‘Every Time I Think of Baby I Cry’

Abstract

This article examines two periods in the history of Victoria's child welfare system—the years following the implementation of a government-run system of industrial and reformatory schools in 1864, and the World War II era—with a particular focus on exploring the ways in which families resisted the ‘solutions’ imposed by the state. Although these periods were widely separated in time, both were marked by a high dependence on institutional placement, which presented families with particular opportunities for contestation. They were also eras in which the relationships between families and welfare authorities were experiencing rapid change, meaning that authorities were, out of necessity, more willing to negotiate with parents than during times when their authority was less challenged.

Notes

¹Although the philosophy of residential children's institutions was that children would remain there for a relatively long period of time (for at least twelve months, but longer for more difficult cases), the realities of overcrowding meant that children were often released much sooner than this. In addition, when children were placed in institutions, welfare authorities really had only the interests of the child and parents to consider. When children were boarded out, the wishes of the foster family added a further complication.

²By contrast, Mark Peel notes how subjugating welfare workers could be in periods when they were not forced to seriously question the validity or the efficacy of their techniques. Mark Peel, ‘Charity, Casework and the Dramas of Class in Melbourne, 1920–1940: “Feeling Your Position”’, History Australia 2, no. 3 (2005): 83–97.

³Christina Twomey, Deserted and Destitute: Motherhood, Wife Desertion and Colonial Welfare (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2002), Dorothy Scott and Shurlee Swain, Confronting Cruelty: Historical Perspectives on Child Protection in Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002).

⁴For the initial debate between Gordon and Scott see Linda Gordon and Joan W. Scott, ‘Book Reviews: Including Scott's Review of Gordon's Book, Gordon's Response, Gordon's Review of Scott's Book, and Scott's Response’, Signs 15, no. 5 (1990): 848–60.

⁵Stephen Robertson, ‘What's Law Got To Do With It? Legal Records and Sexual Histories’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 14, no. 1–2 (2005): 161–63. Case records of mental health institutions have received more scholarly attention than most other types of case files. For examples of the disparate approaches taken to studying case files in that field see Jonathan Andrews, ‘Case Notes, Case Histories, and the Patient's Experience of Insanity at Gartnavel Royal Asylum, Glasgow, in the Nineteenth Century’, Social History of Medicine 11, no. 2 (1998): 255–82; Andrea Dorries and Thomas Beddies, ‘Coping With Quantity and Quality: Computer-Based Research on Case Records from the ‘Wittenauer Heilstatten’ in Berlin (1919–1960)’, History of Psychiatry 10 (1999): 59–85.

⁶Franca Iacovetta and Wendy Mitchinson, eds, On the Case: Explorations in Social History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press Incorporated, 1998).

⁷Naomi Parry, ‘“Such a Longing”: Black and White Children in Welfare in New South Wales and Tasmania, 1880–1940’ (PhD thesis, University of New South Wales, 2007), Jill Barnard and Karen Twigg, Holding on to Hope: A History of the Founding Agencies of McKillop Family Services 1854–1997 (Kew, Victoria: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2004).

⁸The relevant files are found in Chief Secretary's Inward Correspondence II, VPRS 3991, Victorian Public Record Office, North Melbourne.

⁹It is impossible to determine how many records relating to child welfare are in each archive box without physically sifting through each one because these records are stored by date along with other matters tended to by the Chief Secretary's office. There are literally thousands of these boxes. This work is based on a research project examining child welfare files for all of the years from 1851 to 1945. The desire to sample from all of these years, combined with the ad hoc storage of the state ward case files in the colonial period has made it impossible to physically look through every box. The files are stored chronologically, so my strategy has b een to look at boxes selected relatively randomly, except that I have maintained a relatively even distribution across each month of the year. This project is the first one to conduct a serious scholarly study of this material. It is a vast body of historical welfare records and its rich offerings will no doubt prove indispensible to future investigations of child welfare in Victoria.

¹⁰Twomey, Deserted and Destitute, 109–16.

¹¹For examples of this in the press, see Age, June 4 1859 and Argus, March 8 1860.

¹²Twomey, Deserted and Destitute, 109–16.

¹³VPRS 3991, Unit 607, 72/12004.

¹⁴VPRS 3991, Unit 607, 72/12349.

¹⁵For example, see VPRS 937, Unit 31, 65/4082.

¹⁶For an extensive discussion of the ways in which single mothers have been held as symbols of moral and sexual degeneracy, see Shurlee Swain and Renate Howe, Single Mothers and Their Children: Disposal, Punishment and Survival in Australia (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

¹⁷The Board of Visitors was the body responsible for inspecting the conditions at the industrial and reformatory schools. The Board consisted of a group of men who usually had experience as Medical Officers or Magistrates.

¹⁸VPRS 3991, Unit 192, 66/10654.

¹⁹VPRS 3991, Unit 605, 72/10931.

²⁰‘Royal Commission on Industrial and Reformatory Schools and the Sanatory Station: First Report’, (VPP, vol. 3, 1872), 15.

²¹Shurlee Swain has observed this child-victim/child-threat duality, as has Harry Hendrick with respect to England. See Scott and Swain, 5, and Harry Hendrick, Child Welfare: England, 1872–1989 (London; New York: Routledge, 1994), 7–13.

²²Swain and Howe, 91–95.

²³‘Industrial Schools: Report of Inspector for 1866’, (VPP, vol. 4, 1867), 7, Twomey, 121–25, Donella Jaggs, Neglected and Criminal: Foundations of Child Welfare Legislation in Victoria (Melbourne: Philip Institute of Technology, 1986), 30–31.

²⁴‘Industrial Schools: Report of Inspector for 1867’, (VPP, vol. 3, 1868), 7–8.

²⁵For an extended examination of this in the post-WWII era see Nell Musgrove, ‘Making Better Families: Surveillance, Evaluation and Control of Families in Melbourne, 1945–1965’, (MA Thesis, University of Melbourne, 2003).

²⁶The Inspector of Industrial and Reformatory Schools was the director of the colony's schools who answered directly to the Chief Colonial Secretary. The men who held this position during the early years of the schools were: James Thomas Harcourt in office 1864–66; George Oliphant Duncan in office 1866–1878; Henry French Neal, who informally held the position from the time Duncan retired, but who was not officially granted the office until 1880 and resigned just one month later.

²⁷‘Industrial Schools Report 1866’, 6–7, ‘Industrial Schools Report 1867’, 4–5, ‘Industrial and Reformatory Schools: Report of the Inspector for the Year 1875’, (VPP, vol. 2, 1876), 4.

²⁸As a government position, the office of Chief Secretary was held by a number of men during these years, yet there was little to differentiate them in the manner in which they conducted their work with respect to industrial and reformatory schools.

²⁹All names in the case studies discussed are pseudonyms.

³²VPRS 3991, Unit 1005, 78/5095.

³³VPRS 3991, Unit 1005, 78/5095.

³⁰VPRS 3991, Unit 1005, 78/5095.

³¹VPRS 3991, Unit 1005, 78/5095.

³⁴VPRS 3991, Unit 597, 72/2855.

³⁵VPRS 3991, Unit 104, 65/5461.

³⁸VPRS 3991, Unit 1054, 78/6382.

³⁶VPRS 3991, Unit 1054, 78/6382.

³⁷VPRS 3991, Unit 1054, 78/6382.

⁴⁰VPRS 3991, Unit 106, 65/8313.

³⁹VPRS 3991, Unit 106, 65/8313.

⁴¹VPRS 3991, Unit 106, 65/8313.

⁴²This shift was in line with trends in other Western countries, was also motivated by financial concerns, and additionally offered a solution to the ‘problem’ of needing to have single mothers serve as wet nurses in the schools—babies could be boarded out with the single mothers instead, thereby eliminating the risk of their ‘immorality’ ‘contaminating’ older girls in the schools.

⁴³While there are cases where sending parents from agency to agency does seem to have been the result of administrative confusion there are also clear cases of using this as a delaying tactic.

⁴⁴This meant that the parent or parents had entered into an agreement directly with the institution as opposed to having had their child committed to the state.

⁴⁵Melanie Oppenheimer, ‘Volunteers in Action Voluntary Work in Australia 1939–1945’, (PhD thesis, Macquarie University, 1997).

⁴⁶Kate Darian-Smith, On the Home Front: Melbourne in Wartime 1939–1945 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1990), 55–68, Shurlee Swain, Ellen Warne and Patricia Grimshaw, ‘Constructing the Working Mother: Australian Perspectives, 1920–1970’, Hecate 31, no. 2 (2005): 21–33.

⁴⁷Scott and Swain, 94.

⁴⁸VSPCC case file number 261.

⁴⁹VSPCC case file number 192.

⁵⁰VSPCC case file number 181.

⁵¹For examples of this see, VSPCC case file number 125 and VSPCC case file number 111.

⁵²Janet McCalman, ‘Class and Respectability in a Working-Class Suburb: Richmond, Victoria, before the Great War’, Historical Studies 20, no. 78 (1982): 90–103.

⁵⁴VSPCC case file number 210.

⁵⁶CWD case file number 164.

⁵³VSPCC case file number 210.

⁵⁵VSPCC case file number 125.

⁵⁷VSPCC case file number 413.

⁵⁹VSPCC case file number 415.

⁶⁰MO case file number 152.

⁵⁸VSPCC case file number 415.

⁶¹VSPCC case file number 48.

⁶²CWD case file number 229.

⁶³ Bringing Them Home : A Guide to the Findings and Recommendations of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, (Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997).

⁶⁴Aboriginal child removals took place in all Australian states and territories, but the position of Indigenous children who entered the child welfare system differed from place to place. In Victoria, Aboriginal children who came into state care were essentially absorbed into the mainstream system. Naomi Parry has recently completed a detailed study that demonstrates the situations in New South Wales and Tasmania. Parry, ‘Such a Longing’.

⁶⁵VSPCC case file number 112.

⁶⁶CWD case file number 155.

⁶⁷Bronwyn Labrum has argued that, though notions of race and gender coloured welfare officers’ assessments of Maori families, most of these officers were themselves Maori, and Maori were able to use some welfare provisions to their own advantage. This stands in stark contrast to the Aboriginal experience in Victoria. Bronwyn Labrum, ‘Developing 'the Essentials of Good Citizenship and Responsibilities in Maori Women: Family Life, Social Change and the State in New Zealand, 1944–70’, Journal of Family History 29, no. 4 (2004): 446–65.