St Catherine's Orphanage

St Catherine’s Orphanage was the new name given in 1912 to what was formerly Our Lady’s Orphanage. It accommodated girls aged between 3 and 14. In 1928, the Orphanage relocated from Newtown to Highton. In 1960, it became the St Catherine’s Children’s Home.

Barnard and Twigg suggest that the Sisters of Mercy changed the orphanage’s name from Our Lady to St Catherine’s to distinguish it from the Sacred Heart Boarding School and the day primary school, which were located on the same site.

An appeal for a new building was launched in 1926, and in 1928 St Catherine’s Orphanage relocated from Newtown to Highton.

In November 1955, St Catherine’s Girls’ Orphanage was declared an approved children’s home under the Children’s Welfare Act 1954.

In her book, Along the way, Maureen Flanagan remembers her life as a resident of St Catherine’s:

My world was full of bells. There were church bells, bells for meals, bells for rising in the morning, bells for going to bed. There were Rosaries, morning and evening hymns and prayers. There were priests saying Mass, altars, the smell of flowers and polish on pews. We were berets during the week at Mass and on Sundays we dressed in our Sunday best, with frilly hats (Flanagan, 2002, p.15).

Flanagan also describes how once a month, there was a visitors’ day at St Catherine’s. “Some of the parents would turn up, but that was very rare … The nuns used to dress up in pretty little frocks and put special bedspreads out on visitors’ day. People walked through the door, stared at us and whispered to each other. When someone wanted to adopt us we were picked out like cattle in the sale yard. This was how we were chosen in those days (p.24)”.

In 1957, Sister Isidore Ryder took charge at St Catherine’s. A year later, it started to receive boys (usually the younger brothers of girls already at the Orphanage). Subsequently, St Catherine’s changed its name to St Catherine’s Children’s Home in 1960.