Archives



Margaret Reid Orthopaedic Hospital for Crippled Children

The Margaret Reid Orthopaedic Hospital for Crippled Children opened in 1937 at St Ives. It was a disability institution, a convalescent hospital and offered outpatients services. It the only specialist orthopaedic children’s hospital in Australia and took children from all over the country and Pacific nations. It closed in 1981. Margaret Reid Orthopaedic Hospital for…

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…

Waterfall Sanatorium

Waterfall Sanatorium was opened on 14 April 1909 in Waterfall as a hospital for the treatment of patients, including children, who had advanced tuberculosis (TB). Patients were sent to Waterfall Sanatorium, often against their will, and were not released until cured. People who died there are buried on the site. Waterfall Sanatorium closed in 1958….

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…

Dalwood Children’s Home

Dalwood Children’s Home, at Seaforth, was a home for mothers and babies set up by the Food for Babies Fund in 1924. In 1931 it began to provide temporary accommodation for children. In 1989 Dalwood stopped operating as a children’s home. Non-residential programs continue on the site, in 2024 it is known as the Dalwood…

Mittagong Cottage Homes

Mittagong Cottage Homes were established from 1885 by the State Children’s Relief Board. They were houses that each held 20 children, ranging in age from infancy to adolescence. The first were in the Mittagong township but in 1896 they moved to the Southwood Estate on Bong Bong Road, where further cottages were added. The cottages…

Renwick Hospital for Infants, Summer Hill

The Renwick Hospital for Infants was opened at Summer Hill by the Benevolent Society in 1921. It replaced the previous Renwick Hospital for Infants at Thomas Street in Sydney and was a lying-in hospital and a hospital for children whose parents could not afford to pay for their medical care. Renwick Hospital at Summer Hill…

Prince of Wales Hospital

The Prince of Wales Hospital was established in 1953 as an annex of Sydney Hospital and is on the Randwick Campus of the South Eastern Sydney and Illawarra Health Service. This campus includes Sydney Children’s Hospital and the Royal Hospital for Women. The Prince of Wales Hospital holds records of a number of maternity hospitals…

Royal Far West

Royal Far West, also referred to as Royal Far West Scheme and Drummond Far West Home, was set up in Manly in 1924 as a holiday home, to enable children from far western New South Wales to escape the conditions of the outback by holidaying by the sea. Over the years it has evolved to…

South Sydney Women’s Hospital

South Sydney Women’s Hospital was a maternity hospital that provided midwifery and maternity care, particularly to poor and unmarried women. It was founded in Newtown (Camperdown) 1905 by George and Louisa Ardill and the Sydney Rescue Work Society and had been the Home of Hope for Friendless and Fallen Women. It trained midwives and was…