“Where Are They? Who Are They?”

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“Where Are They? Who Are They?”Suellen MurrayPublished online: 28 May 2008.

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‘ ‘Where Are They? Who Are They?’ ’

Reuniting With Family of Origin After Leaving Care

SUELLEN MURRAY

During the mid-twentieth century some Australian children spent as many as eighteen

years in orphanages and other forms of institutional care. Who, then, were the families

they left and what contact did they continue to have with them in the orphanage? How do

they make sense of these experiences and how do they think it has affected their

relationships with both the family members they already knew and others they only came

to know over the course of their life? In answering these questions I draw on oral history

accounts of people aged in their forties to their seventies who grew up in Catholic

orphanages and children’s homes in Victoria and left care during the period 1945 to 1983.

I ASKED THEM IN [THE ORPHANAGE] when I was about eight, ‘Where are they? Who are

they?’ I still remember as a little kid, and they told me their names and where they were

living, so I focussed on St Kilda . . . and I prayed that I could see her . . . And [after I left

care] I remember looking them up, and ringing quite a few numbers . . . but I never

thought of my brother in Fern Tree Gully because he didn’t know I existed. They just said

you’ve got a brother and he’s ten years older.1

Having gone into care as a baby in the late 1940s, Margaret never knew her

mother. When she left the home at sixteen she searched for people who shared

her surname, hoping to trace her mother. By the time she found out about her

in 1982, as a result of accessing her institutional records, her mother had died. In

this search Margaret found an older brother whom she had not known. The

reunion with her brother was highly anticipated and she travelled interstate to

meet him. However, it is not an easy relationship and Margaret is disappointed.

Like Margaret, John also came into care as a baby in the late 1940s and had

no contact with any family members. In contrast to Margaret, he was not

interested in searching for the family he never knew. As a young man he

attempted to enlist in the Army and sought a copy of his birth certificate, which

told him his mother’s name. Many years later, aged in his fifties, he was contacted

by a younger half-brother and half-sister. They told him that they did not know

his father and that his mother, who had since died, ‘had kept a lot of secrets in her

closet’. While they expressed interest in maintaining contact with him, John’s

view was that he was ‘too old and too independent’ and has had no further

involvement with them.2

1 To protect privacy, names of the research participants have been changed and pseudonyms used.Margaret, interviewed by Suellen Murray, 20 November 2006. Future references to Margaret’saccount of care and the aftermath are drawn from this interview.

2 John, interviewed by Suellen Murray, 18 July 2006.

ISSN 1031-461X print/ISSN 1940-5049 online # 2008 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/10314610802033197229

Australian Historical Studies, Month 2008; 39(0): 229�244 :

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Here are two very different responses to reunion with family of origin. As

these responses suggest, the process of (re)uniting with family of origin is rarely

straightforward. As Audrey Marshall and Margaret McDonald have said about

adoptee reunions*they are often ‘complex’.3 But while some, like Margaret

and John, were placed in care as babies and did not know their family of origin,

others were placed in care from situations of in-home care with known family

members. Depending on their circumstances, they may have then lost touch

with some or all of these family members or have been discouraged from having

contact with them. Some were in care with siblings, but may have had only

limited contact with each other.

In Australia there is an emerging interest in the effects of childhood institutio-

nalisation and in the need for people who grew up in institutional care to reconstruct

their life story. People’s experiences of care and its impact on their subsequent lives

and sense of identity have been vividly documented in the Australian Parliament’s

Senate Community Affairs References Committee report into children in institu-

tional care, Forgotten Australians: A Report on Australians Who Experienced Institutional or

Out-of-Home Care as Children.4 This report was the third of the trilogy of Australian

inquiries concerned with the institutionalisation of Australian children, the

preceding two having examined the experiences of Indigenous children and child

migrants.5 Australian autobiographical accounts have also revealed the nature of

childhood institutionalisationand its consequences.6 Eachof theseaccountspoints to

the importance of people who grew up in institutional care being able to build a life

history in order to make sense of their childhood experiences. As noted in Forgotten

Australians, ‘the loss of identity and connection with family is one of the most

traumatic and distressing outcomes from a life lived in institutional care’.7 The

identification of family of origin is considered central to this process of identity

construction and often part of this process is to trace and meet family members.8

3 Audrey Marshall and Margaret McDonald, The Many-Sided Triangle: Adoption in Australia(Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001), 245.

4 Senate Community Affairs References Committee, Forgotten Australians: A Report on Australians WhoExperienced Institutional or Out-of-Home Care as Children (Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia,2004).

5 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Bringing Them Home: The Report of the NationalInquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families (Sydney:Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 1997); Senate Community Affairs ReferencesCommittee, Lost Innocents: Righting the Record, Report on Child Migration (Canberra: Commonwealthof Australia, 2001).

6 Frank Golding, An Orphan’s Escape: Memories of a Lost Childhood (Melbourne: Lothian, 2005); DavidHill, The Forgotten Children (Melbourne: Random House, 2007); Joanna Penglase, Orphans of theLiving: Growing Up in ‘Care’ in Twentieth-century Australia (Perth: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2005);Richard Szablicki, Orphanage Boy: Through the Eyes of Innocence (Sydney: New Holland, 2007).

7 Senate Community Affairs References Committee, Forgotten Australians, 253.8 Jim Goddard, Julia Feast and Derek Kirton, ‘A Childhood on Paper: Accessing Care Records Under

the Data Protection Act 1998’, Adoption and Fostering 29, no. 3 (2003): 82�84; Christine Horrocksand Jim Goddard, ‘Adults Who Grew Up in Care: Constructing the Self and Accessing Care Files’,Child and Family Social Work 11, (2006): 264�72; Gillian Pugh, Unlocking the Past: The Impact of Accessto Barnardo’s Childcare Records (Aldershot: Gower, 1999); Karen Winter and Olivia Cohen, ‘IdentityIssues For Looked After Children With No Knowledge of Their Origins’, Adoption and Fostering 29,no. 2 (2005): 44�52.

230 Australian Historical Studies, 39, 2008

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In this article I use the term ‘family of origin’ to distinguish it from other

family forms. While ‘family of origin’ is privileged over other forms of family,

partly because it provides the genetic link to our forebears, the term also

suggests other biological and social links. Like adoptees, those who grew up in

care can feel ‘a sense of alienation from a society that regularly prioritises blood

ties and genealogies’.9 For other very practical reasons, knowing who family of

origin is can be important for health reasons to assist in the identification or

prevention of medical conditions. For Indigenous people, in particular, family of

origin has important meanings in relation to kinship networks and to country

and is central to understandings of self and relationship to community. Removal

of Indigenous children from their families has devastating consequences for

their communities.10 For both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, loss of

connection to family of origin can result in a sense of isolation and feelings of

not belonging.11 And during the post-war period, when ‘family of origin’ was

associated with the idealised family form of the nuclear family of a father and a

mother and their children, institutionalisation was especially disruptive to these

social norms. This family of origin was one in which there was supposed to be

mutual support and opportunities to be part of a wider social network, and it is

this that some people who grew up in institutional care believe that they missed

out on. For those who were institutionalised as a result of what was then termed

‘illegitimacy’ and who never knew their family of origin as children, as well as

others whose institutionalisation resulted from the breakdown of this idealised

family arrangement, disconnection and isolation may have been especially

emphasised.

In this article, I consider the relationships that people who have grown up in

Catholic orphanages have to their families of origin over their lifetime. First,

I discuss oral history, the research methods used in this study, and the

characteristics of the forty people interviewed. I then turn to the particular

accounts of those who grew up in orphanages, contextualised by the history of

childhood institutionalisation in post-war Australia. I consider why they came

into care, their contact with their family of origin during institutionalisation,

and experiences of reunion after leaving care. I analyse the factors that affected

the existence of relationships within these families, including the institutional

practices that promoted or inhibited contact. Finally, I examine how they have

made sense of these experiences and how they think it has affected their

9 Karen March, The Stranger Who Bore Me: Adoptee-Birth Mother Relationships (Toronto: TorontoUniversity Press, 1995), cited in Veronica Strong-Boag, Finding Families: Finding Ourselves: EnglishCanada Encounters Adoption from the Nineteenth Century to the Present (Toronto: Oxford UniversityPress, 2006), 227.

10 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 202�20; Yvonne Clark, ‘The Construction ofAboriginal Identity in People Separated From Their Families, Community and Culture: Pieces of aJigsaw’, Australian Psychologist 35, no. 2, (July 2000): 150�57; Doreen Mellor and Anna Haebich,eds, Many Voices: Reflections on Experiences of Indigenous Child Separation (Canberra: National Libraryof Australia, 2002).

11 Senate Community Affairs References Committee, Forgotten Australians, 253.

Murray: Reuniting With Family of Origin After Leaving Care 231

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relationships with both the family members they already knew and others they

only came to know over the course of their life.

In its report on the Stolen Generations, the Human Rights and Equal

Opportunity Commission identified the importance of reunion to Indigenous

people, their families, and communities.12 Similarly, in relation to child migrants,

the Senate Committee reported that they had ‘received many heart-warming

testimonials from former child migrants commenting on how the reunions had

had a very positive effect on their lives’.13 In Forgotten Australians, the Senate

Committee did not consider people’s experiences of reunion specifically, but

noted that ‘once people have found their own records, many try to locate other

family members’.14 There is a substantial literature concerned with reunion with

family of origin by adoptees.15 However, there is little research on the reunion

experiences of those who grew up in care. In this article I analyse the impact of

reuniting with family of origin, taking into account individuals’ experiences of

family and the circumstances from which institutionalisation occurred, as well as

the potential disconnection from family that institutionalisation produced. This,

then, is a new contribution to the history of welfare.

Oral history methodology

This article uses oral history to explore the experiences of Australians who grew

up in institutional care, a methodology consistent with recommendation thirty-

seven of Forgotten Australians, which proposes that historical research be

undertaken into ‘the role of institutional care in Australia’s social history’

including ‘the commissioning of personal histories of former residents’.16 Oral

historians have been challenged for uncritically representing the past and not

paying attention to how memory works. Others, though, have argued that oral

history is centrally concerned with memory which, as Portelli has stated, ‘is not

a passive depository of facts, but an active process of creation of meanings’.17

Memory is affected by changing wider public discourses and, in this

instance, by those concerned with the institutionalisation of children. As noted

by historian Alistair Thomson in relation to the Anzac legend, there is a

‘dynamic relationship between individual memory and national myth’.18

Collective memory concerning experiences of institutionalisation was changed

12 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 233�45.13 Senate Community Affairs References Committee, Lost Innocents, 177.14 Senate Community Affairs References Committee, Forgotten Australians, 276.15 Regarding adoptee reunion, see, for example, Marshall and McDonald, Ch. 11; Strong-Boag, Ch.

8; John Trieliotis, Julia Feast and Fiona Kyle, The Adoption Triangle Revisited: A Study of Adoption,Search and Reunion Experiences (London: BAAF, 2005).

16 Senate Community Affairs References Committee, Forgotten Australians, 336.17 Allessandro Portelli, ‘What Makes Oral History Different?’ in The Oral History Reader, eds Robert

Perks and Alistair Thomson (London: Routledge, 1998), 69.18 Alistair Thomson, ‘Anzac Memories: Putting Popular Memory Theory Into Practice in Australia’ in

The Oral History Reader, eds Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson (London: Routledge, 1998), 310.


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with the release of Forgotten Australians. People who had felt unable to speak

about their experiences because of the stigmatisation of growing up in care are

now being encouraged to tell their story. And the story that was told in Forgotten

Australians was overwhelmingly one of negative experiences with long-term ill-

effects. The importance of family of origin was emphasised and reunion with

family was a way of making sense of the past. Forgotten Australians, then, had at

least two effects in relation to ‘individual memory’. First, it contributed to

opening up the possibility for people to speak about their experiences in care

and, secondly, it shaped responses. While some participants in this study recalled

memories similar to that described in Forgotten Australians, others had much

more mixed*and some positive*memories of life in care, and the effects it was

to have on their subsequent life. Some rejected the negative portrayals evident

in Forgotten Australian and stated their views in opposition to it.

This article draws on oral history interviews conducted with forty people

aged in their forties to seventies who grew up in Catholic orphanages and

children’s homes in Victoria and who left care during the period 1945 to 1983.19

Among this group there is considerable diversity in the reasons for them coming

into care, how care was experienced, and what has happened since. However,

they are not necessarily typical of all those who were institutionalised as

children as those who were interviewed were all recruited with the assistance of

three welfare or advocacy organisations*MacKillop Family Services (the

research partner),20 Broken Rites, and the Victorian Adoption Network for

Information and Self-Help (VANISH)21*and all have had some contact with one

or more of these agencies, either for support and counselling, to gain access to

their personal records, or to attend reunions or other activities.22

19 This article is drawn from a research project funded by an Australian Research Council Linkagegrant (LPO 561704) held by Suellen Murray (RMIT University), John Murphy (University ofMelbourne), and Industry Partner, MacKillop Family Services. The larger project explores thesubsequent lives, memories, and identities of a group of people who grew up in Catholicorphanages and children’s Homes.

20 MacKillop Family Services was formed in 1997 as a refounding of seven Catholic welfare agenciessponsored by three religious congregations, Sisters of Mercy, Sisters of St. Joseph, and theChristian Brothers. These agencies were the continuation of an extensive system of babies’ homes,orphanages, and children’s institutions. Today, MacKillop Family Services continues to provideout-of-home care (though no longer in large institutions), as well as family and communityservices, disability services, and special education services.

21 VANISH is a Victorian government-funded service that provides advice and support to people whohave experienced separation from their family of origin through adoption, being placed in aninstitution or foster care, or through donor conception. Broken Rites is an advocacy agency thatprovides support to victims of church-related abuse. It is not government funded and is notconnected with any religious organisation.

22 While it is a limitation of the study that others who had not had contact with support agencieswere not included, it was preferable to have people linked to these specialist agencies to ensurethat they were able to receive assistance if it was required. If interviewees required support, theywere referred to either MacKillop Family Services or VANISH at no cost to themselves. Theresearch was guided by a reference group chaired by MacKillop Family Services, with membershipincluding representation from people who grew up in institutional care and the support andadvocacy groups VANISH and Broken Rites. The research study was approved by the HumanResearch Ethics Committees at RMIT University and the University of Melbourne.


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Oral history interviews of around one-and-a-half hours were undertaken

with each of the research participants. The interviews were digitally recorded,

transcribed, and returned to participants for review. Any changes were

incorporated and the use of quotes was also checked with participants prior to

inclusion in publications. The transcripts were analysed across a range of themes

including the reasons for interviewees coming into care, their contact with

family in and after care, and experiences of reunion.

The following table summarises the characteristics of the forty people

interviewed according to their year of birth, their gender, and the length of

time they spent in care. The group is evenly spread among men (twenty-one)

and women (nineteen) with most aged in their fifties and sixties. The oldest

participant was seventy-six years old at the time of interview and the youngest

was forty-two.23 Among those we interviewed, more than half had spent at

least ten years in care and all had spent some period of time after eight years

of age. The longest time in care was eighteen years and the shortest was three

years.

In the following discussion, the reasons for institutionalisation are

articulated by the interview participants, rather than according to ‘officials’

or, indeed, their parents. As children, they may not have been told and may

not since have found out, but, on the basis of their circumstances at the time,

they might have drawn conclusions about the reasons. Some have also have

sought information from the records held by the institutions in which they

grew up and, if they were state wards, from the responsible government

agency. The search for records and the difficulties that they may have

encountered along this journey, as well as the information that these records

provide*especially to those who knew little of why they were in care*is an

important part of these accounts.24 It is important to note that how they

Table 1. Characteristics of the forty people interviewed

Gender Length of time in care (years)

Year of birth F M 3�7 8�12 13�18

1930�1944 n�13 6 7 3 8 2

1945�1959 n�17 8 9 6 5 6

1960�1989 n�10 5 5 3 3 4

40 19 21 12 16 12

23 We were least successful in recruiting participants to the youngest cohort. Our youngestparticipants were aged forty-two at the time of interview and the latest that one left care was in1983. The report of the Commission of Inquiry into Abuse of Childhood in QueenslandInstitutions stated that ‘this may reflect the time it takes individuals to come to terms with theirpast to the point where they feel able to discuss their experiences’; Leneen Forde, Jane Thomasonand Hans Heilpern, Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Child Abuse in Queensland Institutions:Final Report (Brisbane: Queensland Government, 1999), 7.

24 Suellen Murray, Jenny Malone and Jenny Glare, ‘Building a Life Story: Providing Records andSupport to Former Residents of Children’s Homes’, Australian Social Work, forthcoming 2008.


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made sense of these reasons, and their experiences of reunion, is affected by

memory and the wider public discourses about the institutionalisation of

children.

The article now proceeds to discuss, first, interviewees’ memories of why

they were institutionalised, second, their contact with parents and siblings

during their time in care, and third, their accounts of reunion. I then conclude

by drawing out the meanings attached to family and reunion evident in these

accounts.

Who were they? Family of origin and accounts of coming into care

Childhood institutionalisation has affected a significant number of Australians,

with approximately 500,000 children institutionalised nationally over the

twentieth century and around 100,000 in Victoria during this period.25 Unlike

other states of Australia, for much of the second half of the twentieth century,

Victoria’s care of children who were unable to live with their family of origin

was based in large institutions accommodating up to 300 children, rather than

being oriented towards boarding-out, or foster care as it later became known. In

particular, Catholic child care was based in orphanages until the 1970s when the

Church began to adopt smaller forms of congregate care such as family group

homes or cottage homes.26 It was only from the 1980s that foster care became

the standard form of out-of-home care for Catholic children in Victoria.27

The four main reasons for institutionalisation, evenly spread across this

sample of forty people, were the death or serious ill-health of their mother, the

child’s ‘illegitimacy’, family breakdown and neglect, typically associated with a

combination of excessive parental drinking, and violence and/or poverty.

However, these categories are not necessarily clear-cut and there could be

several reasons why children came into care with one situation leading to

another, precipitating institutionalisation. Because of the small sample size it is

difficult to infer definitive patterns for institutionalisation over this period.

Nonetheless, the sample suggests that, consistent with wider social changes, the

introduction of the Family Law Act in 1975, and the availability of income

support through the Single Mothers’ Pension from 1973, there were fewer

children being institutionalised for illegitimacy and family breakdown by the

1980s. Over time, there had also been decreasing stigmatisation of unmarried

mothers, which increased the likelihood of these women keeping their

25 Senate Community Affairs References Committee, Forgotten Australians, 394.26 Jill Barnard and Karen Twigg, Holding on to Hope: A History of the Founding Agencies of MacKillop

Family Services 1854�1997 (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2004), 140; AnneMarkiewicz, ‘The Child Welfare System in Victoria: Changing Context and Perspectives 1945�1995’, Children Australia 21, no. 3 (1996): 32�41.

27 See the article by Nell Musgrove in this issue, ‘‘‘Every Time I Think of Baby I Cry’’: Dislocation andSurvival in Victoria’s Child Welfare System’.


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children.28 Also represented are the trends associated with children who came

into care as a result of state intervention. In the wider population, this

proportion increased in the later decades reflecting the changing policies and

practices of child welfare.29

A family’s capacity to care for their children at home was influenced by the

wider social and economic circumstances. In the case of the oldest participants,

children were institutionalised as a result of the impact of war on families,

including the desertion of the father or his excessive drinking or violence

attributed to the effects of his experience during World War II. Births of children

to single mothers appear also to have been a consequence of the war, and some

of these children were institutionalised. A family’s capacity to support their

children was affected by the economic times; periods of higher unemployment,

for example, may have led to higher rates of institutionalisation. In earlier times,

Catholic children had been in care in twice their proportion in the wider

population, a fact attributed to the higher levels of poverty among Catholic

families.30 None of these families could be described as well off and poverty was

often a factor in the family circumstances that led to institutionalisation.

Most children who grew up in orphanages in twentieth-century Australia

were not orphans.31 Indeed, none of the forty participants interviewed for this

research project had parents who had both died by the time the participant had

enter care and the death of one parent was the reason for only four participants

entering care. In each case the parent who had died was their mother. Both

Patricia and Andrea were very young when they came into care and both had

older siblings with whom they shared their accounts of coming into care.

Patricia was one of ten children and her mother died when she was eighteen

months old. She then spent short periods of time with a paternal uncle and his

wife and a maternal grandmother before returning to live with her father and

eight of her oldest siblings. In the 1930s, after a serious accident, the father was

advised by the parish priest to put the children into care and Patricia remained in

care until she was fifteen years old.32 Twenty years later, twelve-month-old

Andrea and her twin brother came into care with their three older siblings

28 Shurlee Swain and Renate Howe, Single Mothers and their Children: Disposal, Punishment and Survivalin Australia (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

29 Barnard and Twigg, 145-6, 235; Donella Jaggs, Neglected and Criminal: Foundations of Child WelfareLegislation in Victoria (Melbourne: Philip Institute of Technology, 1986); Dorothy Scott and ShurleeSwain, Confronting Cruelty: Historical Perspectives on Child Protection in Australia (Melbourne:Melbourne University Press, 2002); Robert van Krieken, Children and the State: Social Control and theFormation of the Australian Child Welfare (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1991).

30 Jill Barnard, ‘‘‘A Secure Safeguard of the Children’s Morals’’: Catholic Child Welfare in NineteenthCentury Victoria’, Provenance: The Journal of the Public Records Office Victoria, no. 4 (2005); LesleyHughes, ‘Catholics and the Care of Destitute Children in Late Nineteenth Century New SouthWales’, Australian Social Work, 51, no. 1 (1998): 17�25, citing M. Horsburgh, ‘The Apprenticing ofDependent Children in New South Wales Between 1850 and 1885, Journal of Australian Studies,no. 7 (1980): 39�40.

31 The Report of the Commission of Inquiry Into Abuse of Children in Queensland Institutions also makes thepoint that ‘few of the children historically placed in orphanages were, in fact, orphans’; Forde,Thomason and Heilpern, ii.

32 Patricia, interviewed by Elizabeth Branigan, 14 November 2006.


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because their mother was very unwell. Their mother remained in poor health

and died when Andrea was six years old and she remained in care until she was

seventeen.33 Serious maternal ill-health was the reason that Stephanie and six

other people interviewed came into care. Her mother was in psychiatric

institution for periods of Stephanie’s childhood and she was in care from two

until twelve years of age during the 1950s.34

‘Illegitimacy’ did not necessarily result in institutionalisation although it did

for most of the seven people interviewed who had been born to unmarried

mothers. Being born into a supportive family with sufficient financial resources

could mean that the child stayed with their mother or the mother’s family. For

others, both lack of resources or the social stigma of unmarried motherhood led

to children being institutionalised. Some mothers kept their children and

attempted to care for them until their economic circumstances proved too

difficult. The introduction of the Supporting Mothers’ Pension and other social

policy changes made a significant difference to women’s capacity to care for their

children. Graham is among those who did not know their family of origin while

in care. Graham was in care from six months of age until the late 1950s when he

was thirteen. He had no contact with his mother and knew nothing of his

family. He mused about the circumstances of his institutionalisation, reflecting

that it occurred ‘just after war time so you have to assume that she’s in dire

straits’.35

When family breakdown occurred there were often attempts to keep

children with one parent. However, other issues such as poverty could lead to

institutionalisation. Kevin recalled that his father left the family in 1939 ‘never

to be seen again’. He later found out that his father had gone to war, but never

resumed contact with his family. Consequently, Kevin was institutionalised for

eleven years from the age five years.36 Marilyn was also put into care as a result

of family breakdown. In the late 1940s, her mother had left her father and

Marilyn, aged three, and her younger sister, and an older brother went into

orphanages.37

Domestic violence and parental excessive drinking could also lead to

children being placed in care and it is in these circumstances, or where the

environment was considered ‘immoral’, that state intervention was most likely

to result in children being institutionalised.38 As Shurlee Swain, Nell Musgrove,

and others have revealed, mothers were judged harshly because they were

expected to provide parental care regardless of the husband’s drinking or

violence. Typically, instead of mothers being supported to care for their children,

33 Andrea, interviewed by Suellen Murray, 21 November 2006.34 Stephanie, interviewed by Elizabeth Branigan, 23 August 2006.35 Graham, interviewed by Elizabeth Branigan, 29 September 2006.36 Kevin, interviewed by Elizabeth Branigan, 19 July 2006.37 Marilyn, interviewed by Suellen Murray, 27 April 2007.38 Shurlee Swain, ‘‘‘I am Directed to Remind You of Your Duty to Our Family’’: Public Surveillance of

Mothering in Victoria, Australia, 1920�1940’, Women’s History Review 8, no. 2 (1999): 247�59;Shurlee Swain, ‘The State and the Child’, Australian Journal of Legal History, no. 4 (1998): 57�77.


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the children were removed.39 Children could be placed in care voluntarily

without the intervention of the state where their parent or parents (or other

family members) provided financial assistance to the institution to support their

care, although not necessarily to the extent that the institution may have

wanted. Tim and his five brothers were institutionalised as wards of the state in

the 1940s as a result of parental drinking and violence. He recalled the situation

he left behind:

My mother and father didn’t care for us. They’d be at the hotel every night and wouldn’t

come home until late. I can remember one time*I must have been about four or four

and a half*and I was playing down the road from the house. I remember at nine o’clock

at night a policeman taking me into the house and putting me into my mother’s bed . . .

I can remember seeing my mother and father fighting with knives in their hands while

I’m under the table.40

During the 1950s, Warren and his brothers and sister were left to fend for

themselves after their mother was institutionalised and their father left home.

They were looked after by an aunt for some time but, as a result of her ill-

treatment of them, they were eventually made state wards and Warren spent

most of his childhood in care.41

While their experiences of institutionalisation were not necessarily positive,

many of those whose accounts are described here understood the reason for

their institutionalisation as being, at the very least, necessary. Graham, for

example, assumed that his mother was unable to care for him properly and,

despite their statutory role in providing this alternative care, he is very

concerned that both government and the church then failed in their duties.

According to Andrea, coming into care was the ‘for the best’ because their father

was ‘an alcoholic’ and ‘abusive and violent’. The Home was a ‘safe, secure

environment and that was her [mother’s] only alternative’. Several others,

although dissatisfied with the care that they received, believed that it was better

than what had been available to them in their family of origin. This, then, was

likely to have an impact on how they made sense of reunion.

Where were they? Contact while in care with families of origin

A significant factor affecting children’s capacity to have contact with their

parents (if they knew who they were) and with siblings if they had (known)

39 Nell Musgrove, ‘‘‘Filthy’’ Homes and ‘‘Fast’’ Women: Welfare Agencies’ Moral Surveillance in Post-Second World War Melbourne’, Journal of Australian Studies no. 80 (2004): 111�19; NellMusgrove, ‘Secrecy and Social Work’, Antithesis 1 (2003): 1�17; Scott and Swain, 80�81; Swain,1999, 252�55; Marie Wilkinson, ‘Good Mothers*Bad Mothers: State Substitute Care of Childrenin the 1960s’, in Gender Reclaimed: Women In Social Work, eds Helen Marchant and Betsy Wearing(Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1986), 93�103.

40 Tim, interviewed by Elizabeth Branigan, 4 October 2006.41 Warren, interviewed by Suellen Murray, 14 October 2006.


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siblings was the length of time in care. The longer the period of time spent in

care, the harder it was to maintain contact. While many children could remain

in care for long periods of time*and this could be as long as eighteen years*some were admitted to care ‘temporarily’ by their families for shorter periods

before they returned home.42 While some children had no contact at all with

their parents during institutionalisation, others had some contact with their

mother and/or father (or other family members including grandparents), but

these occasions were typically limited to monthly (or less frequent) visits to the

institutions.43 In addition, during school holidays, some children stayed with

their parents or grandparents. Others were selected to stay with holiday hosts

during school holidays and, for some, this unrelated group of people became

their ‘family’. Visits and time spent with family members were recalled with a

range of emotions. Some recalled a sense of estrangement from family members

they barely knew while others anticipated visits with considerable joy, but

sometimes then experienced great disappointment when the expected visits did

not eventuate.

The religious staff in the orphanages played a part in whether children had

contact with their parents. Marilyn, for example, retained contact with her

siblings over their period of care, particularly her sister, even though, in 1959, at

the age of fifteen, she made the difficult decision to accept foster care and leave

her sister in the home. During her time in care, she saw her mother ‘three or

four times’ and had some contact with a paternal uncle and his family. Marilyn

was aware that the nuns deterred her mother from visiting. Her mother, who

had left their father, was now living with another man, whom she eventually

married, and had two further children, a situation morally unacceptable to the

Church. Like the welfare workers who made judgments about women’s capacity

to parent properly, religious staff also made judgments*judgments that were to

have harsh consequences for the children concerned. Marilyn never saw her

mother again and believed that ‘she didn’t want to have anything to do with

them’.

The amount of contact between siblings was also affected by the policies

and practices of the homes. All of those whose accounts are described here

spent some years in the large institutional settings such as St Catherine’s

Orphanage in the regional city of Geelong or St Vincent de Paul Boys’

Orphanage in suburban South Melbourne. These orphanages housed up to

300 children at any one time. However, if they entered care at younger than

nine years of age, it is likely that they would have lived in a number of other,

smaller institutions that were organised according to age and gender. Due to

this system of age- and gender-based institutions, siblings could be separated

42 Reflecting the dearth of research in this area, we do not know what lengths of stay would havebeen typical for Australian children during the period of this study. For an earlier period, seeMarion Fox, ‘Some Aspects of the Care of Children in Catholic Institutions in New South Wales’,Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society 18 (1997): 41.

43 The practice of discouraging parental contact appears to have been widespread during the post-war decades; Senate Community Affairs References Committee, Forgotten Australians, 105�06.


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throughout their childhood. In contrast to the larger orphanage settings, some

of our youngest interview participants*those born in the 1960s*lived, at

least for some time, in the smaller congregate care arrangements of cottage

homes or family group homes. A number of benefits are attributed to this

model of care, including the possibility of closer emotional ties facilitated by a

smaller number of children in the one household. It also meant that siblings

could remain together.

While levels of contact varied over time*typically and particularly in the

earlier decades*it was restricted, especially if children lived in different

institutions.44 While in some cases the nuns and brothers did not know that

particular children were siblings, in other cases they were actively discouraged

from contact. Even when children lived in the adjoining properties of the St

Vincent de Paul’s Homes, they were rarely allowed to visit each other. Painful

memories were evoked of not being able to talk to or hug a sibling when the

institutions had combined functions. Warren recalled his distress at not being

able to touch or hug his sister on the occasions that she visited him at St

Augustine’s. Others recalled letters written to their siblings, later found among

their institutional records, having never been sent. There were others

interviewed who had more positive memories of contact with siblings in care.

By the 1970s, residential arrangements had changed considerably and this had

marked significance for siblings. For example, Andrea and her twin brother lived

together in St Catherine’s, initially at a time when this institution also

accommodated younger boys, although separately in boys’ and girls’ dormi-

tories. Later they lived together in a family group home.

(Re)uniting with families of origin

Given the circumstances of their institutionalisation and the obstacles to

maintaining contact between parents, children, and siblings, reunion with

family of origin could be difficult. At the same time, however, because of

idealised notions of ‘family of origin’ and what they should be in terms of

providing support and a caring social network, there could be high expectations

of reunion. Some participants had vivid memories of the difficulties of family life

prior to coming into care and there could simply be ‘a wish to know our

background, our heritage’.45 Similarly, according to Strong-Boag, ‘while

[adoptee] searchers have occasionally hoped for close emotional ties to those

44 As for restrictions on children’s contact with their parents, these practices of limiting contact withsiblings were also identified by the Senate Community Affairs References Committee, ForgottenAustralians, 107.

45 Madelene Allen, Reunion: The Search for My Birth Family (Toronto: Stoddart, 1992) vii, cited inStrong-Boag, 225.


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who they have lost, more often they concentrated on the details to anchor their

own lives.’46 What, then, were the accounts of those who experienced reunion?

Reunion with families of origin could occur at various times after leaving

care. The youngest children leaving care were reunited with their family of

origin, typically returning to the home with all its attendant complexities that

they had left behind when first placed in care. Others met family members

whom they had not known before upon leaving the home (and had sometimes

met siblings for the first time in care). Some leaving care had no family to

contact or to return to. Others found out about and contacted newly discovered

family much later, sometimes after long periods of wondering and searching.

Indeed, most of the forty people interviewed have since had contact with other

members of their family of origin, including those who, as children, believed

they had no known relatives.

Seeking reunion among adoptees is a gendered experience: women are

more likely to do so than men.47 To some extent this is also reflected among this

group of people who grew up in institutional care. Like Margaret, whose

experience of reunion I described in the introduction to this article, Marilyn was

keen to reunite with previously unknown family members. At the time of

interview, Marilyn had recently made contact with two younger half-brothers

who lived with their mother while she and her two siblings from an earlier

marriage were institutionalised. Marilyn’s excitement about a forthcoming first

meeting with them was palpable. While she clearly was curious to know much

about the mother she had hardly known, she was very concerned not to upset

her newly found half-siblings by asking questions about her: ‘hopefully’, she

said, ‘it might come out’.

For Andrea, an attempt to reunite with her father resulted in unanswered

questions. Andrea was in care with four siblings and has maintained close

contact with them throughout her life. She also has three older half-siblings

from her mother’s earlier marriage and two younger half-siblings from her

father’s later marriage with whom she has more recently made contact. Her

father has since died, but she did not have contact with him, even though she

tried to trace him. A letter sent to him many years before by her sister received

no response, but was found in his house after he died. Andrea was left to

wonder what they had meant to him and why he had not responded.

In contrast to the experiences of the women, several of the men, when

approached by other previously unknown family members, declined or showed

little interest in ongoing contact. As we have seen, John was not interested in

maintaining contact with newly found half-siblings. Similarly, Graham had not

made any efforts to search for family members and did not have any

expectations of the family he had never known. When he was fifty years old,

he was contacted by a sister who had been fostered and was told that he had five

46 Strong-Boag, 227.47 Marshall and McDonald, 225; Strong-Boag, 211.


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other siblings. Graham has ‘no interest’ in reuniting with his family: for him,

they have never existed and he has had no further contact.

But there were also some exceptions to the expected gendered norms

regarding reunion. Tom went into care as a baby during the 1930s, leaving

when he was fourteen years old. He knew nothing of the circumstances of his

birth and knew of no family members. After finding his mother’s death

certificate in 2004, he wrote to the person who informed the Register of Births,

Deaths and Marriages of her death, thinking that she may know something

about her. He was surprised to discover that this woman is his sister-in-law and

had been married to his half-brother, James. He has since reunited with the

family he never knew and has learned something more of his mother’s life. She

had had the two boys as a single mother and, coming from a family of ten

herself, and one that was stretched financially, at least in part because her own

father had died, she had relinquished the care of the younger child to the

orphanage. After the reunion, the family changed their mother’s headstone to

include ‘mother of James and Tom.’ This acknowledgement held great

importance to Tom.48

Brendan’s reunion was with his mother, previously known but with whom

contact had been lost. Along with his brothers he had actively sought reunion

with her over many years. In the 1970s, Brendan was growing up in a family

where domestic violence was occurring. He recalled his father standing over his

mother with a shotgun: ‘he was a very, very hard person’. When he was nine his

mother left the family and had no contact with him or his four siblings until they

found her again twenty-four years later. Brendan and his older brother went

into care with the younger children remaining at home with their father.

Despite this long gap when he did not see her and the sadness that her leaving

had caused, Brendan welcomed his mother back into his life, sharing his home

with her and ensuring that she got to know her grandson. He said he ‘never

brought up the past. She was a good grandmother and that was all that

mattered.’49 For a child, having a parent leave the family could be emotionally

devastating, at least partly because of the institutionalisation that resulted, as

some of these accounts testify. While this loss could result in a lifetime of

bitterness, Brendan’s is a story of both wanting to reunite and of great

generosity.

As noted by Strong-Boag in relation to adoptees, ‘siblings could be as

desperately desired as parents’,50 but reuniting with siblings with whom they

had previously grown up also had varying outcomes. Closeness and lack of

closeness to siblings are both attributed to the effects of institutionalisation.

Several of those interviewed believed that their emotional closeness to their

siblings was a result of having shared the experiences of childhood institutio-

nalisation. Others, in contrast, believed it had shattered these relationships.

48 Tom, interviewed by Elizabeth Branigan, 10 November 2006.49 Brendan, interviewed by Suellen Murray, 2 March 2007.50 Strong-Boag, 216.


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Warren and his two brothers and a sister were all institutionalised. As a younger

child he and his sister had been ‘inseparable’, but now ‘we hardly have anything

to say to each other’. His childhood had resulted in their being ‘disconnected’,

but, he acknowledged, ‘if they were in trouble, one of us would be there pretty

quick’. Tim and his five brothers all went into care and, although he did not see

a lot of them there, they did play football together. Indeed, he met his eldest

brother for the first time in a football match between St Augustine’s and St

Vincent de Paul Boys’ orphanages. Institutionalisation, according to Tim, had

broken some of their fraternal bonds as they rarely spent time together as a

group. In recent years, for the first time in fifty-two years, the six brothers were

together at a family wedding. He considers the boys that he was in care with to

be his brothers more than his siblings.

Conclusion

A range of circumstances led children to be institutionalised, but all were, at

best, difficult. Some circumstances were characterised by considerable tragedy.

Moreover, for much of the four decades discussed here, contact between

institutionalised children and their parents and siblings was restricted. In the

earliest decades, consistent with wider social attitudes that deemed parents

unworthy if they engaged in morally unacceptable behaviours, such as having

children out of marriage or leaving a marriage to live with someone else, the

Catholic orphanages discouraged these ‘immoral’ parents from visiting their

children. In any event, visits were typically only allowed once a month. Siblings

were also discouraged from being in contact by virtue of the policies of

separating children by age and gender across and within institutions and

limiting physical contact during infrequent visits. Only from the 1970s was

contact between siblings encouraged through the advent of smaller shared living

arrangements.

While some have declared that these difficulties in childhood, both

the circumstances of their family of origin and the life they lived in care, have

brought them closer together, many believe that these circumstances have

disrupted what they consider to be the natural familial bonds. It is possibly for

this reason that, for some, there are high expectations of the relationships that

they forge with newly discovered family members, both parents and siblings.

There is a hope that by meeting these people with whom they share a common

parent (or the parent they had never known), they can reconstruct something of

the family life that they never knew. For others, though, it is much simpler than

this: they just want to know more about the parents they left behind to try to

make sense of the life that they have lived. Among this group there has been

both joy in meeting previously unknown family members and also great

disappointment. There has also been considerable ambivalence and a lack of

interest in having contact with people who have not previously shared their

lives. And there are others again who have maintained close relationships with


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siblings and other family members despite the obstacles that institutionalisation

presented. Regardless, what these accounts tell us is that reunion, when it

occurs, may not be straightforward. The circumstances that lead to institutio-

nalisation may work against reunion and, while institutionalisation itself may

result in the desire to reunite with family of origin, it may also produce long-

term fracturing effects that disrupt the possibility of connectedness.


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Documents

“Where Are They? Who Are They?”