Abstract
In this chapter, Musgrove and Michell present a microhistory of the Thomas family to show how nineteenth-century foster care systems understood the value of both parent–child and sibling relationships. The chapter argues that while welfare authorities made an effort to keep siblings together in foster care, the ultimate logic and smooth functioning of the system was more important. Also considered in the chapter is the state’s attitude towards reuniting mothers with their children through the stories of two of the Thomas sisters who fell pregnant while they were wards of the state. Finally, the chapter explores the meanings of familial relationships for people who grew up in foster care through more recent autobiographies and oral histories, and Australian governments’ slow progress towards supporting family reunion.
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Notes
- 1.
“Extraordinary Case Under the Boarding Out System: Mother Charged with Stealing Her Own Child,” Age (Melbourne), 25 June 1894, 6.
- 2.
“A Child Kidnapped by Its Mother,” Argus (Melbourne), 25 June 1894, 5; “Extraordinary Case Under the Boarding Out System,” Age (Melbourne), 25 June 1894, 6.
- 3.
“Mother and Child: Strange Case of Kidnapping,” Weekly Times (Melbourne), 30 June 1894, 32; several articles make reference to “Chinese dens,” for example, see “Latest News from the Metropolis,” Hamilton Spectator (VIC), 28 June 1894, 3.
- 4.
This birth date is given on her official birth certificate and also her entry in the Children’s Register, VPRS 4527, Unit 29, 220.
- 5.
See Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, “Bringing Them Home : National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families” (Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997); “Demongraphy” in Encyclopedia of Melbourne Online (The School of Historial Studies, The University of Melbourne, 2009), http://www.emelbourne.net.au/home.html.
- 6.
For example, in several places Harry and Mary Thomas were recorded as Henry and Elizabeth Thomas . It is possible these were aliases used by the parents, and it is also possible that this was simply an error in the admission records. Harry once appeared in court reports as Henry: “Town Talk,” Geelong Advertiser (Geelong, VIC), 5 August 1884, 3. Through cross-checking a number of documents from within the records of the Neglected Children’s Department and the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria, it has been possible to reconstruct enough information to be sure that all of the members of the Thomas family (and other families discussed later in this chapter) are correctly linked with historical records relating to them.
- 7.
“Town Talk,” Geelong Advertiser (Geelong, VIC), 30 October 1873, 2; “To the Editor of the Advertiser,” Geelong Advertiser (Geelong, VIC), 30 January 1868, 3.
- 8.
“A Scene at the Bush Inn,” Geelong Advertiser (Geelong, VIC), 31 October 1872, 4.
- 9.
Ibid.
- 10.
“Town Talk,” Geelong Advertiser (Geelong, VIC), 24 March 1881, 3.
- 11.
The police and court records which would have provide direct details of the Harry and Mary’s convictions could not be located, and they have likely been destroyed, but the Geelong Advertiser reports of court proceedings note that Harry had been convicted more than ten times for offenses which held a £5 fine or three months imprisonment: “Town Talk,” Geelong Advertiser (Geelong, VIC), 28 December 1883, 2. The ward register entry for Annie Thomas notes that at the time of her admission to the department in 1885, Harry was serving three months in gaol for obscene language and Mary was serving the same for larceny.
- 12.
“A Paltry Charge,” Geelong Advertiser (Geelong, VIC), 14 January 1873, 3.
- 13.
“Young in Crime,” Geelong Advertiser (Geelong, VIC), 14 November 1876, 3.
- 14.
VPRS 4527, Unit 20, 35. His parents are incorrectly listed as Henry and Elizabeth, but his father’s employment is correct, and his birth date lines up with the birth certificate of Walter Thomas to Harry and Mary.
- 15.
“Larceny,” Geelong Advertiser (Geelong, VIC), 2 February 1881, 2; VPRS 4527, Unit 20, 202.
- 16.
VPRS 4527, Unit 20, 202; VPRS 4527, Unit 24, 231.
- 17.
VPRS 4527, Unit 24, 231; “Town Talk,” Geelong Advertiser (Geelong, VIC), 5 August 1884, 3.
- 18.
For at least one previous example see “Inebriates,” Geelong Advertiser (Geelong, VIC), 12 July 1881, 3.
- 19.
“Town Talk,” Geelong Advertiser (Geelong, VIC), 31 August 1883, 2.
- 20.
“Town Talk,” Geelong Advertiser (Geelong, VIC), 28 December 1883, 2.
- 21.
VPRS 4527, Unit 29, 220; “Town Talk,” Geelong Advertiser (Geelong, VIC), 5 May 1885, 2.
- 22.
VPRS 4527, Unit 29, 220 (Annie); VPRS 4527, Unit 29, 221 (Kate, Listed as Catherine); VPRS 4527, Unit 12, 233 (Second Entry for Kate, Listed as Catherine).
- 23.
VPRS 4527, Unit 29, 220.
- 24.
VPRS 4527, Unit 29, 220; VPRS 4527, Unit 29, 221. Over time the relative sizes of Geelong and Ballarat reversed and today Geelong is considerably larger.
- 25.
Department for Neglected Children and Reformatory Schools, Victoria. Department for Neglected Children and Reformatory Schools: Report of the Secretary, 1887, 35.
- 26.
VPRS 4527, Unit 29, 220.
- 27.
VPRS 4527, Unit 29, 220; VPRS 4527, Unit 29, 221.
- 28.
VPRS 4527, Unit 29, 220; VPRS 4527, Unit 37, 142.
- 29.
For a detailed exploration of this in the South Australian context see Margaret Barbalet, Far from a Low Gutter Girl: The Forgotten World of State Wards: South Australia 1887–1940 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1983).
- 30.
For some examples of the department intervening to help recover owed wages see VPRS 3992, Unit 29, 84/5548 and VPRS 3992, Unit 701, 98/942.
- 31.
Penelope Hetherington, Settlers, Servants and Slaves: Aboriginal and European Children in Nineteenth-Century Western Australia (Crawley, WA: University of Western Australia Press, 2002); Shirleene Robinson, Something Like Slavery—Queensland‘s Aboriginal Child Workers, 1842–1945 (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2008); Rosalind Kidd, Trustees on Trial: Recovering the Stolen Wages (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2006); and Andrew Gunstone and Sadie Heckenberg, The Government Owes a Lot of Money to Our People: A History of Indigenous Stolen Wages in Victoria (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2009).
- 32.
Shurlee Swain , “Giving Voice to Narratives of Institutional Sex Abuse,” Australian Feminist Law Journal 41, no. 2 (2015): 289–304; Louise Jackson, Child Sexual Abise in Victorian England (London and New York: Routledge, 2001).
- 33.
For example, see VPRS 3992, Unit 1746, 26/9157. The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Sexual Abuse, noted in its Final Report (2017) the contribution of factor such as this to the under-reporting of abuse . In particular see Volume Seven, available at https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/final-report, last accessed 21 March 2017.
- 34.
For example, see VPRS 3992, Unit 747, 99/3219.
- 35.
This issue has been well explored by historians in relation to Aboriginal girls, for example, see Victoria Haskins, “‘A Better Chance’? Sexual Abuse and the Apprenticeship of Aboriginal Girls Under the NSW Aborigines Protection Board,” Aboriginal History 28 (2005): 33–58.
- 36.
See multiple contributions addressing this issue in: Yorick Smaal, Andy Kaladelfos, and Mark Finnane, eds., The Sexual Abuse of Children: Recognition and Redress (Clayton, VIC: Monash University Publishing, 2016).
- 37.
For example, see VPRS 3992, Unit 738, 99/235.
- 38.
VPRS 4527, Unit 23, 116.
- 39.
VPRS 4527, Unit 31, 100.
- 40.
Department for Neglected Children and Reformatory Schools, Victoria. Department for Neglected Children and Reformatory Schools: Report of the Secretary, 1893.
- 41.
It was not reported on in the department’s annual reports, and the only correspondence about it located in this research related to approval of applications for such assistance on a case by case basis.
- 42.
VPRS 4527, Unit 8, 42.
- 43.
VPRS 3992, Unit 393, 91/1673.
- 44.
Ibid.
- 45.
Ibid.
- 46.
Ibid.
- 47.
VPRS 4527, Unit 25, 107.
- 48.
For example, see VPRS 3992, Unit 876, 02/3183.
- 49.
VPRS 3992, Unit 800, 00/6365.
- 50.
VPRS 3992, Unit 1074, 08/438.
- 51.
In 1919, 6206 children were boarded out by the department, and 3989 (64%) of these were boarded with their own mothers. Department for Neglected Children and Reformatory Schools, Victoria. Department for Neglected Children and Reformatory Schools: Report of the Secretary, 1919. For more on boarding out children with their own mothers and the dismantling of the scheme see Chapter 6: Foster Care—Philosophies, Rhetoric and Practices.
- 52.
VPRS 4527, Unit 29, 220; VPRS 4527, Unit 37, 142.
- 53.
VPRS 4527, Unit 29, 220.
- 54.
Marriage certificate of Ling Sin and Clara Thomas, Victoria, 1892.
- 55.
Based on births registered in Victoria, Clara gave birth to at least eight children between 1892 and 1912 who all bore the surname Ling Sin, although the father’s details were not recorded on the certificates of the children born after 1900.
- 56.
VPRS 4527, Unit 12, 233; VPRS 4527, Unit 29, 221; VPRS 4527, Unit 44, 86.
- 57.
Marriage certificate of Yee Louey and Kate Thomas, Victoria, 1898. Based on the births registered in Victoria, the couple had at least two children one in 1898 and another in 1902. In some indexes Yee Louey has been transcribed as Yee Souey, but the marriage certificate shows Louey.
- 58.
“Extraordinary Case Under the Boarding Out System: Mother Charged with Stealing Her Own Child,” Age (Melbourne), 25 June 1894, 6.
- 59.
VPRS 4527, Unit 44, 86. Departmental correspondence which may have existed about the case has since been destroyed, and any records that may have been created by the minor court where the case was heard have probably also been destroyed.
- 60.
“Extraordinary Case Under the Boarding Out System: Mother Charged with Stealing Her Own Child,” Age (Melbourne), 25 June 1894, 6.
- 61.
“Child Kidnapped by Its Mother: Arrest of the Woman in the Chinese Quarter,” Argus (Melbourne), 25 June 1894, 5.
- 62.
“The Child Stealing Case,” Age (Melbourne), 28 June 1894, 6.
- 63.
Alan Mayne, “Big Notes from a Little Street: Historical Research at Melbourne’s ‘Little Lon’,” International Journal of Historical Archaeology 10, no. 4 (2006).
- 64.
“Alleged Child Abduction Case: The Charge Against Annie Thomas,” Argus (Melbourne), 28 June 1894, 6.
- 65.
“Stealing Her Own Child,” Advocate (Melbourne), 30 June 1894, 17.
- 66.
“The Child Stealing Case,” Age (Melbourne), 28 June 1894, 6.
- 67.
“A Peculiar Case: A Mother Charged with Stealing Her Own Child,” Coburg Leader (VIC), 30 June 1894, 1.
- 68.
Ibid.
- 69.
“The Child Stealing Case,” Age (Melbourne), 28 June 1894, 6.
- 70.
Marriage certificate of Osborne Westland Anderson and Annite Thomas, Victoria, 1894.
- 71.
As far as this research could disceren from the available records of the Victorian department.
- 72.
VPRS 4527, Unit 5, 36–37; VPRS 4527, Unit 6, 96–97. An older brother was not admitted with the other siblings.
- 73.
There are a number of reasons that Catholic foster homes were less plentiful. In part, it related to the fact that more of the women who made up the Ladies Committees that supervised the boarding out programme were Protestant, and so their connections with Catholic households were fewer. The Catholic Church itself had a preference for institutional placement of children to ensure their religious education. Social tensions between Protestants and Catholics were very real in the colony, and although it did occur, the department was reluctant to place Catholic children in non-Catholic foster homes. See also Jill Barnard and Karen Twigg, Holding on to Hope: A History of the Founding Agencies of Mackillop Family Services 1854–1997 (Kew, VIC: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2004).
- 74.
One of the Lester children died in the institution, and so eventually five of the seven were boarded out together. VPRS 4527, P003, Unit 1, 253–54; VPRS 4527, Unit 5, 69–70.
- 75.
See Births, Deaths and Marriages Index, Victoria.
- 76.
Most siblings who entered together were admitted on the same date or within 2–3 days, however we also included siblings who were admitted within one month of each other. The digital records and their online listing is part of VPRS 4527, P0002 and is accessible through the Public Record Office Victoria Website: https://www.prov.vic.gov.au/, last accessed 28 January 2018.
- 77.
Based on the total number of state wards in this period, this sample size gave 95% confidence with an 8.79% margin of error.
- 78.
For further discussion of the position of single and deserted mothers, and their use of the department as a coping strategy for their young children, see Chapter 2: Did Anybody Care? The Death of John Wood Pledger .
- 79.
In 1885 we examined 58 of the 144 children who were admitted with siblings that year, and in 1893 we examined 63 of the 177. Both of these sample sizes give a 95% confidence with just under 10% margin of error.
- 80.
Deidre Michell, Ways of the Wicked Witch (Elizabeth, SA: People’s Voice Publishing, 2012), 8; Deidre Michell, “Two Mothers—Twice the Blessing or Was I Cursed?,” Women-Church 31 (Spring 2002): 15–16; and Deidre Michell, “Putting Down Roots,” in Women Journeying with Spirit, ed. Deidre Michell and Jude Noble (Port Adelaide, SA: Ginninderra Press, 2010), 18.
- 81.
Deidre Michell, “Systemic Familial Alienation and the Australian Foster Care System,” in Challenges to Living Together: Transculturalism, Migration, Exploitation, ed. Susan Petrilli (Italy: Mimesis International, 2017), 395–96.
- 82.
Senate Community Affairs References Committee, “Protecting Vulnerable Children: A National Challenge” (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2005), 9–10.
- 83.
Senate 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), 105.
- 84.
Bringing them home, 10.
- 85.
Commission, “Bringing Them Home Report,” 10. Senate Community Affairs References Committee, “Lost Innocents: Righting the Record, Report on Child Migration” (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2001), 148.
- 86.
Deirdre Murphy and Hilary Jenkinson, “The Mutual Benefits of Listening to Young People in Care, with a Particular Focus on Grief and Loss,” Child Care in Practice 18, no. 3 (2012): 248–49. Monique Mitchell, “‘No One Acknowledge My Loss and Hurt’: Non-death Loss, Grief, and Trauma in Foster Care.” Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal 35, no. 1 (2018): 2. Also see Kerrie Fineran, “Helping Foster and Adopted Children to Grieve the Loss of Birthparents,” The Family Journal 20, no. 4 (2012).
- 87.
See, for example, Nina Memarnia et al., “‘It Felt Like It Was Night All the Time’: Listening to the Experiences of Birth Mothers Whose Children Have Been Taken into Care or Adopted’,” Adoption & Fostering 39, no. 4 (2015).
- 88.
Monique Mitchell and Leon Kuczynski, “Does Anyone Know What Is Going On? Examining Children’s Lived Experience of the Transition into Foster Care,” Children and Youth Services Review 32, no. 3 (2010).
- 89.
Mitchell, “‘No One Acknowledge My Loss and Hurt’: Non-death Loss, Grief, and Trauma in Foster Care,” 2. Also see Mitchell and Kuczynski, “Does Anyone Know What Is Going On? Examining Children’s Lived Experience of the Transition into Foster Care”; and Monique Mitchell, “The Family Dance: Ambiguous Loss, Meaning Making and the Psychological Family in Foster Care,” Journal of Family Theory & Review 8, no. 3 (2016).
- 90.
Regulation 11, “State Children’s Council Regulations,” in GRG 27/1 Correspondence Files (‘SCD’ Files) (Attorney-General’s Department, Government of South Australia, 1887), 33.
- 91.
See Chapter 6: Foster Care—Philosophies, Rhetoric and Practices.
- 92.
Barbalet, Far from a Low Gutter Girl, 170. Also see Hazel Smith, “The Need for Revaluation and Assessment of Australian Foster Care Programmes,” Australian Journal of Social Work 16, no. 2 (1963): 25.
- 93.
Barbalet, Far from a Low Gutter Girl, 169–76. Research from the 1990s onwards shows that children in foster can spend a great deal of their time, and therefore energy, worrying about the welfare of their birth families , see for instance Robin Sen and Karen Broadhurst, “Contact Between Children in Out-of-Home Placements and Their Family and Friends Networks: A Research Review,” Child & Family Social Work 16, no. 3 (2011).
- 94.
Walter Jacobsen, Dussa and the Maiden’s Prayer (Melbourne: The Law Printer, 1994), 97, 157.
- 95.
Ibid., 195, 232.
- 96.
Voluntary placement was the expression used from the mid-nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century to describe parents who placed their children in non-statutory out of home care rather than having them made wards of the state. It was voluntary in the sense that they had not been subjected to a legal order to place their children, but for many it was a last resort solution to an otherwise irresolvable crisis.
- 97.
Ellen Mitchell, “The Place of the Natural Parents in a Foster Care Programme,” Australian Journal of Social Work 16, no. 2 (1963).
- 98.
Chapter 5: They’re Just Doing it for the Money.
- 99.
Chapter 4: Remembering and Forgetting Foster Care.
- 100.
David Jackson, “I Was Just Trying to Matter,” in Recipes for Survival, ed. Deidre Michell and Priscilla Taylor (Elizabeth, SA: People’s Voice Publishing, 2011), 43, 50.
- 101.
Smith, “The Need for Revaluation and Assessment of Australian Foster Care Programmes,” 27.
- 102.
Ellen Mitchell, “The Place of the Natural Parents in a Foster Care Programme,” ibid.
- 103.
Ki Meekins, Red Tape Rape: The Story of Ki Meekins (Adelaide, 2008), 30, 33. Social workers were well aware of children developing rich fantasy lives about their birth parents when they were not in contact with them, see, for example, Smith, “The Need for Revaluation and Assessment of Australian Foster Care Programmes,” 28.
- 104.
Meekins, Red Tape Rape: The Story of Ki Meekins, 16.
- 105.
See, for example, Armeda Stevenson Wojciak et al., “Sibling Relationship in Foster Care: Foster Parent Perspective,” Journal of Family Issues Online (2018).
- 106.
Amanda Gargula, “Cloudy Wishes,” in Recipes for Survival, ed. Deidre Michell and Priscilla Taylor (Elizabeth, SA: People’s Voice Publishing, 2011), 55–64.
- 107.
Senate Standing Committee, “Children in Institutional and Other Forms of Care: A National Perspective” (Commonwealth of Australia, 1985), 15.
- 108.
Ibid., 59.
- 109.
“‘She’s My Sister and She Will Always Mean Something to Me…’ Report on the Inquiry into What Children Say About Contact with Their Siblings and the Impact Sibling Contact Has on Wellbeing” (Online: Guardian for Children and Young People, Government of South Australia, 2011), 53, 54.
- 110.
See for instance S. Serbinski and Aron Shlonsky, “Is It That We Are Afraid to Ask? A Scoping Review About Sons and Daughters of Foster Parents,” Children and Youth Services Review 36 (2014).
- 111.
Gargula, “Cloudy Wishes,” 61–62.
- 112.
Dee Michell and Claudine Scalzi, “I Want to Be Someone, I Want to Make a Difference: Young Care Leavers Preparing for the Future in South Australia,” in Young People Transitioning from Out-of-Home Care, ed. Philip Mendes and Pamela Snow (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 125–26.
- 113.
Long History of Foster Care Oral History Project, “Peter,” 2014. All interview content has been edited to remove any information which might identify an individual, including geographical locations within Australia. For further information on the ethical protocols of these interviews, see the introduction to this book.
- 114.
Long History of Foster Care Oral History Project, “Evie,” 2014.
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Musgrove, N., Michell, D. (2018). Making and Breaking Families. In: The Slow Evolution of Foster Care in Australia. Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93900-1_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93900-1_3
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-93899-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-93900-1
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