During the 1840s the Friendly Brothers began finding local Catholic families to provide shelter for children who would otherwise have been sent to gaol (either alone or alongside their mothers), and Protestant charitable societies took an interest in assisting impoverished children by supplying cash or groceries to their struggling parents.
John Thomas Smith, who was both the Mayor of Melbourne and a Justice in the Melbourne Court of Petty Sessions, heard a case in 1849 which concerned him greatly. A man appeared before him, accused of murder, and who confessed to having killed his wife, two of his children and who threatened to kill a third child. Investigations proved that all three children were alive, but they were clearly in need of assistance. Justice Smith asked Eleanor Nicholson, a prominent member of the Dorcas Society (the women's charitable group associated with the Anglican St. James' Visiting Society), to take an interest in the case. She agreed, and proceeded to find a woman who would provide lodgings for the children for a small fee.
Within a short time several more children were directed to the Dorcas Society, and so the women of the society secured the use of a building behind the Royal Oak Hotel in Queen Street, Melbourne, and employed a widow with children of her own to work as the matron. This was the first residential children's institution in Victoria. Early in 1851 the ladies' Dorcas Society changed its name to the St James' Orphan Asylum and Visiting Society in recognition of its growing commitment to residential children's services, and from this event the Melbourne Orphan Asylum (now Oz Child) dates its beginnings.
We do not currently have any resources linked to this entry, but resources may exist. If you know of any related resources, please contact us.
The Find & Connect Support Service can help people who lived in orphanages and children's institutions look for their records.
We do not currently have any photographs linked to this entry. If you know of any additional photographs, please contact us.
The Find & Connect Support Service can help people who lived in orphanages and children's institutions look for their records.
Last updated:
27 July 2015
Cite this: http://www.findandconnect.gov.au/guide/vic/E000532
First published by the Find & Connect Web Resource Project for the Commonwealth of Australia, 2011
Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License