Infant Life Protection was a program that emerged in response to rising concerns about ‘baby farming’ in the late nineteenth century – this was the practice of infants, usually born to single mothers, being placed in private homes to be nursed and boarded, for a fee. There was a very high mortality rate for ex-nuptial…
Mental deficiency is a term that was commonly used to describe intellectual or developmental disability in the first half of the twentieth century. It was regarded as a disease, and the popular belief was that people who were diagnosed as ‘mentally defective’ needed to be segregated from the community, to receive special ‘care’ and treatment….
“Correspondence files, single number series with ‘B’ [Child Endowment] prefix” is an archival series held by the National Archives of Australia. Its series number is A885. The records in A885 relate to child endowment and family allowances. The records were created by the Commonwealth Department of Social Services. Many of the files document the payment…
The National Library of Australia in Canberra was formally established by the passage of the National Library Act 1960. Its origins can be traced back to the establishment of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Library in 1901. The Library’s role “is to ensure that documentary resources of national significance relating to Australia and the Australian people, as…
The Salvation Army Australia Museum holds historical memorabilia, photographs and records related to the operations of the Salvation Army in Australia, including material relating to some of the children’s Homes it ran. The Museum also holds a digitised and searchable complete set of the Salvation Army magazine, War Cry. The Museum is located in Melbourne,…
The Salvation Army Australia Museum in Melbourne collects historical records and memorabilia about the Salvation Army in Australia. This includes memorabilia and photographs related to the Homes run by the Salvation Army in its Southern Territory (from 1921 until 2018, the Salvation Army was divided into two territories. The Southern Territory comprised South Australia, Tasmania,…
The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is an international convention, setting out the civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of children. The General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child on 20 November 1989 (the 30th anniversary of the Declaration of the Rights of…
An orphan is a child whose mother or father or both has died. Historically, in the context of institutional ‘care’, the term ‘orphan’ did not necessarily mean a child whose parents had died. It was most often used to describe a child whose parent/s were (or were judged to be) unable, for many different reasons,…
The Wattle Day Appeal was an annual fundraising event, used to raise funds for children’s institutions and other charitable organisations. The annual Wattle Day Appeal began in 1910, with Wattle Day events held in New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. Over the next few years, Wattle Day events were also held in Queensland and…
Jervis Bay Territory Acceptance Act 1915 (No. 19, 1915), had the full title ‘An Act to provide for the Acceptance of certain Territory Surrendered by the State of New South Wales to the Commonwealth’. The Act created the Territory of Jervis Bay, and specified that the Territory was subject to the laws of the Australian…
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