Charity in New South Wales, 1850-1914 : a study in public, private and state provisions for the poor

Dickey, Brian

Charity in New South Wales, 1850-1914 : a study in public, private and state provisions for the poor

Date

1966

Authors

Dickey, Brian

Abstract

In 185O charity in N.S.W. was a matter of caring for the destitute aged, the sick poor, fallen and friendless females, deserted wives and neglected or orphaned children. Most assistance was administered by public societies supported both by donations from the well-to-do in the community and by government subsidies. Charity’s role was a conserving one, with minimal goals and limited vision. The motives were mixed but largely Christian. The techniques were condescending and based on assessments of moral worth. Three main types of need attracted attention: the sick poor, neglected children and those who were simply called ’the p o o r ’. The colony’s hospitals were its charitable institutions par excellence. They were, however, little more than places of last resort in the 1850s . By the 187Os there were signs of change, largely the product of advances in medical knowledge. By 19OO, and even more so by 1914, the facilities provided in them had ceased to be limited to the mid nineteenth century objects of charity. Hospitals provided services manifestly desirable to sober middle class people. The charitable quality of the hospitals was largely disappearing. The second group which has been discussed were the destitute and neglected children of the colony. Care for them in 185O was custodial and institutional. The state was more deeply involved in the care of children than with the hospitals. As well as subsidies it provided legal sanctions, and after 1866, its own reformatory and industrial schools. But in the 1870s there was a sustained barrage of criticisms against the ’barracks’, which showed that attitudes towards these children were changing. The creation of the State Children's Relief Board in 1881 symbolised this increased emphasis on the needs of such children for the individual care which they could best be given in a family. It also revealed the extended involvement of the government in this field of charitable effort. With the succession of C.K. Mackellar as President of the Board in 1902, another stage was reached. Mackellar sought to expand the Board's work beyond the simply charitable, through legal and administrative effort. By 1914 a wide and complex range of services under the control of the State Children’s Relief Department, as well as the efforts of the older and more conservative societies was available for these children. The poor were the subject of much more generalised attention. An important process in the story of caring for them was that by which first one group then another was recognised as requiring special attention. Thus the aged destitute came under the care of a government board in 1862. The Benevolent Society accepted lying-in cases from the mid 1850s. In 1902 it opened the Royal Hospital for Women at Paddington for their care. Poor families and destitute people who could not appropriately be admitted to the asylums usually received outdoor relief in kind. After 19OO many of them received an old age pension. After 1908 the permanently invalid received similar aid. Deserted wives and widows with families came under the care of the State Children’s Relief Department in 1896. By 1914 the state government’s expenditure on assistance to hospitals and charitable societies was nearly £600,000. It had been perhaps £20,000 in 1855» The government had taken its place alongside the public’ societies as the supplier of some services; it had replaced them in others; it had made much more active efforts to reform the conditions in the environment which produced the needs which the charitable societies had sought to deal with. The societies too had accepted important re-definitions of the people to be helped, of the aid appropriate to their needs, and of their place in the community. Charity in 191^ was still an operative concept, but no longer separate from much of the rest of the life of the community. By 191^ it had very largely ceased to be a chancy, condescending affair at the Benevolent Asylum, and had become the provision of widely available, efficiently administered social services.