Our Children's Home, Liverpool was established by George Edward Ardill, of the Society for Providing Homes for Neglected Children, in 1887. It was a home for boys aged four to eight and girls aged four to fourteen. It held up to 40 children. In 1918 Ardill opened a new Our Children's Home at Concord (Ardill House). Both homes were operated until 1936, when the Liverpool home was closed and children were transferred to the Concord Our Children's Home.
Ardill claimed that the children in the homes were found on the streets, needy and friendless, or the victims of vice, ill-treatment and neglect. Some must have been born in the Home of Hope and others came from Our Babies Home and Rockdale Babies Home.
The land for the home was donated by Mr Frederick Kingston Olliver. In the home boys received training in farm labouring and girls were trained in domestic service. When children left the home Ardill placed them as apprenticed servants, or 'adopted' them, informally, by placing them with Christian families.
Sources used to compile this entry: 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; Thornton, Bruce, George Edward Ardill and the Sydney Rescue Work Society (now Communicare Sydney) [also titled "Haste to the Rescue"], Baptist Historical Society of New South Wales, Sydney, 2008, 118 pp.
Prepared by: Naomi Parry
Created: 22 March 2011, Last modified: 10 March 2014
Last updated: 4 August 2023
Cite this: https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/ref/nsw/biogs/NE00368b.htm
First published by the Find & Connect Web Resource Project for the Commonwealth of Australia, 2011
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