The Big Brother Movement (BBM) was established in 1925 by Richard Linton, a Melbourne businessman, to sponsor youth migration from Britain to Australia. It was one of several non-government organisations involved in immigration to Australia in the 1920s. The Big Brother Movement was originally conceived as a form of sponsorship, by which each youth migrant,…
The Infants’ Custody and Settlements Act (39/1899) was also known as ‘An Act to consolidate the law relating to the custody of infants and the settlement of the property of infants’. This Act brought a number of previous pieces of legislation, to do with custody, marriage settlements, and damages recovered on behalf of children, under…
The Society for the Relief of Destitute Children opened an asylum for children in Ormond House, a mansion in Paddington, in 1852. The Asylum held 150 children aged 3 to 10 years who were defined as needy yet had not been admitted to the Orphan Schools. The Asylum for Destitute Children relocated to Randwick in…
The Infant Convicts Act 1849 [21/1849 (13 Vic. No.21)], also known as ‘An Act to provide for the Care and Education of Infants who may be convicted of Felony or Misdemeanour’, allowed judges and magistrates to make custody orders, and send children into the care of other adults, when sentencing children convicted of crimes. It…
The Custody of Children and Children’s Settlements Act 1894 enabled courts to refuse a parents’ application for the return of a child if the court was of the opinion that the parent has abandoned or deserted or neglected the child or otherwise so conducted himself or herself that the court should refuse to enforce the…
The Randwick Asylum for Destitute Children began in 1858, when the Asylum for Destitute Children relocated from Ormond House in Paddington to Randwick. It was run by the Society for the Relief of Destitute Children and housed up to 800 children at a time in large dormitories that are often called ‘barracks’. Most of the…
Mittagong Training School For Boys, run by the Child Welfare Department, was the new name given in 1947 to what had been the Mittagong Farm School for Boys. It was an institution for boys aged 8 to 17 convicted in the Children’s Courts. Some children were transferred from the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and placed…
Toongabbie was established by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in 1948 in Toongabbie in western Sydney. It appears that it was established as a holiday home and farm school, with the farm supporting the Home of the Good Shepherd, Ashfield. In 1953, the The Loreto Training School was established at Toongabbie, as an adjunct…
St Gabriel’s was established in Castle Hill in 1922 by the Christian Brothers. It was a residential home for boys who had a hearing impairment, aged from 5 to 17 years. St Gabriel’s stopped serving as a residential school in 1973, and became a co-educational day school. In 2014 it was still a school, but…
St Martha’s Industrial Home opened at Leichhardt by the Sisters of Saint Joseph in 1888. St Martha’s housed girls of school age and trained them in domestic arts and crafts. In 1923 the original building was demolished and replaced with dormitories, housing up to 120 children. In the late 1950s, St Martha’s Industrial Home became…
Dec 18, 2024
Nov 15, 2024
