The Haven

The Haven, North Fitzroy, was established by the Salvation Army in 1897. It had various functions over the years, including a maternity home, foundling hospital, babies’ and toddlers’ home, day care centre and hostel for girls with intellectual disabilities. It closed in 1988.

The Haven was situated at 73-75 Alfred Crescent, North Fitzroy. It was established by the Salvation Army as a ‘Foundling Home and Refuge’ in a substantial private residence in Alfred Crescent, North Fitzroy in 1897. The private home was modified to provide dormitories, a maternity hospital and a nursery. The Haven was then utilised as a maternity home for young mothers from around the State.

The book Delinquent Angel describes what The Haven might have been like for a young woman in the post World War Two period.

… Fitzroy was a raw and seedy place. Terraced cottages compacted street after street. There were missions for the poor, food kitchens, doss houses and places where the needy could get handouts … A middle class girl might be intimidated in the streets of Fitzroy but she would not be recognised. The Haven was locked behind a corrugated iron fence with metal arrowhead pickets running along the top … New inmates arrived into an austere place, with a regimen calculated for their own good … The smell of the daily routines hung in pockets around the building. Beeswax and eucalyptus on buffed wooden floors and staircases. Boiled cabbage and pumpkin, baked custard, boiled and roasted meats from the kitchen. Disinfectants from the swabbed bathrooms and delivery rooms. And the nursery smelled of new babies and milk and more disinfectant …

The girls were forbidden to go beyond the walls. A condition of their stay was that they must be hidden. They were allowed no male visitors, not even their fathers. The girls were not allowed to divulge their surnames or talk about their families. Here they were all equals, all equally shamed (Georgeff, 2007, pp.319-320).

In 1932 a two storey hospital and nursing home was erected on the Alfred Crescent site to accommodate infants and toddlers. The Haven operated as a hostel for single mothers, and as a hospital and home for babies and toddlers until the mid 1970s.

The hospital section of The Haven was closed in 1967. Expectant mothers were then taken to the Royal Women’s Hospital for their confinements.

In 1971 a new Babies’ Home was opened at the rear of the older buildings. This consisted of a wing with a reception area, lounge, office for the Sister-in-Charge and a room for newborn babies awaiting adoption and babes up to six months. Another wing comprised four units each for five children.

At this time the Haven Hostel, Babies’ and Toddlers home had accommodation for a maximum of 31 babies and toddlers from birth to three years. The Hostel section was still catering for single mothers whose babies were delivered at the Royal Women’s Hospital, although the numbers had consistently decreased over the previous few years.

In May 1973 the Salvation Army advised the Department that it would be closing the babies’ home in June and establishing a day care centre in its place.

In 1975 the function of the ‘The Haven Centre’ was further changed. Until its final closure in 1988, it operated as a hostel for girls with intellectual disabilities who needed supportive help and care.

The Haven was mentioned in the Commonwealth Contribution to Former Forced Adoption Policies and Practices Inquiry (2012) as an institution that was involved in forced adoption. It was also cited in the report of the Inquiry into Responses to Historical Forced Adoptions in Victoria.

One person born at the Haven to a single mother made a submission to the Victorian inquiry. She wrote that her mother was too ashamed to tell her parents she was pregnant, so she said she was moving interstate to study:

What she actually did was move into Salvation Army’s, The Haven, in Alfred Crescent North Fitzroy, all alone in a state where she knew no one. The Haven was a maternity and children’s home, where women who had sinned were able to spend their confinement working like slaves in exchange for their food and accommodation (submission 89, quoted in Legislative Assembly, 2021, p.146).