So long as the mother, Ignorance, lives; it is not safe for Science, the offspring, to divulge the hidden causes of things.

This used to be an orphanage. Poor orphans! St Johns Park, New Town. March 2011.

The King's Orphan School, later, the Queen's Orphan School, was built in 1833 to provide for people who weren’t quite orphans; that is, the children of convict women, orphans those whose parent were unable to support them and abandoned children.

It seems that the ‘school’ was a bleak and over-crowded establishment, with headmasters who were more interested in their own profits than they were the wellbeing of the children in their care.

The minutes of one of the Board of Management meetings makes for grim reading.

… Children had never been furnished with Porridge, but merely a very thin Gruel -- that the Oatmeal provided for making a thick porridge could not have been used, & that what had been used was never weighed or measured.
-- that the Childrens Tea was made in a Boiler contg about 6 Galls of water, a handful of Tea with some Sugar & Milk being thrown into the Boiler, without being weighed or measured, and thus boiled all together, & then taken to the Childrens Table in an Iron Pot, where it was laded out, Leaves and all, by the Childrens panakins & so placed before them.

….

The 3 Servants likewise stated that the Master fed his poultry, consisting of Turkeys, Geese, Ducks & Hens, regularly twice a day, with Oatmeal, taken the Store Room and mixed with water. Also that the Children would sometimes pick up Bones, Turnip paring &c, thrown out from the Kitchen, & pick the one and eat the other, & ask for Bread & other things complaining of Hunger.

For an extended trip down misery lane, check out this little expose from the hard hitting Colonial Times, dated 23 April, 1839!

Comments

smudgeon said…

Sounds fairly grim - and if I'm not mistaken, this building is now Meals on Wheels HQ?

21 March 2011 at 12:11

Kris McCracken said…

Yep, this one is Meals on Wheels HQ, while the (twin) building on the other side of the church is the Toy Library, part of Playgroup Tasmania HQ.

21 March 2011 at 15:22

Roddy said…

You do know that my grandmother. My mothers mother was raised in an orphanage.
Her mother died and her father couldn't raise his children on his own.
They were reunited when her father remarried though.
I'm told that times were tough.

21 March 2011 at 19:19

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...

This will hurt me...

Search This Blog