Orphan schools

Orphans by Thomas Kennington (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Within a few short years of white settlement of Australia 398 out 958 children were neglected and/or in need of care. Initially Orphan Schools were established to look after these children. Church schools were to later take over the role, and continued, for the next few centuries, caring not only for the orphaned and those at risk but also migrant war children and children of mixed colour.

This poem is for my mother who was to spend years in a church home.

 

Orphan Schools  

You did not know, they started the orphan schools for the likes of you,

Children whose mother could or would not care for them.

You did not know that barely five years after our colonies birth

The children of convict mothers ran the streets unloved, unwashed, unfed.

You did not know that they only thought to feed them, house them fit for work.

Gov. Phillip Gidley King :  Immediate steps (must be) taken to save the youth of this colony from the destructive examples of their abandoned parents and others they unavoidably associate with.

 

You did not know that for some of them the Homes were better than life on the streets.

You did not know when you stood in the gutters, your father’s furniture around your feet,

That your mother could not or would not care for you. You did not know.

You did not know that when the Governor’s job in looking after ‘currency’ children became too great the church stepped in.

Elizabeth Paterson: (They) are to be entirely secluded from other people and brought up in the habit of religion and morality.

 

You were not generations meant for lifting out of gutters, for fitting for society

But generations meant for work – domestic or industrial.

Children spared from guttersnipes and prostitutes and thievery.

You did not know that centuries had passed and still there was a need.

You did not know a mother’s love, a caring touch, a kind word.

But when you became my mother you vowed it would never happen again.