Mother of Ten

by J. B. Rowley

  During the time Bertie lived in Albury with his grandparents, he was never taken to visit his sister, Audrey, who was less than ten kilometres away at St John’s Orphanage in Thurgoona, then considered to be on the outskirts of Albury but now a suburb.

  Chapter 14

  “If you want to know what it was like in the Orphanage, read Orphanage Survivors: A true story of St. John’s, Thurgoona, by Howard C. Jones,” Audrey said when I asked her about her childhood at St John’s.

  Because she was not able to remember her life there in detail, I did as she suggested and bought a copy of the book. Audrey told me that she was in one of the group photos reprinted in Orphanage Survivors so I decided to see if I could pick her out. Having listened to her talk about some of her experiences, her feelings about the Orphanage and how she saw herself as a ‘throw-away child’, I looked for a little girl who might have that reflected in her face. It did not take me long to spot her and Audrey later verified that I was correct. I also read about many of the girls who were in St John’s; an institution which was founded by the Sisters of Mercy in 1882 and created in the ‘strict discipline of the Irish Catholic orphanage’. Some of the women have fond memories of their girlhood in the Orphanage but Audrey and others have painful memories. Audrey remembers several of the girls quoted in Orphanage Survivors and she also recalls some of the incidents related in the book.

  Marie Rooney who arrived at St John’s with her three sisters in 1952 states in Orphanage Survivors: ‘I was nine. The four of us huddled together at the big front gate and cried for a week. We were waiting for our family to come and get us but no one came. It was frightening.’

  I also heard the poignant phrase ‘no-one came’ from Audrey’s lips.

  The Rooney sisters eventually settled in and Marie recalls: ‘It was a tough life, because there was no one to cuddle you when you felt bad, but eventually there were lots of good times.’

  For Ruth Robinson, ‘It was always bad. We went without meals for punishment, or were locked up or stretched across a bed and flogged.’

  Audrey remembers Margaret Coyne who was described in Orphanage Survivors as ‘a very naughty girl’.

  ‘The nuns used to put her in the cellar and put a hessian bag on her for a dress. Once they put her in a big flour bin. I was there when they tied her to a tree by an anthill,’ recalls Olive Bryan.

  Virginia Savige states: ‘We didn’t keep anything. I remember being given a doll in a big box, but it was taken away.’

  One woman recalls that on her first night at the Orphanage she refused to eat the sago she was given so a nun ‘grabbed her by the hair and force-fed her’.

  ‘When I proceeded to spew, she just kept spooning it up and feeding it to me until the superior made her stop.’

  Having several acres of land allowed the Orphanage to grow most of their own food and keep cows on the property. The staff and older girls made butter and bread and most of the girls worked in the vegetable garden. They also rose very early in the morning to milk the cows and separate the milk.

  ‘I was nine years old and we went barefoot,’ recalls Ruth Robinson. ‘When it was cold we waited for the cow to drop her shit and we put our foot in it to warm it up.’

  Audrey and the other girls at St John’s lived in daily fear of punishment. One girl recalls being belted and ordered to stand in the dark until 2 a.m. because she had asked if she could put her cardigan on. Perceived bad behaviour or sins such as bedwetting would result in girls being deprived of food, flogged or locked in cupboards. This sort of physical and emotional cruelty was not uncommon. Neither was it uncommon for an orphanage to use a small, confined space such as the cupboard under the stairs to lock children in. A child could be kept in isolation for hours, or even days.

  Audrey recalls these severe punishments and remembers spending hours scrubbing the floor area of the Orphanage verandas with a small brush - another common penance. She was in trouble a lot and was often punished for things she did not do. On one occasion, Audrey had to kneel on the hard floor with her hands held out while a nun repeatedly slapped her palms with a cane. One nun vented her anger on Audrey by repeatedly whipping the backs of her legs with a cane, determined to make the child cry.

  “I’ll break you if it’s the last thing I do!” yelled the nun.

  However, Audrey refused to cry. When the beating was over, she told the nun she had been punished for something she did not do.

  “You’ll be the death of me, yet,” retorted the nun.

  One day, not long after she arrived at St. John’s, probably at the age of three, the nuns dressed Audrey in a pretty blue dress for a visit to her mother. When she returned to the Orphanage after her visit with Myrtle, the nuns yanked the dress off so roughly that her arm was pulled out of its socket. She curled up on her bed and cried. Later, she was pacified with a bar of chocolate which must have been a luxury for any orphanage child.

  The Orphanage environment was a harsh one and, like the other inmates, Audrey was not shown any affection. She yearned for love and she yearned to be touched; touched in the casual, familiar way that happens as a matter of course in a family situation.

  A typical day was an early rise in the morning for a 6 a.m. shower with the other 50 or 60 inmates. Their naked bodies were exposed to the watchful eyes of the nuns standing guard, fully dressed in their habits. Before eating their breakfast of lumpy porridge, toast and milky tea, the girls were required to say prayers. After breakfast they were shepherded to the school room for the day’s lessons.

  No food was offered at the 11 a.m. break but at lunch time the girls filed into the dining hall for stew and bread before returning to the class room. After school, the girls had to work; setting the table for dinner, washing dirty dishes and scrubbing in the laundry. The sound of a cow bell signalled dinner time. The evening meal was usually the same as lunch with an added treat such as fruit and custard. School homework had to be completed before bedtime at around 7 p.m. At weekends, there was time for play provided the girls did not participate in unladylike activities such as climbing trees for which they would be severely punished.

  There were few acts of kindness but on one occasion Audrey, a frail and skinny child, was peering longingly through the kitchen window at the women who were baking and preparing food when one of the older women gave her two slices of bread with jam and cream. It was a rare treat that she remembers to this day.

  She also recalls visits from her mother. Later, Etti Webb (Myrtle’s mother) visited her. I suspect Etti visited when Myrtle was no longer able to because she had left Albury to start her new life in Orbost. However, as time passed, Audrey recalls that ‘no one came’.

  Perhaps Etti Webb felt unable to continue the visits for personal reasons. It is also possible that her visits ceased because the nuns at the Orphanage thought it would be kinder to Audrey if family members did not visit. This was certainly the case at other orphanages.

  Lorraine Davis who was in Launceston Children’s Home from the age of three is quoted in Orphans of the Living as saying: ‘My mother wasn’t allowed to visit us at the home, as they thought it would upset us too much.’

  Frank Golding, who was in Ballarat Orphanage in the 1940s, relates in his submission to the 2004 Australian Senate Inquiry into children in institutional care how the superintendent claimed: ‘Your father upsets you; I’m going to cut out these visits.’

  I have no proof that Etti ceased her visits as a result of advice from the Orphanage; there might have been an entirely different reason. Another possible reason is that once the final legal documents sealed Henry Bishop’s custody of the children in 1947, he exercised his power and desire for revenge by forbidding Myrtle and her mother to visit. I have no proof of that either.

  Like most children in orphanages, Audrey fantasised about having a family. She spent her young years wanting desperately to be someone’s daughter. At about the same time that Myrtle gave birth to my twin brothers Kevin and Georgie in 1952, Audrey’s dream o
f being part of a family almost came true. A Catholic couple applied to adopt the lonely twelve-year-old. Permission had to be given by Audrey’s father who had retained legal custody of Audrey and her brother, Noel.

  Unfortunately, Henry Bishop, who was Church of England, refused to allow the adoption to go ahead on the basis that he did not wish his daughter to be become a Catholic. This is mystifying since the children at St John’s were brought up as Catholics anyway. All Audrey wanted was a family. She wanted to be hugged and kissed goodnight.

  She did not know whether her mother was still alive. Furthermore, she did not know she had an older brother living a few kilometres from St John’s and a younger brother 400 kilometres away, across the state border in Ballarat, Victoria.

  Chapter 15

  Ballarat, just over one hundred kilometres from Melbourne, is home to the Wathaurong people and was first settled by Europeans in 1837. In less than twenty years the region developed dramatically into a city of 100 000 people as a result of the 1851 Gold Rush. The city’s affluence led to an increase in public buildings such as the Ballarat District Orphan Asylum in Victoria Street which was built on an old mining ground. This large two storey red brick mansion of Gothic design accommodating 200 children was built in the 1860s.

  By 1945 when Noel, the youngest of Myrtle’s first three children, was sent there, the institution had been renamed Ballarat Orphanage. It was set on several acres and included a swimming pool, a library, a football ground and tennis courts. In those days, there was no attempt to keep siblings together in orphanages.

  In his submission to the Senate Inquiry, Frank Golding writes: ‘The staff saw no reason to treat brothers and sisters as part of a family. Instead, children were separated into age groups and some siblings were even sent to different orphanages.’

  Boys in the Riverina district were usually sent to Gumleigh Boys Home 180 kilometres from Albury in Wagga Wagga. I do not know why Noel was sent instead to a city 400 kilometres away in a different state. It is possible Gumleigh did not take toddlers; Noel was three years old at the time of his placement. It could have been that there were simply no vacancies. The abundance of children in Australia as a result of the post war baby boom meant there were not enough places for children in the available Homes.

  Arriving at an orphanage must have been an especially traumatic time for children who were sometimes taken by their parents, sometimes sent by train with a relative and sometimes escorted by the police. Phyllis Davies was sent on her own, at the age of nine, from Melbourne to Albury by train. She arrived around midnight after what would probably have been a four or five hour journey in those days. She was to be admitted to St John’s Orphanage and was told to ‘find a policeman’ when she arrived and tell him ‘there was a note in my bag’. (Orphanage Survivors)

  Noel was accompanied by his father on his train journey from Albury to Ballarat Orphanage. He remembers sitting on a park bench at the railway station under a huge flagpole, swinging his feet which were not able to reach the ground. When the train reached Melbourne, Noel and his father took another train to Ballarat. Noel does not recall arriving at the Orphanage but Frank Golding who was there at the same time as Noel, recalled his own arrival vividly in his submission to the Senate Inquiry:

  ‘It was a terrifying experience to be dragged to the doorway of this huge, two-storeyed institution, ‘Orphan Asylum’ in large letters outside and 200 other orphans inside. I remember it was my brother Bob’s fourth birthday so I must have been two and a half. Bill, our half-brother, was a little older.

  I snatched at each shaft of the iron fence as the policeman pulled us towards the great double gate. The gravel crunched under our feet as we drew near the dark-red building. Looking up to the balcony on the second floor, Billy read to us the cast iron words ‘ORPHAN ASYLUM 1865’. This was a grim place, this Ballarat Orphanage. Solid, like a fortress.

  Billy and Bobby clutched my hands tightly as we came to the grand front doors. A child cried down the long passage. Bobby tried to pull back and we joined in. That was futile. Our escort pushed us past the large front doors into the vast entrance hallway where Miss Sharp awaited. Arms crossed, she filled the hallway like a giant. A watch hung from a heavy chain on her massive bosom. She searched our faces. Her scrutiny hurt and my eyes welled up. I whimpered like a timid dog.’

  Frank Golding also wrote a book about his childhood called An Orphan’s Escape, in which he recalls the Orphanage as a grim place with stern staff where ‘there was no privacy; not even for the most personal needs’.

  Orphanage children slept in dormitories where there was not only a lack of privacy but also no personal space at night. They lived regimented lives under the control and in the presence of authority. An optimistic assessment of Ballarat Orphanage published in the Melbourne newspaper The Argus in 1924 states: ‘...in the little locker assigned to each inmate there is a little store of week-day and Sunday clothing, orderly as in a soldier’s kit. And the little people do all this for themselves; the nurse or attendant directs, and nothing more.’

  During the day, there was nowhere for children to go to be by themselves. Neither Audrey nor Noel had the luxury that I had of being able to escape from my brothers and the outside world by curling up in the hayshed with a book.

  Bath time was another occasion when children in private homes might be afforded some privacy but not orphanage children who had to line up naked and wait their turn. Bath night in orphanages was usually only once a week and, as in many private homes at that time, the bath water would not be changed until all the children had had their baths. Noel remembers sharing the bath with twenty other children on Friday nights when he was in the toddlers’ block. They were dried off by the older Orphanage girls in an assembly line.

  When they were in their pyjamas, a female staff member read them all a bed-time story. I am glad that Noel at least has this memory of warm interaction with an adult. Such moments were few, and a close relationship with a trusted adult was non-existent. Noel had the same problems as Frank Golding who had no-one to answer the questions that ‘gnawed’ at his brain. “Where could you turn for answers or reassurance? We dealt with the mysteries and meanings of life as best we could. The staff were too busy for such childish nonsense and questions were answered with a silent rebuff, or worse, a sudden smack for being a nuisance. The staff had no time for a child’s sobbing. I clammed up because it was safer. I coped as best I could.”

  Noel started his day in a dormitory of twenty children, their cast iron cots lined up in two straight rows with the bed-wetters separated at one end. At seven o’clock he joined the throngs of children heading to the dining room for breakfast. They lined up in front of large buckets of gluggy porridge and served themselves one scoop with a long handled ladle.

  At the table, the children stood to attention to say grace before hungrily devouring their food. When he was older, Noel was given the job of getting up early to stoke the boiler and cut the wood before breakfast; a job he loved.

  After breakfast the children went to the school room where they sat in desks in long rows in unheated class rooms despite Ballarat’s cold climate where winter temperatures could drop to as low as three degrees Celsius with overnight lows of minus five degrees Celsius. Alan Radcliffe, in his submission to the Senate Inquiry, recalls suffering from the cold at Ballarat Orphanage to the point of getting chilblains on his ‘ears, fingers and toes’.

  The children were drilled in the basics of spelling and the multiplication tables. As was the custom in Victorian schools at the time, reading was taught using the Victorian Readers, one for each year. The Readers included poems such as The Owl and the Pussy Cat, fairy tales and other stories including The Hobyahs. I can imagine what might have been in the minds of the Orphanage children when they read The Three Wishes in the Third Book.

  Teachers could choose to inflict punishment, such as ‘the cuts’ or a caning, on children who did not spell words correctly or gave wrong answers to their times tabl
es. However, Noel remembers his teacher as being patient and caring. She would sit beside him if he did not understand something and explain it to him.

  At midday, the children stopped for lunch, which was usually a hot meal such as stewed rabbit, followed by steamed pudding or other dessert. The staff watched the children to make sure they ate all the food put in front of them. One day, when Noel refused to eat his steamed pudding, a staff member pushed his head down onto his plate and slammed his face into the sticky pudding. Noel retaliated by picking up the plate of steamed pudding and throwing it at the man. After that, Noel was not forced to eat pudding he did not like.

  The school day ended at 3.30 p.m. Then there was work to be done. The children worked in the vegetable garden or the pigsty, chopped wood for the boiler and milked the cows. The tradition of hard working orphans was established early at Ballarat Orphanage where ‘every boy and girl is taught to work, first in the way of cleanliness and order. ...Girls will, by the time they leave the orphanage, be good plain cooks, they will be able to make their own clothes and will understand all about laundry.’ (The Argus, 1929.)

  Noel’s evening meal at five o’clock was usually bread and butter with jam or treacle and a cup of milky tea. Orphanage children often had to endure the mouth-watering aroma of delicious food served to the staff while they forced down their mass produced fare.

  At bed time, the children were sent to their dormitories which, like the school room, were unheated. After warning the children not to wet the bed, the staff patrolled the corridors alert for any child breaking the rules by talking. If caught, the guilty child was made to stand by their bed for ten to fifteen minutes, shivering with cold.

  Violence was another hazard faced by the children at Ballarat Orphanage. Noel remembers retaliating against staff members who used physical violence. According to Frank Golding, most of the staff at the Orphanage used physical intimidation. In his submission to the Senate Inquiry he recalls: ‘Charlie McGregor, the head ‘carer’, set the tone. Not a day went by without him wielding his waddy, banging heads together, dishing out a backhander, a slap across the lug, or a box over the ears. Even the toddlers knew to keep out of the way of his vile stick. The schoolyard was his point of ambush. McGregor stood at the gateway with yard broom at the ready for those who were slow in coming out. Over the years many a broom handle broke over a kid's back or bum. The quickest children avoided him. The slowest bore the brunt. We all feared and loathed him.’