Prelude
Symmetry is what I notice as I stand directly at the entrance to the driveway that leads to a magnificent stone church at the end of the avenue in New Town, not too far from Kunanyi, that towers over the landscape in all its moods. Today, it is dark and brooding, as are the buildings I am standing between; identical bluestone buildings that squat watchfully on either side of the avenue. They were hewn from the rocks by convicts, when people were shorter. There are the usual small paned glass windows and apertures for muskets slightly concealed but facing the road that goes past the end.
It is evening and quiet as I walk up the avenue, so it is easy to slip from the 21st to the 19th century. As I walk towards the church two wings come into view, again symmetrical and identical structures. Each wing is two storeys tall. I am drawn to the middle section of each building. Within these sections are five tall windows, each with 60 small panes of glass. Spaces for the hundreds of children who had to live there. Above them on the next level are two large dormer windows. The bottom half of each of these windows are long and rectangular, the two on top are divided into four squares each. More geometrical symmetry. To the side is a single tall chimney.
As I stare at these windows, the air grows colder and the place feels both crowded and deserted at the same time. I am prepared for the sorrow that emanates from behind the glass because I have been here before. I see again the ghostly pale faces and little hands on the panes, but they knew that if they escaped, the guards at the end of the road would catch them.
There are other sections of the wings that draw my attention less, apart from noting the deeply recessed sections could have easily have been windows to let light inside, but are not.
Both wings are connected to the church in the centre, still consecrated and operating as it has since the first stages of its construction which spanned from 1831 to 1833. These buildings were not the first Orphan schools, but they grew out of desperate need in a chaotic colony.
Symmetry matters. It creates an illusion of order. And order was paramount.
The tower is so tall I have to tilt my head back to take it all in. The size of the bluestones, so precisely cut and arranged are massive by current standards. I touch the rough surface of them and marvel at the efficiency of the convict system that allowed buildings like this to appear all over the island for their betters to enjoy. I know that on the interior, the same men who had sweated and groaned and struggled to make these sandstone blocks were expected to attend the weekly services for the salvation of their darkened souls and that when they did, they were sectioned off into their own gallery, to the side, where they could not make eye contact with either the clergy or the children behind a wall on the opposite gallery. The partition was so that the children’s eyes could not be contaminated by seeing the convicts sitting opposite, neither could the good folk see their ragged clothes and bare feet, only hear their little voices raised to lead the hymn singing like a disembodied choir of angels. Or more likely, they were behind the partition to prevent them from scanning to see if a familiar parental face might have been looking just as desperately, for them. The gentlemen and ladies who clip clopped up the avenue each Sunday in their best clothes, were allowed the entire centre section, directly facing the sacred section where the priest stood.
On top of the beautiful stone and arched brickwork of the tower are turrets that would look at home on a castle, or a prison, which is what it really was. A massive black faced clock is on the third section of the tower, brass roman numerals and hands measuring the time; decades of time. I recall the words from so long ago, published in the Colonial Times in the early part of December, 1826.
‘We hope’ the distant voices said, ‘that the Orhan School…may flourish amid the wreck of time in future ages.’ It chills me to the core; this ancient optimism, that strange place where parish and government collided, knowing what I know about this place. But as I wander, I come to a sudden standstill, for there is a sign on the left wing: ‘Adoptions and Permanency and After Care Support Services.’ It is current. I stand and wonder if those kind hearts know that their wish came true and that the very best of something awful, had indeed flourished
It was a wreck though continuing on from earlier failed attempts to manage these byproducts of transportation.
There is no other way to tell the story of these places.
This is where I am. They still stand, the permanent Orphan School buildings. The earlier ones have vanished, Belle Vue returned to private ownership, the distillery/bark manufactory no longer physically present either. They stand here in gloomy silence, not quite flourishing, more anchored by their physical and energetic weight. One wing is worse than the other. There have been multiple incarnations within the walls, but the wing on the right side has an energy about it that even in daylight in 2022, feels ominous, heavy, even threatening. This is where I always see the ghosts appear at the windows and I wonder about earthbound angels. What secrets it holds have almost escaped, have been alluded to, hinted at, studied by people like me with an academic interest, but have they been truly understood? I know they were not always secrets. I have read the records, the original committee minutes, the diaries. It is almost easier to stay in an academic mode, but those days have gone. I still have the thesis, but it did not do the place justice. So I am, as they say, doing another lap. Maybe then, the place will leave me alone and stop drawing me back across the waters of Bass Strait, back home to the island of secrets.
Why Were Orphan Schools Needed?
A seldom asked question is why were there so many orphans in Van Diemen’s Land that special schools needed to be opened for them. Was there a plague or other mass death episode?
Only of freedom.
In a world where convicts outnumbered ‘respectable’ people, what were they to do? Let convicts and emancipated people run wild and profligate, laughing loving and procreating? None of the convicts were really recognised as members of families even though they were. That made them far too human and familiar, neither of which were welcome sentiments.
Social networks were fractured by transportation. By the laws of Britain the father was the legal guardian of any children born to himself and his wife. Therefore, if the father died but the mother survived, the child was still regarded as a legal orphan, as were children of single mothers. But they were often left on the far shores, with the mothers and their children banished across the seas and beyond their reach. So who was responsible for their welfare? Not the mothers, they were urgently needed as workers, unhindered workers.
It was one thing to have shiploads of useful workers emptied into the new colony, quite another, when, to fill the shipboard quotas, or in some kind of attempt at humanity, their children had been shipped across with them. Parents of either gender who arrived with children in tow were an awful burden on a system that had not factored them in. Transportation created a new class of legal orphans, none of whom were truly orphaned.
The working definition then of an orphan in Van Diemen’s Land according to the notes made by the Committee who was charged with the oversight of these institutions not only included children without parents, but also extended to children of convicts, poor settlers, single mothers, single fathers and Aboriginal people. For all of these children, the government became the guardian if only for a time.
They could not be taken in by respectable families because there were simply too many children and too few families to absorb them through conventional adoption or fostering.
‘Hobart Town is a perfect sink of debauchery and blackguardianism. There are hardly any respectable Ladies in this place …and he is the greatest man who can drink most.’ -Colonial Times, January 6, 1826 The Orphan School existed at the intersection of parish and politics and from their inception, from those who could afford to pay, a fee was collected for the upkeep of their children with the intention that they would be returned if and when their parents found their situation stable enough to apply to receive them back. But it was also an integral part of the convict system as it freed the mothers to work full time without distraction and made good use of their children as future workers.
Over the ensuing decades, it proved to be easier to have a child admitted to the Orphan School than it was to prove yourself respectable and reliable enough to claim your child back. The system was not built that way. Underlying it was the belief that breaking up families was better for the well being of the child, who would remain within the system, first as an ‘orphan’, then as an indentured servant until they reached eighteen years of age. That is not to say there were no families reunified, only that it was not the main objective. At all.
Clearly it was not their education that was the main motivating factor; they were already eligible to attend any of the free schools already operating. It was more a strange and cruel excuse to break up families, to make a problem disappear and to train up a generation of workers while saving them from the ‘vicious example’ of their convict and poor parents. Ladies and gentlemen of the colony needed servants. The proposed Orphan Schools would operate as asylum, school and prisons. They were an integral part of the convict system no matter what other guise they fell under. The boys would be educated in trades and agriculture, the girls trained for their future as domestic servants. They would be taught enough to grow their own food and make their own clothes. Order would be regained. These children were not expected to be well educated, only useful.
If we look at the landscape of 1820, through the lens of the Bigge inquiry into the state of the colony we learn the following:
Reverend Knopwood was questioned about the attitude of parents in the colony, whether they indeed wanted to send their children to school and assured them that they did. In 1820, reported Reverend Knopwood, there were a number of private schools operating; boarding schools for boys, both boarding schools and day schools for girls, evening school for boys and girls, day schools teaching Classics and French. There were at least six schools in Hobart Town, with each school master receiving a salary of fifteen pounds per annum from the Orphan Fund. Some received more depending on their appointment and clientele of up to twenty five pounds per annum from the Police Funds or the Colonial Funds. As well as the salary, a ‘certain sum’, between one shilling and one shilling and sixpence per week was also received from parents able to pay the fees.
This took care of the settlers but did nothing for the children of convicts and others battling poverty who were very visible on and around the streets of Hobart Town, disturbing sensibilities, exciting compassion and concern. How to clear the streets?
Reverend Knopwood was also asked whether convict parents would want to send children to school when they could afford it and Knopwood replied that yes, when they could afford it, they did want this for their children. He added that those who could not afford this could apply directly to him and they would be admitted gratis. In summary, there were eleven schools educating a total of 239 children over six districts. However, he also acknowledged that private schools for ‘the poorer classes’ were few in number, mismanaged and that the children were often taught ‘by intellectual but immoral convict masters.’
The bitter irony of this prejudice becomes clear as we follow the history.
Following Bigge’s very detailed inquiry, a decision was made to establish Orphan Schools, a decision met with great enthusiasm:
‘An Asylum for the protection of destitute children has been long wanted in this Colony and we hope that the projected Orphan School will prove in every respect what it ought to be. Our earnest desire is that the Orphan School of Tasmania may flourish amid the wreck of time in future ages.’
-Colonial Times December 15, 1826The ideology behind their function was a little different from other schools already operating. Archdeacon Scott, who helped to identify the children who should be admitted, was himself, one of eight children in a well educated Oxford family who did not receive an inheritance from his father, but instead traveled, first to France where he proved to himself that he did not have the makings of a successful wine merchant after going bankrupt and returned to study at Oxford. He found his way to New South Wales where he worked as secretary for John Thomas Bigge who was there to unravel the mess the colony had fallen in to. He rose from deacon to Archdeacon after relocating to Van Diemen’s Land, with control over ecclesiastical matters and education, two areas he saw no reason to divide. He was uneasy in the colony and was allowed to return home in 1828. Reverend Bedford was the other ecclesiastical representative involved in the planning stages, a military chaplain who replaced the more colourful Reverend Knopwood. He seemed devout and committed, holding weekly services for the public and for the prisoners until he was replaced as colonial head of the Anglican church. He continued his work with the Committee although his star had faded. The military was represented by Major Kirkwood and Affleck Moodie, who were in charge of the Commissariat and Joseph Hone Esquire was a lawyer. GTWB Boyes, a colourful artistic writer and diarist, was the other initial official. Governor Arthur had the final say on who was and was not admitted. His neat additions are recorded in the Committee’s reports each month.
But they were slow to get off the ground.
Similar institutions, also called Orphan Schools had slowly and grudgingly been developed in New South Wales a good thirteen years after Europeans arrived there. When the first one was opened, it was only for girls. The young boys had to wait another long eighteen years before such a place was built for them, in which time many of those who had arrived early had grown into adulthood, which was not much different from their childhood anyway. Childhood was a thing of fantasy for which the children who ended up there had no real need, or so it would seem. Even small boys were useful. Education was also a thing of fantasy. That was not what these places were about at all. It never had been. It was just a useful euphemism that made it possible for their betters to sleep in peace.
If Necessary, Why the Delay? Colonial Shenanigans
You would think that having lived through the process in New South Wales, those charged with administering and managing life in Van Diemen’s Land might have been a little quicker off the mark. The trouble was that the coffers that were supposed to be collecting the funds were being allocated to the Schoolmasters and Superintendents but were also being pilfered as quickly as they were being filled to the point where there was simply not enough money for educating the lowest tier of this world.
Poverty, self interest and opportunity intersected easily. With a bit of creative record management people like the infamous Major Geils could live very comfortably, and hardly miss England at all. He was the Commandant of Hobart Town in the early 1800s, the heyday of his career. Distance was quite wonderful for him.
Governor Macquarie spoke sternly from across Bass Strait:
‘I must recommend to you in the strongest manner, to observe the strictest and most rigid economy in the expenditure of the Publick Money, Stores and Provisions at the settlement under your command; and that you will most carefully avoid putting Government to any useless and unnecessary Expense of any sort whatsoever.’ One can almost hear Geils chortling as he instead made exorbitant claims on land grants, stocking them with government herds. He bequeathed himself land in Hobart Town and had his eye on Government House for himself, his wife and six children. He also had his eye on another lovely parcel of land in Risdon Cove that would be in his wife’s name. He had control of the supplies and used them to bribe cajole and reward those he needed to make his dreams come true. Blankets and supplies went to friends and marines instead of the poor settlers relocated from Norfolk Island and needless to say, no convict went warm either.
Geils was not alone, or exceptional in any way. A certain Captain Murray regularly forgot to keep correct records and also forgot to send them to Macquarie when asked. It was not until the total of unaccounted funds reached 1,259 pounds, 3 shillings and 2 pence, that Macquarie fired up. There really were few teeth to his request though. The tyranny of distance was well manipulated by many who might have known better had they been of better character.
Macquarie tried his best to reign them in. He warned Lieutenant Governor Thomas Davey who has been condemned as a drunkard and lauded as a kindhearted man as though the two could not coexist, who to keep an eye on. Davey was quite possibly alarmed at the list of men against whom he needed to be on guard, because they included Reverend Knopwood, the Anglican chaplain for the colony, Leonard Fosbrook when was in charge of the Commissariat, Robert Loane, a prominent merchant and settler, Dr Bowden the assistant surgeon and Loane’s business partner, Thomas Kent. It was a wide net or suspicion. Of these gentlemen, only Fosbrook was court marshalled for fraud at which time he turned sharply and brought charges against Major Geils, admonishing him for conduct that had been highly reprehensible and incompatible with strict military principles (such as ignoring shenanigans)…concluding that his behaviour was a complete abuse of the Authority invested in him. Geils was exonerated.
Not surprisingly, the very frustrated Governor Macquarie made a clean sweep of the administrators under Davey who himself only stayed on in the role for the four years 1813 to 1817 by which time he had managed to get the colony to a place where they were producing all the beef mutton and grain the needed to be self sufficient, built St David’s Church in Hobart Town and started the construction of a clearly much needed court house.
Davey was replaced by Governor Sorell at which time the coffers may once again have started to fill had he been more public spirited. Instead he was more focused on balancing his private life. Balancing is probably too kind given that everyone knew he neglected his wife in favour of the wife of another man. The reason now given for the delay in building an Orphan School became, according to the Bigge report on the state of the colony, that it would be highly improper to have a Female Orphan School in Van Diemen’s land while Sorell was in charge. Harsh words indeed, but enough to tarnish his public reputation. Macquarie was not so concerned about that, he was more worried about his stores.
His first order to Sorell was to ‘take a regular and exact Account and Survey of all Naval and Military Stores, Provisions, Spirits and Grains belonging to the Crown.’ His second task was to ‘settle, liquidate, close and publicly declare no liability for debts and demands incurred under Davey,’ and to ‘document and guard the King’s Stores from misappropriation and to submit regular quarterly returns and reposts to Macquarie.’ All of this he did, but in so doing discovered that the situation was far worse that Macquarie, even with his acute and widespread suspicions had realised. The prisoners were miserable and had until then not received as much as a blanket or any of the jackets that had been intended for them. Independent trade was prohibited, and shoes slops, clothing and stationery were all inadequate. The winter of 1817 was freezing and in a gesture of goodwill, Macquarie approved the purchase of 3000 gallons of spirits for the members of government and Indian blankets for the troops. Nothing for the convicts, less for their children.
To make matters worse, the same situation was also rife in the north of the island, where Lt. Colonel Cimitere was busily handing out land allotments, and stores from the Commissariat to himself and his friends. He too was transferring cattle from the government herds to selected private landholders.
Finally, on October 13th of 1818, Macquarie ordered a complete audit of the Police Fund, resulting in the dismissal of one scapegoated naval officer. It did little to dissuade the opportunism, though. In July of 1819 the Government Stores was robbed by two soldiers, five convicts and one free man who were all tried for the crime. One of the soldiers, rather than facing the consequences of becoming a convict, a fate he well understood, shot himself instead.
The Colonial Times was scathing.
‘ Oh but says the hireling, the Gentlemen must live as becomes them. They cannot keep up proper appearances for less than the sums they receive…misery and distress should prevail, in order that certain persons should live in luxury’. They continued ‘And yet with all the hypocritical whining about devotion and morality, there are few who stand forth to hold out the hand of relief, to offer the morsel of bread or the cup of water. What infinite happiness could have been conferred upon numberless miserable beings by a different appropriation of half of the money which is expended in the shape of salaries.’ Clearly, many of the whining hypocrites felt that their salaries were entirely inadequate. Until 1819, the colony had only one chaplain, who despite Macquarie’s suspicions did manage to swing a few funds in the direction of needy children. In his capacity of Chief Magistrate, he ordered offenders to pay fines into the created Orphans Fund. Perhaps he was stung by what everyone had read in the Colonial Times.
The Distillery.
Down by a river, near the Government Farm in New Town was a picturesque lodge. Next to it was an old building that had once been a gin distillery, chosen for its tucked away position and its proximity to fresh river water. Many of these operations had only a short life expectancy and it was turned into a more respectable bark mill. It was here that the second Orphan School for boys was located, the first in 1809 had been a shelter in Davey Street that they shared with cattle. It had been over a decade before the boys were finally going to be admitted. It was not the lodge that would house them though this is what the report in the Colonial Advocate reported on March 1st 1828 :
‘The Male Orphan School, to be managed by R.W. Giblin, is to be established at Roseway Lodge, near New Town…’ Close. They were housed, to use the term generously, in the bark mill adjacent to the lodge, which provided quite a stately home either for the Beadle and his wife or for the Giblins, I am not sure, but certainly not for the boys. They were in the old bark mill. The dust and dirt were the only issues of concern, and they were easily swept aside; the concern that is, not the dirt and dust.
The report went on to exclaim with some surprise that many parents with ‘wicked obstinancy’ were not rushing to have these boys admitted. To remedy this ‘crying sin’ His Excellency said any boy in indigent circumstances ‘shall be placed in the Orphan School, if not with the parties consent, why, without it.’ The good people of Hobart were delighted.
Not all parents were opposed to sending their boys to the Orphan School and at each meeting the Committee would consider a variety of applications. The following two samples show the complexities of the times. Conversations swirled about unfit parents for sure and not sending children to school was problematic to say the least, but then, the context of extreme poverty and dislocation affected everyone, one way or the other. The language was colourful and to our ears, quite extreme, but there was genuine concern or the inhabitants of Hobart Town would not have been so vocal about the very evident scale of suffering. Or at least, suffering as they understood it. There was also deep misunderstanding and suspicion about the lives of people who lived in a different manner. Whether the children taken from their multiple circumstances and placed in these institutions were cared for or abused and neglected in a cruel and ironic twist of fate, depended on the character of those who were employed as Masters and Matrons. Also, the children were out of sight and dependent on strangers who had replaced their own family, which is always dangerous.
Every week, the members of the Committee had to requisition supplies, check on complaints and consider who to admit and who to reject. By then, there were even more families seeking relief. On the 13th of November, 1828 for example, the Committee were deliberating the application from Jane Hangan or Hanyan, the writing is difficult to decipher. She was an unmarried mother of five children living ‘in a very immoral manner’ who applied for the admission of her twelve year old son, George. After deliberation, they decided they would recommend that it be accepted, ‘under the circumstances, and the fact of the poor Lad having not long since lost a Brother by the hand of the Executioner.’ It was a poignant insight into the real lives they were dealing with.
Children of widows and widowers were seldom refused and most were automatically admitted ‘on the Foundation’ meaning that they were not expected to contribute financially. Marriage gave a certain cover of respectability; and in fact was a prerequisite if parents wanted to reclaim any child they had relinquished to the Orphan Schools, then and later. Married people were upholding norms that most in charge wanted to encourage. Common law marriages were seen as ‘depraved’ and such parents clearly could not be trusted to do the right thing; raise decent citizens. It is hard to stand in this whirlpool of unrest and not become judgemental about the judgements, given the depth and scope of corruption that swirled through all levels of this fractured society. It was a top down world, heavy with religious and moral overtones, laced with ideas of the time as is any period we might land in when we try to understand a different era. It would be fair though to conclude that morality was oblivious to class or wealth, that genuine concern was just as prevalent as the more pragmatic desire to ‘clean the gutters’ The Government, by artificially creating orphans, fully assumed the legal guardianship, which was convenient in a colony short of workers.
The guidelines for the duties of the Master and Matron of the Boys Orphan School were formalised as follows:
1. Supplies were only for those who had been ‘placed on the Establishment’; children and staff.
2. To endure none were misappropriated, a list of all who had been supplied with rations was expected weekly, the day prior to the Committee Meeting
3. Admission and discharge dates of all children were to be submitted monthly
4. Unless permitted by Committee no boy was allowed to leave the property except to
attend church
5. Weekly reports of all punishments, the offence and general character of offenders were to be submitted to the Committee
None were properly adhered to at first, either at the bark mill, or at Belle Vue where the girls were accommodated.
Henry Smith, an eleven year old boy was one such child who appears in the Committee reports. He was registered for admission in May, but they dawdled and he was only ‘received’ on the 1st of September. Two weeks later, he escaped and ran back to his father. His father allowed his weary son to stay the night, before the heartbreaking return the following afternoon. However, the Committee abjectly refused to have him back because of this time lapse. They said the boy ‘was so vicious a character as to endanger the moral welfare of every other lad.’
To the first Master, Mr Giblin’s horror, he was outsmarted by a Mr Butcher from Bagdad, another father who had been forced to admit his son for ‘education’. He politely arranged to pick up his son in order to buy him some boots, which were non existent in the school at the time. Instead of returning his son, Mr Giblin received another polite request: that the boys clothes should ‘be delivered up’ and expressing what was recorded as ‘disappointment’ with the establishment. This one too, escaped the joys that awaited those who stayed; rats, dirt, cold, hard work and loneliness. Once a week they were allowed to wash the upper halves of their bodies in buckets of cold water and once a week there were shunted off to the River to wash their nether halves.
Although it is easy to assume all kinds of nefarious and wide spread neglect, the Committee did care. They did their best to keep oversight of the institutions and occasionally after a particular fractious or concerning report, would even put in a rare physical appearance on site despite the fact that such visits were meant to be weekly. They reported without effect that the roof in the bark mill was in a ‘highly dangerous state’. They reported over and over that the boys had no shoes. Up to fifty pairs were requested each month beginning in January for both the boys and the girls Orphan Schools to no avail for months. Apparently, none were in the stores. In the end they received stamps in September, after the winter frosts and snow had passed and the valley was turning a vibrant green and were permitted to buy them from a local boot maker.
It was a recurring issue, because only four months later the wrestling over shoes was continuing. This time the Committee was frustrated enough to find their own shoe maker, order the shoes and sent the bill to the Government who had no real option but to approve the purchase, even though this time the shoes cost five shillings and sixpence a pair. The Government had no option; there were none in the stores.
The convict servants, they noticed, were also ‘in want of necessary clothing’ and appealed to the Government for these servants to receive the same allowances as servants in private families received. To streamline the process they settled on a half yearly request that was ratified by and submitted to the Colonial Secretary, by the Ordinance Storekeeper so that ‘by this means, there will be no interference with the clothing regulations.’
It is not surprising then, that when juvenile male convicts were transported to the purpose build Point Puer, that they all were put to work making shoes. His Excellency was a frugal soul who firmly believed in the power of work to save souls and costs at the same time.
The Committee had their quills working overtime to document all that went on, the requests, the complaints, the staffing problems… like the Beadle, a cross between a constable and an assistant minister, who when sent for supplies, got some for himself as well, became intoxicated and wandered off, leaving the cart unattended for hours on the Wellington Bridge. Given that among the many civic and moral duties of a Beadle, was the task of escorting drunks to prison, he truly did fall off the wagon. Needless to say, the Committee were given permission to sack him. They were told the Government would approve whoever they decided on to replace him. The advertisement appeared in the Tasmanian and the Courier. They paid more attention this time, even going so far as to ride out unannounced at times. One result of their closer attention was to learn that things were not as they were led to believe. What blankets the boys had were filthy, given that there were no laundry tubs in a bark mill and so they asked if perhaps the inmates of the Female House of Correction might wash them every so often. At other times, the boys were found cold and wet, no firewood to warm them and barely clothed. By 1831, after the death of one boy from ‘punishment’ Mr Giblin was dismissed.
His replacement, given the rapidity of Giblin’s dismissal was only appointed temporarily with one month for the Committee to decide his fitness to be the Master. His name was Thomas Stone, recruited from the National School. He had previously administered his own Academy for the Education of Young Gentlemen and brought his teaching expertise to these boys. He had an uphill battle despite his kind manner and success with giving these boys the same attention as he had previously shown to the young gentlemen in his academy.
The Committee were happy with him but this did not save him from criticism that seems disproportionate and unfair given all he accomplished and the respect he showed these boys. The only time he found himself in any kind of trouble was for what seems highly trivial. While he was at the National School he was busily growing a range of trees. After buying his own block of land he moved the trees there and when he had the convict worker going into town for the supplies he would often get him to drop off perhaps a load of manure, perhaps some firewood on the way; a very small detour for which he was accused of misusing convict labour. For this he was condemned and fined a severe amount of ten pounds; the equivalent of half a years wages. He protested politely, as did the Committee but Arthur was unmoved.
Belle Vue : Pincushions and Turkeys.
The girls fared slightly better at first, or so it would have seemed, when the Government rented a grand building, ‘Belle Vue’ in Davey Street, close to the first one in 1806 that had also housed cattle. It was owned first by Mr Loane and had been the residence also of Mr E. Curr before the government rented it for the female children of convicts.
The building was a mansion consisting of a dining room, study, three bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen, pantry and scullery on the ground floor and a lounge, dining room, kitchen and balcony on the first floor. This, I assume was the accommodation for the Master and Matron, Mr and Mrs Chorley because in the records, the girls, who had a dining room downstairs, had to take their meals standing up for years. From the reports it seems that there were two different worlds, one in which Mr and Mrs Chorley lived quite comfortably on their considerable combined salaries. Outside on the expansive and picturesque grounds, were stables, coach houses, a fowl house and a well stocked garden where Master Chorley kept and raised his prize flocks of turkeys, geese and other poultry. One researcher whose notes I read, assumed that the girls must have been housed somewhere else on the property, unable to entertain the reality that so many girls could be stuffed into the ground floor of this house where the fifty or more girls made the best of the barely furnished floor. At times, seventy or more girls were squeezed into the three bedrooms.
The Committee considered each application for admission carefully. The need was greater than the resources and the Government was slow to provide what the Committee repeatedly asked for, so they had to determine each situation on its merits. For example, a family in Launceston with five children wrote to ask that their children be ‘put on the stores’. The Committee conferred and decided that the parents were ‘worthwhile characters,’ resolving that if they accepted the two eldest daughters aged seven and nine, ‘it might be the means of preserving them from ruin without offending by so doing, (giving) encouragement to their abandoned Father and Mother.’ I wonder about the schizophrenic descriptions of the parents.
However, at the same meeting, another girl was refused admission on the grounds of her ‘very depraved character.’
Little Ellen Topping was admitted ‘on the Foundation’ after the death of her father because her mother was serving her sentence but fell ill and was transferred to the hospital.
The hidden cost of colonisation reveals itself in all these brief reports. It would seem that the Orphan Schools and the benevolence they offered was at times the only hope for desperate parents, but there was a hidden danger that once admitted, the children might never be returned, because once taught their trades, they were often indentured to an employer who had the free use of their labour until the child turned eighteen and parents had to satisfy the Committee as to their moral character before a child would be returned. They took their role as guardians seriously and the economy of the island was all the better for it.
The Ladies Committee, tasked with the onerous task of caring for the girls held weekly meetings in their own Committee Room in St David’s Church. On the 22nd of May, 1828, they ordered 34 1/2 yards of carpet, 8 chairs, a tablecover, 1 fender and irons, and two curtain windows to help their deliberations.
How the children fared was dependent on the day to day decisions and choices of those charged with caring for them. The Committee assumed that the recommendations were being followed and took the weekly reports at face value. They had no reason not to really. It was so straightforward: they were given the resources to feed, clothe, educate and train the girls in their care from the Government via the Committee, but then, nothing in Van Diemen’s Land seemed to go as intended.
GTWB Boyes transferred to Hobart from Sydney, where he famously said he knew everyone worth knowing and liked none of them and soon after his arrival in 1826, was appointed auditor of civil accounts and then to Secretary of the Church and School Committee in 1830. Here he was just as disillusioned with his peers as he had been in New South Wales. He grew tired of the fraud and mismanagement, the indolence and the apathy within the Committee itself. Leaving that post after only a short few years, he wrote in his diary that had ‘in the last eighteen months lost all faith in Hone’s trust, sincerity, honesty.’
There was little to alter his opinion of his peers. He described Reverend Knopwoods replacement, Bedford, as ‘a liar, a mischief maker, a backbiter, and a drunkard.’ The Treasurer alerted him to cases where money received from parents to go towards the support of their children in care often mysteriously vanished. He learned, among other things that one little girl who had inherited two tenements in Macquarie Street that he estimated could have brought in forty pounds per year if tenanted, instead were going to ruin and taking her potential future down with them.
There was some debate as to what age girls should be sent out into service. Boyes ruminated in his diary that ‘It appears probable that the Girls would be quiet as safe as respect to Morals and much better off in temporal matters in a respectable family than they would be in the School’.
Behind the walls of Belle Vue, life was bleak and uncertain. There are only little snippets that give this away, like the suggestion, a full year or more after Belle Vue opened its doors to such acclaim from the people of Hobart Town for instance, that the Committee realised that, having no place to wash the blankets here either for over a year, perhaps they should be sent across to the Female House of Corrections in the same way as blankets from the Male Orphan School. It is little wonder there was so much illness. A tin ventilator was ordered for Belle Vue, probably in response to a recorded spate of infections and carbon monoxide poisoning.
While the youngest of the boys admitted, surmised from the requisition for shoes, was four, girls as young as two were admitted to Belle Vue. On October 25, 1828, the list of requirements included twenty pairs of shoes, ten for girls twelve years old and ten pairs for girls aged two to four years. I have visions of these little creatures shuffling around in such multisized shoes, toes cut out when they outgrew them. If they had shoes at all.
The Chorleys, parents in absentia, were not fit for the task. The rations were already minimal but compared to starvation, would have been quite sufficient.
The menu set by the Committee was as follows:
Breakfast: Oatmeal porridge with some milk, or bread and tea with sugar and milk.
Monday: Baked meat, bread and vegetables
Tuesday: Soup of Meat, thickened with oatmeal, vegetables and bread
Wednesday: Boiled and baked dumplings with suet
Thursday: Baked meat, bread and vegetables
Friday: Soup of meat, thickened with oatmeal, vegetables and bread
Saturday: Boiled and baked dumplings with suet
Sunday: Cold boiled beef, vegetables and bread
Supper daily: Bread and tea with milk.
The prize turkeys bred on the property by Mr Chorley did exceedingly well. Every day they were fed three times, growing fat on the regular diet of oats, none of which made its way into the girls’ soup and breakfast was often just a cup of tea, their soup unthickened, according to the convict who finally reported it to the Committee.
Their concerns had finally been piqued by irregularities in the accounts when Mr Chorley, emboldened by his successful misappropriations of resources that were destined for friend as well as his turkeys, when they added up his flour rations. Between the months of May and July, he drew 645 pounds of flour when the standardised amount would have been closer to 100 pounds.
By then, they had also finally received reports of how the girls were being treated by horrified convict servants, probably on their way out the door.
It appears that the girls were going to be quite busy learning sewing skills. In January 1829, the following order was submitted for a supply of gingham, Stuff, Blue Check, Black White and Calico fabric, 12 dozen tape measures, 100 thimbles, 1000 needles and two pounds of pins among other things.
Mrs Chorley was given to fits of rage and one of her most cruel punishments, along with fully clothed cold baths and drip drying, was to take some of these pins and hammer them into the heads of any girls whose sewing skills annoyed her.
Finally, the Committee decided to bring the Chorleys in for interrogation. Mr Chorley sent his wife, probably unavoidably detained by his turkeys, to answer to the accusations. Unimpressed, they sent her to collect her husband and bring him in with her. The pair then set about passing blame and accusations back and forth, trying to avoid losing their comfortable positions. When questions turned to the eye witness reports of abject cruelty, they united and tried to assure the Committee that they were only disciplining the depraved girls.
Thankfully for everyone involved, they were dismissed.
Despite these internal realities, the operation of Orphan Schools was lauded by the good people of Hobart Town.
Every Sunday, the children would lead the singing for the Divine Service.
Idyllic?
Reports revealed that the children were cold hungry and filthy, (apart from on Sundays) and illness were rife. Overcrowding had reached ridiculous heights. By 1830, the number of shoes required had risen to seventy pairs and 100 pairs of stockings were also ordered for the girls and the Master of the Male Orphan School had resorted to hammocks instead of beds, to accommodate the steadily increasing number of boys.
After the dual disasters of the early Orphan Schools it was time to sack and start over. A new broom for a new building. Perhaps this one would be the one ‘to flourish in the wreck of time’.
Governor Arthur was not too busy to pay close attention. It was what he did. The entire assignment system was panoptic in structure. If the settlers did not attend to the moral well being of the convicts serving them and the children under their guardianship, they had to answer for it. Sometimes.
His neat handwritten notes are scattered all through the minutes of the Committee meetings. The Committee answered to him, just as the Matron and Master were meant to answer to the Committee. If Arthur was the warden then they were the guards. So far, it had not worked out so well.
Something had to give and slowly, plans for a purpose built Orphan School began. Large numbers of destitute children (an interesting and broad term) continued to be neglected until the arrival of Governor Arthur when discussions about building a permanent Orphan School gathered momentum.
Which takes me back to the driveway I was standing in.
Overtly Humane Containment.
There was a whirlpool of ideas and beliefs that swirled together in the final years before the buildings started in New Town. In the conversations of the time, there was a genuine distress about the situation. It helps to remember the context of poverty and dislocation that impacted everyone. As often happens during difficult times, scapegoats are found to carry the burden. In Van Diemen’s Land, they were quite easy to find. The language was extreme; poor parents were ‘vicious examples’, the free spirited were ‘depraved’ those not officially married were ‘wicked’ and on and on it went. The uneasy counterbalance within this self righteous intervention was genuine concern for the plight of so many children obviously suffering hardship.
Large numbers of destitute children (an interesting and broad term) continued to be grow and outgrow both the temporary Orphan Schools when discussions about building a permanent Orphan School gathered momentum. Given the dilapidated state of the temporary Orphan Schools and the constant battle to have them kept in a state of even near repair, it is a testament to the efficiency of Lieutenant Governor Arthur that there was now enough money in the coffers to build it. He was an evangelical zealot, a micro manager and a keeper of records. Given the rocky start and delays, and that he only took up his position in 1823, it speaks to his determination to make the island the most efficient gaol possible that these buildings, designed by the pre-eminent architect John Lee Archer, were completed in 1833. The location was relatively remote from Hobart Town. There was a long driveway, with guardhouses on either side of the entrance with handy little musket sized windows from where everyone, either coming or going, was clearly visible. The entire grounds were fenced. Yet there is still doubt among some who write about this place, that it was part of the convict system, which was of course, itself part of the panoptic Total Institution movement.
The wish list was created from experience with all that had not previously worked in the earlier Schools and from observations of the Cascade Female Factory where convict women and the children under three who were interned with them were sent, contained, assigned from and returned to. There were issues with this arrangement, because it blurred the effectiveness of punishment for the women to be with their children. They were expected to wean their infants at nine months so they could return to work, but if they misbehaved, weaning was instant. There were two floors for the ‘suckling nursery’, the one on the lower floor being unventilated. The children’s wards were each 28 by 12 feet, within which up to seventy children were squeezed. Disease could easily step from body to body. Prematurely weaned children were particularly vulnerable. In 1833 37% of the infants died, in 1834, 40% and in 1836, 14%.
The list drawn up by the committee stated that the Orphan Schools should include large school rooms, sleeping rooms of good width and height, an infirmary, a nursery, kitchen, wash houses, fenced in grounds for exercise, a stable and space for a large vegetable garden. Build as wings from the central church, it was not necessary to build separate chapels like those in the Factory.
Clearly, once again it was not education that was the main motivating factor; they were already eligible to attend any of the free schools already operating. It was more a strange and cruel excuse to break up families, to make a problem disappear and to train up a generation of workers while saving them from the ‘vicious example’ of their convict and poor parents. Ladies and gentlemen of the colony needed servants.
The proposed new Orphan Schools would continue to operate as asylum, school and prisons. They were an integral part of the convict system. The boys would be educated in trades and agriculture, the girls trained for their future as domestic servants. They would be taught enough to grow their own food and make their own clothes, a continuation of the earlier Schools. They would take in laundry from the prisons. Order would be regained. In this strange and artificial world, the natural family was replaced: the matron and her husband were the surrogate parents, the beadle acted as the butler, the Ladies Committee were like a group of well dressed maiden aunts and the Governor was perhaps Santa Claus and the human cost was ignored.
Initially though there was a convenient crossover between the management of these children and the needs that arose from the programs to bring single women to the colony to ‘create a civilising effect’ on the unbalanced social structure, top heavy with convict males and single immigrants. When the Strathfieldsaye docked with its load of single woman immigrants, at least ten of these woman found their way to the Orphan School to begin their working life in the colony.
Lucy Beeson and her two children, (probably because she HAD two children) was employed as a laundress with a salary of twelve pounds per year. Mary Ann Crumb, a nursery governess was sent there to be ‘temporarily accommodated’. Mrs Chalk was employed as a cook, again with a salary of twelve pounds per year. Sarah Fielder who was seventeen when she arrived, was employed as a nurserymaid at ten pounds per year and nineteen year old E. Sutherland, also a nurserymaid was offered accommodation, but not a salary; clearly her stay was only intended to be until she found another position. Sarah Kettle, who arrived with one child was offered the post of assistant teacher while her fellow traveller, Anne Lennard, twenty years old, became the assistant cook. Thirty year old Miss Russel (with no recorded first name?) became the sub matron of the Female Orphan School with a salary of forty pounds per year.
Many who they had sailed over with either had friends, were engaged or absconded from the ship. There are records of all those waiting for positions being accommodated in the Orphan School until that time, but the ship records do not indicate that any other than the ten mentioned above, went there. Of course, the gap would most likely be in my research. I wonder whether it was Belle Vue they went to, but that is another topic, not relevant to the lives of our ‘orphans’, so I will leave that aside.
Over time it would increasingly be seen as a financial burden. Skipping ahead, the quiet part was spoken out loud.
‘No servant is (to be) introduced for any kind of service which can be performed by the children themselves.’
The Courier, Monday 31 January, 1853. 6. The Starving YearsThere is no argument that the physical buildings were quite magnificent. On January 6th, 1830 the foundation stone of the much needed new Orphan Schools was placed with ceremony and prayers by the architect, John Lee Archer and Lieutenant-Governor Arthur in the north east corner with Mr Gregory, the Treasurer depositing gold silver and coins in the compartment within it. This was followed with a stirring prayer and much celebration.
It took a few years to build and the church came later.
The most important thing to know about the Orphan Schools was not how well they were designed but that very few of the children for whom they were intended to house and educate were actual orphans.
The working definition of an orphan in Van Diemen’s Land according to the notes made by the Committee charged with the oversight of these institutions not only included children without parents, but also extended to children of convicts, poor settlers, single mothers, single fathers and Aboriginal people. For all of these children, the government became the guardian if only for a time.
‘Destitute’ could mean either children abandoned by both parents, or abandoned by one with the whereabouts of the other unknown. It also included those with two convicted parents. Where the status of neither parent was known, they were also recorded as destitute rather than orphaned because those with both parents deceased were listed as such. Given the economic situation, the Committee was also leaving the door open for these parents to reappear should they become established enough, although in practice, it was at times very difficult for some parents to win that battle.
Over the years that it operated, 1833-1897 only 10% of the children admitted, were parentless.
In 1820, over fifty percent of the population were convicts. By the 1930s it was closer to 75%. These were the starvation years and for single women like Ann Armstrong, who was raising six children it was an option she had to make use of. One day in midsummer of 1835 sent all six of them to the Orphan SchoolNo father is recorded and given the abruptness of having all her children were admitted at once. It is likely she lost not only her children that day, but had also suffered the loss of her husband. No-one would have work for a woman with so many dependent children. In early December, three years later, over a two day period, five of her children were discharged, hopefully back into her care, while her son Robert, who had been nine years old when they were admitted, remained at the school for another long seven years after his family left.
One of the many convict women aboard the Tasmania 2, which docked in Hobart on December 4, 1835 had made the arduous journey with five children, a bittersweet extra three months of time together. Like so many others, four of her children were admitted into the Orphan School only five days after they arrived. Her eldest daughter Jane was eight years old when she arrived and twelve when she was discharged, but within seven months, she was back and stayed until she was fifteen years old. Her baby brother, Robert was allowed to stay with their mother on arrival for another five months. He was only two years old when he too was admitted into the Orphan School where he died, seven months later.
When the Arab arrived with its cargo of convicted women and the children who travelled with them, how was Mary Budgell meant to explain to her four children who stepped off the ship onto this foreign soil, that they would not be staying with her but instead were headed for the Orphan School?
There were long lines from different directions of children arriving at those doors in those years. Those coming from the dock and from the Cascade House of Correction were thickest, but other paths also led there. Thomas Buccarry a single father of five children walked that path a few times during the starving years. The first time was in November of 1833 where he said goodby to six year old Harriet and her four year old brother Thomas. On Valentines Day the next year he brought his eldest daughter to the door. Elizabeth was eleven years old. He tried to hold things together for his two remaining children, Agnes who was only one year old at the time and her sister, Mary Ann who was only five when their big sister Elizabeth was admitted. Somehow he managed to do so for two more years, but they too were finally admitted in the winter of 1836.
All of his children survived and the dates at which each were discharged are recorded but that is all. The best guess, based on the discharge dates and the ages of the children on that day, would indicate that Thomas was successful in having at least two of his children returned to his care and if the stars had aligned it is possible to speculate that all four found their way home. That is not certain from this vantage point though, because it was normal for children who had been ‘educated’ by the system to be assigned to other settlers who took over their guardianship (and their labour) until they reached eighteen years of age. But this family may have been able to avoid that fate. Elizabeth was fifteen when she was discharged in the winter of 1838, the first of her family to leave. Thomas though, was only ten years old when he too was discharged in the following winter so there is some hope that he was able to go home where at ten years old he would be useful to his own father, given that Elizabeth may have already been there. He would not have been apprenticed, being too young. Had his father been remarried by then and thus able to apply to have his children returned, all four may have gone home together, but this does not seem to have been the case. Optimism grows on learning that little Agnes was discharged in the spring of 1841, two years after Thomas left. She had spent five years in the Orphan School and was only eight years old when she left. That left Harriet and MaryAnn still in the Orphan School. When Harriet turned fifteen, a year later, she was discharged, again in winter leaving her sister MaryAnn still within the walls of the Orphan School, the last of the family there for another two years. In the summer two years later, she left the place for the last time. She was fourteen years old and it was now 1842, nine years after she and Thomas had arrived.
This family exemplifies the role the Orphan School also played within the colony while the settlers were battling extremely difficult circumstances and is what the good men and woman had hoped it would do; ‘extend the hand of relief’ and provide support to families who may otherwise have ‘sunk.’
By the 1840s another economic depression was setting in and to explore what those times were like and how the Orphan School was an integral part we start with the story of several families, both free and convict.
The first family, like the Bucharry family in the previous decade, were not a convict family, It consisted of an unnamed mother listed simply as ‘free.’ No father is listed on the admission records for her three boys who came to the Orphan School on the sixth of April in 1940. James is recorded as either five or six years old, William, nine and John, who was eleven when the three were admitted. This gave their mother the opportunity to get on her feet, which she seems to have managed to do, because three years later, in the winter of 1843, James, William and John were all released.
One case of a mother of twins was Bridget Blinkensop, a convict mother who arrived on the ‘Tasmania 1′ with her were her three children, Hannah (two), James (four) and Robert (seven). It seems she may have conceived either just before they all left, or on the voyage over, because eight months after her arrival, her twin sons, William and William were born. I have to wonder why these mothers named their sons with the same name. Was it because they had little hope for their survival? Or was it just a lack of interest? They were also admitted into the Orphan School when they were one year and eight months old, much earlier than was usual. One was discharged eleven months later, while his twin brother remained behind for another four years. Their reunion only lasted a year, before one of the Williams was readmitted. He remained at the Orphan School until he was indentured along with his three older siblings. How does a mother make those difficult choices? Did they ever reunite?
There were instances when a single convict woman would arrive, serve her sentence, give birth to children and then find her life intersecting with the Orphan School. One such woman was a convict with two surnames, who arrived on the convict ship East London, in 1843. We will revisit her when we arrive at the 1850s when her children were admitted. Her name was Ann, her surnames were recorded as Golden/Cuddy. This process of naming is evident in the records and often indicated that the woman was in a common law marriage.
Ann Botterill arrived in Van Diemen’s Land along with 169 other convicted women on the 4th of July, 1845, aboard the Tory all of whom had survived a voyage with no deaths recorded. Eight days later, having spent that time in the female prison with their mother, her daughters, Betsy, aged six and Ann, aged eight were taken to the Orphan School and admitted. Here they spent a long three years. The Orphan School was in this sense, able to provide some kind of protection and the mothers were encouraged to pay for their crimes through hard work, find a husband and reapply for their children. This, Ann achieved, and her daughters, now nine and eleven and too young to apprentice out, were both discharged on September 13th, 1848.
Another convict ship, Tasmania 2, arrived at the end of the same year as Ann Bottrill arrived. Aboard this ship was Esther Burgess and her five children, four of whom were admitted five days after they landed. Her youngest child, Robert, an infant of 18 months stayed with her for another five months before he too was sent off to the Orphan School where he only lived another seven months before dying. Of her other children, Jane was discharged to her on 25th September, 1849 after four years in the Orphan School only to be readmitted the following winter where she stayed until she was discharged in 1853 when she turned 15 years of age and could be assigned.
Ann Barrett, convicted and transported aboard the ‘Asia’ sailed with her twin sons, both unimaginatively named Thomas. They were only two years old when they arrived and despite their ages, both were admitted into the Orphan School two months after they arrived, one on the 18th of September, 1847 and his twin brother on the 19th. One Thomas was discharged only a year later, his brother stayed behind another five years before he too was discharged. It was not easy for convict mothers to convince the Committee that they were sufficiently reformed to assume the mantle of mother again. They were only together for nine months before she had to relinquish one of her sons back to the Orphan School, where almost exactly two years later, he died, on 5th April, 1854 at the age of nine.
Some single mothers gave hyphenated surnames; often a conjunction of both her name and that of the children’s father. De facto relationships were not recognised. Such a mother was Ann Barnes-Morris, also listed as Ann Barnes-Morrisby. This is likely a failure of record keeping as it is quite unlikely that two women with the same sounding name would have arrived on the same convict ship, the James Calvin, although anything is possible.
Her son John, born in May 1844 has his father recorded as Patrick Barnes. John was admitted into the Orphan School in 1848 at four and a half. His brother, Patrick was born in 1846, and also admitted at six and a half. He is recorded as having no father. Because Ann’s second son has the same name as his brother’s father, perhaps they were a family and the way of recording that in the fragmented world into which she arrived, was through naming.
The subject of naming relates closely to the issue of respectability. Ideas about deserving and undeserving, moral and immoral still ran deep through the 1800s and onwards, not that marriage, common or otherwise always guaranteed high moral living. Despite the imbalance of men and woman in the colony, one man had much more than his fair share. It appears he had four common law wives, at least. With Sarah O’Malley, Samuel Cummins the serial charmer, had at least four children, who were admitted on July 26, 1847. Her sister or cousin, Hannah O’Malley also had two of Samuel’s children admitted at the same time, one on the 25th of July, one the next day on the 26th. Here, their children joined two more of Samuel’s children, twins named Eliza and William who had been admitted earlier in that year in March. Their mother, Violet White also named Samuel Cummins as their father. It would be interesting to find out what happened to our man and how he managed this complex web of woman and children and what happened to him that eight of his children were admitted to the Orphan School within a period of five months.
The Years of Assisted Immigration
In another concerted attempt to balance out the imbalanced social fabric of Van Diemen’s land, during the 1850s over sixteen thousand assisted immigrants arrived to begin their new lives. The world they arrived to find was not an easy one. The starving years had been accentuated by the economic depression of the 1840s and the Orphan School was an integral part of trying to survive.
Ann Banks had arrived a free married woman, but after her husband died, three of her children arrived at the School for admission on February 14th 1854; Jane, seven, William, nine and their older brother Samuel, ten years old. Their little brother, then only five, stayed with their mother for another three years, before he too was admitted in 1857. He remained in the school until 1863 when he was apprenticed to Reverend William Richardson of Avoca with whom he stayed until his apprenticeship expired on September 1st 1867. There are so many life stories that live within the records of the admissions and discharges that I hope live on in other minds.
One couple, Catherine and James Casey, were no strangers to the Orphan School. I am not sure what the story was with their son Peter, or what was behind the admission and discharge dates but it is probably an indication of the difficult circumstances with which early Vandeimonians lived. He was first admitted in 1849 and discharged a day later. He was twelve years old at the time and there is a chance that although I haven’t noted to where he was discharged, that he was apprenticed out, as sometimes, boys as young as twelve, were. His younger brother, James, was admitted the following year aged three and a half, so it is clear that Catherine and James were finding times hard. They brought him back home on July 1st, 1851 but he was readmitted the following year where he only stayed for three months.
Mr William Allen/Allan was in Port Phillip when his wife died. She had been raising their children William, seven and Eliza, who was nine at the time of their bereavement. Both children were admitted to the Orphan School on 25th April, 1854. They remained in the Orphan School for the remainder of their childhoods until they were both apprenticed out in 1860, at the ages of thirteen and fifteen, one to Simon Fitzgerald in Launceston and the other to Thomas Clark in Hobart, at either end of the island.
Ann Cuddy, who we met when she arrived in 1843 as a convict, seems to have almost found her feet, until 1856 when two of her children, Emily, eight and Selina, six, were admitted. Their younger brother Thomas remained with their mother for another five years, but he too was admitted to the Orphan School in 1861.
Another child whose mother had arrived as a convict aboard the Garland Grove also found himself at the doors of the Orphan School in 1857. He was only six years old. His father was not named on the records. At thirteen he was apprenticed to Mrs Mary A Maum in New Norfolk but he absconded, running back to the only home he had known in years. His indenture was cancelled by the Committee and he remained there for only one month before he was found another placement, this time with Mr William Hayton of Spring Bay. He absconded again, this time suspected of having stolen a double barrelled shotgun from Mr James Quigley in New Norfolk. He was arrested on December 6th, 1867 and sentenced to trial. He was guilty of having stolen Mr Quigley’s boots but he had not stolen a gun. He was returned to complete his indenture which expired two miserable years later.
This was the landscape into which the immigrants poured. In July, 1855, the America arrived with a shipload of travel worn German immigrants. Lives of two of the families aboard intersected almost immediately with the Orphan School.
The Busch family consisted of a father and four children. The Halme family on the other hand, arrived with four children and their mother. It is possible, though this is only supposition, that both were bereaved during the voyage. Passengers aboard consisted of 45 married couples with ninety two children under the age of 14. Also aboard were 101 single adults. Given the average size of immigrant families at the time, it is unlikely that any of the single adults were travelling with children and very likely that these two families lost a parent during the voyage. On that particular voyage, there was a measles outbreak, and as a result of post measles complications twenty one people died. Five more fatalities were children born on the voyage and an ill fated apprentice who fell overboard from the main yard arm. It was a rough voyage by all measurements. In both cases though, the children we have Committee records for, arrived in Van Diemen’s Land with only one parent and all the children were admitted into the Orphan School.
Three of Mr Busch’s four children were admitted in September, a short two months after arrival. It was not the new life any of them had hoped for when they left Germany for sure. Two weeks later, his fourth child was also admitted. Within two years though Mr Busch had been able to establish himself and all four of his children were back in his care. For him, the Orphan School may well have been a blessing. It was the only way people were able to find work. Parents with dependent children were simply not wanted and for many, the Orphan School was an integral part of their lives. Happy were those children whose stays were this short.
It was in this decade of increased immigration that Van Diemen’s Land changed its name to Tasmania taking, they hoped the association between Diemen’s and demons with it. The Orphan School also changed its name in 1861, to the Queen’s Orphan Asylum. Perhaps they had given up the pretense that this was a place for education in the sense that other children understood it.
Aboriginal Children in the Orphan Schools
Forcible or coerced removal of children was not restricted to convict families. Several Aboriginal children were placed in the Orphan School under the same kind of moral policy as the children of convicts. Three different reasons were described: to remove them from the ‘contaminating influence’ of their parents, because they were orphaned, or had been abducted by settlers. It is difficult to write the description ‘orphaned’ because it is so euphemistic, but much easier to write than ‘parents were murdered.’ Over the course of her young life, one girl experienced abduction, assimilation and then removal. Firstly she was captured by a man named Mr Talbot in 1817. For some reason she was then given to Dr Temple Pearson, of ‘Douglas Park’ in Campbelltown two years later, where she was baptised by Reverend Bedford under the name of Margaret Douglas. In 1831, Dr Pearson wanted to send her to the Aboriginal settlement at Wybaleena on Flinders Island. He asked Lieutenant Governor Arthur who approved her removal ‘if she wants to go’. Did she?
Choice was not something enjoyed by the Aboriginal people of the island, Then as now, they were subject to policies made by people who knew nothing about them. Prior to the ‘Friendly Mission’ managed by George A Robertson, Aboriginal children were taken from their parents and either placed in the Orphan School or put into service, at a much younger age than their European counterparts. In 1832, Darling recommended to the Aboriginal committee that four healthy boys between the ages of six and nine be either taken to the Orphan School or put into service. The age for service for boys was normally only considered if they were twelve or older. According to the records, only three, Daniel, Peter and Friday were admitted. I can only assume that the nine year old was sent out to work.
By July 31, 1835, the controversial figure of George Robinson suggested that any Aboriginal children in the Orphan School at that time who had family on the newly established place of exile on Finders Island, should be removed from the Orphan School and sent there. While this might sound progressive it was opportunistic and cruel, because once removed there, they were kept separate from their parents. Just as they had been in the Orphan School, the girls were instructed in sewing and caring for a home and the boys were trained in agriculture. It was no different from the gendered institutional life in the institution other than that their parents were also there which only makes the separation all the more miserable. But Robinson had plans for these children, who had received enough education in the Schools to act as school monitors for him in the mission.
There are many discrepancies when historical records are compared. The records of historians Plomley, Ryan, Purtsher, the CSO records and the minutes of the Orphan Schools do not correlate with any degree of accuracy.
When Robinson went back to Flinders Island as Commandant, in September 1835, it is said that he took with him seven boys and a girl from the school, yet only five Aboriginal children are recorded as having left the Orphan School at this time as follows:
| Name: | Age on admission | Date Admitted | Date Discharged | Age at Discharge |
| Daniel | 10 | 17/08/1832 | 30/09/1835 | 12 |
| Menou | Unknown | 08/02/1835 | 30/09/1835 | Unknown |
| Pungerawallah | Unknown | 06/02/1835 | 30/09/1835 | Unknown |
| Peter | 9 | 17/08/1832 | 30/09/1835 | 11 |
| Tommierick | Unknown | 06/02/1835 | 30/09/1835 | Unknown |
The names and spellings here are as recorded and no insult is intended by using the recorded names. Other Aboriginal children who were discharged to Flinders Island from May to June 1835 as follows:
| Name | Age at Admission | Date Admitted | Date Discharged | Discharged to | Age at Discharge |
| Beamannock | Unknown | 06/02/1835 | 09/06/1835 | Trinity Burial Ground | Unknown |
| Friday | 10 | 30/11/1832 | 26/05/1835 | Flinders Island | 12 |
| Mowana | Unknown | 06/02/1835 | 27/05/1835 | Flinders Island | Unknown |
| Samuel | Unknown | 03/09/1834 | 26/04/1835 | Flinders Island | Unknown |
| Tina | Unknown | 09/02/1835 | 15/06/1835 | Trinity Burial Ground | Unknown |
| George | Unknown | 03/12/1835 | 26/04/1835 | Flinders Island | Unknown |
| Pungerwallah | Unknown | 06/02/1835 | 30/06/1835 | Flinders Island | Unknown |
| William | Unknown | 03/09/1834 | 26/04/1835 | Flinders Island | Unknown |
Some were sent later to Wybalenna from the Orphan School, records identifying them according to the language of the time as ‘half-caste’ or children of ‘half caste’ parent:
| Name | Age of Admission | Date of Admission | Date of Discharge | ||
| Teddy | 7 | 27/02/1839 | 30/12/1839 | ||
| Thomas Thompson | 4 | 09/05/1836 | 26/08/1847 | ||
| Mary Ann Thompson | 10 | 28/02/1839 | 10/12/1839 |
From the records of SWD 24, at least six Aboriginal Children were sent to the Orphan School when the move to Oyster Cove was instigated:
| Name | Date at Admission | Age | Date Discharged | Age at Discharge | Discharged to | Date of Death |
| Adam | 28/12/1847 | 7 | 13/01/1853 | 13 | Joseph Milligan | 1859 |
| Hannah | 28/12/1847 | 7 | 20/05/1850 | 9 | Flinders Island | |
| Billie (William)Lannie | 28/12/1847 | 8 | ||||
| Mathinna | 14/01/1844 28/12/1847 | 12 | 01/02/1844 05/08/1851 | Dr. Milligan, adopted by Lady Franklin and returned to Orphan School | ||
| Nannie | 28/12/1847 | 10 | 25/04/1849 | 12 | Buried at St John’s Cemetery. |
Lyndall Ryan, a slightly contentious historian, says that by April 1851, thirty Aboriginal people survived on Flinders Island, thirteen having died between 1847 and 1851 and that four Aboriginal children were at the Orphan School, yet SWD 24 records list nine who were enrolled in that year, maybe more if you consider those with an admission date followed by neither a date of discharge or a record of death.
‘The reluctance of the natives to allow their children to go to the Orphan School was due to the many deaths which had occurred among those sent there they will not stay in a place of sickness or death, believing an evil spirit caused it.’ (Plomley). Tragically, Plomley then lists the following deaths of Aboriginal children while in the Orphan School
Fir.er.book
Pen.der.roun.dim
Pen.er.mon.rook (Sam) and
Tean.ic
I have found that at least eleven Aboriginal children died.
The records do not add up. Add to that Plomley’s annotation that his list is ‘almost certainly incomplete’ and I am left with shadows and questions. Even from the available data and a quick calculation, 20% of the Aboriginal children placed in the Orphan School, died, as they had predicted they would. The same tragic death rate occurred on Flinders Island as well. West described it as a strange disease that they perished by. He understood it as homesickness. He said ‘they were within sight of Tasmania and as they beheld its distant but forbidden shore, they were often deeply melancholy…They die from a disease of the stomach, which comes on entirely from a desire to return to their own country.’ Plomley noticed the same phenomenon amongst Aboriginal people being detained. He said it had ’every appearance of an endemic. The patient seldom survives longer than 48 hours after being attacked. All ages and sexes fell victim to its ravages and generally expired in a state of delirium.’ They were all in apparent health when first brought to the settlement.’
The scale of human misery caused by the colonisation of the island and by transportation of convicts as well as the hopeful migration of others is not easy to comprehend. It spread across all sections. It was very difficult to have your child returned once they were admitted. Many tried. Many children tried escaping as well. Nothing, it seems, can replace the natural family.
‘I’m afraid my wife will commit suicide if the boy is not back soon, for she is good for nothing, only crying day and night… It did not take long for him to go, but it takes a long time for him to come back.’ It fell on ears deafened by toxic benevolence.
Behind the Walls
Michel Foucault said it best. It was overtly humane containment. The last word cancels out the first two. It could never had been other than what it was; a prison from which even if the body escaped, the soul was scarred beyond recognition by a social experiment that forgot about humanity.
When we cast our minds back to the high hopes and the celebratory mood when the first stone for the permanent Orphan School was laid and look at the beautiful architecture of the buildings, it is easy to imagine that they were benevolent institutions. The tree lined avenue, the symmetry, the beautiful central church have a certain romance. But behind these thick stone walls, what was life really like?
The separate wings kept the boys and girls separated. Each had its own Master and Matron and other convict staff, well, as many as the Government could afford to supply. From the outside one could imagine the children living quite comfortably in their newly fabricated families. Yet this was not quite the reality. Inside these lovely buildings, the cold crept in and around the four to five hundred children from the bare stone floors, past the empty fireplaces where no flames leapt, out to the open flagstone wash rooms.
The ‘playground’ was fenced on every side. Brothers and sisters were kept apart. Parents, if they were allowed to visit could only do so for short supervised periods. Not many left and not many people came. The walls protected secrets more than they protected the children.
The days were long and bleak. Food was rationed and inadequate. The mornings were full of prayers and religious instruction that rather than fill little hearts with comfort and hope, taught them that they were wicked sinners, dependent on their betters to save them from their own depraved selves. If they resisted, the punishments were for their own good and they were taught to accept that. What little academic instruction was given was likewise very basic. They were trained in useful skills and trades, their reading material was the Bible and they would not know enough to rise above their station in life. They were taught to be compliant and servile and useful. When inspectors did visit, they reported that all the children, no matter how bright they were, were well behind their peers outside these walls.
Death swept through the buildings and took the lives of over four hundred of these children. The buildings, cold, sparsely furnished and overcrowded allowed communicable diseases to step easily from one body to the next. The burial ground received their bodies.
But on every Sunday, the children, as clean and as well dressed as they possibly could be, would file from the School wings into the Church, through their own entrances, to their designated seats, where their betters could listen to their little voices leading the hymn singing and feel comforted at their own kindness.
Of course, not all was bleak and cruel. There were many who were involved over the years, who truly cared about the well-being of these children. Mr Thomas Stone, the school teacher and Master who took great care in education the boys as though they were as important as the young gentlemen he had previously taught, tried his best, but was never in favour. He had to endure the pontifications of the appointed Superintendent of the Orphan Schools who appointed himself to relegate Mr Thomas to little more than a servant until he was able to persuade the Committee to sack Mr Stone.
He fought back as best he could, telling the Committee that any shortcomings were due to the removal of all the older boys to labour on the government farm, who under the monitorial system were integral to the successful education of the younger boys, the great deficiency of necessary books and the Superintendent’s interference with his teaching.
The Committee supported his request for at least a proper severance, given his years of faithful service and the suddenness of his intended dismissal and hoped that Arthur would at least agree to giving him a grant of land as recompense. Once again, for reasons best known to himself, Arthur was not moved to do so and Mr Stone left
Indentures and Absconders
Control of the child extended beyond the walls of the Orphan School. When a child was indentured, these indentures formed an official contract between masters and the Guardians of the Queen’s Asylum. The contracts were binding until the apprentice turned eighteen.
The master had a legal duty of care to the apprentice, who was to be supplied with sufficient food, clothing and shelter and medical care, something they had not enjoyed while in the institutions. Many of the children who were apprenticed and absconded were described in the Police Record as suffering from chronic and untreated conditions, particularly from poor eyesight yet none had, they noted, been prescribed glasses.
John Brown, who absconded on February 8, 1871, was described as approximately fifteen years old, small for his age, with a stupid appearance, weak eyes with both arms having been broken and not set. The descriptions which recurred of these children were ‘small for age, often four feet six to eight inches tall, of pale complexion, with scarring most often on foreheads, a stupid appearance and with a restless expression of their eyes.’
This was the legacy they carried. The years of living in buildings where the widows were boarded over to help them forget the lives they might have had, had evidently taken their toll. Their small for age appearance substantiated the reports made by brave convict staff that the children were starved.
Of the many young people who were listed in police records as absconding from their masters, were not so much running away, as running towards whatever remnants of family they had either heard of or hoped to find. The police realised this and included in their reports, any known relatives that the runaway might have had. After often heartbreaking failures, many would voluntarily return, defeated, to finish their indentures.
One such boy, John Davis, son of convict parents, Alice Dwyer (deceased) and Phillip Davis, absconded from a series of masters. Each time, he was running away from cruel treatment, which was tacitly acknowledged within the records, because instead of being returned, he was moved on to another master. This lasted until he was finally eighteen and free to make his own decisions. He was also looking for his father: ‘It is supposed’, the report states that he had ‘gone to his father who is working for Mr Page at the Sand Hills. Each time, he was arrested but moved on to another situation. Another boy who absconded but was not returned to his master was George King. He ran away after a period of six months, from his master in Green Ponds. He was found dressed in Asylum clothes, at the home of his mother in Hobart town, ‘suffering from sore feet.’ It is no wonder his feet were sore, the distance would have taken him over eighteen hours walking. He was not sent back to that place. Just the fact that he was still dressed in his old Asylum clothes after six months was enough to show the master had not upheld his side of the contract. That and compassion for such a brave and desperate walk did not stop him from being reassigned though.
Another boy looking for family was Thomas Harding, who absconded in 1871. He too was heading for his father according to the police record. He was arrested. When another boy, Charles McDonald absconded, he too was searching for family, a thirty year old man ‘the lad calls Uncle.’ the search for belonging drove William Rhodes, an orphan, to run as hard as he could in the direction of Cygnet, where his father had owned land. He too was arrested. Anther boy, William Ross, made four attempts to escape, trying desperately to reach his sister in Hamilton. Each attempt failed.
Sometimes a family member trying to find a sibling who had been admitted to the Orphan Schools initiated the search. For example, Henry McDonald, a seaman in Hobart Town, posted an advertisement for ‘information respecting Charles McDonald, an apprentice from the Queen’s Asylum.’
Very occasionally, a child would succeed. Thirteen year old Robert Martin was arrested for absconding and sentenced to one month in the Deloraine goal. In this instance however, the Guardians of the School sanctioned that he should be ‘handed over to the care of his brother instead.’
The most conclusive evidence that the Orphan School were institutions of social control is that these absconders were pursued and arrested for the crime of trying to reunite with a family member, or in the case of the orphaned William Rhodes, trying to get back to land his father had owned, the only remaining connection he had.
Conclusions
The whole system was one of forced child labour under the guise of training and benevolence for the betterment of their betters. The people to who they were given were meant to take over the guardianship so far as providing food shelter and training to make them useful productive members of a system that was never designed for their benefit. It was a hierarchical system with built in ideology of class even though it was hidden behind benevolence and protection.
At heart, was the ideology that only a certain class of people had it right. The idea of family, of the kinship connections within the indigenous, the poor, the criminally convicted did not matter. The system of transportation and colonisation had an underbelly of cruelty and dehumanisation. You will find so much evidence in dusty old records of surprise when parents fought the system, when parents grieved for their lost children. The elements of coercion and control ran through the colonised worlds all over the globe, fracturing the human connections that sustain everyone.
The irony of replacing natural family ties with institutionalised situations with artificially created parents, the Master and Matron is not lost on me as I think about the place and why it holds so much grief, why I see hands on those window panes. I understand the desperate hope these children had of freedom and the longing they had for their parents.
If parents were allowed to visit, the visits were supervised. If a parent wanted to reclaim their children from the institution they had to satisfy the committee that they were capable of taking over the care, that they were respectable enough to BE parents. Meanwhile, behind the cover those deep walls provided, cruelty had a secret breeding ground. After all, these children were inherently inferior as were their parents. Even after they were discharged, unless they were among the fortunate few who were reunited with their parents, they were still bonded to a system intent on making the best use of them. If a child did manage to escape and run away in the direction of any family they knew they had, the police were brought in to capture those runaways and return them to their proper stations.
I think of the burial grounds around the Orphan Schools, some two hundred of them, many in unmarked graves. I think of the bodies left behind when those headstones that were relocated were moved. I think of the hundreds of deaths from disease, starvation and brutal punishments.
I think of the lives of those who did survive and go on to be apprenticed. I know there are many who keep secret the period of time they lived there, they try to wipe this part of their history out of their minds. It is the only control they have over their own lives after having had them torn apart.
I think of the longing to help destitute children and the poverty and difficulty of rebuilding social networks under circumstances that were designed to break them in order to control them as labour resources. I think of Mr Thomas, the kind teacher brought in to replace the vicious and corrupt Mr Giblin and his dedication to give the best of himself to the boys in his care and how he was treated when he moved with them to the Kings Orphan School and how unfair it was. I think about the plaque that hangs on the wall to commemorate him and his kindness
I think about the courage of those convict servants who dared to speak out about unspeakable things going on behind those walls. I think about the shock felt by Committee members as they realised this social experiment had such a dark underbelly and the horror of it being brought into the light to be addressed.
I think about the propensity of human beings to hurt the vulnerable in their care within any institutionalised setting.
I conclude that the aspirations of that early hope were never realised, that these places would ‘flourish amid the wreck of time’ and I reach my hands to the windows, wishing that somehow I could comfort the ghosts.
One day, I would like to see a movie about this place, not as voyeuristim or a tourism enhancer, but one written to give voice to those who were voiceless, to tell their story of survival against the odds, of courage, and resistance. Then, perhaps, they might stop haunting me.
REFERENCES:
Primary Sources:
Documents:
Colonial Secretary’s Office correspondence: CSO 5/93/2074, CSO 5/86/1885, CSO 24/32/922 CSO 24/72/1642 CSO 24/211/8004, CSO 24/211/8004, CSO 24/280/6178. CSO 24/125/4070,
Archives Office of Tasmania
Executive Council Minutes, 1827-8: EC 4/1.
Historical Records of Australia series 1, Governor’s despatches to and from England 1788-1848. 1914-1925 AGPS, Sydney, 1914-1925
Historical Records of Australia series 3, volumes 1-6, Despatches adnpapers relating to the settlement of the states. AGPS, Sydney, 1914-1925
Historical Records of Australia Resumed Series 3, Despatches andPapers Relating to the History of Tasmania, Volume 7, Canberra, 1997
SWD 24 Minutes of the King’s Orphan Schools 26 April 1828-1833, October 1833 Archives Office of Tasmania
SWD 25, Reports of Decisions of Subcommittees of the Board of Management, May 1860-1861. Archives Office of Tasmania
(b) Literary
Bigge, J.T. Report of the Commissioner of Inquiry into the state of the colony of New South Wales House of Commons, London 1822, Facsimile edition, Libraries Board of South Australia, Adelaide 1966
Harris, P., Schaffer I., German Immigrants Arriving in tasmania per “America” 1855, New Town,
Tasmania 1997
McClelland, James, James McClellands’s convict pioneer and immigrant history of Australia, Book no. 17; Names of Convict and Immigrant Ships known to me Arriving in Australia 1788 to 1899, James McClelland’s Research, Silverdale, NSW, 1981
Purtscher, J., Children in Queen’s Orphanage Hobart Town, . I. Schaffer, New Town, Tasmania 1993
The Clyde Company Papers, Edited by P.L. Brown, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1956
The Diary and Letters of G.T.W.B. Boys, volume 1, 1820-1832, edited by Peter Chapman, Oxford University Press, Melbourne 1985
The Diary of the Reverend Robert Knopwood 1803-1838, edited by M. Nicholls, Tasmanian Historical Research Association, Sandy Bay, 1977
West, J., History of Tasmania, volumes 1-2, Henry Dowling, Launceston 1852
(c) Newspapers
Colonial times, January 6, 1826, June 18, 1830, September 3 1830
Hobart Town Courier, October 28, 1828
- Secondary ‘Materials
Books
Brown, J.C., Poverty is not a Crime: the development of Social Services in Tasmania 1803-1900, Tasmanian Historical Research Association, Sandy Bay, 1972
Damousi, J., Depraved and Disorderly: Female Convit Sexuality and Gender in Colonial Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997
Duffield I., Bradley J., (Eds) Representing Convicts: New Perspectives on convict forced labour migration, Leicester University Press, London 1997
Foucault, M., Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison, Penguin Books, London 1977
Hockey, Mabel, Bobby Knopwood dan his times: from the diaries of 1804-8, 1814-17 by Robert Knopwood, W.E Fuller, Hobart 1929
Hughes, R., The Fatal Shore: a history of the transportation of convicts to Australia 1787-1868, Pantheon Books, Random House Inc, Great Britain 1978
Ignatieff, M., A Just Measure of Pain: the Penitentiary in the Industrial Revolution, 1750-1850, Pantheon Books, Random House Inc., Great Britain 1978
Matza, D. Becoming Deviant, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs 1969
Nicholas, S., (Ed) Convict Workers: Reinterpreting Australia’s Past Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1988
Plomley, N.J.B. (Ed) Weep inSilence: a history of the Flinders Island Aboriginal settlement, Blubber Head Press, Hobart 1987
Plomley, N.J.B., (Ed) Friendly Missions: the Tasmanian journals and papers of George Augustus Robinson, 1828-1834, Tasmanian Historical Research Association, Hobart 1971
Ramsland J., Children of the Back Lanes: destitute and neglected children in colonial New South Wales, NSW University Press, Kensington, NSW, 1986
Ryan, L., The Aboriginal Tasmanians, Queensland University Press, St Lucia 1981
Reeves, C. A History of Tasmanian Education, volume 1 Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1994
Shaw, A.G.L., Sir George Arthur, Bart 1784-1854, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne
Tomlinson D., Carrier J., Asylum in the Community, Routledge, london 1996
(b) Articles
Snow,D., ‘Family Policy and Orphan Schools in Early Colonial Australia’, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol 22, issue 2, 1991
‘
‘The Orphanage’, Newsweek, December 12, 1994