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Montrose Infants’ Home

Montrose Infants’ Home was a home for preschool-aged children that was established in Burwood by the Child Welfare Department. Montrose had previously been a hostel for older children. It had a kindergarten programme and mostly took children who were being prepared for foster placement. However its use varied according to need, and four girls aged…

Corelli Babies’ Home

Corelli Babies’ Home was opened around 1945 in Marrickville. It was a Child Welfare Department nursing home for around 20 toddlers. It was situated in a house called Corelli. Previously, it had been a Child Welfare Department home for unmarried mothers, (the Corelli Women’s Hospital). Around 1970 Corelli was converted to a hostel for older…

Garth

Garth was established by the Child Welfare Department in Willoughby in 1924. It was a home for the segregation and treatment of children, and mothers and babies, who were suffering from venereal disease. Not all children in the home carried venereal disease, as it also housed children with polio (infantile paralysis). A commission of inquiry…

Sydney Home for Babies

The Sydney Home for Babies was located at Waverley, in a large two-storey house on what was then called Nelson Bay Road and is now Bronte Road. Opened in February 1910 by Mrs Greig-Smith, founder of Sydney Norland Nurseries, it was ‘founded for the care of infants who are poor and whose mothers have to…

Dr Dill Macky Memorial Home

The Dr Dill Macky Memorial Home, in Albert Road Strathfield, was founded by the Loyal Orange Lodge and run by the Australian Protestant Orphans’ Society in 1922. It housed up to 150 children at one time. It closed in 1983. Dr Dill Macky Memorial Home, Strathfield, was a sister institution for the Dr Dill Macky…

Tresillian Vaucluse

Tresillian Vaucluse was established around 1935 or 1936 in Greycliffe House, which is within Nielsen Park, Vaucluse. It was a mothercraft home run by Tresillian. It cared for mothers with babies and for babies who needed nursing. By the 1960s it looked after around 110 mothers and 177 babies a year. Unmarried mothers worked at…

Tresillian North Home

Tresillian Willoughby is a Tresillian Family Care Centre. It was established as a Mothercraft Nursing Home in 1927, to support mothers and care for babies, and it continued to provide support to parents of young children until it closed in 2023. In the 1960s Tresillian North Home could accommodate 10 mothers with breastfed babies, eight…

Tresillian Wollstonecraft

Tresillian Wollstonecraft, or Carpenter House, was a Tresillian Mothercraft Home that was established in 1940. It was a mothercraft training home for nurses and, by the 1960s, housed around 200 mothers and 260 babies during the course of a year. In 2012 Tresillian Wollstonecraft was still providing services to mothers and babies from Carpenter House….

Lady Edeline Hospital for Sick Babies

The Lady Edeline Hospital for Sick Babies was a government children’s hospital at Nielsen Park, in Vaucluse, in an historic house called ‘Greycliffe’. It began in 1914. It had 40 cots and was intended as a hospital to nurse babies who were sick with gastroenteritis, which was common in Sydney summer. It closed in 1936…

Dr Dill Macky Memorial Home for Children, Auburn

The Dill Macky Memorial Home for Children, Auburn, was established by the Australian Protestant Orphans’ Society in June 1917. It had previously been the King Edward VII Home but was renamed after the death of the founder of the Australian Protestant Orphan Society and the King Edward VII Home, Dr Dill Macky. The Auburn Home…