The Theresian Holiday Home, also known as Liseux, was opened at Padstow Park in 1938. It was run by the Theresian Club, an organisation of Catholic women closely associated with the Sisters of Charity. The Home provided short holidays in a bushland setting for disadvantaged children from Sydney. Children between the ages of three and…
Tuggerah Welfare Farm was established by the Salvation Army around 1954 as a training farm for young men between 15 and 25 years old. In 1959 there were two boys at the farm under the age of 16. Many (though not all) of the residents of the farm were sent there by the Courts following…
Infant Life Protection was a program that emerged in response to rising concerns about ‘baby farming’ in the late nineteenth century – this was the practice of infants, usually born to single mothers, being placed in private homes to be nursed and boarded, for a fee. There was a very high mortality rate for ex-nuptial…
The Cottage Home was established in July 1879 as a private boarding-out home in Newtown, Sydney. The Cottage Home had capacity for approximately 10 children and was managed by an older couple acting as house “father and mother”. It was established as a trial of the boarding-out “family system” as opposed to the institutional system…
Mental deficiency is a term that was commonly used to describe intellectual or developmental disability in the first half of the twentieth century. It was regarded as a disease, and the popular belief was that people who were diagnosed as ‘mentally defective’ needed to be segregated from the community, to receive special ‘care’ and treatment….
The Register of Convicts for House of Correction, Carters Barracks is a record held by Museums of History in the collection of the State Archives of NSW. It contains information about people incarcerated at Carters Barracks, including date entered the barracks, convict number, convict name, name of the ship they arrived on, original sentence, crime…
“Correspondence files, single number series with ‘B’ [Child Endowment] prefix” is an archival series held by the National Archives of Australia. Its series number is A885. The records in A885 relate to child endowment and family allowances. The records were created by the Commonwealth Department of Social Services. Many of the files document the payment…
In 1951, a British Home Office official named John Moss inspected and reported on Australian and New Zealand institutions where British child migrants were living. Moss spent July-December 1951 travelling around Australia and to New Zealand, inspecting institutions and making recommendations. His report, known as the Moss Report, was submitted to the British government in…
The Salvation Army Australia Museum holds historical memorabilia, photographs and records related to the operations of the Salvation Army in Australia, including material relating to some of the children’s Homes it ran. The Museum also holds a digitised and searchable complete set of the Salvation Army magazine, War Cry. The Museum is located in Melbourne,…
The Community of the Holy Name is a religious order founded in Melbourne, in 1888. The founder of the order, Emma Caroline Silcock (also known as Sister Esther), led the work of the Mission to the Streets and Lanes in Melbourne, and the two organisations had a close association. The order was not formally established…
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