The Ballarat Industrial School was a state-run institution, which opened in August 1869. The institution housed 215 girls in 1872. In 1879, the Industrial School closed, and became a reformatory for boys.
The Ballarat Industrial School was the only institution in Victoria mentioned in the 1872 report by the Royal Commission on Penal and Prison Discipline about Victoria’s Industrial and Reformatory Schools as having had a ‘satisfactory realization of the objects for which industrial schools should be founded’. Despite this, the Commission called for the industrial school system to be abandoned, in favour of the boarding out system.
The Ballarat Industrial School housed 215 girls in 1872, according to the report of the Royal Commission.
In 1877, the Industrial School closed, and was briefly used as the site for the Ballarat Asylum until 1879 when it became the Ballarat Boys’ Reformatory. This reformatory closed in 1893 and was returned to its former use as an asylum.
From
1869
To
1877
1869 - 1877
The Ballarat Industrial School was located at Wendouree (now called Lake Gardens), Ballarat, Victoria (Building Partially demolished)
