Waif's Home, Parkerville

The Waif’s Home, Parkerville was established in 1903 by the Sisters of the Church to accommodate babies and young children who were not eligible for the Perth orphanages.

In May 1903, Sister Jane, Sister Kate and six English boys aged nine to twelve from the Orphanage of Mercy, Kilburn, England, arrived at the 10-acre Parkerville property that the Sisters had purchased in the bush in the Darling Ranges. At first, the boys slept in the barn and the Sisters in a hut on the property. A cottage, known as The Lodge, was built for the babies who were transferred to Parkerville in July 1903.

One of the boys, Arthur Purton, described their duties as including “in the early days all the washing was done in a brook at the bottom of the hill, and all the water had to be carted up the hill in buckets. The older boys had to be up at daybreak so they could dig pits and empty the sewerage before light.” (Whittington, p. 86)

By 1904, Whittington (1999, p.88) reports there were 14 toddlers under four years of age at Parkerville. The Home continued to expand thanks to donations of money and resources. The English boys, who had come to Parkerville in 1903, continued to work at the Home by building new cottages, clearing land, building tracks, and helping with the laundry.

In The West Australian in February 1906, Sister Vera discussed the input of the boys to the Waif’s Home, Parkerville.

Instead of being a burden to the State, these boys have been an aid to us in our work of succouring the poor waifs. When we first started we were very, very poor, and if the boys had not cut wood and carried water, minded the children when out of school, and worked very hard indeed, I am sure that we should never have tided over that time of poverty and privation. Now they are under the tuition of a gardener, half of whose salary is paid by Mr. Padbury. They supply the Home with vegetables, drive the cart, milk the cow. go wood-cutting, and, in fact, help the State to a very large extent by enabling us to support some of its poor, neglected babies.

The Home continued to expand and on 16 May 1907 The West Australian reported that there had been 60 children on average at the Home for the past two years. Whittington (1999, p. 131) shares information from the Sisters’ report for the year ending 30 April 1907 including that all 60 children were under seven. 46 children were aged under four years, including 17 infants under one year old. Six children died during the year. The Sisters reported that many of children who came to the Home arrived in ill health and often had been abused.

The West Australian also reported that six of the English girls who had arrived with the Sisters from the Orphanage of Mercy in England in 1901 were “employed in caring for the children, 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.