St Joseph's Girls' Orphanage

St Joseph’s Girls’ Orphanage was established in Subiaco in 1901. It was run by the Sisters of Mercy, for girls aged up to 16 years who were placed there by government authorities or who were private admissions. From 1947, child migrants from Britain and Malta were sent to St Joseph’s. It closed in 1971 and became the Catherine McAuley Centre.

The St Joseph’s Girls’ Orphanage was run by the Sisters of Mercy from 21 November 1901 on the site of the old boys’ orphanage in Subiaco. The Sisters and children from the Roman Catholic Girls’ Orphanage in Victoria Square moved to Subiaco a few months after the boys moved out to Clontarf. Although St Joseph’s was called an orphanage, both children who were wards and those who were ‘privately placed’ lived there.

A letter of appreciation of the The Daily News Orphans’ Christmas Cheer Fund in 1915 gives an insight into life at St Joseph’s. The letter shows that donations enabled the children to occasionally have extras that were not part of their daily experience:

The Sisters and children of the orphanage are extremely grateful for the donation [of £24]. Each child was provided with a portion of the money to spend as she wished, and nothing could exceed the pleasure thereby given, particularly as this year nothing was expected, owing to the heavy demands on our kind friends. A picnic was provided with the remainder which, as usual, delighted the children. Letter, 12 January 1916 published in The Daily News 2 December 1916, p.10

Government reports (Signposts 2004, pp.454-455) show that there were 129 girls resident in 1920, with 114 girls in 1921. In subsequent years before World War II, the number of girls at St Joseph’s ranged from 91 (in 1922) to 37 (in 1943). Reports from the 1920s and 1940s also report on the number of girls who were ‘at service’. That is, working-age girls who were placed with employers (under a formal agreement) or who worked within the institution. Occasionally, reports show ‘abscondings’ or the number of children who ran away.

From 1947, child migrants from Britain and Malta were sent to St Joseph’s. The government reports (Signposts pp.457-458) probably underestimate the number of girls in the Home during the period 1947 to 1956. From 1957, ‘private admissions’ (girls who were placed at St Joseph’s by families or others) exceeded the number of girls placed by child welfare authorities. It is possible that girls admittedly privately were not counted in government reports in previous years.

Published, official reports about the Orphanage generally present a far brighter picture than testimony from former residents. In evidence to the Senate Inquiry into Children in Institutional Care, a woman described deprivations at St Joseph’s that left a deep impression on her: ‘We were never allowed to keep the presents as the nuns used to take them off us when we got back to the orphanage and would sell them at their fetes’ (Forgotten Australians 2004, p.88). In 2024, ABC News told the story of a group of women who call themselves the Joey Girls, child migrants who had to care for babies who had been removed from their mothers during the forced adoptions era.

They ended up in St Joseph’s Orphanage in the Perth suburb of Subiaco, where they were given numbers and learnt how to work and pray, alongside wards of the state, under the guidance of the Sisters of Mercy.

But what has not been revealed until now is that, for some of them, the work they did around the orphanage also included caring for newborn babies and becoming their godmothers.

They were involuntarily and unwittingly dragged into what’s now referred to as the “forced adoption era” when thousands of babies were removed from their mainly unwed mothers from the 1940s to the early 1980s.

The young migrants were instructed not to mix with the expectant mothers who, they say,  were kept separate in a nearby “foundling home” and sat in the back row of the chapel during mass.

These young women, not much older than the migrants themselves, had been sent there from all around the country after becoming pregnant out of wedlock.

“The nuns called them sinners,” says Teresa Phillips, a Joey Girl who came out on the first ship carrying child migrants from the UK in 1947.

“We weren’t allowed near them. (ABC News, 21 August 2024)”

In 1971, St Joseph’s Girls’ Orphanage closed and became the Catherine McAuley Centre.