“Where Are They? Who Are They?”

Abstract

During the mid-twentieth century some Australian children spent as many as eighteen years in orphanages and other forms of institutional care. Who, then, were the families they left and what contact did they continue to have with them in the orphanage? How do they make sense of these experiences and how do they think it has affected their relationships with both the family members they already knew and others they only came to know over the course of their life? In answering these questions I draw on oral history accounts of people aged in their forties to their seventies who grew up in Catholic orphanages and children's homes in Victoria and left care during the period 1945 to 1983.

Notes

¹To protect privacy, names of the research participants have been changed and pseudonyms used. Margaret, interviewed by Suellen Murray, 20 November 2006. Future references to Margaret's account of care and the aftermath are drawn from this interview.

²John, interviewed by Suellen Murray, 18 July 2006.

³Audrey Marshall and Margaret McDonald, The Many-Sided Triangle: Adoption in Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001), 245.

⁴Senate Community Affairs References Committee, Forgotten Australians: A Report on Australians Who Experienced Institutional or Out-of-Home Care as Children (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2004).

⁵Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Bringing Them Home: The Report 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); Senate Community Affairs References Committee, Lost Innocents: Righting the Record, Report on Child Migration (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2001).

⁶Frank Golding, An Orphan's Escape: Memories of a Lost Childhood (Melbourne: Lothian, 2005); David Hill, The Forgotten Children (Melbourne: Random House, 2007); Joanna Penglase, Orphans of the Living: Growing Up in ‘Care’ in Twentieth-century Australia (Perth: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2005); Richard Szablicki, Orphanage Boy: Through the Eyes of Innocence (Sydney: New Holland, 2007).

⁷Senate Community Affairs References Committee, Forgotten Australians, 253.

⁸Jim Goddard, Julia Feast and Derek Kirton, ‘A Childhood on Paper: Accessing Care Records Under the Data Protection Act 1998’, Adoption and Fostering 29, no. 3 (2003): 82–84; Christine Horrocks and Jim Goddard, ‘Adults Who Grew Up in Care: Constructing the Self and Accessing Care Files’, Child and Family Social Work 11, (2006): 264–72; Gillian Pugh, Unlocking the Past: The Impact of Access to Barnardo's Childcare Records (Aldershot: Gower, 1999); Karen Winter and Olivia Cohen, ‘Identity Issues For Looked After Children With No Knowledge of Their Origins’, Adoption and Fostering 29, no. 2 (2005): 44–52.

⁹Karen March, The Stranger Who Bore Me: Adoptee-Birth Mother Relationships (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1995), cited in Veronica Strong-Boag, Finding Families: Finding Ourselves: English Canada Encounters Adoption from the Nineteenth Century to the Present (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2006), 227.

¹⁰Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 202–20; Yvonne Clark, ‘The Construction of Aboriginal Identity in People Separated From Their Families, Community and Culture: Pieces of a Jigsaw’, Australian Psychologist 35, no. 2, (July 2000): 150–57; Doreen Mellor and Anna Haebich, eds, Many Voices: Reflections on Experiences of Indigenous Child Separation (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2002).

¹¹Senate Community Affairs References Committee, Forgotten Australians, 253.

¹²Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 233–45.

¹³Senate Community Affairs References Committee, Lost Innocents, 177.

¹⁴Senate Community Affairs References Committee, Forgotten Australians, 276.

¹⁵Regarding adoptee reunion, see, for example, Marshall and McDonald, Ch. 11; Strong-Boag, Ch. 8; John Trieliotis, Julia Feast and Fiona Kyle, The Adoption Triangle Revisited: A Study of Adoption, Search and Reunion Experiences (London: BAAF, 2005).

¹⁶Senate Community Affairs References Committee, Forgotten Australians, 336.

¹⁷Allessandro Portelli, ‘What Makes Oral History Different?’ in The Oral History Reader, eds Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson (London: Routledge, 1998), 69.

¹⁸Alistair Thomson, ‘Anzac Memories: Putting Popular Memory Theory Into Practice in Australia’ in The Oral History Reader, eds Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson (London: Routledge, 1998), 310.

¹⁹This article is drawn from a research project funded by an Australian Research Council Linkage grant (LPO 561704) held by Suellen Murray (RMIT University), John Murphy (University of Melbourne), and Industry Partner, MacKillop Family Services. The larger project explores the subsequent lives, memories, and identities of a group of people who grew up in Catholic orphanages and children's Homes.

²⁰MacKillop Family Services was formed in 1997 as a refounding of seven Catholic welfare agencies sponsored by three religious congregations, Sisters of Mercy, Sisters of St. Joseph, and the Christian Brothers. These agencies were the continuation of an extensive system of babies’ homes, orphanages, and children's institutions. Today, MacKillop Family Services continues to provide out-of-home care (though no longer in large institutions), as well as family and community services, disability services, and special education services.

²¹VANISH is a Victorian government-funded service that provides advice and support to people who have experienced separation from their family of origin through adoption, being placed in an institution or foster care, or through donor conception. Broken Rites is an advocacy agency that provides support to victims of church-related abuse. It is not government funded and is not connected with any religious organisation.

²²While it is a limitation of the study that others who had not had contact with support agencies were not included, it was preferable to have people linked to these specialist agencies to ensure that they were able to receive assistance if it was required. If interviewees required support, they were referred to either MacKillop Family Services or VANISH at no cost to themselves. The research was guided by a reference group chaired by MacKillop Family Services, with membership including representation from people who grew up in institutional care and the support and advocacy groups VANISH and Broken Rites. The research study was approved by the Human Research Ethics Committees at RMIT University and the University of Melbourne.

²³We were least successful in recruiting participants to the youngest cohort. Our youngest participants were aged forty-two at the time of interview and the latest that one left care was in 1983. The report of the Commission of Inquiry into Abuse of Childhood in Queensland Institutions stated that ‘this may reflect the time it takes individuals to come to terms with their past to the point where they feel able to discuss their experiences’; Leneen Forde, Jane Thomason and Hans Heilpern, Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Child Abuse in Queensland Institutions: Final Report (Brisbane: Queensland Government, 1999), 7.

²⁴Suellen Murray, Jenny Malone and Jenny Glare, ‘Building a Life Story: Providing Records and Support to Former Residents of Children's Homes’, Australian Social Work, forthcoming 2008.

²⁵Senate Community Affairs References Committee, Forgotten Australians, 394.

²⁶Jill Barnard and Karen Twigg, Holding on to Hope: A History of the Founding Agencies of MacKillop Family Services 1854–1997 (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2004), 140; Anne Markiewicz, ‘The Child Welfare System in Victoria: Changing Context and Perspectives 1945–1995’, Children Australia 21, no. 3 (1996): 32–41.

²⁷See the article by Nell Musgrove in this issue, ‘“Every Time I Think of Baby I Cry”: Dislocation and Survival in Victoria's Child Welfare System’.

²⁸Shurlee Swain and Renate Howe, Single Mothers and their Children: Disposal, Punishment and Survival in Australia (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

²⁹Barnard and Twigg, 145-6, 235; Donella Jaggs, Neglected and Criminal: Foundations of Child Welfare Legislation in Victoria (Melbourne: Philip Institute of Technology, 1986); Dorothy Scott and Shurlee Swain, Confronting Cruelty: Historical Perspectives on Child Protection in Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002); Robert van Krieken, Children and the State: Social Control and the Formation of the Australian Child Welfare (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1991).

³⁰Jill Barnard, ‘“A Secure Safeguard of the Children's Morals”: Catholic Child Welfare in Nineteenth Century Victoria’, Provenance: The Journal of the Public Records Office Victoria, no. 4 (2005); Lesley Hughes, ‘Catholics and the Care of Destitute Children in Late Nineteenth Century New South Wales’, Australian Social Work, 51, no. 1 (1998): 17–25, citing M. Horsburgh, ‘The Apprenticing of Dependent Children in New South Wales Between 1850 and 1885, Journal of Australian Studies, no. 7 (1980): 39–40.

³¹The Report of the Commission of Inquiry Into Abuse of Children in Queensland Institutions also makes the point that ‘few of the children historically placed in orphanages were, in fact, orphans’; Forde, Thomason and Heilpern, ii.

³²Patricia, interviewed by Elizabeth Branigan, 14 November 2006.

³³Andrea, interviewed by Suellen Murray, 21 November 2006.

³⁴Stephanie, interviewed by Elizabeth Branigan, 23 August 2006.

³⁵Graham, interviewed by Elizabeth Branigan, 29 September 2006.

³⁶Kevin, interviewed by Elizabeth Branigan, 19 July 2006.

³⁷Marilyn, interviewed by Suellen Murray, 27 April 2007.

⁴⁰Tim, interviewed by Elizabeth Branigan, 4 October 2006.

³⁸Shurlee Swain, ‘“I am Directed to Remind You of Your Duty to Our Family”: Public Surveillance of Mothering in Victoria, Australia, 1920–1940’, Women's History Review 8, no. 2 (1999): 247–59; Shurlee Swain, ‘The State and the Child’, Australian Journal of Legal History, no. 4 (1998): 57–77.

³⁹Nell Musgrove, ‘“Filthy” Homes and “Fast” Women: Welfare Agencies’ Moral Surveillance in Post-Second World War Melbourne’, Journal of Australian Studies no. 80 (2004): 111–19; Nell Musgrove, ‘Secrecy and Social Work’, Antithesis 1 (2003): 1–17; Scott and Swain, 80–81; Swain, 1999, 252–55; Marie Wilkinson, ‘Good Mothers—Bad Mothers: State Substitute Care of Children in the 1960s’, in Gender Reclaimed: Women In Social Work, eds Helen Marchant and Betsy Wearing (Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1986), 93–103.

⁴¹Warren, interviewed by Suellen Murray, 14 October 2006.

⁴²Reflecting the dearth of research in this area, we do not know what lengths of stay would have been typical for Australian children during the period of this study. For an earlier period, see Marion Fox, ‘Some Aspects of the Care of Children in Catholic Institutions in New South Wales’, Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society 18 (1997): 41.

⁴³The practice of discouraging parental contact appears to have been widespread during the post-war decades; Senate Community Affairs References Committee, Forgotten Australians, 105–06.

⁴⁴As for restrictions on children's contact with their parents, these practices of limiting contact with siblings were also identified by the Senate Community Affairs References Committee, Forgotten Australians, 107.

⁴⁵Madelene Allen, Reunion: The Search for My Birth Family (Toronto: Stoddart, 1992) vii, cited in Strong-Boag, 225.

⁴⁶Strong-Boag, 227.

⁴⁷Marshall and McDonald, 225; Strong-Boag, 211.

⁴⁸Tom, interviewed by Elizabeth Branigan, 10 November 2006.

⁴⁹Brendan, interviewed by Suellen Murray, 2 March 2007.

⁵⁰Strong-Boag, 216.