Settler colonial expansion and the institutionalisation of children in Victoria, Australia

ABSTRACTRecent histories have underlined the importance of understanding the nineteenth-century gold rushes which took place in various parts of the anglophone world in relation to settler colonialism, and this work has advanced understandings of gender, race and Empire in significant ways. However, the field has yet to seriously grapple with questions about the role, treatment and positioning of children. This article will examine the Australian colony of Victoria, which was profoundly transformed by a gold rush beginning in 1851. Through case studies of three families – one white, one Chinese and one Aboriginal – the article will illustrate the complex relationships between poverty, colonialism and carceral institutions for children during the second half of the nineteenth century. These case studies allow an exploration that centres on the lives of the children and families forced to navigate an often-inescapable network of institutions, thereby demonstrating the impossibility of separating these institutions (which form the foundations of our modern-day child protection system) from the project and philosophy of settler colonialism.KEYWORDS: Australian social historysettler colonialismcarceral institutionschild welfaremicrohistory Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Anne O’Brien, Philanthropy and Settler Colonialism (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).2 O’Brien, Philanthropy and Settler Colonialism.3 Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event (London: Cassell, 1999).4 Anna Haebich, ‘Neoliberalism, Settler Colonialism and the History of Indigenous Child Removal in Australia’, Australian Indigenous Law Review 19, no. 1 (2015): 20–31; Patrick Wolfe, ‘Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native’, Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (2006): 387–409.5 For a leading example see: James Belich, Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Angloworld (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).6 For a recent contribution to the field which uses settler colonialism as a lens for examining early twentieth-century child migration schemes from Britain to Australia see: Tim Calabria, ‘Agents of Settler Colonialism?: Childhood, Time and Exclusion in the Fairbridge Scheme, 1913–1924’, Settler Colonial Studies 13, no. 1 (2023): 133–55.7 Shurlee Swain and Margot Hillel, Child, Nation, Race and Empire: Child Rescue Discourse, England, Canada and Australia, 1850–1915 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010).8 Graeme Davison, ‘Gold-Rush Melbourne’, in Gold: Forogtten Histories and Lost Objects of Australia, ed. Iain McCalman, Alexander Cook, and Andrew Reeves (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 53.9 Charles Fahey, ‘Peopling the Victorian Goldfields: From Boom to Bust, 1851–1901’, Australian Economic History Review 50, no. 2 (2010): 148–61.10 Miller is a pseudonym because one of the documents used to construct this family history is not in the public domain. The Taker and Carewickham family histories are drawn from publicly accessible materials. The author pays respect to the descendants of the people discussed in this article and would be happy to share genealogical research with any interested family members.11 Heather Holst, Making a Home: A History of Castlemaine, History of Castlemaine (North Melbourne, VIC: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2014); Maria Elena Indelicato, ‘Neither Black nor White: Colonial Myths, Irish Women, and Chinese Men’s Quest for Respectability’, Interventions 25, no. 4 (2023): 448–67; Keir Reeves and Benjamin Mountford, ‘Sojourning and Settling: Locating Chinese Australian History’, Australian Historical Studies 42, no. 1 (2011): 111–25.12 Fred Cahir et al., ‘Not Invisible, Not Silent, Not Nameless: Dja Dja Wurrung Contributions to Nineteenth-Century Goldfields Society in Central Victoria, Australia’, Cultural and Social History 20, no. 4 (2023): 517–35.13 Richard Broome, Aboriginal Victorians: A History Since 1800 (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2005), xx–xxii; Len Smith et al., ‘Fractional Identities: The Political Arithmetic of Aboriginal Victorians’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 38, no. 4 (2008): 533–51.14 Broome, Aboriginal Victorians.15 Nell Musgrove, The Scars Remain: A Long History of Forgotten Australians and Chidlren’s Institutions (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2013), 10.16 Ian D. Clark and David A. Cahir, ‘“The Comfort of Strangers”: Hospitality on the Victorian Goldfields, 1850–1860’, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management 15, no. 1 (2008): 2.17 Musgrove, The Scars Remain, 10–11; Brian Dickey, No Charity There: A Short History of Social Welfare in Australia, 2nd ed. (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1987), 34–35.18 Davison, ‘Gold-Rush Melbourne’, 52–66.19 Belich, Replenishing the Earth, 2; Benjamin Mountford and Stephen Tuffnell, eds., A Global History of Gold Rushes (Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2018); Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).20 Benjamin Mountford, ‘The Pacific Gold Rushes and the Struggle for Order’, in A Global History of Gold Rushes (see note 18), 111–31.21 David Goodman, Gold Seeking: Victoria and California in the 1850s (St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1994), 64–104.22 O’Brien, Philanthropy and Settler Colonialism, 18; Charlotte Newman, ‘To Punish or Protect: The New Poor Law and the English Workhouse’, International Journal of Historical Archaeology 18, no. 1 (2014): 125–45.23 Musgrove, The Scars Remain, 2–26.24 Geoffrey Serle, The Golden Age: A History of the Colony of Victoria 1851–1861, Rev. ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1968), 21, 673.25 Hugh Cunningham, Children and Childhood in Western Society since 1500, 3rd ed. (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2021), 91–108.26 Brief histories of each of these institutions can be found on the Find & Connect Web Resource: https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/ (accessed June 22, 2023).27 ‘The Orphan Asylum’, Argus, September 7, 1855, 5.28 As Jane Carey and Leigh Boucher argue in Historicising Whiteness: Transnational Perspectives on the Construction of an Identity (Melbourne: RMIT Publishing, 2007), whiteness must be historicised as it has not been construed in the same ways across time and place. The term ‘white’ is used here to denote a lens through which mid-19th-century Victorian colonial society understood the purposes and intended recipients of charitable institutions. Apart from the Catholic institutions, who primarily understood themselves as serving the Irish Catholic migrant population, almost all were run as (effectively) non-denominational Protestant organisations, yet perceived whiteness and acceptance by the white community assocaited with running the institution in question were more important factors in determining admission than religion. For example, Jewish families were sometimes treated by such organisations as ‘white’ and at other times not, reflecting the complicated cultural position of Jewish people in this period. For some examinations of this in the context of the gold fields see: Elizabeth Offer, ‘Dressed and Blessed: The Abraham Family, Brit Milah and Dress in Colonial Ballarat, 1850–1900’, Journal of Australian Studies 45, no. 3 (2021): 317–33; Elizabeth Offer, ‘A Good Sound Schooling: Hebrew Schools and Jewish Education on the Central Victorian Goldfields, 1851–1901’, Australian Journal of Jewish Studies 35 (2022): 5–29.29 Victorian Parliamentary Debates (VPD), Vol. 4, October 1858–February 1859, 748.30 Ibid.31 Penelope Edmonds, Urbanizing Frontiers: Indigenous Peoples and Settlers in 19th-century Pacific Rim Cities (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010).32 The report was reprinted in full in the press: ‘Penal Discipline’, Argus, September 12, 1857, 5.33 VPD, Vol. 2, March 1857–November 1857, 895; Musgrove, The Scars Remain, 14–24.34 Mary Carpenter, Reformatory Schools for the Children of the Perishing and Dangerous Classes and for Juvenile Offenders (London: C. Gilpin, 1851).35 Christina Twomey, Deserted and Destitute: Motherhood, Wife Desertion and Colonial Welfare (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2002), 74–87, 109–16; Musgrove, The Scars Remain, 78–80.36 Nell Musgrove and Deidre Michell, The Slow Evolution of Foster Care in Australia—Just Like a Family? (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 211–13.37 Musgrove and Michell, The Slow Evolution of Foster Care in Australia, 131–34.38 Dorothy Wickham, ‘“Blood, Sweat and Tears”: Women at Eureka’, Journal of Australian Colonial History 10, no. 1 (2008): 99–114; Margaret Anderson, ‘Mrs Charles Clacy, Lola Montez and Poll the Grogseller: Glimpses of Women on the Early Victorian Goldfields’, in Gold (see note 8), 225–49.39 Warwick Frost, ‘Making an Edgier Interpretation of the Gold Rushes: Contrasting Perspectives from Australia and New Zealand’, International Journal of Heritage Studies 11, no. 3 (2005): 235–50.40 Jennifer Jones, ‘Faith and Failure on the Australian Goldfields: Gendered Interpretations of Piety and the “Good Death”’, Journal of Religious History 43, no. 4 (2019): 460–77; Offer, ‘A Good Sound Schooling’, 5–29.41 ‘The Gold Fields’, Mount Alexander Mail, February 2, 1855, 2.42 Timothy Willem Jones and Clare Wright, ‘The Goldfields’ Sabbath: A Postsecular Analysis of Social Cohesion and Social Control on the Ballarat Goldfields, 1854’, Journal of Religious History 43, no. 4 (2019): 447–59.43 Rebecca Swartz, Education and Empire: Children, Race and Humanitarianism in the British Settler Colonies, 1833–1880 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 8.44 Richard and Alice Miller, marriage certificate, Victoria, 1855; State Library of Victoria, Melbourne Orphan Asylum Records, MS 11591, papers related to Mary Jane and Rosanna Miller (hereafter MOA Miller records).45 MOA Miller records.46 Mary Jane Miller, birth certificate, Victoria, 1857; Rosanna Miller, birth certificate, Victoria, 1860; MOA Miller records.47 Alice Miller, death certificate, Victoria, 1865.48 MOA Miller records.49 Ibid.50 Musgrove and Michell, Slow Evolution of Foster Care, 51–86.51 Mary Jane and George Tinker, marriage certificate, Victoria, 1879.52 Institutionalised children were often imbued with shame about the supposed moral failings which had led their families to need to place them in orphanages of with the State. Musgrove, The Scars Remain, xv.53 George Tinker, death certificate, Victoria, 1895; Ethel May Tinker, birth certificate, Victoria, 1896.54 Catherine Coleborne and Dolly MacKinnon, eds., Madness in Australia: Histories, Heritage and the Asylum (St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press, 2003).55 Public Record Office Victoria (hereafter PROV), VA 2840 Kew Asylum, VPRS 7397 Casebooks of Female Patients, Vol. 5, 275–76.56 For more detail on the conditions within these institutions as well as colonial understandings of the people within the, see: Coleborne and MacKinnon, Madness in Australia; Lee-Ann Monk and David Henderson with Christine Bigby, Richard Broome and Katie Holmes, Failed Ambitions: Kew Cottages and Changing Ideas of Intellectual Disabilities (Clayton, VIC: Monash University Publishing, 2023).57 VPRS 7397, Vol. 5, 275–76.58 Rosanna Miller, death certificate, Victoria, 1890.59 Chinese names and people are notoriously difficult to trace through colonial records, not only because people Anglicised their names, but because Chinese names were recorded inconsistently. In this case the same name appears variously as Taker, Teager, Teaguer, Teagar and Teker, and James’s Chinese name is unknown. In the article text I use Taker for ease of reading but the footnotes to sources record the names as given in each record. One of James’s children’s birth certificates (Elizabeth b.1862) gives his birthplace as Singapore, but he is said to be from Amoy (Xiamen) in other records.60 Ellen Farrell, marriage extract, 1855, https://www.genealogysa.org.au/ (accessed June 26, 2023); Ellen Teaguer, death certificate, Victoria, 1905; PROV, VA 475 Chief Secretary’s Department, VPRS 516 Central Register of Female Convicts, Vol. 2, 509.61 ‘Police Court’, The Star, August 26, 1856, 3.62 ‘Police Court’, The Star, August 28, 1856, 3; ‘Police Court’, The Star, August 26, 1856, 3.63 ‘Police Court’, The Star, September 4, 1856, 3; ‘Court of General Sessions for Ballarat and Buninyong’, The Star, September 9, 1856, 3.64 ‘Police Court’, The Star, April 8, 1857, 2.65 James Malony Teagar, death certificate, Victoria, 1885; ‘Police: District Court’, Ballarat Star, February 22, 1865, 1; ‘Police: Eastern Court’, Ballarat Star, April 12, 1866, 3.66 ‘Police: Eastern Court’, Ballarat Star, April 16, 1867, 4.67 VPRS 516 Central Register of Female Convicts, Vol. 2, 509–12; PROV, VA 475 Chief Secretary’s Department, VPRS 515 Central Register of Male Convicts, Vol. 11, 185.68 ‘Police: Eastern Court’, Ballarat Star, April 12, 1866, 3.69 All movements of the girls through the industrial school system from: PROV, VA 475 Chief Secretary’s Department, VPRS 4527 Children’s Registers, Unit 2, 450–51.70 Indelicato, ‘Neither Black nor White’.71 See pages for each institution at: https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/ (accessed June 23).72 VPRS 4527, Unit 2, 450–51.73 Victoria Julia Teager and Mary Ann Edith Teager, Marriage certificates, Victoria, 1873; VPRS 4527, Unit 2, 450.74 Ellen Teager, marriage certificate, Victoria, 1875.75 Children born to Julia Hiah and Ellen Kim, birth extracts, Victoria, 1873–1886.76 VRPS 4527, Unit 2, 450.77 ‘District Police Court’, The Star, November 27, 1861, 1.78 ‘Criminal Court’, Herald, February 23, 1893, 1; ‘The Chinese Perjury Case’, Bendigo Advertiser, January 10, 1895, 3; ‘Chinese Devilment’, Herald, July 29, 1896, 1.79 The family name appears as both Carewickham and Wickham on various documents.80 Carewickham family marriage and birth extracts, https://www.genealogysa.org.au/ (accessed June 26, 2023).81 ‘Insolvency Notices’, Adelaide Observer, October 1, 1853, 882 Their first daughter’s birth certificate gives a marriage date of March 11, 1867.83 For example: VPRS 4527, Unit 25, 80.84 Evelyn Araluen Corr, ‘Silence and Resistance: Aboriginal Women Working within and against the Archive’, Continuum 32, no. 4 (2018): 487–502.85 Eliza Carewickham, birth certificate, Victoria, 1869.86 Mary Ann Gardiner, birth certificate, Victoria, 1875. It is not clear why Sarah is registered under her maiden name here and on her death certificate. Possibly she and James had separated, but members of the Carewickham family were informants on both documents.87 Sarah Gardiner, death certificate, Victoria, 1875.88 ‘Bendigo Benevolent Asylum’, Bendigo Advertiser, April 9, 1879, 3.89 Charles Carewickham, birth certificate, Victoria, 1883.90 VPRS 516, Vol. 9, 77.91 Ibid.; VPRS 4527, Unit 8, 24 & Unit 25, 80.92 VPRS 4527, Unit 8, 24.93 Musgrove and Michell, Slow Evolution of Foster Care, 60–63.94 VPRS 4527, Unit 25, 80.95 Musgrove and Michell, Slow Evolution of Foster Care, 60–63.96 This term is considered offensive, particularly due to its basis in the eugenic ‘blood quotient’ theorem of ‘racial purity’. It is defined within the Act as meaning all ‘persons of mixed aboriginal [sic] blood’, Aborigines Protection Act 1886, Victoria, section 3.97 VPRS 4527, Unit 34, 18–19.98 VPRS 4527, Unit 34, 18.99 Ibid.100 VPRS 4572, Unit 41, 32.101 Lynette Russell, A Little Bird Told Me: Family Secrets, Necessary Lies (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2002); Julie Andrews, ‘“Memoirs of an Aboriginal Woman” by Theresa Clements: Reflections on my Great Grandmother’s Life’, in Conflict, Adaptation, Transformation: Richard Broome and the Practice of Aboriginal History, ed. Ben Silverstein (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2018), 96–122.102 VPRS 4527, Unit 34, 19.103 Frank Golding and Jacqueline Z. Wilson, ‘Lost and Found: Counter-Narratives of Dis/Located Children’, in Children’s Voices from the Past: New Historical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Kristine Moruzi, Nell Musgrove, and Carla Pascoe Leahy (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 305–30.104 Golding and Wilson, ‘Lost and Found’.105 VPRS 515, Vol. 57, 12; William Curtis (alias), death certificate, Victoria, 1913.Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by Australian Research Council [grant number DP210101275].