danny Shaw, ‘Myths and Facts about Aborigines and Social 170 Hospital Benefits Act, 1945 (Cwth). Security’, Indigenous Law Bulletin no. 20, 1999, http://www. austlii.edu.au/au/journals/ILB/1999/26.html 171 Gray, ‘Health Policy in Australia’. 175 Bringing them Home, np. 172 ‘Eric Cunningham Dax’ Encyclopedia of Australian Science http://www.eoas.info/biogs/P004740b.htm 176 ibid. 36 Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study

Victoria, Tasmania and New South Wales, from the 1940s, Children and young people dealt with Aboriginal children under child welfare laws and could use the increasingly wide definitions of ‘neglect’ The Second World War placed some pressures on the to justify removing Aboriginal children from their parents’ child welfare system in various states in Australia as some care.177 In Western Australia (until 1954), the Northern children were placed in temporary care for the duration Territory (until 1964) and Queensland (until 1965) the of the war. The war also saw the provision of a greater Minister in the relevant Aboriginal Affairs Department and number of day care or kindergarten facilities, some funded the Chief Protector of the Department had the power to by the Commonwealth Government, to provide care for remove or order to be moved Aboriginal children from children whose mothers were involved in paid war work. their parents.178 In practice this meant that up until the 1970s thousands of Aboriginal children were taken from The postwar baby boom dramatically increased the their homes and communities and placed in institutions proportion of children and young people within the Australian 180 of varying quality. Aboriginal children received inadequate population in the twenty years after World War II and, education in these institutions and were placed out despite the apparent economic boom, the number of children as servants or apprenticed workers at an early age. – non-Indigenous as well as Indigenous – living in out of By 1972, when the Western Australian Department of home care appeared to have risen in the period from World Native Welfare was abolished, one in ten of the state’s War II to the 1970s. In Victoria, for instance, there were 4388 Aboriginal people was living in an institution.179 In 1973 wards of the state in 1945. This number fell in the late 1940s, 181 the Commonwealth Government assumed responsibility but by 1965, there were 6415 wards of the state in Victoria. for Aboriginal affairs. The Commonwealth Human Rights Similarly in New South Wales, there were 2665 wards under Commission of Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal the supervision of the department in 1948 and 5926 in 182 and Torres Strait Islander Children from their families 1964. This does not include those children ‘privately placed’ in 1997 documented the long-term consequences of in the voluntary or charity children’s homes or babies’ homes. the practice of removing Indigenous children from their In South Australia too, the increasing numbers of children families over several generations across several states in state care in the 1950s and 1960s led to overcrowding 183 and discussed the implications of the denial of human in children’s institutions. The number of institutions for rights that these government-sanctioned actions implied. children appears also to have also risen, as churches and other groups opened additional homes for children and some state departments, such as those in Victoria and South Australia, increased the number of their own establishments for the reception and care of state wards.184

In some states the availability of foster carers willing and able to care for boarded out children had declined during the Depression and World War II and this contributed to the increase in the number of institutionalised children in the decades after the war. In Queensland, for instance, while only 10% of children in state care were in institutions in 1930 by 1965 this figure had increased to 18% with a peak of 22% in 1951.185 Thirteen church-run children’s institutions, built with government subsidy, were established in Queensland in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In New South Wales, the vast majority of wards of the state continued to be boarded out in the 1960s, but there was an increasing number of homes, both independent and state-run, catering to

180 Australian Bureau of Statistics, ‘Echoes of the Baby Boom’, Australian Social Trends, 2004, http://www.abs.gov.au/ AUSSTATS/[email protected]/2f762f95845417aeca25706c00834 efa/47f151c90ade4c73ca256e9e001f8973!OpenDocument St Vincent de Paul’s Orphanage, Adelaide. Creator – 181 Barnard and Twigg, p. 235. Sweet, Samuel White, 1825-1886. Courtesy of the National Library of Australia PIC 3176/17 LOC Album 951/nla.obj- 182 Annual Reports of the Director, 1950 and 1964. 144218224 183 EP Mullighan, Children in State Care Commission of Inquiry, 2008, p. 33. 184 Dickey, in Wakefield Companion, says that the CW and PR embarked on a plan for an extended number of buildings and 177 Bringing them Home, np. institutions in 1938 and continued that for the next twenty 178 ibid. years in Victoria after new legislation was passed. 179 ibid. 185 Forde Inquiry. Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study 37

a wide variety of categories of children. The number of cottage homes in South Australia between 1961 and 1968.190 premises licensed to care for children under the age of Some church-run institutions also moved to replace their seven (not state wards) rose to 345 in 1964.186 These large congregate care-style institutions with cottage homes, were essentially the small, privately run homes in which usually grouped on a campus, in the postwar years as well. mothers could leave their children, paying the home for the child’s upkeep. They were not under the control A similar alternative to congregate care that was of the State Children’s Relief board, though they were promoted from the late 1940s was the family group liable to inspection by the Board and could have their home. Again this model aimed to replicate the size and licenses revoked. In Western Australia the Child Welfare structure of a family home, but rather than being based Department began to place greater emphasis on foster on a campus, family group homes would be scattered care in the 1950s.187 amongst the community. The Victorian Children’s Welfare Department began building family group homes across Reasons for the rise in the numbers of children coming Victoria in 1956. Up to eight children were accommodated into the care of the state at this time are unclear. They in each home, cared for by a cottage mother (and may have just reflected the sharp rise in the birth rate sometimes father).191 Other state welfare departments in Australia in the years between 1946 and 1965. Only were slower to adopt this form of out of home care. in Victoria were the grounds on which children could be charged as needing ‘care and protection’ broadened by Government and church agencies also moved in the legislation during this period. ‘No settled place of abode’ postwar years to offer hostel-style accommodation for was one cause for committing a child as a ward and it is young people who had left the care of the state and gone possible that the children of families living in makeshift into employment or apprenticeships, but still required accommodation in the postwar housing crisis fell into this somewhere to live. This reflected a move away from the category. It has been suggested that family breakdown tradition that had endured from the nineteenth century of might have been increased in the postwar years by the apprenticing young female wards as domestic servants, post-traumatic stress (undiagnosed) suffered by ex- who lived in at their workplace, and young male wards servicemen and that this led to an increase in children as farm workers. There were moves also, in the postwar coming into care. Surveying state wards in Victoria in period, to extend the level of education offered to children the early 1960s, however, social worker Leonard Tierney in state care beyond the basic standard of education that found that wards of the state in the main came from had been previously funded. economically disadvantaged families.188 Although there were attempts by some state government Awareness of the theories of maternal deprivation welfare agencies and non-government agencies to adapt propounded by John Bowlby and the effects of institutional their methods of offering out of home care in the 1950s life on children’s development led some providers to and 1960s, the institutional model of care remained for begin to move to alternative ways of caring for children many children until the 1970s and beyond. This was partly to the dormitory-style institutionalised buildings that because of a lack of financial resources within the child 192 were the dominant form of out of home care for children. welfare field, particularly in the non-government sector. One alternative to the large institutional model was the Not placing a high priority on child welfare issues until cottage home. The cottage home model, often grouped the 1960s and 1970s has been attributed to Australian on a campus, attempted to replicate the family home, governments.193 accommodating small groups of children of around the same age (though they could number up to 40) with preferably In the 1950s the numbers of Australian children in a couple to supervise and care for the children. Cottage institutions was also increased by child migrants from homes had been advocated by some child welfare experts the British Isles and Malta. Between 7000 and 10 000 since the nineteenth century and indeed there were some child migrants were brought to Australia between the cottage home campuses established by church-affiliated late 1940s and 1967.194 They followed groups of child child welfare organisations in the early twentieth century. migrants who had been brought out to Australia in the The Methodist Homes for Children had operated as a 1920s by such organisations as the Fairbridge Scheme (in cottage-style campus at Cheltenham in Victoria since 1891. Western Australia and New South Wales) and the Lady In 1952 the home moved to a new modern version of the Northcote Farm School in Victoria. The post-World War cottage-style campus at Burwood. Burnside Homes in II child migrants came from orphanages in the United Parramatta, a Presbyterian home for children, had operated Kingdom and were enticed to Australia by promises of a 189 on the cottage model from its inception in 1911. The South better life. The Commonwealth and state governments paid Australian Children’s Welfare and State Relief Board (known subsidies to the private organisations and churches that as the Department of Social Welfare after 1966) built six ran the institutions in which the child migrants were placed

186 Director’s Report Child Welfare Dept. NSW 1964. 190 Find and Connect website. 187 Forgotten Australians, Chapter 2. 191 Find and Connect website. 188 Barnard and Twigg, p. 235. 192 Forgotten Australians, Chapter 2. 189 Find and Connect website. 193 Forgotten Australians,Chapter 2. 194 Blythe, Counting the Cost, p. vii. 38 Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study

in Australia. Although the Commonwealth Government, Although the Commonwealth Government moved to in agreeing to the child migrant scheme, was motivated establish hostels for migrants close to industry and rural by humanitarian concerns as well as the desire to build employment, it took some time to achieve this aim. Many Australia’s postwar population,195 evidence in recent years, of the earliest migrant hostels were established in former particularly that offered to the Senate Inquiry into child army camps or barracks. Some attracted the criticism of migration – Lost Innocents: Righting the Record – Report on their residents for the poor conditions they had to endure child migration (2001), indicates that for many child migrants and many people remained in hostels for years at a time. At in the postwar period the experience of migration to the same time, at a time of housing shortages in Australia, Australia and care in Australian institutions was miserable. there were criticisms of the government for building migrant hostels when houses for Australians were needed. The homeless In 1951 the Commonwealth Government established Long years of depression and then war created a Commonwealth Hostels Limited to build and manage serious shortage of housing in Australia. In 1943 the further hostels for migrants. Some of the temporary Commonwealth Housing Commission estimated there hostels were eventually rebuilt as more modern, was a shortage of 300 000 homes across the nation.196 comfortable hostels. An example of this is the Midway At World War II’s end, and for several years afterward, Migrant Hostel at Maribyrnong, Victoria, which later many Australian families shared makeshift, substandard served as a home for Indo-Chinese refugees arriving accommodation, sometimes in former army camps or in Australia in the 1970s and 1980s in the wake of the public parks, such as Camp Pell in Royal Park, Melbourne. federal Liberal-Country Party’s moves to break down the At the end of the war the Commonwealth Government long-established White Australia Policy. entered into agreements with each of the states to provide loans with which state housing authorities could provide Services provided to help postwar migrants settle in housing for low income earners. Some states had pre- Australia were limited, however. Many began to form existing housing trusts or commissions. For instance, the self-help groups, often based on ethnicity and regions, to Housing Commission of Victoria had been established support each other in areas such as child care, caring for before the war to tackle slum clearance. The South the aged and general social support, furnished through the Australian Housing Trust had been established by Premier establishment of clubrooms and church-based societies. Thomas Playford in 1936, primarily to provide housing at low enough rates to keep workers’ costs of living down People with a mental illness and attract industry to South Australia.197 Many of the new There were strong changes in ways of caring for mental houses built by the state housing commissions in the next health patients from the 1940s and 1950s in particular. ten years were in outer urban estates. In Western Australia, This is exemplified in the work of John Cade, who in the Commission was responsible for 41% of all new 1952 was appointed Psychiatrist Superintendent and houses built during that time. However, housing standards Dean of the clinical school at Royal Park Psychiatric for many in the population remained inadequate. The slum Hospital in Victoria. Two years later, at the request of reclamation aims, for which the Housing Commission of the Victorian Mental Hygiene Authority, which was Victoria had been established, were delayed until the 1960s. planning to remodel Royal Park, he visited Britain for Postwar migrants six months to inspect psychiatric institutions. On his return, he introduced modern facilities and replaced the Many postwar migrants also faced hardship in their early rather authoritarian approach to patient care with a more years in Australia. Many assisted European migrants found personal and informal style that included group therapy. themselves transported to Bonegilla Migrant Camp in a Also exemplary is the work of Dr Eric Cunningham Dax, former army camp in north-eastern Victoria on arrival in the who introduced community-based psychiatric care rather country. From here, many of the men were placed into work than asylum-based care, improved treatment regimens ‘as directed’ for two years as part of the agreement for their and rehabilitation projects, and increased the number of assisted passage to Australia. This sometimes meant that psychiatric superintendents in Victoria’s hospitals from migrant families were split up as men were sent to work on nine in 1951 to 17 in 1960, as well as improving local such projects as the Snowy River Scheme. Bonegilla served training for both psychiatrists and psychiatric nurses. One as a migrant camp until 1971, by which time 300 000 of Dax’s greatest legacies was his art therapy programs. migrants had passed through its gates.198 The Cunningham Dax Collection of ‘psychiatric art’ is a tribute to this work.

195 Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs, The aged Lost Innocents: Righting the Record – Report on Child Migration, 2001. Some of the aged care homes for the poor that had 196 The Commonwealth State Housing Agreement. been established as the first destitute or benevolent asylums in the nineteenth century were still in existence 197 Susan Marsden, ‘Playford’s Metropolis’, in Professional and occupying near original buildings in the years after Historians Association (SA), SA175, http://www.sahistorians. World War II. In those years the attention of church-based org.au/175/documents/playfords-metropolis-2.shtml 198 Australian Heritage Places, http://www.environment.gov.au/ node/19635 Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study 39

groups, municipal and state councils and self-help and advocacy groups began to turn towards providing adequate accommodation for the elderly, particularly for the less Period summary 1940–1972 privileged. Many aged people were ending their days The social impacts of the Second World War had a in mental health hospitals for want of more appropriate shaping influence on the Australian Government and 199 accommodation. Associations such as the War Widows’ its role in providing care and support for Australians Guild, formed during World War II, and the RSL advocated in need. The Australian Government increasingly for better housing for their aged members, as did service took control and responsibility for the provision clubs such as Apex and Lions Clubs. Charitable societies of welfare payments, with state governments such as the Smith Family and the Brotherhood of St responsible for the provision of welfare services. Lawrence also focussed attention on building aged care ‘villages’ and facilities. In recognition of the need to provide Within the period between 1941 and 1945 for for the aged, the Commonwealth Government passed example the Australian Government introduced a the Aged Persons Homes Act 1954, and offered pound number of benefits including the payment of child for pound subsidies to providers of these homes. A range endowment, pensions for widows and deserted of organisations began to invest in providing aged care wives, and unemployment and sickness benefits. facilities and independent homes for the elderly. Despite an extended period of economic growth the number of children living in out-of-home care Providers of welfare increased. Boarding out or fostering of children continued but there was an increasing number of The social welfare legislation achieved during the wartime homes, both state and charity run, catering to a years represented a shift in terms of the idea of entitlement variety of children’s needs. A growing awareness to welfare in Australia, and a transfer of much responsibility of the effects of institutional care on children also for welfare to the Commonwealth Government, though led to the development of cottage homes or other this entitlement did not extend to most Aboriginal people, group style homes for children in this era. nor to recently arrived migrants who had to have been resident in Australia for minimum periods to qualify for By the 1970s many thousand of Aboriginal benefits. State governments continued to be responsible and Torres Strait Islander children over many for the provision of a number of welfare services – for poor, generations, had been removed from their families. neglected or delinquent children, Aboriginal people, the mentally ill and most of the sick. Post-war migrants required extensive assistance on their arrival in Australia. European Migrants A desire for social justice in service delivery was were sent to Bonegilla Migrant Camp in Victoria expressed through the community-controlled services on their arrival. Men were required to work ‘as established by Aboriginal activists, particularly in urban directed’ for two years as part of their assisted areas, in the 1960s and 1970s. Legal and medical migration. The Australian Government established services, child care services and Aboriginal community the Commonwealth Hostels Limited to build and welfare organisations, along with land rights activism, manage hostels. were expressions of Indigenous peoples’ determination to take back control of their own health and community Some of the aged care homes established in the welfare. The Redfern Aboriginal Medical Service 1800s for the poor were still being used as aged established in a shopfront in Sydney in 1971 was the first care facilities at the end of the Second World community medical service in Australia, a precursor to a War. Charitable societies began to focus attention number of community-based services providing health on building aged care ‘villages’. The Australian and welfare. Government introduced subsidies to providers of these homes.

199 Argus 9 May 1951. Bonegilla Migrant Camp – Block 19. Rt53171. Courtesy of the Department of the Environment. 40 Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study

1972–2001 NEW MOVEMENTS

n 1972, after 23 years of Liberal-Country Party The Labor Party returned to power in 1983. To battle government of Australia, the Labor Party, led by both unemployment and inflation at the same time, they Gough Whitlam, won government. Over the next agreed to an accord with the Australian Council of Trade Ithree years an array of reforms were instituted Unions, representing workers, that unions would forego by the Labor Government that reflected new ways additional claims for pay rises in return for a ‘social wage’. of thinking about access to education, health and Implicit in the idea of a social wage was a return to a social welfare. In addition, there was a recognition, universal health insurance scheme – Medicare. Another at least symbolically, of the land rights of Aboriginal trade-off for keeping wages down was the acceptance of Australians. The Labor Government introduced a the idea of superannuation – hitherto the preserve of the universal free healthcare system – Medibank – which, white collar workers and public servants – for all workers. though it did not survive the ensuing Fraser Liberal- The Labor Party further enshrined the spread of universal Country Party Government, was revived as Medicare superannuation with a superannuation guarantee by Bob Hawke when he became Prime Minister in legislated for in 1992. 1983. In addition, Whitlam introduced the Australian Assistance Plan to encourage development at local and regional levels of community participation in Attitudes, ideas and beliefs social planning. Although the Australian Assistance Plan was abolished by the Fraser Government, In 1969 Australian women were finally granted equal it established the idea in Australia of community pay with men after several decades of campaigns. The development and social planning.200 second wave feminist movement had been gaining momentum in Australia. The momentum for Aboriginal rights had also been building from the early 1960s, when Doug Nichols led a protest for the return of land to the people at Cumeroogunga Reserve in New South Wales and the Gurindji people walked off Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory in support of equal pay for Aboriginal workers.201 The 1970s saw a rise in the number of volunteer self-help groups in Australia.202 In this decade the United Nations focussed attention on the rights of people with a disability, passing the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 1975.

In the 1960s Professor Ronald Henderson of Melbourne University had studied poverty in Melbourne, establishing what he called a ‘poverty line’, the level of income below which people would not be living at an acceptable standard for Australian society.203 In the 1970s, on behalf of the federal government, he headed an inquiry into poverty in Australia. His poverty line would remain one measure of how well or not so well social security benefits supported Australian welfare recipients and Street scene in a residential area of Darwin after Cyclone families for the next four decades.204 Henderson’s inquiry Tracy, December, 1974. Creator Alan Dwyer. Courtesy of found that in the early 1970s 6.9% of all family units the National Library of Australia. PIC/8827/22 LOC nla.pic- could be classified as very poor.205 Yet, as unemployment vn3112074 Online access/nla.obj-148903700 rose in the late 1970s and early 1980s, there were those who questioned the ‘entitlement’ of the unemployed, particularly the young, to unemployment benefits.

The Fraser Government was elected to power amid growing inflation and unemployment in Australia. This was a unique situation in Australia’s economic history and, 201 Garton, p. 162. in fact, the recession of the late 1970s and early 1980s 202 Melanie Oppenheimer, Volunteering, why we can’t survive presented the worst economic crisis in Australia since the without it, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2008, p. 128. Great Depression. Unemployment rose to 10.3% of the workforce in 1983. It would rise again to almost that much 203 Garton, p. 150. in the early 1990s. 204 The poverty line is still updated quarterly by the University of Melbourne Institute of Labour Economics and Social Research. 200 Australian Council of Social Services Library, ‘Australian Assistance Plan’. 205 Garton, p. 151. Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study 41

A new term, ‘dole bludger’, was applied by some in the The renewed emphasis on living in the community was media and federal government to label them, a return not just expressed in relation to child and family welfare, in some ways to the views expressed in the nineteenth but also in connection to psychiatric and disability century about the ‘idle’ poor.206 services. There was a newly found emphasis on the location and servicing of welfare needs at the community level, with municipal governments as well as local support Major trends and influences and interest groups seeing a role for themselves in of the period supplying services. Aboriginal activists, advocating for land, welfare and In the 1970s, just as smaller sized units of out of home health rights, raised a new awareness in the Australian care for children, such as family group homes, were community of Indigenous rights. Some Aboriginal becoming the norm, a Committee of Inquiry into Child communities won back land rights and achieved equal Care Services in Victoria argued against removing children opportunity under the law for the first time. Prime from their families, if at all possible. Instead, every effort Minister Paul Keating publicly acknowledged past wrongs should be made to provide support to families to stay in a public speech delivered at Redfern in 1992. Yet the together. In the event that this was not possible, foster state of Indigenous health, educational status, equal care was the best alternative for the child.207 Preferably, rights and welfare, particularly in remote communities, children in care should be located as close as possible remained a cause for urgent action. to their own communities. These ideas were radical departures from the practices of many of the Australian states, which removed children and sent them to institutions far from home. At the same time, a renewed Recipients of welfare awareness of the incidence of child physical abuse and Women – recognised for the first time – sexual abuse from the 1980s led to stronger measures and legislation regarding Perhaps the last piece of the ‘safety net’ of social security the mandatory reporting of child abuse. benefits offered to Australians was put in place when the Whitlam Government introduced the Supporting Mother’s Benefit in 1973 for those mothers who did not qualify for a widows’ pension. The Supporting Mother’s Benefit provided an avenue whereby single mothers, who overwhelmingly had found it difficult to keep their children in the face of family disapproval, the pressure to give their babies up for adoption, and lack of financial support, could now keep their children. The effect of the pension was dramatic. Within two years of the passing of the legislation, about 80% of the single mothers giving birth at Melbourne’s Royal Women’s Hospital were taking home their babies, a huge increase on the 35% taking their babies home in 1969.208 The achievement of this pension was largely the result of the work of a self-help and lobby group, the Council of Single Mothers and their Children, pioneered by Rosemary West, mother, student and journalist, in 1969.

People with a mental illness

In the 1980s most of the ‘lunatic asylums’ that had Women outside Trades Hall in Melbourne 1969. Courtesy been established in the Australian colonies in the of ACTU Worksite, worksite.actu.org.au, http://worksite. nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were still in actu.org.au/equal-pay-equal-value/ use as psychiatric hospitals, and their numbers had increased with the addition of more hospitals. The anti- institutional movement of the 1970s and 1980s coincided with the development of the use of medications such as chlorpromazine and lithium to treat psychosis in the 1950s and 1960s, which had allowed many patients’ 206 William van Diemen, ‘Unemployment in Australia in the 1970s’, in Cabbages and Kings, Selected Essays in History symptoms to be modified enough for them to function and Australian Studies vol. 10, History Dept. University of in the community outside of hospital, using the recently South Australia, 1982. developed community health and mental health services 207 John Norgard, Committee of Inquiry into Child Care Services, paraphrased in Find and Connect. http://www. 208 Marian Quartly, Shurlee Swain and Denise Cuthbert, The findandconnect.gov.au/guide/vic/E000375. Market in Babies: Stories of Australian Adoption. 42 Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study

for support.209 The number of psychiatric beds occupied though Western Australia moved in this direction after the in Australia dropped from 30 000 in the 1960s to about a passing of its Children and Community Services Act 2004. quarter of that in 1992.210 Far less generously funded than the other state children’s departments in the 1990s,213 the staff of the Queensland In 1992 a National Mental Health Strategy, to which all Department had little time to devote to attempting to states were signatories, agreed to aim to work towards support families to prevent their children coming into providing as much mental health care as possible outside care.2141 Indigenous youths were over represented in of the institutional setting. There would still be a need Queensland juvenile justice centres.215 By the 1970s to provide some psychiatric care within institutions, but, Aboriginal people in some states had taken the initiative even so, it was agreed that existing institutions needed and formed their own child care agencies to provide to be modified or replaced to cater for those patients culturally appropriate care for Aboriginal children.216 needing long-term care.211 Psychiatric wards in general hospitals would serve other patients. Victoria had already closed its oldest asylum, Kew Mental Asylum, and was the first state to embrace the opportunity to close the others. Tasmania closed its only psychiatric hospital, the Royal Derwent Hospital (formerly New Norfolk Asylum), in 2000. Other longstanding psychiatric hospitals, such as Brisbane’s Woolston Park, and Adelaide’s Glenside Hospital, remain on their original sites.

Children and young people

In most of the state departments responsible for children’s welfare there was an increasing professionalism from the 1970s, as trained social workers replaced the ‘inspectors’ of earlier eras. Fewer children were coming into the care Lunatic Asylum, Adelaide, South Australia, Charles of the state. But many of those who were in state care Summers. Watercolour. Courtesy of the National Library needed care and protection. Some states had long had of Australia pic an5836920 clauses within their children’s welfare legislation spelling out the illegality of abusing children. But from 1977, when New South Wales passed amended legislation, until 2009, As Australian children moved out of the older institutional when Western Australia did, each state legislature passed forms of out of home care in the late twentieth century, laws requiring the mandatory reporting of abuse of children the trend for children with a disability was to not enter by professionals in contact with children. institutions in the first place.217 Unlike the beginning of the previous century, when disabled children were hidden Most of the states, apart from New South Wales, away, by the beginning of the twenty-first century few abandoned most of their own care facilities for children Australian children with disabilities entered residential in the last couple of decades of the twentieth century, institutions, nor even attended ‘special’ schools at the relying increasingly on non-government agencies to beginning of the twenty-first century. Between 1981 provide services, including the organisation of foster and 1993 the number of severely disabled young people care – now the much preferred form of care for children (under 30) living in care dropped dramatically, from an in all the states. Nevertheless, the ‘difficult’ nature of average of 15.9 per 100 households to an average of 3.1 some children coming into care having experienced abuse per 100 households.218 This fall was largely attributable meant that residential facilities for ‘hard to place’ children to the peak bodies that acted as advocates for disabled were still required. These most often took the form of people and their parents, because it was these bodies family group homes, but in some states, such as New that had lobbied the federal government to introduce the South Wales, larger facilities lingered into the 1990s.212 Carer Allowance, which was legislated for in 1999.219 Although some states, such as Victoria, moved more quickly to regionalise their departmental staff to bring them closer to the ‘clients’, this does not appear to have 213 Leneen Forde, in her Inquiry into Abuse of Children in occurred in the other states in the twentieth century – Queensland Institutions, demonstrates just how far Queensland lagged behind the other states. 214 Forde Inquiry. 209 Meg Carter, Terry Burke and Sue Moore, ‘Deinstitutionalising: Implementing Supported Housing Programmes in 215 Forde Inquiry Material within this paragraph has been Two Australian States’, Swinburne Institute for Social gleaned from a number of sources. Research 2008. 216 Bringing them Home. 210 ibid. 217 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, ‘Children with 211 ibid. Disabilities in Australia’, Canberra, 2004. 212 Find and Connect website. 218 ibid. 219 ibid. Course and Pattern of Welfare History | Thematic Study 43

Providers of Welfare Period summary 1972–2001 The peak bodies were an example of a new form of ‘provider’ of welfare in Australia in the late twentieth In the early 1970s governments introduced reforms century. Along with self-help groups and activists, they that reflected new ways of thinking about access worked alongside government and the traditional charities to education, health and social welfare. Universal and voluntary providers with the aim of achieving social health care was introduced. The supporting justice. Local community groups began to take action mother’s benefits was introduced. The ‘poverty line’, to promote the welfare of those within their local the level of income below which people would not area – both at a municipal council level, but also at the be living at an acceptable standard for Australian grassroots level of providing services to meet the needs society, was established. It became a fundamental of local groups. measure of the how well or not social security was supporting families and pensioners for the next Women activists focussed a spotlight on the problem 40 years. of domestic violence during this period and provided practical assistance. In 1973 members of the Sydney In 1969 Australian women were granted equal Women’s Liberation group, led by Anne Summers, pay. The concept of a ‘social wage’, including both opened Australia’s first women’s refuge for victims of superannuation and universal health care, was domestic violence. The house, in Glebe, was known as introduced into wage bargaining to combat wage Elsie (that was the name on the nameplate of the house). growth and inflation. Within five years there were one hundred women’s refuges around Australia.220 The 1970s saw the closure of most of Australia’s benevolent institutions. Children’s homes and Despite federal and state governments providing homes for people with a mental illness or people social security benefits, funding welfare programs with a disability were closed down. In 1992 all state and supporting initiatives in health and welfare, in and territory governments agreed to work towards the period from the 1970s, there was an increasingly providing as much mental health care as possible complex method of delivery of welfare. Some voluntary outside of the institutional setting. and religious charitable agencies that had traditionally delivered welfare programs, such as child care, withdrew In time, a number of enquiries were established that from the fields of supporting children and families who argued against removing children from their families had moved out of institutions. Many religious orders, and further urged that support be given to families for instance, withdrew from the field, leaving the work to stay together. They also argued that if keeping the to an increasingly professionalised lay workforce. Those family together was not possible then foster care agencies that remained in the field, however, found was the preferred alternative for the child. Most of themselves increasingly having to adapt their work to the states abandoned their care facilities, with non changing government priorities in both funding and government agencies providing services, including delivery of care. arranging foster care. Some larger scale facilities however, continued to operate until the 1990s in New South Wales.

This era saw a newly found emphasis on the location and servicing of welfare needs at the community level. Municipal services as well as local support and interest groups began to see a role for themselves in supplying services in response to local need.

Elsie Walk Launch, Glebe 2012. Paying tribute to pioneering women’s refuge. Courtesy of Clover Moore, Lord Mayor of Sydney

220 Anne Summers, Ducks on the Pond: An Autobiography, 1945–1976, Viking, Tingwood, 1999,p. 321. Let our histories be visible. Anonymous. Submission 22.

Senate Inquiry into Children in Institutional Care, 2004

Sydney Rum Hospital Courtesy of the National Library of Australia, nla.cat-vn1405202. Terry, Frederick Charles. & Allan & Wigley. ([186-]). Bird’s eye view of Sydney Harbour. CONCLUDING REMARKS 46 Concluding Remarks | Thematic Study

NATIONAL THREADS AND VOICES

istorians have sometimes presented the One consistent strand for much of the story of welfare in story of welfare and benevolence in Australia Australia is the extent to which Australian governments as a linear narrative in which the narrow have attempted to promote self-reliance amongst Hand penny-pinching provision of minimum the population and to minimise the need to rely on sustenance gave way in the mid-twentieth century to government or private charity for support. This has often a ‘welfare state’ under which the state provided for been to the detriment of those most in need. Economic all. This approach is unsatisfactory on many levels. cycles, the conditions of a frontier society, the waves of It does not take into account the differing founding immigration and the disruption of Aboriginal patterns of stories of each of the Australian colonies and the life interfered with the self-reliance ideal at many stages impact of events such as economic developments, in Australia’s past, necessitating intervention by both migration, transportation and British policy on the governments and private suppliers of charity. Yet the fits and starts of the development of welfare within circumstances of the founding of the Australian colonies each colony. Nor does such a linear account allow coloured the bestowing of welfare provision and the for the inclusion of differing religious, charitable and methods in which it was received. In some colonies, social justice impulses that have motivated governing such as Tasmania, Western Australia and South Australia, bodies, legislators and the providers of ‘private’ governments provide the bulk of welfare support for charity in different eras across the past two centuries much of the nineteenth century and private charity played and their perception of needs at different times. Some a smaller role. Yet even in those colonies where private significant sections of the Australian community charity did flourish, attitudes about the provision of charity, are left out of linear narrative accounts. Aboriginal derived from experiences in Britain, ensured that rigorous Australians, for instance, were excluded for the tests often applied before charity was extended. At the most part from many of the benefits achieved during same time, the Christian values brought to Australia by much of the twentieth century. The achievement of many nineteenth century immigrants motivated them a basic wage for men in the early twentieth century to reach out to those ‘less fortunate’ and private and did little to alter life for single women, widowed or religiously sponsored organisations often not only filled deserted wives and their children. While general living the gaps in government support but were also proactive standards rose in the mid-twentieth century, there in identifying and attempting to meet needs. were still many people who experienced inequality and poverty. Investigations in recent decades of the Changes in the broader history of the colonies and later experiences of the Stolen Generations, former child in the states also threw into relief the needs of different migrants and Forgotten Australians have revealed groups in society in different eras, and services, often how, while much of the Australian population moved provided by voluntary charities, expanded to meet to enjoy a comfortable lifestyle in the twentieth the needs of these groups. Initially, only the most century, significant numbers of children were incapacitated physically and mentally were regarded separated from families, many enduring deprivation as being outside the sphere of the self-reliance and as and abuse while in the ‘care’ of the state with being in need of support. Only slowly, as the European consequent life-long anguish for many as a result. population of Australia diversified through waves of migration and natural growth, did the identification of Nor does the linear approach to celebrating the the needs of disparate portions of the population expand achievement of a ‘safety net’ of social security measures as well. This has been a slow but constant movement in the twentieth century allow for the fact that there over the past two centuries that has continued in recent were ‘safety nets’ of sorts (albeit fairly punitive ones) decades as new groups have emerged to voice their for many Australians in the nineteenth century. Few demands for social equity and justice. colonial governments were prepared to see their citizens starve. However, the measures used to prevent absolute starvation differed markedly from those achieved through social security benefits in the twentieth century. Recipients of care and assistance often endured humiliating scrutiny of their private affairs, punitive incarceration in institutions and separation from family in order to receive the most basic sustenance. Concluding Remarks | Thematic Study 47

Frequently it has been the non-government or advocacy Another theme has been the ability of particular sector of society that has identified the needs of particular individuals at particular times in history to respond to groups and attempted to meet them before governments, conditions with humane impulses, and thus materially state and federal, have responded. Despite the adoption alter the life circumstances of those round them and in of (almost) universal welfare benefits in the second half of the wider community. Frequently, but not always, these the twentieth century, this role for the not for profit sector responses were governed by Christian values of caring for has remained and perhaps expanded as governments one’s neighbour or by a sense of egalitarianism or social withdrew from direct delivery of services in some justice. Sometimes these impulses swam against the tide sectors, leaving the non-government sector to administer of public opinion. and deliver social service programs and increasingly imposing restrictions on this delivery over time. Welfare provision has at times robbed people of their freedom and dignity, their families, their homes and their Institutionalisation has been a major theme in the health. Conversely, it has saved people’s lives, restored experience of welfare in Australia. Initially institutions them to health and helped to keep families together. were generic. However, throughout the nineteenth Many sites associated with welfare arouse ambivalent century there was a gradual specialisation of institutions, feelings of sorrow, confusion and anger but also of with distinct purposes defined by residents’ age, familiarity and gratitude. Perhaps they are significant for all race, gender or disability. Despite the drawbacks of of these reasons and for the fact that they are signposts institutionalised care becoming obvious in the late to the ways in which Australians have cared for each other nineteenth century, it remained a model of care for in the past and today. various segments of the population until very recent decades and it has only been in the past 50 years that the large institution has fallen from favour as a method of care, while support for individuals to function within society has become the favoured model. Although institutionalisation was often experienced as incarceration and punishment, others experienced it as a refuge from poverty, violence or neglect.

mental health reform

Hospitals and health care

Education and training

Indigenous missions and other control/care provisions Benevolent and other care institutions

social reform movements 48 Concluding Remarks | Thematic Study

Reflections as it is about places. This is particularly apparent in the twentieth century where institutionalisation starts to The study of benevolent and other care institutions in decline and places evolve and amalgamate with larger the context of welfare history in Australia is a large and institutions, such as hospitals. It is also acknowledged complex story. At the time of finishing this study, welfare that the identification of the intangible heritage and was receiving attention in the media. Changes in the way material objects is of vital importance under the theme welfare is provided reaches the heart of who we are and of welfare, and this study has not done justice to these how we look after each other when times are good and important aspects. when life is a struggle. The story is being rewritten in Finally, a significant area for important further work on new ways as the government of the day tries to find new the thematic topic is a survey and study of institutions ways of distributing welfare and refining the criteria for dedicated to Aboriginal services such as agencies, homes, eligibility.The essay has sought to conceptualise changes protectorates and missions. Only minimal attention is in welfare through a chronological sequence. However, afforded to the welfare of Aboriginal people in the essay there are other ways of seeing change, for instance by and then largely in the context of mainstream services looking at the early all-purpose institutions such as the rather than dedicated Aboriginal services. asylum model slowly evolving into a myriad of specialist organisations and institutions, as particular groups capture It has been surprising that there are relatively few people the attention of government and the charitable sector. associated with welfare who have a national profile. There Looking at welfare history by this method is likely to are many people at the state or local level who have advance a more layered understanding of benevolent and played remarkable roles in policy and operations; however, care institutions. few appear to be able to provide a strong national story. Caroline Chisholm is the exception, and several others are In developing the indicators it is acknowledged that noted as potential candidates under Criterion H. further work would be beneficial to refine and add to the list. One of the chief difficulties of the study in developing indicators and selecting a shortlist of places was that welfare history is as much about ideas and practices

The Melbourne Benevolent Asylum and gardens c. 1885 Courtesy of the Museum Victoria Collections. http://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/items/774057 Concluding Remarks | Thematic Study 49

• More attention needs to focus on objects and Next steps collections and on aspects of intangible heritage, The theme of welfare history in Australia and of particularly the collection of life stories. There is rich benevolent and other care institutions is one where there material being gathered as people seek to connect is ample scope for further work and it is hoped that this with others whose lives have been shaped by welfare. study will be followed by subsequent projects in this area. Much of this is difficult, but has the potential for us as a nation to learn from the past in order to achieve a The following points are of particular importance to better future. address in further work: • There are particular areas where the written history • The integration of Aboriginal welfare history – both presented in this report has only skimmed the surface, in terms of dedicated and mainstream services for including immigration and other demographic changes, Aboriginal people. mutual self-help societies and societies for particular ethnic groups. Further work is needed in these areas. • Greater representation of the post-World War II period on any indicative list. Their under-representation is not • The indicators would benefit from further reflection, because they do not exist, but because their uses have refinement and addition. With more time available for evolved, fragmented and become absorbed into other the study this would have been possible. However, they larger institutions. They are therefore more difficult to are considered to be a good starting point in assisting identify using the methodology applied to this study. the identification of places. More work is needed to uncover these ‘typical’ highly • Further work on people of importance mentioned in the adapted places to balance the ‘survivors’ that are most history essay will undoubtedly serve to uncover larger heavily represented on current heritage registers. and richer stories than has been possible in this study. Cunningham Dax in mental health, Edward Hall Smith for the Benevolent Society and Arthur Renwick for children in care are just three national representatives of the welfare sector highlighted in this report. Other people of national import for example may include the many women both inside and outside of religious orders who have provided exemplary role models in the provision of welfare; their stories deserve to be told also.

• Further work on the role and influence of the nation- wide Benevolent Society, its offshoots and influences is considered to have significant potential to uncover a national story.

Dr Eric Cunningham Dax. Dr Dax pioneered the use of art therapy in the treatment of mental illness. Courtesy of the Dax Centre, Melbourne A word about the Irish orphan girls, so liberally poured into the colony during the last year or two. Forty thousand pounds worth of this commodity was imported into New South Wales up to 1850...

Our Antipodes Godfrey Charles Mundy, England 1855

Dunwich Benevolent Institution Courtesy of the State Library of Queensland, record number 273307 BIBLIOGRAPHY 52 Bibliography | Thematic Study

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Oppenheimer, Melanie, ‘Voluntary Action and Welfare in Naomi Parry, ‘Such a Longing’, Black and White Children Post-1945 Australia: Preliminary Perspectives’, History in Welfare in New South Wales and Tasmania 1880–1940’, Australia, vol. 2, no. 3, 2005. PhD thesis, School of History, University of New South Wales, 2007. Belinda Robson, ‘From Mental Hygiene to Community Mental Health: Psychiatrists and Victorian Public SL Swain, ‘The Victorian Charity Network in the 1890’s’, Administration from the 1940s to 1990s’, Provenance: The PhD thesis, Department of History, The University of Journal of Public Record Office Victoria, issue no. 7, 2008. Melbourne, 1976.‘

Kerry Wimshurst, ‘Punishment, Welfare and Gender Ordering in Queensland, 1920–1940’, Australian and New Journals Zealand Journal of Criminology, Dec 2002, vol.35 no. 3, Studies in Western Australian History Issue 25 (whole issue). pp. 308–329.

ADB entries Reports Leneen Forde, ‘Commission of Inquiry into Abuse of Caroline Emily Clark (1825–1911), Australian Dictionary Children in Queensland Institutions’, Queensland, 1999. of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/clark- Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, caroline-emily-3212/text4837, published in hardcopy 1969, Bringing them Home, Report of the National Inquiry into accessed online 19 April 2014. the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families, 1997.EP Mullighan, Children Niel Gunson, ‘Threlkeld, Lancelot Edward (1788–1859)’, in State Care Commission of Inquiry, 2008. Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu. ‘The Well-being of the People’: the Final Report of edu.au/biography/threlkeld-lancelot-edward-2734/text3859, the welfare and community services review Western published in hardcopy 1967, accessed online 21 April 2014. Australia, 1984. Joan Mansfield, ‘Hammond, Robert Brodribb (1870– 1946)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre Websites and databases of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb. anu.edu.au/biography/hammond-robert-brodribb-6543/ http://www.austlii.edu.au/ text11243, published in hardcopy 1983, accessed online http://www.emelbourne.net.au/ 21 April 2014. https://www.humanrights.gov.au/timeline-history- Papers separation-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-children- their-families-text Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) Children with disabilities in Australia, AIHW cat. no. http://www.ahpi.esrc.unimelb.edu.au/biogs/E000391b. DIS 38. Canberra: AIHW, 2004Patricia Hale and Tanya htm (database history of psychiatric care and Koeneman. ‘to turn those poor unenlightened people institutionalisation in Australia) into an important degree of civilisation’ Rethinking http://www.findandconnect.gov.au/featured-stories/timeline/ Governor Macquarie’s Aboriginal policy, Heritage Council In the years after Federation, Australia gained a reputation as an innovative ‘social laboratory’. Experiments in arbitration, working conditions, social welfare and electoral laws were watched by commentators around the world.

Oxford Companion to Australian History Entry

Group of Dr. Barnado children in uniform Sam Hood Collection Part II. Digital Order No. a220015. Courtesy of the State Library of New South Wales. APPENDICES 56 Appendixes | Thematic Study

The following indicators highlight some of the many APPENDIX 1 threads that we have identified as running through Australia’s welfare history. Text in bold is the relevant general indicator provided in the NHL guidelines. Other text is the indicator within the specific theme of Thresholds and indicators: benevolent and other care institutions. introduction Criterion A: historic-defining ndicators of significance are specific characteristics or attributes of places that might events/processes make them significant within the context of a particular theme. Significance helps in the A place associated with landmark events and I moments of importance that have had enduring identification of places to consider under the National Heritage criteria, and can help in the assessment of a consequences to the Nation or a significant impact place under each criterion. Indicators help explain, in on the Nation. a broad way, the aspects of a place or its associations • Places associated with establishment of welfare that would have to be assessed in order to establish provision in Australia. significance. Places associated with events that have resulted in The sub-theme of Benevolent and Care Institutions fits important changes to the political, economic, scientific under the Department of Environment’s broad thematic or social fabric of Australia. group Building a Nation. The use of indicators enables places with like values to be compared under a theme in • Places associated with the provision of welfare made order to establish relative levels of significance. necessary by the major influx and movement of people in gold rushes of the 1850s, 1860s and post-World War Some indicators are key narratives, contributing to the II immigration. understanding of benevolent and care institutions in the history of Australia’s system of social welfare. These • Places associated with the expansion and consolidation indicators are further defined and developed through the of charitable institutions to provide relief during the development of further ‘sub-indicators’ which assist in economic depression of the 1890s. identifying particular places. These places might contain evidence in the form of artefacts, buildings or structural • Places associated with the Harvester Judgement remains, archaeological sites or landscape modifications 1907, the advent of the living wage for men and the reflecting the place’s values and therefore being beginnings of the welfare state. deserving of protection. • Places associated with the establishment of Soldier The range of places identified through this study fit almost Settlement Schemes following World Wars I and II. exclusively into the nineteenth and early twentieth century. • Places associated with the establishment of universal The period from 1949 onwards is under-represented, infant health care. reflecting the limitations of current heritage registers. • Places associated with the formation of housing The important changes in the course and pattern of authorities from the 1930s. welfare history are those that are more intangible and usually enacted through political processes, such as • Places associated with the separation of families and the change in welfare assistance towards a system of children – includes the Forgotten Australians, former universal social security. During such shifts, the role of child migrants and the Stolen Generations. some institutions began to decline while others adapted and were absorbed into other places. Tracing the history • Places associated with advances in social policy, of benevolent and care institutions as part of this study medicine, education and care giving. has interestingly led to the identification of a strong group of places that embody changing welfare approaches over Places of national importance for their ability to time within a single physical place – particularly those represent a political or cultural system such as the originating in the nineteenth century. Twentieth and convict penal system, communication networks, the twenty-first century benevolent and care institutions do, establishment of the federal capital, or the defence of course, also change and adapt constantly in order to of Australia. reflect current care models. However, this is often not • Places of national importance for their ability to represent captured in our state’s and nation’s heritage registers. the systems of welfare (state systems, non-government Places where welfare legislation has been enacted systems and provision of welfare within institutions). become more common from the twentieth century and beyond but few places as such were identified in our • Places associated with philanthropic, charitable welfare heritage register searches. and religious organisations that played a key role in shaping society. Appendixes | Thematic Study 57

Places with a high diversity of features that best Criterion D: class of place demonstrate a characteristic way of life in one or more periods of the history of Australia. It covers places The place should represent the principal consisting of many features that collectively tell at characteristics of a particular high order design or least one story of importance to the Nation. style of importance in the history of Australia.

• Places associated with a long history of welfare use The place must have a high integrity in its and demonstrating in their assemblage a rich and multi- representative characteristics that may represent the layered history of welfare. period design, style.

• Places that best demonstrate key innovations in the The class of place or environment demonstrating a provision of welfare that reflect broad changes in social particular way of life must be of a national order or attitudes in Australia. level of importance.

The place should represent all of the critical elements Criterion B: rarity representative of a particular way of life of importance in the history of Australia. Places which characterise past ways of life, custom, processes, land use, function or design that were No indicators were developed under this criterion as it is always few in number, or that are now few in their outside the scope of this study. surviving number due to subsequent destruction. Places may include: Criterion E: aesthetic value • those demonstrating uncommon aspects of human The place is of national significance to Australia occupation and activity because it exhibits particular aesthetic characteristics • those demonstrating a past human activity or aspects valued by a community or cultural group through the of culture that are now rare, obsolete or following: no longer practised Features of beauty, or features that inspire, • those with uncommon integrity in their national emotionally move or have other characteristics that context. evoke a strong human response.

• those with rare physical evidence of places associated No indicators were developed under this criterion as it is with the establishment of welfare in Australia. outside the scope of this study.

• those with rare physical evidence of past practices in welfare provision that are no longer used. Criterion F: excellence

• those demonstrating specific aspects or systems of The place demonstrates a high degree of creative welfare that have an uncommon integrity. achievement which is of national significance to Australia for the following: Criterion C: research High degree of achievement in art, design or craftsmanship. The place is of national significance to Australia because it could provide information deriving from A high degree of combining built features into records, collections, movable cultural heritage, a natural of designed landscape for an aesthetic archaeological resources, architectural fabric or other purpose. evidence for the understanding of: No indicators were developed under this criterion as it is The history, ways of life and/or cultures of Australia. outside the scope of this study.

• Places of archaeological potential associated with the theme of welfare. Criterion G: social value

• Places where there is fragmentary evidence of The place is of national significance to Australia earlier welfare institutions that have been removed or because it has a strong or special association with absorbed into later institutions. a particular community or cultural group for social, cultural or spiritual reasons that could include: traditional, religious, ceremonial or other social purpose, including a celebratory or commemorative use, or association with community action. 58 Appendixes | Thematic Study

Note: Nationally recognised groups may include Criterion H: associations religious denominations, ethnic communities, societies, incorporated groups, or political groups. Places which are significant for their enduring associations with people or groups of national • Indicated through the widespread connection and importance in Australia. The association of the person sharing of stories of individuals associated with or group to the place must be significant in that the particular types of care or institutions. place represents a major achievement of a person or • Likely to be indicated through strong associations with group of national importance in any field of life religious or non-denominational organisations that have provided welfare over a number of widespread but • Places associated with individuals and organisations related institutions. that have served the nation through philanthropy, advancing government policy or advocating for change. • Likely to be indicated in national organisations with a long history of welfare provision that have become an integral part of communities or of family life. Criterion I: Indigenous

• Likely to be indicated through significant national events The place demonstrates an aspect of Indigenous that are recognised widely and/or commemorated. tradition which is of national significance to Australia for the following: • Likely to be indicated through stories that resonate for the nation and that shed light on subjects of a difficult Places associated with people’s ritual and ceremonial nature, validate experiences, provide lessons for the transformations future, and seek to provide healing. No indicators were developed under this criterion as it is outside the scope of this study.

The Royal Prince Alfred Hospital of Sydney. Simon Fieldhouse. Courtesy of Wikimedia under Creative Commons Attribution - Share Alike 3.0 Unported Licence Indicators of welfare history – place and criteria application

INDICATOR WITHIN THE RELEVANT INDICATORS RELEVANT NATIONAL THEME OF WELFARE IN TYPES OF INDICATIVE PROVIDED IN THE NHL HERITAGE LIST CRITERIA AUSTRALIA’S CULTURAL PLACES PLACES GUIDELINES HISTORY Criterion A: A place associated with landmark Places associated with Places associated Parramatta Female events and moments of establishment of welfare provision with government and Factory NSW The place has outstanding importance that have had enduring in Australia. colonial administration in heritage value to the nation consequences to the Nation or a distributing relief. St John’s Park Precinct because of the place’s significant impact on the Nation. TAS importance in the course or • Orphanages pattern of Australia’s cultural Fremantle Museum history • Asylums and Art Gallery (former Lunatic Asylum) WA • Female factories Places associated with events that Places associated with the Places associated with The Hungry Mile Place have resulted in important changes provision of welfare made working for welfare on (Darling Harbour) NSW to the political, economic, scientific necessary by the major influx and nation building schemes (unemployed men search or social fabric of Australia. movement of people in gold rushes during the depressions of for work) of the 1850s, 1860s and post-World the 1890s – 1930s. War II. Heidelberg Repatriation Places associated with Complex Vic. Places associated with the supporting immigrants, expansion and consolidation of e.g. Chinese Societies. Fortitude Valley Child charitable institutions to provide Health Centre QLD relief during economic depression Repatriation Lady Gowrie Child Care of the 1890s. Commissions and the Department of Veterans’ Centres SA / Vic. Places associated with the Affairs. Carlton Refuge (Queen Harvester Judgement 1907, the Elizabeth Maternal and advent of the living wage for men, Rural settlements Child Health Centre) Vic. and the beginnings of the welfare and patterns of land subdivision. state. Renwick Children’s Homes NSW (examples Appendixes | Thematic Study Places associated with the Infant welfare centres, of different types of care establishment of Soldier maternal and child health for children including Settlement Schemes following care. early cottage homes, World Wars I and II. farm home and training centre) 59 60 Appendixes | Thematic Study INDICATOR WITHIN THE RELEVANT INDICATORS RELEVANT NATIONAL THEME OF WELFARE IN TYPES OF INDICATIVE PROVIDED IN THE NHL HERITAGE LIST CRITERIA AUSTRALIA’S CULTURAL PLACES PLACES GUIDELINES HISTORY Places associated with the Babies’ and children’s Royal Victorian Institute establishment of universal infant homes. for the Blind Precinct health care. Prahran Vic. (care and Hospitals, including education of deaf and Places associated with the psychiatric hospitals. blind children) formation of housing authorities from the 1930s. Institutions for the care North West Hospital of people with physical or Parkville Vic. Places associated with the sensory disabilities. separation of families and children Maybanke Kindergarten – children as ‘Forgotten Australians’. Slum clearances in inner NSW Includes child migrants and cities and the building of children who are part of ‘the Stolen public housing. Generations’.

Places associated with advances in social policy, medicine, education and care giving. INDICATOR WITHIN THE RELEVANT INDICATORS RELEVANT NATIONAL THEME OF WELFARE IN TYPES OF INDICATIVE PROVIDED IN THE NHL HERITAGE LIST CRITERIA AUSTRALIA’S CULTURAL PLACES PLACES GUIDELINES HISTORY Places of national importance Places of national importance Benevolent Societies and Melbourne Benevolent for their ability to represent a for their ability to represent the Asylums. Asylum (Kingston Centre) political or cultural system such systems of welfare (state systems, Vic. as the convict penal system, non-government systems and Places associated with communication networks, the provision of welfare with within non-denominational, Sydney Benevolent establishment of the federal institutions). Catholic and Protestant Asylum (Thomas Street) capital, or the defence of Australia. organisations (including NSW Places associated with the Salvation Army, philanthropic, charitable and Methodist Central Bendigo Benevolent religious organisations that played a Mission, St Vincent Asylum (Anne Caudle key role in shaping society. de Paul Society and Centre) Vic. Brotherhood of St Dunwich Benevolent Laurence). Asylum QLD Places associated with Adelaide Destitute religious orders (including Asylum SA the Sisters of Mercy, Sisters of the Good Launceston Benevolent Shepherd, Sisters of Society TAS Charity). Convent of the Good Mutual self-help Shepherd Abbotsford Vic. societies. Mount St Canice TAS (convent complex similar to Abbotsford)

Holy Cross Laundry QLD Appendixes | Thematic Study 61 62 Appendixes | Thematic Study INDICATOR WITHIN THE RELEVANT INDICATORS RELEVANT NATIONAL THEME OF WELFARE IN TYPES OF INDICATIVE PROVIDED IN THE NHL HERITAGE LIST CRITERIA AUSTRALIA’S CULTURAL PLACES PLACES GUIDELINES HISTORY Places with a high diversity of Places associated with a long Charitable institutions Sydney Benevolent features that best demonstrate history of welfare use and that operated over a long Asylum (Thomas Street) a characteristic way of life in one demonstrating in their assemblage period of time and reflect NSW (established as or more periods of the history a rich and multi-layered history of in their fabric changing the first Benevolent of Australia. It covers places welfare. approaches to welfare Society in 1813 and still consisting of many features that delivery. operating) collectively tell at least one story of Places that best demonstrate key importance to the nation. innovations in the provision of Institutions and other Melbourne Benevolent welfare that reflect broad changes places that demonstrate Asylum (Kingston Centre) in social attitudes in Australia. key innovations in reform/ Vic. rehabilitation and care. St John’s Park Precinct TAS Places that demonstrate (change through time) deinstitutionalisation from the 1890s (including Convent of the Good boarding out and cottage Shepherd Abbotsford Vic. homes). (change through time) Mont Park Asylum Vic. (reflects innovations in care for the intellectually disabled and shell shocked built in 1911)

Caloola Precinct Vic. (innovation in mental health care)

Kew Cottages (former Willsmere hospital and lunatic asylum) Vic. (very early separation of the mentally and physically disabled from the mentally ill)

The Royal Park Psychiatric Hospital, Parkville Vic. (innovation in mental health care) INDICATOR WITHIN THE RELEVANT INDICATORS RELEVANT NATIONAL THEME OF WELFARE IN TYPES OF INDICATIVE PROVIDED IN THE NHL HERITAGE LIST CRITERIA AUSTRALIA’S CULTURAL PLACES PLACES GUIDELINES HISTORY Royal Derwent Hospital (Willow Court) TAS (long history of care of mentally ill)

Kenmore Psychiatric Hospital NSW

Renwick Children’s Homes NSW (different types of care for children including early cottage homes, farm home and training centre)

Burnside Homes NSW (private children’s village demonstrating innovative care in large ‘family’ settings)

Parkerville Children’s Home WA (early development of cottage homes)

Kew Cottages (former Willsmere hospital and lunatic asylum) Vic. (very early separation of the mentally and physically Appendixes | Thematic Study disabled from the mentally ill) 63 64 Appendixes | Thematic Study INDICATOR WITHIN THE RELEVANT INDICATORS RELEVANT NATIONAL THEME OF WELFARE IN TYPES OF INDICATIVE PROVIDED IN THE NHL HERITAGE LIST CRITERIA AUSTRALIA’S CULTURAL PLACES PLACES GUIDELINES HISTORY Criterion B: Places which characterise past Rare physical evidence of places Female factories. Tarban Creek area as part ways of life, custom, process, land associated with the establishment of the Gladesville Mental The place has outstanding use, function or design that were of welfare in Australia. Pre-1850 orphanages, Hospital NSW heritage values to the nation always few in number, or that are asylums, etc. because of the place’s now few in their surviving number Rare physical evidence of past Parramatta Female Industrial schools and possession of uncommon, due to subsequent destruction. practices in welfare provision that Factory NSW rare or endangered aspects of are no longer used. reformatories. Australia’s natural or cultural Places may include: Fremantle Museum Immigration depots history Places demonstrating specific and Art Gallery (former • those demonstrating uncommon aspects or systems of welfare that (before World War II). Lunatic Asylum) WA aspects of human occupation have an uncommon integrity. and activity; Royal Derwent Hospital (Willow Court) TAS • those demonstrating a past human activity or aspects of St John’s Park Precinct culture that is now rare, obsolete TAS (very early or no longer practised; orphanages from 1833)

• those with uncommon integrity Caloola Precinct Vic. in their national context. (formerly used as an industrial school)

North West Hospital Vic. (former use as an industrial school and immigrant’s depot)

Caroline Chisolm Barracks NSW (associated with immigrant women)

Yungaba Immigration Depot QLD INDICATOR WITHIN THE RELEVANT INDICATORS RELEVANT NATIONAL THEME OF WELFARE IN TYPES OF INDICATIVE PROVIDED IN THE NHL HERITAGE LIST CRITERIA AUSTRALIA’S CULTURAL PLACES PLACES GUIDELINES HISTORY Criterion C: The place is of national significance Places of archaeological potential Archaeological remains of Castle Hill NSW to Australia because it could associated with the theme of welfare institutions, their (settlement site and site The place has outstanding provide information deriving from welfare. associated cemeteries, of first lunatic asylum) heritage value to the nation records, collections, movable or other evidence. because of the place’s potential cultural heritage, archaeological Places where there is fragmentary Dunwich Complex QLD to provide information that resources, architectural fabric evidence of earlier welfare Fragments of earlier (Benevolent Asylum, makes a contribution of national or other evidence for the institutions that have been institutions often Convict Causeway, importance to the understanding understanding of: removed or absorbed into later associated with hospitals Cemetery) of Australia’s history, cultures, or institutions. etc. the natural world • The history, ways of life and/or cultures of Australia. Note: Generally outside the scope for this study. Criterion D. The place should represent the Generally outside the scope for Some of the larger Comparative assessment principal characteristics of a this study. See report section ‘1.3 typological groups of is outside the scope of The place has outstanding particular high order design or style Constraints’ for further details. places comprise the the theme for this study. heritage value to the nation of importance in the history of following: See report section ‘1.3 because of the place’s Australia. Constraints’ for further importance in demonstrating • Benevolent asylums details. the principal characteristics of The place must have a high a class of Australia’s cultural integrity in its representative • Lunatic asylums places characteristics that may represent • Children’s Homes the period design, style. • Religious institutions. The class of place or environment demonstrating a particular way of life must be of a national order or level of importance.

The place should represent all or the critical elements representative

of a particular way of life of Appendixes | Thematic Study importance in the history of Australia. 65 66 Appendixes | Thematic Study INDICATOR WITHIN THE RELEVANT INDICATORS RELEVANT NATIONAL THEME OF WELFARE IN TYPES OF INDICATIVE PROVIDED IN THE NHL HERITAGE LIST CRITERIA AUSTRALIA’S CULTURAL PLACES PLACES GUIDELINES HISTORY Criterion E The place is of national significance Generally outside the scope for to Australia because it exhibits this study. See report section ‘1.3 E – the place has outstanding particular aesthetic characteristics Constraints’ for further details. heritage value to the nation valued by a community or cultural because of the place’s group through the following: importance in exhibiting particular aesthetic • Features of beauty, or features characteristics valued by a that inspire, emotionally move community or cultural group or have other characteristics that evoke a strong human response. Criterion F: The place demonstrates a high Generally outside the scope for this degree of creative achievement study. The place has outstanding which is of national significance to heritage value to the nation Australia for the following: because of the place’s importance in demonstrating • High degree of achievement in a high degree of creative or art, design or craftsmanship technical achievement at a particular period • A high degree of combining built features into a natural of designed landscape for an aesthetic purpose. INDICATOR WITHIN THE RELEVANT INDICATORS RELEVANT NATIONAL THEME OF WELFARE IN TYPES OF INDICATIVE PROVIDED IN THE NHL HERITAGE LIST CRITERIA AUSTRALIA’S CULTURAL PLACES PLACES GUIDELINES HISTORY Criterion G: The place is of national significance Indicated through the widespread Places associated with Renwick Children’s to Australia because it has a connection and sharing of the separation of families Homes NSW The place has outstanding strong or special association with stories of individuals associated and children – children as heritage value to the nation a particular community or cultural with particular types of care or ‘Forgotten Australians’ Burnside Homes NSW because of the place’s strong group for social, cultural institutions. and ‘Stolen Australians’. Sydney Benevolent or special association with a or spiritual reasons that could Asylum (Thomas Street) particular community or cultural include: traditional, religious, Likely to be indicated through Places associated with NSW (Representing group for social, cultural or ceremonial or other social strong associations with religious orders. Benevolent Societies in spiritual reasons purpose, including a celebratory or religious or non-denominational Places associated Australia) commemorative use, or association organisations that have provided welfare over a number of with other national with community action. Convent of the Good widespread but related institutions. organisations. Shepherd Abbotsford Vic. Note: Nationally recognised Places associated with groups may include religious Likely to be indicated in national the apologies to the denominations, ethnic organisations with a long history of Stolen Generations and communities, societies, welfare provision that have become the Forgotten Australians incorporated groups, or political an integral part of communities or (National Sorry Day for groups. of family life. example). Likely to be indicated through significant national events that Intangible heritage in are recognised widely and/or the form of life stories of commemorated. those who were either institutionalised, the Likely to be indicated through givers or the recipients of stories that resonate for the nation welfare. and that shed light on subjects of a difficult nature, validate experiences, provide lessons for the future, and seek to provide

healing. Appendixes | Thematic Study 67 68 Appendixes | Thematic Study INDICATOR WITHIN THE RELEVANT INDICATORS RELEVANT NATIONAL THEME OF WELFARE IN TYPES OF INDICATIVE PROVIDED IN THE NHL HERITAGE LIST CRITERIA AUSTRALIA’S CULTURAL PLACES PLACES GUIDELINES HISTORY Criterion H: Places which are significant for Places associated with individuals Places associated with Caroline Chisolm their enduring associations with and organisations that have served individuals who have Barracks NSW (Caroline The place has outstanding people or groups of national the nation through philanthropy, fought for welfare rights Chisholm) heritage value to the nation importance in Australia. The advancing government policy or in in specific sectors because of the place’s special association of the person or group advocating for change. (including Caroline Royal Park Psychiatric association with the life or works to the place must be significant in Chisolm, who achieved Hospital Vic. (E. of a person of group of persons, that the place represents a major welfare progress for Cunningham Dax and of importance in Australia’s achievement of a person or group immigrant women). John Cade) natural or cultural history of national importance in any field Sydney Benevolent of life. Organisations that have played a major role in the Asylum (Thomas Street) care of Australians. NSW (Edward Smith Hall) Criterion I The place demonstrates an aspect Outside the scope for this study. of Indigenous tradition which is of The place has outstanding national significance to Australia for heritage value to the nation the following: because of the place’s importance as part of Indigenous • places associated with tradition people’s ritual and ceremonial transformations. Appendixes | Thematic Study 69

APPENDIX 2

Places referred to in the text

SPECIFIC PLACES GENERAL TYPES OF PLACES PEOPLE AND ORGANISATIONS CHAPTER 1 Female orphans’ asylum, Orphanage Philip Gidley King and Anna King Sydney NSW King’s Orphan Schools TAS. Female factories Governor Arthur Philip Tent hospital, Sydney NSW Hospital Governor Lachlan Macquarie New Norfolk Hospital (Royal Hospital Governor Arthur Philip Derwent Hospital) TAS Castle Hill Asylum NSW Hospital Governor Lachlan Macquarie Parramatta Hospital NSW Hospital Adelaide Parklands Immigrant Outdoor relief Shelter SA Guildford, WA Township Governor Stirling South Australian Colonising Commission Governor Hutt Aboriginal protectorate George Augustus Robinson Point Puer TAS Reformatory Governor Arthur Philip Parramatta Female Factory Female Factory and Refuge Sisters of Charity

Parramatta Roman Catholic Orphanage Good Samaritan Sisters Orphan School (later Parramatta Industrial School /Girls Home) Female Immigrants Barracks Caroline Chisholm

Bent St Sydney CHAPTER 2 Benevolent society (dem.) George Benevolent Asylum Sydney Benevolent Society Street Sydney NSW, transferred to Thomas Street Sydney Benevolent Asylum Parramatta Benevolent Asylum NSW (dem.) St Vincent de Paul Society Little Sisters of the Poor Benevolent Asylum Liverpool Benevolent Asylum NSW Benevolent Asylum Newington Benevolent Asylum NSW Benevolent Asylum Melbourne Benevolent Asylum Vic. (dem.) now Kingston Centre Cheltenham Benevolent Asylum Benevolent Asylum Beechworth Vic. Benevolent Asylum Ballarat Vic. Orphanage Benevolent Asylum Bendigo Vic. Benevolent Asylum Immigrant’s Aid Society Sisters of Mercy 70 Appendixes | Thematic Study

SPECIFIC PLACES GENERAL TYPES OF PLACES PEOPLE AND ORGANISATIONS Benevolent Asylum Dunwich QLD Benevolent Asylum Destitute Asylum Adelaide SA Benevolent Asylum Adelaide Benevolent and Stranger’s Friend Society Mt Eliza Poor House WA Poor House New Norfolk Invalid Depot also Hospital known as New Norfolk Hospital (Royal Derwent Hospital) TAS Fremantle Lunatic Asylum, now Lunatic asylum Museum and Art Gallery King’s Orphan Schools, Orphanage Emily Clark New Town TAS Benevolent Asylum Benevolent Asylum Launceston TAS Little Sisters of the Poor convent, Convent Northcote Vic. Masonic Charitable Institution Aged care Masonic societies Prahran Vic. Old Colonists Home North Aged care Old Colonist’s Association George Coppin Fitzroy Vic. Melbourne Orphan Asylum Orphanage Melbourne Vic. Geelong Orphan Asylum Orphanage Geelong Vic. Destitute Children’s Asylum Orphanage Randwick NSW Diamantina Orphanage, QLD Orphanage Royal Park Industrial School Industrial schools Parkville Vic. Immigrant’s depot Renwick Homes Mittagong NSW Cottage Homes Dr Arthur Renwick Renwick Homes Pennant Hills Cottage Homes Dr Arthur Renwick NSW House of the Good Shepherd (Pitt Refuge Sisters of Charity Street Refuge) NSW Mt Magdala, (Buckingham Street) Convent Sisters of the Good Shepherd NSW Convent of the Good Shepherd Convent Sisters of the Good Shepherd Abbotsford Vic. Adelaide Catholic Female Refuge, Refuge Sisters of St Joseph now Fullarton SA Mary McKillop

Tenison Woods Holy Cross Retreat Ludwyche Convent Sisters of Mercy QLD Magdalen Home,Mt St Canice Convent Sisters of the Good Shepherd Sandy Bay TAS Magdalen Home Leederville WA Convent Sisters of the Good Shepherd Carlton Refuge (Queen Elizabeth Refuge Maternal and child Health Centre) Carlton Vic. Ladies Friendly Society Appendixes | Thematic Study 71

SPECIFIC PLACES GENERAL TYPES OF PLACES PEOPLE AND ORGANISATIONS Glenside Lunatic Asylum, Lunatic asylum Parkside SA Adelaide Asylum, Adelaide SA Lunatic asylum Kew Insane Asylum (Willsmere) Lunatic asylum Kew Vic. Yarra Bend Asylum, Kew Vic. Lunatic asylum (dem) Ararat Lunatic Asylum Vic. Lunatic asylum Beechworth Lunatic Asylum Vic. Lunatic asylum Sunbury Lunatic Asylum (Caloola) Lunatic asylum Sunbury Vic. Kew cottages for the intellectually Cottage homes disabled, Kew Vic. Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum Lunatic asylum Dr Byam Ellerton (Goodna) Female Immigrants Home Immigrants Home

(Hyde Park Barracks)

Sydney Immigration Depot Kangaroo Point Immigrants Depot Queensland Government Brisbane (Yungaba) Old Colonists Homes Aged Care Homes George Coppin CHAPTER 3 Soldier settlement schemes Dunwich Asylum Aged care Gippsland and central Victoria Village settlements Horace Tucker

Charles Strong Pitt Town NSW Labour camp Southport TAS Village settlements Great Ocean Road Sustenance schemes Shrine of Remembrance Sustenance schemes Soup kitchen Blackboy Hill WA Labour camp Broadmeadows Vic. Labour camp Selina Sutherland Children’s Courts Children’s Homes Voluntary Homes Reformatory Salvation Army Dr Frederic Truby King Working mother’s hostels NSW State Children’s Relief Board 72 Appendixes | Thematic Study

SPECIFIC PLACES GENERAL TYPES OF PLACES PEOPLE AND ORGANISATIONS Maybanke Kindergarten Free kindergarten Maybanke Anderson Woolloomooloo NSW Free kindergarten Edith Cowan South Australia Mothers and Babies Health Association Maternal and child health centres Lady Zara Gowrie Protestant churches Wesleyan Mission Societies Brotherhood of St Laurence Father Gerald Tucker Slum abolition Frederic Oswald Barnett Hammondville Liverpool NSW Worker homes, model suburb Canon B.S.Hammond Aged care McNess Trust

Charles McNess Daceyville, NSW Worker homes, model suburb Worker’s Home Board WA CHAPTER 4 Social welfare benefits Commonwealth Government Aboriginal ‘protection’ Aboriginal Protectorates The Methodist Homes for Cottage-style / family group State Children’s Relief Boards Children Vic. homes

Burnside Homes NSW Lady Gowrie Centre Day care / kindergarten Foster care Child Welfare Departments Lady Northcote Farm School Vic. Migrant schemes Fairbridge Scheme WA NSW

Camp Pell Vic. Public housing schemes Commonwealth and State Housing Commissions Bonegilla Migrant Camp Vic. Migrant hostels Snowy River Scheme Vic. Midway Migrant Hostel Vic. Commonwealth Hostels Limited Vasey Homes NSW War widow homes RSL Royal Park Psychiatric Hospital Vic. Personalised psychiatric services John Cade

Cunningham Dax CHAPTER 5 Labor Party

Gough Whitlam Professor Ronald Henderson Royal Women’s Hospital Council of single mothers and their children

Rosemary West Elsie, Glebe NSW Refuge Anne Summers Woolston Park Hospital, QLD Mental health institution Glenside, Hospital, Parkside SA Mental health institution Appendixes | Thematic Study 73

APPENDIX 3

National Heritage Themes National Thematic Framework (2003).

The following list is the thematic groups and themes developed by the Australian Heritage Commission in preparation for the introduction of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.

1. AN ANCIENT 2. AN ISLAND 3. PEOPLING 4. UNDERSTANDING 5. BUILDING A 6. LIVING AS COUNTRY OF NATURAL THE LAND & SHAPING THE NATION AUSTRALIANS DIVERSITY LAND 1.1. Fossil sites 2.1. The drying of 3.1. The antiquity 4.1. Indigenous 5.1. Indigenous 6.1. Ingenuity, that contribute to Australia of Indigenous Management and people and creativity and an understanding settlement in modification of the European contact achieving of the evolution 2.2. The Australia landscape through fire- excellence of Australia’s influence of stick farming 5.2. Expansion biota drought, water 3.2. Changing of settlement 6.2. Recreation, and fire the ways of life 4.2 Indigenous art, law – pre and post entertainment 1.2. Geological over the last and the land Federation and sport sites which 2.3. The 60,000 years demonstrate influence 4.3 Indigenous use of 5.3. The 6.3. Beliefs, the early of human 3.3. Contact aquatic resources recognition of spirituality and development of occupation between Indigenous land worshiping 4.4. Indigenous use of the continent Aboriginal and native title 2.4. The people and mineral resources and rights 6.4. 1.3. Living fossils country’s unique people from stone Memorialising fauna and flora neighbouring 5.4. Urban events and 4. 5. Exploration and islands planning people settlement 3.4. Migrants 5.5. Developing 4.6 Land and resource by choice democracy, use or coercion Federation (travellers, 4.7 Inspirational 5.6. Transport and refugees, landscapes communication convicts) 5.7. Government, administration, education, science, health and social welfare development.

5.7.1 Benevolent and other Care Institutions.

5.8. Defending the Nation