Boulder Rescue Home

Run by The Salvation Army, the Boulder Rescue Home provided an alternative to gaol or an industrial school for girls and young women who were charged by the Police or Children’s Courts from 1904 to around 1914. Children charged with neglect, vulnerable young women and people committed for offences all seem to have been taken into the Home. Parents also placed children there to benefit from what they considered to be a reforming influence of the Home. It was located in Burt Street, Boulder in a large house known as ‘Ellerslie’.

The 1903 annual report of the Salvation Army’s ‘rescue work’ was delivered in the Kalgoorlie Miners’ Institute Hall on 22 June. The report acknowledged the help of ‘their friend, Mr. Ralph Potts, for the block of land he had been instrumental in getting for them in Kalgoorlie, and they hoped at an early date to get a home started locally’. The 1903 edition of the Western Australia Post Office Directory (p.16) shows that the house was located on Burt Street near the intersection with Thompson Street in Boulder City.

The Salvation Army’s submission to the Inquiry into Children in Institutional Care in 2003 identified the Boulder City Rescue Home as operating from 1904 to possibly 1908. However, it seems more likely that it continued until 1914. A newspaper report in 1911 says that Lady Edeline Strickland was visiting the Salvation Army Homes while in the goldfields, suggesting the Rescue Home and the Home for Girls were both operating at that time. The 1914 Post Office Directory shows a rescue home still operating in Kalgoorlie (Staff Captain Ward). The 1915 Post Office Directory shows that Matron Thomas was in charge of the Rescue Home at Kalgoorlie, but she was Matron of the Girls’ Home so it is uncertain whether the Rescue Home was still open in 1915.