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Abstract
The history of child welfare in Australia has been constructed within the context of empire, but the writing of British child-welfare history has paid little attention to Australia, noting only its role as a (complicit) destination for the last generation of child migrants, and, within studies of settler colonialism, its program of Indigenous child removal. This article brings these historiographies into a closer relationship, arguing that developments in the way in which child-welfare history has been written in the wake of Australian inquiries into historical abuse can inform similar inquiries now being undertaken in Britain.
This article has been peer reviewed.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
About the author
Shurlee Swain is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and Professor of Humanities and head of the Historical Studies Research Concentration at Australian Catholic University and the historian chief investigator on the Find & Connect web resource. A social historian, she has published widely in the area of child-welfare history and her work has informed several of the recent inquiries into Australia’s history of forced adoption and the physical and sexual abuse of children in care.
Notes
1 In contemporary discourse these functions come within the scope of child protection but that usage of the term is relatively recent and narrowly defined. For historical consistency the broader term child welfare is used throughout this article.
2 The key Australian state-based child-welfare histories are: John Ramsland, Children of the Backlanes: Destitute and Neglected Children in Colonial New South Wales (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1986); Donella Jaggs, Neglected and Criminal: Foundations of Child Welfare Legislation in Victoria (Melbourne: Phillip Institute of Technology, 1986); Penelope Hetherington, Settlers, Servants & Slaves: Aboriginal and European Children in Nineteenth-Century Western Australia (Perth: University of Western Australia Press, 2002); Margaret Barbalet, Far from a Low Gutter Girl: The Forgotten World of State Wards: South Australia 1887–1940 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1983). While studies such as Dorothy Scott and Shurlee Swain, Confronting Cruelty: Historical Perspectives on Child Abuse (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2002), Nell Musgrove, The Scars Remain: A Long History of Forgotten Australians and Children’s Institutions (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2013) and Robert Van Krieken, Children and the State: Social Control and the Formation of Australian Child Welfare (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1992) attempt national coverage, the data on which they are based comes essentially from one state in each case.
3 Major histories of the development of child welfare in Britain include: Hugh Cunningham, The Children of the Poor: Representations of Childhood since the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991); George K. Behlmer, Child Abuse and Moral Reform in England, 1870–1908 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982); Harry Hendrick, Child Welfare: England, 1872–1989 (London: Routledge, 1994); Harry Hendrick, Child Welfare: Historical Dimensions, Contemporary Debate (Bristol: Policy Press, 2003); Lydia Murdoch, Imagined Orphans: Poor Families, Child Welfare and Contested Citizenship in London (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2006); Lynn Abrams, The Orphan Country: Children of Scotland’s Broken Homes from 1845 to the Present Day (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1998); Ivy Pinchbeck and Margaret Hewitt, Children in English Society: Volume II: From the Eighteenth Century to the Children Act 1948 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973).
4 Robert van Krieken, ‘The “Stolen Generations” and Cultural Genocide: The Forcible Removal of Australian Indigenous Children from their Families and its Implications for the Sociology of Childhood,’ Childhood Studies 6, no. 3 (1999): 297.
5 Carpenter first outlined her arguments for the necessity of removal in Juvenile Delinquents and their Condition and Treatment (London: W. & F.G. Cash, 1853).
6 Elizabeth A. Harvey, ‘“Layered Networks”: Imperial Philanthropy in Birmingham and Sydney, 1860–1914,’ Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 41, no. 1 (2013): 123; Shurlee Swain, History of Child Protection Legislation (Sydney: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, 2014).
7 David Pilgrim, ‘Child Abuse in Irish Catholic Settings,’ Child Abuse Review 21, no. 6 (2012): 407; Nicola Yeates, ‘The Irish Catholic Female Religious and the Transnationalisation of Care: An Historical Perspective,’ Irish Journal of Sociology 19, no. 2 (2011) 83.
8 See for example: Renate Howe and Shurlee Swain, All God’s Children: A Centenary History of the Methodist Homes for Children and the Orana Peace Memorial Homes (Canberra: Acorn Press, 1989), 113–15.
9 Many historians have offered explanations for this resistance, most of which combine a resistance to striking a poor rate and a negative reaction to the post-1834 Poor Law, directly experienced by some but more usually conveyed in literary works, particularly the writings of Charles Dickens. See for example Brian Dickey, ‘Why Were There No Poor Laws in Australia?,’ Journal of Policy History 4, no. 2 (1992): 111–3; Tanya Evans, Fractured Families: Life on the Margins in Colonial New South Wales (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2015), 83–4.
10 Departments with various names but performing essentially the same functions were established in Victoria in 1864, Queensland in 1879, New South Wales in 1881, South Australia in 1886, Tasmania in 1896, and Western Australia in 1908.
11 Harvey, ‘Layered Networks,’ 128.
12 For a celebratory account of this success see: W. Clarke Hall, The Queen’s Reign for Children (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1897).
13 The founders of the boarding-out movement in South Australia, Caroline Emily Clarke and Catherine Helen Spence, were able to take their campaign directly to the Premier, while Mary Windeyer, their equivalent in NSW, was the wife of the chair of the Royal Commission which led to the introduction of boarding-out in that colony. ‘Clark, Caroline Emily (1825–1911),’ Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB), National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, accessed 24 April 2015, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/clark-caroline-emily-3212/text4837; Heather Radi, ‘Windeyer, Lady Mary Elizabeth (1837–1912),’ ADB, accessed 24 April 2015, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/windeyer-lady-mary-elizabeth-1059/text16155.
14 Harvey, ‘Layered Networks,’ 134.
15 Shurlee Swain and Margot Hillel, Child, Nation, Race and Empire: Child Rescue Discourse, England, Canada and Australia, 1850–1915 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), 141; '1887 Parliament,’ Argus, 26 August 1887, 9.
16 Hendrick, Child Welfare: Historical Dimensions, Contemporary Debate, 47.
17 Ibid., 85.
18 ‘The Emigrants. No.1,’ Ragged School Union Magazine I, no. 4 (1849): 61–4.
19 Mary Carpenter, ‘Suggestions from Experience on the Management of Reformatories and Certified Industrial Schools (continued),’ Reformatory and Refuge Journal XIX (1864): 81–7; C.H. Bracebridge, ‘Juvenile Emigration,’ Reformatory and Refuge Journal XXXIV (1867): 2–6; ‘A New Scheme for Emigration,’ Night and Day VI, nos 66 & 67 (1882): 124; T.J. Barnardo, ‘Little Emigrants,’ Night and Day VIII, nos 87 & 88 (1884): 94–6; Dr Barnardo, ‘Our Boys in Australia,’ Night and Day XX, no. 197 (1896): 97–8.
20 This classic narrative is spelt out in Sanford J. Fox, ‘The Early History of the Court,’ The Future of Children 6, no. 3 (1996): 29–39.
21 ‘The Angel of the Little Ones, or the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children,’ Review of Reviews 4 (1891): 521–30; ‘The Arraignment of Children: Extract from State Children’s Department Report, Adelaide, August 24th, 1891,’ The Child’s Guardian VI, no. 4 (1892): 47.
22 ‘A Children’s Court of Justice,’ Argus, 12 September 1903, 4.
23 Catherine Spence, State Children in Australia (Adelaide: Vardon and Sons, 1907), 52.
24 For a fuller explanation of the Hills’ background and role see: Shurlee Swain, ‘Florence and Rosamond Davenport Hill and the Development of Boarding Out in England and Australia: A Study in Cultural Transmission,’ Women’s History Review 23, no. 5 (2014): 744–59.
25 Florence Hill, Children of the State: The Training of Juvenile Paupers (London: Macmillan and Co, 1868).
26 Ibid., 198–9.
27 Rosamund Davenport Hill and Florence Davenport Hill, What We Saw in Australia (London: Macmillan and Co., 1875); Florence Davenport-Hill, Children of the State, 2nd ed. (London and New York: Macmillan and Co, 1889).
28 ‘The Boarding-out System,’ Pacific Weekly, 5 June 1880, 81. See also: ‘The Nineteenth Century,’ Review of Reviews 15 (1897): 53.
29 ‘The World of Childhood,’ Highways and Hedges IV, no. 39 (1891): 51.
30 ‘Australian State Homes for Children,’ The Child’s Guardian XIV, no. 11 (1900): 134.
31 Florence Davenport Hill, ‘The System of Boarding-out Pauper Children,’ Economic Journal 3, no. 9 (1893): 134.
32 ‘Miss C. H. Spence on her Travels,’ South Australian Register, 26 July 1893, 6.
33 Spence, State Children in Australia, 5, 76.
34 UK House of Commons Health Committee, The Welfare of Former British Child Migrants (HC Paper No 755 1997–98), para 13.
35 Geoffrey Sherington, ‘Contrasting Narratives in the History of Twentieth-century British Children Migration to Australia: An Interpretive Essay,’ History Australia 9, no. 2 (2012): 27–47.
36 For a fuller explanation of this argument see Ellen Boucher, Empire’s Children: Child Emigration, Welfare, and the Decline of the British World, 1869–1967 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), ch. 5.
37 Sherington, ‘Contrasting Narratives,’ 37.
38 Quoted in Hendrick, Child Welfare: Historical Dimensions, Contemporary Debate, 133, 35.
39 Cited in Brian Corby, Alan Doig and Vicky Roberts, Public Inquiries into Residential Abuse of Children (London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2001), 26–7; Hendrick, Child Welfare: Historical Dimensions, Contemporary Debate, 134.
40 Corby, Doig and Roberts, Public Inquiries into Residential Abuse of Children, 7.
41 Shurlee Swain, History of Inquiries Reviewing Institutions Providing Care for Children (Sydney: Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, 2014).
42 Prime Minister’s Statement: Child Migration, 25 February 2010, accessed 29 April 2015, http://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2010/02/prime-ministers-statement-child-migration/; Australian Apology to both Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants, accessed 29 April 2015, https://www.dss.gov.au/our-responsibilities/families-and-children/programs-services/apology-to-the-forgotten-australians-and-former-child-migrants.
43 Melissa Nobles, The Politics of Official Apologies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 14.
44 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Bringing Them Home: 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).
45 ‘Child Migrants Trust,’ accessed 17 May 2011, http://www.childmigrantstrust.com/.
46 Coral Dow and Janet Phillips, ‘“Forgotten Australians” and “Lost Innocents”: Child Migrants and Children in Institutional Care in Australia,’ Parliamentary Library, Commonwealth of Australia, 2009, accessed 26 May 2015, http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BN/0910/ChildMigrants; Australian Senate Community Affairs References Committee, Lost Innocents: Righting the Record Report on Child Migration (Canberra: Senate Printing Unit, 2001).
47 Philip Mendes, ‘Remembering “Forgotten” Australians: The Care Leavers of Australia Network and the Senate Inquiry into Institutional and Out-of-Home Care,’ Children Australia 30, no. 1 (2005): 4. See also Joanna Penglase, ‘Forgotten Australians: The Report of the Senate Inquiry into Children in Institutional Care,’ Developing Practice 11 (2004): 32–7.
48 Cited in Mendes, ‘Remembering “Forgotten” Australians,’ 6.
49 Joanna Penglase interviewed by Susan Marsden, Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants Oral History Project, 2010, http://nla.gov.au/nla.oh-vn4901590; Australian Senate Community Affairs References Committee, Forgotten Australians: A Report on Australians who Experienced Institutional or Our-of-home Care as Children (Canberra: Senate Printing Unit, 2004).
50 Australia Senate Community Affairs References Committee, Commonwealth Contribution to Former Forced Adoption Policies and Practices (Canberra: Senate Printing Unit, 2012). For the text of the apology, accessed 30 April 2015, http://www.ag.gov.au/About/ForcedAdoptionsApology/Pages/default.aspx.
51 Corby, Doig and Roberts, Public Inquiries into Residential Abuse of Children, 80.
52 Ibid., 193.
53 Matthew Colton, Maurice Vanstone and Christine Walby, ‘Victimization, Care and Justice: Reflections on the Experiences of Victims/Survivors Involved in Large‐scale Historical Investigations of Child Sexual Abuse in Residential Institutions,’ British Journal of Social Work 32, no. 5 (2002): 548.
54 ‘Australia Apologises to “Forgotten Children”, Care Leavers Association Blog, accessed 27 May 2015, http://www.careleavers.com/blog.
55 Tom Shaw, Historical Abuse Systemic Review: Residential Schools and Children’s Homes in Scotland 1950 to 1995 (Edinburgh: Scottish Government, 2007).
56 Historical Institutional Abuse Website, accessed 1 May 2015, http://www.hiainquiry.org/.
57 ‘Policy Statement on Abuse in Care,’ Care Leavers Association Website, accessed 27 May 2015, http://www.careleavers.com/policies/abuse.
58 For the multiplicity of inquiries currently underway see: ‘Historical Abuse Inquiry: Key Investigations,’ BBC News, 17 March 2015, accessed 1 May 2015, http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-28194271. For a summary of the difficulties in finding an acceptable chair see: ‘New Zealand Judge Lowell Goddard to Lead Abuse Inquiry,’ BBC News, 4 February 2015, accessed 1 May 2015, http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31130805.
59 ‘How We Work’ Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse Webpage, accessed 21 September 2015, https://www.iicsa.org.uk/about-the-inquiry/how-we-work.
60 Chris Greer and Eugene McLaughlin, ‘The Sir Jimmy Savile Scandal: Child Sexual Abuse and Institutional Denial at the BBC,’ Crime, Media, Culture 9, no. 3 (2013): 245.
61 Harry Ferguson, Protecting Children in Time: Child Abuse, Child Protection, and the Consequences of Modernity (Gordonsville: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 107. See also Frank Furedi, Moral Crusades in an Age of Distrust: The Jimmy Savile Scandal (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 9.
62 ‘Who We Are’ Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse Webpage, accessed 21 September 2015, https://www.iicsa.org.uk/about-the-inquiry/who-we-are.
63 The allegations refer to former Governor-General Sir William Slim and the actor Robert Hughes. For the allegations against Slim see: ‘Hero, Villain and the School for Scandal,’ Sydney Morning Herald, 28 April 2007, and Lorna Knowles, ‘Class Action to Begin over Alleged Abuse of Migrants at Fairbridge Farm School,’ ABC News, 31 July 2014, accessed 1 May 2015, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-13/class-action-begins-over-alleged-abuse-of-child-migrants/5319066. For Hughes see: ‘Robert Hughes Trial: Former Hey Dad! Star Found Guilty of Sexually Abusing Girls in 1980s,’ ABC News, 8 April 2014, accessed 1 May 2015, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-07/robert-hughes-found-guilty/5372728.
64 The case studies and research projects are all listed on the Royal Commission’s Website, accessed 21 September 2015, https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/public-hearings and https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/policy-and-research/research-program.
65 Kathleen Daly, ‘Conceptualising Responses to Institutional Abuse of Children,’ Current Issues in Criminal Justice 26, no. 1 (2014): 17.
66 Ibid., 7.
67 Johanna Sköld, ‘Historical Abuse – A Contemporary Issue: Compiling Inquiries into Abuse and Neglect of Children in Out-of-Home Care Worldwide,’ Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention 14, no. 1 (2013): 7.
68 Furedi, Moral Crusades in an Age of Distrust, 35.
69 Ibid., 59, 71.
70 Mark Smith, ‘Victim Narratives of Historical Abuse in Residential Child Care: Do We Really Know What We Think We Know?,’ Qualitative Social Work 9, no. 3 (2010): 303–20; Mark Smith, ‘Historical Abuse in Residential Child Care: An Alternative View,’ Practice: Social Work in Action 20, no. 1 (2008): 29–41.
71 See for example: I.C.F. Spry, ‘The Discrediting of the Wilson Report: False “Stolen Generation” Claims,’ National Observer, 43 (Summer 2000): 55–61.
72 This is a key component of the speeches made by both the Prime Minister and leader of the Opposition, accessed 1 May 2015, http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/Completed_inquiries/2004-07/inst_care/national_apology/index.
73 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse Website, accessed 1 May 2015, https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/share-your-story/private-sessions.
74 Jacqueline Z. Wilson and Frank Golding, ‘Contested Memories: Caring about the Past or Past Caring,’ in Apologies and the Legacy of Abuse of Children in ‘Care,’ ed. Johanna Sköld and Shurlee Swain (Houndsmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).
75 Nell Musgrove, ‘The Role and Importance of History,’ in Sköld and Swain, eds, Apologies and the Legacy of Abuse of Children in ‘Care’; Shurlee Swain, Leonie Sheedy and Cate O’Neill, ‘Responding to “Forgotten Australians”: Historians and the Legacy of Out-of-home “Care”,’ Journal of Australian Studies 36, no. 1 (2012): 17–28.
76 The concept of a contrapuntal history comes from Charles Maier, ‘Overcoming the Past? Narrative and Negotiation, Remembering and Reparation: Issues at the Interface of History and the Law,’ in Politics and the Past: On Repairing Historical Injustices, ed. John Torpey (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), 301. For a fuller discussion of how this concept has been applied in Australia see: Shurlee Swain, ‘Stakeholders as Subjects: The Role of Historians in the Development of Australia’s Find & Connect Web Resource,’ The Public Historian 36, no. 4 (2014): 38–50.
77 See for example: Hendrick, Child Welfare: England, 1872–1989; Hendrick, Child Welfare: Historical Dimensions, Contemporary Debate; Harry Ferguson, ‘Abused and Looked after Children as “Moral Dirt”: Child Abuse and Institutional Care in Historical Perspective,’ Journal of Social Policy 36, no. 1 (2007): 123–39.
78 Although Louise Jackson and her team are seeking to use their current research project to make just such an inroad, accessed 1 May 2015, http://www.historyandpolicy.org/projects/project/historical-child-sex-abuse.
79 Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, ‘Truth Project Sharing your Experience: What to Expect,’ accessed 21 September 2015, https://www.iicsa.org.uk/sites/default/files/sharing-your-experience.pdf.