House of the Good Shepherd, c. 1877, by Charles Percy Pickering, 1825-1908, courtesy of State Library of New South Wales.
Details
The House of the Good Shepherd on Pitt Street provided accommodation for females over the age of fourteen years. It opened in 1848, in the building of Carters' Barracks, and was initially staffed by the Irish Sisters of Charity. In 1857 a new order was established to run the institution called the Sisters of the Good Shepherd. Their name was changed in 1866 to the Sisters of the Good Samaritan and they ran the Home until its closure. In 1901 the site was reclaimed by the Government for Central Railway Station and residents were transferred to St Magdalen's Retreat at Tempe.
The House of the Good Shepherd received women and girls from the courts, and via voluntary placement. All of the residents agreed to stay for a minimum period of two years.
From 1887, after the establishment of St Magdalen's Retreat in Tempe (described as a 'branch refuge' by Judith Godden), many residents from House of the Good Shepherd in Pitt Street were housed at St Magdalen's.
In 1901, when the House of the Good Shepherd was closed, its residents were transferred to St Magdalen's Retreat.
Sources used to compile this entry: Good Samaritan, Sisters of the, 1997, https://web.archive.org/web/20190319003236/http://web.stbedes.catholic.edu.au/Other/nuns/hist/sgs.html; Thinee, Kristy and Bradford, Tracy, Connecting Kin: Guide to Records, A guide to help people separated from their families search for their records [completed in 1998], New South Wales Department of Community Services, Sydney, New South Wales, 1998, https://clan.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/connectkin_guide.pdf.
Prepared by: Melissa Downing and Nicola Laurent
Created: 7 March 2011, Last modified: 27 October 2017
Last updated: 4 August 2023
Cite this: https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/ref/nsw/biogs/NE00150b.htm
First published by the Find & Connect Web Resource Project for the Commonwealth of Australia, 2011
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