St Brigid's Hostel, Rockhampton, 1950s, courtesy of Institute of Sisters of Mercy of Australia and Papua New Guinea Archives and Heritage Centre.
Details
St Brigid's Industrial School, in Rockhampton, was run by the Sisters of Mercy. Information about this institution is scarce but it originally operated as a boarding facility and industrial school for young girls from outlying areas of the Diocese. It then became a working girls' hostel. St Brigid's opened around 1874 and closed in 1985.
St Brigid's is described in A piece of the story (1999) like this:
St Brigid's Convent was the founding house of the Rockhampton Sisters of Mercy after their arrival in Brisbane in August 1873. From 1874 to 1895, it housed the Catholic Girls' High School before the school was transferred to a site on the Athelstone Range. Boarders attending the High School continued to live at St Brigid's as well as a group of boarders who were part of the student population of the neighbouring primary schools of St Patrick's and Our Lady's. In the workrooms at St Brigid's, the Sisters taught dressmaking, millinery, lace and fancy work, cooking, typewriting, music and art to the boarders. The Sisters also made Church vestments and altar decorations.
Sources used to compile this entry: 'A Piece of the Story': National Directory of Records of Catholic Organisations Caring for Children Separated from Families, Australian Catholic Social Welfare Commission & Australian Conference of Leaders of Religious Institutes, 1999, https://cssa.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/A-Piece-of-the-Story.pdf. p.78-79.; Cathedral College, Rockhampton: our history, 2014, https://web.archive.org/web/20160228135559/http://tccr.com.au/boarding-life/169/p//our-history; Trove news articles, see http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article105017106; http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article69368199; http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article105966072. Email by Cate O'Neill, 'FCQD - St Brigid's Rockhampton', dated 11 November 2016, held in the project files at the University of Melbourne eScholarship Research Centre.
Prepared by: Cate O'Neill
Created: 28 June 2011, Last modified: 19 October 2018
Last updated: 18 January 2023
Cite this: https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/ref/qld/biogs/QE00178b.htm
First published by the Find & Connect Web Resource Project for the Commonwealth of Australia, 2011
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