Please contact the Benevolent Society:
Postal Address: PO Box 171, Paddington NSW 2021
Phone: (02) 8262 3400 or 1800 236 762
Website: https://www.benevolent.org.au/
These records are held by State Library of New South Wales (1827 - current).
The Benevolent Society of New South Wales Collection, 1813-1996 is an aggregated collection held by the State Library of New South Wales. It comprises a large amount of records created between 1813 and 1996 by the Benevolent Society and its predecessor, the New South Wales Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and Benevolence. The aggregated collection is created from four smaller collections and records include minute books, indexes and registers of admissions and discharges, ledgers, journals, correspondence, and subject files.
Written permission from the Benevolent Society must be obtained: permission is granted for use for 10 years only. Contact the Benevolent Society or the State Library of New South Wales for assistance in applying for access to the collection.
The Benevolent Society of New South Wales Collection, 1813-1996 is an aggregated collection made from 4 smaller collections. These collections are:
The large collection includes the surviving records of:
Many of the early records of Scarba House for Children and Renwick Hospital for Infants were destroyed or lost as a result of a flood in the Society’s records storage area. No records of these institutions remain outside the State Library of New South Wales collection except for patients’ medical records for the Royal Hospital for Women which currently reside with the hospital in Paddington, New South Wales.
Information about series that were included in the publication Connecting Kin (1998) is available on the Find & Connect website.
The records are described in the publication ‘Guide to the Records of the Benevolent Society of New South Wales, 1813-1995, in the Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW’. The guide (140 pages) may be consulted in the Mitchell Library Reading Room.