Waif's Home, Parkerville

The Waif’s Home, Parkerville began in 1903. It was founded by the Sisters of the Church. Sister Kate Clutterbuck has had the strongest association with the Home, which was the pioneer in Western Australia of ‘cottage care’ and keeping children from the same family together. In 1909, the Waif’s Home, Parkerville became a subsidised orphanage under the State Children Act 1907 and it was known thereafter as Parkerville Children’s Home.

On 5 May 1903, one of the Sisters of the Church, Sister Jane, left Fremantle railway station with six of the older boys (all aged under 12) and arrived at the 10 acre property that the Sisters had purchased in the bush at Parkerville, in the Darling Ranges. The following day, Sister Kate arrived. At first, the boys slept in the barn and the Sisters in a hut on the property. A roofless cottage, known as The Lodge, was built for the babies who were transferred to Parkerville from the Sisters’ premises in Perth and Fremantle in July 1903.

By 1904, Whittington (p.88) reports there were 14 ‘toddlers under four years of age’ at Parkerville. The young English boys who had come to Parkerville in 1903 continued to give help in establishing and building new cottages, clearing land and building tracks.

At a meeting of ‘subscribers’ (supporters) of the Home at the Perth Town Hall on 16 May 1907 (Whittington, p.131), it was reported that there had been around 60 children on average at the Home for the past two years. At April 1907, there were 46 children aged under four years, including 17 infants under one year old. Six of the girls who had arrived with the Sisters from England in 1901 were ’employed’ at the Home, being paid ‘without any cost to the institution, except their food and clothing’.

In 1909, the Waif’s Home, Parkerville became a subsidised orphanage under the State Children Act 1907 and it was known thereafter as Parkerville Children’s Home.