Excellent Women and Troublesome Children: State Foster Care in Tasmania, 1896-1918

Caroline Evans*

Tasmania’s Neglected Children’s Department was established in 1896, as a result of public anxiety engendered by the presence of numerous children in the streets during 1890s Depression. The Department employed foster mothers to look after the children who were defined as neglected and committed to its care. Extensive files of the children were kept, providing a unique opportunity to study the relationship between the state and the working class, in early twentieth century Tasmania. They demonstrate that foster mothers exercised agency in their negotiations with the Department and in so doing were contributors to the development of policy. Their actions challenge the implicit assumption of much welfare historiography that policy was driven solely by an elite.

In 1896, the Tasmanian Neglected Children and Youthful Offenders Act was passed, establishing a Neglected Children’s Department. Its creation ended almost 30 years of joint voluntary and state management of the boarding-out scheme, placing it firmly in the control of public servants. Unlike the volunteers, the public servants were diligent record keepers, resulting in a rich primary source. Each letter, memo, and report was scrupulously filed, mostly in one folder per child, although some families are placed together. They provide a fascinating example of relations between the state, its clients, and workers. In particular, they offer a glimpse into the working lives of foster mothers, demonstrating not passivity, but a determination to manage the children according to their own traditions and an ability to negotiate effectively with officialdom. Their initiatives won them concessions on a day to day basis and influenced policy decisions, although not necessarily in ways that the women might have chosen. While most histories depict that as a prerogative of elites, this source provides an opportunity to discuss the role of foster mothers, as well as other groups, in policy formulation.	1
Over the last 30 years, the argument put forward by liberal historians that welfare provision, as an initiative of a benevolent masculine elite, maintained a steady progress, has been convincingly challenged by other historians drawing on neo-Marxist or Foucauldian models. More recently, feminist historiography, by demonstrating the role that women played in initiating state child welfare reforms, has been crucial to breaking down the myths that change was driven only by men. Yet all such histories remain focused on the elite and its ability to control other social groups, thus characterising them, as Richard Kennedy points out, as passive recipients of initiatives from above.1	2
To counter such images other historians have tried to jettison the social control theory of neo-Marxist positions. For instance, Brian Dickey and Robert Van Krieken argue that although the middle class were influential in developing policy, the working class, through the trade union movement and the Labor Party, had an input into it too.2 Van Krieken argues that the state was not	3
a bourgeois gardener or social engineer, restructuring working-class families, but in alliance with the working class’s ‘struggle for respectability’. That many would resist that move to respectability, especially children and youth, and that men and women defined it differently, does not detract from its overall strength within the movement as a whole.3
There was considerable working-class opposition to the Neglected Children and Youthful Offenders Act, a liberal-bourgeois initiative, on the grounds that families needed a decent income, not moral advice concerning their children.4 The opponents aspired not to imposed models, but to respectability on their own terms. As Janet McCalman suggests, working-class respectability, acquired through self-discipline, did not mean ‘social and political deference’.5 Once the Department was established, this conflict was perpetuated. It was because foster mothers did consider themselves respectable that many resisted attempts to monitor their lives. Interference, mostly through an inspection system that implied their homes were inferior, fuelled resentment. Moreover they sought to maintain their traditional rationales for child care and methods of carrying it out. While using the state to earn a living, they resisted its power.	4
Van Krieken and Dickey’s histories seem to illustrate a fundamental dilemma for social historians in that, while social control theory is dismissive of agency, attempts to avoid it can underestimate power inequalities. Smaller studies in terms of place, scope and time frames reveal the complexities of the relationship between the state and individuals, thus ameliorating this difficulty. For instance, Christina Twomey’s article ‘Gender, Welfare and the Colonial State’ shows how poor women’s requests to magistrates for assistance in supporting their children led to a policy framed to help them, albeit according to bourgeois masculine values. Linda Gordon, writing in the American context, argues that, in seeking help from child protection agencies, victims of domestic violence sought to redefine problems and influence policy, with some success. However, these studies reveal the relationship between the state and its clients (or in America, a voluntary agency and clients), not those who worked for it, like foster mothers. While their experiences are briefly addressed in books such as Margaret Barbalet’s Far from a Low Gutter Girl, and Shurlee Swain and Renate Howe’s Single Mothers and their Children, they are tangential to the central theme and do not address the question of power between the state and foster mothers.6	5
The Tasmanian records provide an excellent opportunity to study the power relationships between individuals and the state. They are comprehensive, yet manageable, because the population was small. The minutiae of detail required to understand power relations from below makes an Australia-wide project impossible and difficult in any larger states which still have such records. Thus Tasmania provides a valuable microcosm, despite local variations, of policies that were replicated elsewhere. This article is a study of human interactions, the experiences and agency of the foster mothers; its qualitative approach is determined by the nature of the files of the Neglected Children’s Department which are highly subjective, and not amenable to the categorisation required for statistical analysis.	6
Working-Class Child Care Traditions
The foster mothers’ approach to state foster care relied on working-class women’s traditional ways of mothering and working. In all working-class homes, necessity made economic security the over-riding priority, so that there was little scope for indulgence. Child rearing was an economic exchange between parent and child in that, as children grew older, they repaid the cost of their early care by contributing to the household income. Some very young children assisted their parents by selling papers, shoe shining, and in poorer families, foraging in the streets for food, begging, and pilfering. Busy mothers, usually doing paid work, had little time for coddling so they raised self-reliant rather than carefully supervised children.	7
Child minding was often undertaken for payment. For instance, a woman who looked after the children of a neighbour who had gone into domestic service and then reneged on her payments, told the departmental secretary that, ‘I did not take them out of charity I could not afford to do it’. The Anglican curate said she was ‘very badly off so of course it was a matter of business not charity’.7 Sometimes child-minding became a regular source of income and children, usually babies, were sought by advertising in the press or word of mouth. However, the care of young children was financially risky because indigent parents often stopped paying maintenance and disappeared. When the children became older, costs could be offset by their labour, running errands, minding younger children and so on. Older children could be in demand for this reason. One father who advertised his daughter and son, aged nine and six, in the Mercury, was flooded with requests for the girl because she had only four years of schooling left and would be useful for ‘running messages’. Since it was unsupervised, child-minding suited independently minded women in need of a dignified source of income. They were probably willing to sacrifice some personal autonomy to work for the state so that their pay, although similar to that of private carers, was more regular. Moreover, many hoped to capitalise on older children’s labour.8	8
Departmental Attitudes Towards Foster Mothers
The Neglected Children’s Department had four secretaries: George Richardson (1896-98), F.R. Seager (1898-1911), H.E. Packer (1911-14) and D’Arcy Addison (1914-18). Until Packer’s administration, they were assisted by a women’s volunteer visiting committee and two departmental inquiring officers, James Pearce and William Welsh. After that inspections were carried out by two professionally qualified inspecting nurses.9	9
The bureaucrats were influenced by the maternalism of this period, well documented by Marilyn Lake and Jill Roe. The Neglected Children and Youthful Offenders Act, under which they worked, had been lobbied for by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, who promoted maternalism. Another potential influence was progressivism which gained strength in Tasmania from about 1900 onwards. This was a movement which, according to Michael Roe, sought the perfectibility of the human physical condition through rational means. Some progressivists who were concerned about the racial purity of Anglo-Celtic Australia embraced eugenics. As Naomi Parry and Caroline Evans argue, limited funding, bureaucratic stasis, an attachment to liberal-bourgeois principles, and state wards’ agency meant that officials in the Neglected Children’s Department substantially evaded progressivism and eugenics, despite their influence in contemporary legislation, for instance, the Infant Life Protection Act (1907) and the Mental Deficiency Act (1920). The only progressivist secretary was HE Packer, who appointed the inspecting nurses.10	10
While officials wanted state children to be raised working class, they had a definite perspective about what that entailed, which did not necessarily coincide with the foster mothers’ ideas. Moreover, the bureaucrats had an inherent suspicion of working-class parental practices, born of observations of them through a middle-class prism. In a broad sense they were guided by representations which assumed a dichotomy of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mothers. ‘Good’ mothers provided nurture and moral training in a quiet but firm way. They led by example, drawing on impeccable characters, modest, honest, emotionally generous and calm, yet firm. However, in the early twentieth century there was a growing suspicion, freely expressed in the Tasmanian press, that mothers were becoming too frivolous and self-indulgent to take proper care of their children. Inevitably, any generalised concern about mothering devolved mostly on a working class caught in the gaze of social reformers, bureaucrats and the press.11	11
To make matters worse, women who accepted payment for child care were suspected of having no emotional commitment to the child. A letter to the Daily Post in June 1917, from a man having a custody dispute with the Department, drew on representations of inadequate, paid mothering to complain about foster care:	12
For a long time many people have eyed the boarding out system with grave suspicion, and every day facts are coming to light which prove our suspicions well founded. We have heard of children going short of food and clothes; we have heard of actual cases of ill-treatment and neglect, and have complained to members of Parliament, Labor and Liberal. Parliaments have come and gone, but nothing has been done for these helpless children of the boarded-out system. And why this silence? Are they blind or dumb, those guardians of our public interest? Is it because there are hundreds, nay thousands, who have an interest in and profit by these State-kept children? ... Is it a fact that all sorts and conditions of women are obtaining an easy living, dressing in silks and satins, with an income obtained by skimping these unfortunate children’s food and clothes? I tell you, sir, the time has come when we must sift this question to the bottom.12
In a follow-up interview with a Daily Post reporter Addison emphasised that, on the contrary, foster mothers were affectionate, nurturing, and altruistic. There had been no deaths since 1913 thanks to the women, ‘who in nearly every instance displayed the very greatest care and devotion in the welfare of the children’. Addison said that the children endorsed his comments with their affection. Boys who went away as sailors sent their foster mothers presents and ‘when they returned never failed to call on them, just as if they were their real parents’. This was proof that ‘the department’s system is a success, and that the children receive the very best of care from those who, although paid for their services yet combine with it maternal instincts of the best kind’.13	13
Despite Addison’s denials, officials feared the dangers of fostering. A ‘baby farming’ scare in June 1905, in which the Mercury alleged that four children had died from culpable neglect by the same ‘baby farmer’ within six months, only added to these concerns. The revelation led to a media panic, in which women paid to look after infants by their single mothers were accused of murder, thus causing the high ex-nuptial death rate. In an attempt to curb infanticide, parliamentarians passed the Infant Life Protection Act in 1907 to provide for the inspection of such homes. Most historians of the subject agree that poverty, inadequate feeding, and gastric flu caused such deaths, with infanticides being committed by the babies’ own mothers. Swain and Howe argue that, in an era of maternalism, authorities sought to divert attention from this reality by blaming ‘baby farmers’. Such constructs had implications for state foster mothers too.14	14
Concern about whether quality child care was possible in the absence of altruistic motives was furthered by the stories of some state wards, in private care before their committals. For instance, a 12-year-old girl living with an impoverished old woman in a Strahan hut was kept home from school to go begging and to buy beer from the pub.15 Eight-year-old Clifford, fostered for several years by a woman working because her husband was unemployed, came to police attention for school truanting and stealing. He was probably, like many street children, picking up an income where he could. A police sergeant reported:	15
I examined the boy found him pale, and pinched in the face, his body appeared in fair condition and bore no marks of ill usage, his shirt was very dirty, I examined the room and bed in which he sleeps the room is underground, and very damp, the bed was dirty.16
Departmental officials also had some bad experiences with children in their own care but outside the boarding-out system, either in adoptive homes or as teenagers who had been apprenticed. Until the Adoption of Children Act was passed in 1920, there were no legal arrangements for adoption, as we understand it today. However, under the Neglected Children and Youthful Offenders Act, the secretary of the Department, as the guardian of state children, had the power to place them with ‘some suitable person who may be willing to take charge of such ward’. The Act also provided for a more permanent arrangement by which the carer became the child’s legal guardian by an order of the governor-in-council. Inspections by the Department still had to be allowed, and an approval of guardianship could be revoked if the carer proved unsatisfactory.17	16
In practice, secretaries did not arrange adoptions by order of the governor-in-council, but relied instead on their own, less formal powers, to place children in homes which they considered suitable; an arrangement that was more expedient and less likely to cause legal wrangles. It was referred to as adoption, yet although an agreement was signed, the secretary remained the guardian.	17
During Seager’s administration the Department was financially constrained so that to save money, children were sometimes placed in adoptive homes with little care taken to ensure their well being. Unlike boarded-out children they could be sent to rural areas, which were not regularly inspected until 1915. Although many of these children apparently fared well, others were exploited as cheap labour and sometimes cruelly treated. One boy asked to be removed because he was ‘kicked in the head’. His story was corroborated by neighbours who said he was frightened of his adoptive mother and worked long hours hoeing, scrubbing floors, washing dishes, and minding younger children while she socialised.18 In another instance, a girl was removed from an adoptive home because of sexual abuse by the father and the mother’s cruelty.19	18
Children were apprenticed at school-leaving age, usually in rural areas, as domestic servants if they were girls, or farm labourers if boys. Like adopted children they had mixed experiences. A few prosecutions for cruelty alerted officials to their vulnerability.20 For instance, according to a police report, one boy ran to the police station after his fourth beating with his back, arms, and legs ‘literally a mass of bruises’, from being hit with a whip. His employer was prosecuted and convicted.21	19
Departmental officials had aspirations for the care of state wards as well as concerns. They stressed the importance of good training so as to impart moral purity, cleanliness, tidiness, reliability, punctuality, obedience, honesty, industry, good manners, and the ability to take responsibility. Liberal bourgeois influences, notably those of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, ensured that good health, as well as moral purity, was emphasised.22 Later the importance of health was reinforced by the growing influence of progressivism.23 The provision of plentiful, wholesome food was an indicator of good care. Pearce liked to see state children fed an ‘abundance of good food, meat vegetables and pudding’ with the table properly set with knives, forks, crockery, and a clean cloth.24 Good food produced healthy children, a strong future work force, and symbolised the foster mother’s nurturing skills, while proper presentation suggested attention to manners. Neatly clothed, clean children were also a sign of good care.25 Since clean bodies led to good health and moral purity, foster mothers were advised to make ‘frequent use of the bath’.26 Houses should be ‘well furnished’, ‘roomy’, ‘tidy’, ‘neat and clean’.27 Schooling augmented the foster mothers’ efforts.28 Warmly dressed and well-fed, state children would hopefully blend in with the others.	20
Where there was a serious contagious illness, children were removed. One foster mother, whose sister had tuberculosis, begged Packer that two children be left with her:	21
Mr Welsh told me he intend to removed them from my care by order in conquence [sic] of the illness of my poor sister who had absolulily [sic] nothing to do with the children. I therefore Humbly ask that they Should not taken from me, they are very much attached to mee [sic] and I love them and take great interest in them.
Packer replied that since the children’s health was endangered they must be removed.29 From past experience, he feared the dangers of leaving children in such homes. One child who died of tubercular meningitis had caught the disease from her foster mother’s daughter.30
State wards were supposed to be raised like children from ‘respectable’ working-class families. Pearce thought that in ‘appearance and manners’ they ‘compared very favourably’ and that	22
there is nothing about them that would lead one to believe that they are state children and [I] have always impressed on foster parents the necessity of keeping the latter fact from the children.31
Kindness was expected. According to Pearce: ‘Our aim is to lift the children from their former surroundings and not to crush their little spirits by letting them know or feel that they are state or charity children’.32 He was pleased to see them ‘picknicking on sport grounds, on steam roundabouts and joining in all kinds of amusements’.33 Seager praised Pearce’s attempt to ‘elevate the social position of state children wherever possible’.34 However, it is unlikely that he succeeded in concealing the children’s status from them. Many would have remembered their own parents and if they did not, inspection was likely to reveal the truth. One girl, adopted as a baby, who was ignorant of her status, was considered an aberration.35
Training was mostly imparted through a way of life that was simple but with the material necessities, disciplined but kind, and by a routine that included work and pleasure. Eight-year-old Phillip, committed in 1908 after killing his two and a half year old brother, was raised according to these ideals.36 A few years after his committal, Phillip wrote the following letter:	23
We all go to school and I am in the third class. We have had our examination for the quarter but I do not know wheather [sic] I have passed into the fourth class or not yet We have got 3 little calves to feed We have to get up early of a morning and we have got 2 cows too and a lot of fowls and we get 10 eggs every day. We go to church and Sunday School every Sunday. We got a medal and a cake on Coronation day and we went into town on Thursday.37
The letter was written to show the attorney-general, W.B. Propsting, the advantages of placing delinquent boys in foster care, so Phillip was probably told what to write. Although the letter does not give his point of view, it illustrates the ideal home and outcome. The child’s life was orderly and unobtrusively disciplined, combining work and pleasure. He was apparently developing a respect for the civil order and was polite, hard working, and content.
Ensuring ‘Properly Conducted’ Homes
Careful selection of foster mothers was considered one way of protecting children and ensuring ‘good’ training. Only foster mothers with ‘respectable’, even ‘superior’ characters who were ‘industrious’, ‘clean’ and ‘properly conducted’ were chosen.38 Their good character was endorsed by a letter from their church minister and assessed by a visit from the inquiring officer. Although mostly working-class, they were relatively economically secure, preferred because they were thought to be hard working, prudent, and less likely to want the child’s labour. Occasionally middle-class homes were found. One foster mother was married to a council clerk and another to the headmaster of Sandy Bay State School. Pearce believed the latter offered ‘an extra good home’ and did not inspect it.39 There was an ex-school teacher, who soon gave up fostering to return to teaching. Her husband worked at the railway station, and they had five children and a servant. Impoverished women who applied for registration were unsuccessful.40	24
Many foster mothers were single or widowed. If married, their husbands were usually skilled workers in regular employment, including an engine driver at the Marine Board, a blacksmith at the Railway Workshop, two storemen, a carpenter, a bricklayer, a butcher, and some labourers with permanent work. They earned between 25s and 30s a week. In the departmental records the husbands are shadowy figures. Apart from their employment, they were not factors in the selection of the home. Yet for the children, a foster father must have been a significant presence.41	25
With care and regular employment artisan incomes sometimes stretched to modest home ownership. If the foster mother was widowed or single, property ownership provided security against poverty. A few had some other source of income such as dressmaking or running a boarding house. Having older children, especially if they were employed, was a recommendation because they augmented the domestic income and showed the woman’s maternal capabilities.42	26
Promoting altruism amongst foster mothers, even though they were paid, was believed to be another safeguard for state wards. Amongst other child welfare departments, opinion varied about payment. In Ontario’s forward looking department, from which Seager derived ideas, it was feared that payment would encourage people to do the work for money. Foster mothers were told that their sacrifice for the child was for Christ. Alternatively, the South Australian social activist, Catherine Spence, believed that, if foster mothers were unpaid, the children’s labour might be exploited and material needs skimped. Her views were shared in Tasmania but a shortage of departmental funds kept the pay low, even though with six or seven children some profit could be achieved. However, Pearce always warned applicants that the allowance was too small to make a living. In 1899, foster mothers were paid 21s 6d a month for children under eight, and 23s 6d for children from eight to ten-years-old. Foster mothers’ pay did not increase while Seager was secretary. Packer raised the amount in 1911, although it is not clear by how much. In 1920 it was increased to a weekly payment of 12s for children under two, 11s for children from two to ten, and 13s for those over ten. These payments were a useful source of control. For instance, foster mothers were only paid if they had a certificate of school attendance.43	27
It was hoped that the limited income would encourage women to foster for altruistic reasons. In 1905, Pearce said:	28
many of our foster parents have brought up their families respectably and they are now doing well for themselves and they feel it a labour of love and a duty to God in undertaking the responsibility of training these poor orphans.44
He emphasised the affection between foster mothers and children, suggesting that ‘little if anything could surpass the affection that exists between the foster parents and the children and vice versa’.45 Foster mothers took pride in the ‘plump and fine condition’ of their charges.46 However, there was little chance of establishing a boarding-out system based solely on affection, because although the attachment between foster mother and child was often strong, the economics of working-class life made it a financial relationship too.
Despite limits to its efficacy, officials hoped that inspections would protect state wards and promote departmental attitudes to child rearing. The system of inspection was inherited from the Central Boarding-Out Committee, which pre-dated the Neglected Children’s Department. Hobart and Launceston were divided into districts, each with a voluntary visiting committee, initially of two women and one man, later of women only. The children’s homes were visited every month to prevent abuse or negligence, to advise foster mothers, and to check that bedding was clean and warm. Clothing was bought for newly committed children. Pearce and Welsh always questioned the children away from the foster mother’s hearing. The voluntary committees were dismissed shortly after Pearce and Welsh were replaced by inspecting nurses in 1911 and 1912. By 1918 inspections were made weekly. The police also did inspections, but their role, central at first, declined to that of a useful adjunct as the Department acquired the financial resources and experience to police the wards. Inspectors, as the communicators of policy to foster mothers, and of their responses back to the secretary, played a pivotal role in the Department’s day to day policy development.47	29
Interactions Between Foster Mothers and the Neglected Children’s Department
A chronic shortage of foster homes was a constant problem for the Department. As early as 1901 the Launceston Visiting Committee suggested measures to increase the number of foster mothers because poor pay and conditions made it ‘difficult to place children with thoroughly respectable people’.48 In 1912, Packer sent some children to industrial schools because there were not enough ‘suitable’ homes.49 He told Welsh to advertise for new foster homes rather than place some children in an old one.50 By 1919, according to Addison, the Department’s only problem was the lack of homes.51 In 1920, it was still difficult to obtain good foster mothers – newspaper advertisements attracted little response – so that Departmental officials were prevented from ‘doing the very best that is possible’ for state wards.52 Applicants were probably deterred on two levels. One was the parameters established by the Department, especially the inspections and low pay. The other was the nature of the work itself, particularly the children’s behaviour. This shortage meant foster mothers had some latitude to work in the ways that they wished, drawing on working-class traditions of child minding.	30
Many foster mothers were independent, resourceful women so that the inspections, with the inference that their homes were suspect, were difficult to bear. The inspectors, especially the visiting committees, often offended, even though they meant well and sometimes tried to be supportive.53 The committees always arrived in groups of four, without warning, and looked into each minutiae of housekeeping. Bedding was a focal point and the insinuation that it might be dirty was particularly resented. Once Seager asked if a child had clean bedding and the foster mother replied, using the Department’s own language of physical and moral purity:	31
As Mr. Pearce called unexpectedly this morning I showed him their bed. I have the bed to wash every day after one child. I have attended much to their moral training. Yes, I forgot to finish - their bed is quite clean and comfortable.54
One foster mother told Pearce that ‘the insults from the Visitors was more than she could stand and she would not humble to them’.55 When another gave up fostering, Pearce blamed the committee. The foster mother was	32
a very proud hearted woman and I think that it is the four lady visitors that she cant [sic] stand. The foster parents do not like to say much about it but they dont [sic] like so many.
He thought that the number of visitors should be reduced: ‘We have to study our foster parents as well as our visitors in order to keep our homes’.56 Seager acknowledged the problems caused by the visitors when he exempted a foster mother from visits because she ran ‘a very superior home’.57
If the visiting committees were unpopular, the Department’s inspectors probably were too, at times. The inquiring officers were resented less than the inspecting nurses because their lower middle-class status was closest to the foster mothers. There were shared experiences since both Mrs Pearce and Mrs Welsh took in state wards.58 Pearce, who emphasised that most homes easily met departmental regulations, often ignored breaches because of the shortage of homes but also out of sympathy for the foster mothers. Even so some were overawed by his authority.59 The nurses, as professionally trained women, had some social prestige and although they, like the visiting committees, tried to be supportive at times, class distances were not easily bridged, even by the shared sympathies of women. One foster mother was consistently out when the nurse arrived, possibly to avoid inspections. The nurse found her ‘more or less a puzzle, she always seems frightfully busy when I call yet she seems to have plenty of spare time of an afternoon to go out and always attends the races’.60	33
Low pay was another grievance. One of the reasons given by the 1901 deputation of the Launceston Visiting Committee to the chief secretary for the shortage of foster homes was the inadequate boarding-out allowance. Therefore it is not surprising that, since working-class children worked in a paid or unpaid capacity, some foster mothers continued the practice in order to augment their pay. As Kociumbas argues, an important motive for fostering was the children’s labour. However, throughout Australia, schooling was increasingly seen as children’s proper activity. In Tasmania, as elsewhere, steps were taken to reduce children’s labour through employment and education acts. Yet, as historians such as Wimshurst and O’Brien have shown, state officials could be sympathetic to the plight of parents who were dependent on their children’s labour, going so far as to shape policy to meet their needs.61	34
Officials at the Neglected Children’s Department recognised the importance of state children’s work to their foster families’ economies. In addition, they did not want them to be more leisured than others of their class, considering that they should be ‘useful’. Both boys and girls were meant to help with household duties like sewing on buttons, cleaning boots, and mending their clothes. Fruit picking with the family and feeding animals were acceptable. The line between usefulness and exploitation was usually drawn between unpaid work, which was allowed, and hiring the child out, which was not. The shortage of homes and Pearce’s sympathy for foster mothers meant that fewer children were removed for overwork during Seager’s administration.62	35
An example of Pearce’s leniency was his handling of allegations that children in Mrs Colville’s care were ‘having a hard time of it’. Pearce visited and found that they were well fed:	36
I cannot think what he meant or would call a hard time I called on Mrs Colville at 12:15 on the 26th instant and I saw a good boiled dinner of meat and potatoes and boiled vegetables, And a nice clean cloth laid on the table.
Mrs Colville told Pearce that she kept two or three cows and on Saturdays they grazed at the front of the house while the children watched them. Pearce said it gave them a chance to play, and that there was ‘no hardship in such things that I can see and I always use discretion in such actions’.63 Pearce did not want to lose the home and the children’s care seemed satisfactory, so he closed the episode quickly.
If complaints persisted, the secretary might over-ride Pearce. In 1907, some teachers told the doctor at the Education Department that two children in Mrs Sweet’s care were always hungry, picking up scraps and crusts from the playground. The boy was poorly clad and ‘blue with cold’. When Pearce visited the children at school they looked, ‘warm, clean and comfortably clad’. He also visited at mealtimes and found that they were well-fed. On his recommendation nothing was done, but the teachers suspected that the children had been ‘fixed up’. In 1909, there was a complaint that Mrs Sweet overworked the children. Pearce reported that she, ‘naturally denies that any hard work was given to them’. Their most difficult tasks were cutting wood and carrying water to the garden every morning. Pearce suggested that Mrs Sweet must have enemies because anonymous letters had been written about her before. Even so, Seager wanted the children removed.64	37
Under Packer, who was influenced by progressivism, children were removed with greater dispatch, and Addison continued the practice. For instance, a foster mother was ordered to stop sending two boys out every morning to deliver a neighbour’s milk, while another’s registration was cancelled because her foster son sold sweets at the pictures.65 In 1915, a re-registration was refused because the children were sent out to earn money. The foster mother felt she had been conscientious and should be employed, especially since the children’s bedding could not be sold because ‘things are so bad’. She concluded, ‘our home is quiet and respectable and there is no knows what those children where [sic] when I got them. I had a big struggle with them’.66 Addison, however, was adamant.	38
Some foster mothers apparently undertook the work for profit only, taking little care of the children. Skimping and ignoring the Department’s child care priorities was also a way of rejecting its intrusiveness. The employment of Mrs Powell, a widow, had been a compromise caused by the shortage of foster mothers because, according to Pearce, she was in ‘rather poor circumstances’.67 In 1907, the school complained that her foster child was ‘very untidy in her appearance and her conduct very bad’. Seager wondered if Mrs Powell had ‘sufficient control’, but nothing was done.68 In 1912, another child was brought into Packer’s office by the school nurse and doctor to show him ‘the state she is being kept in’. The nurse had dressed her hand for broken chilblains and told Mrs Powell to bathe it every day, but the dressing had not been touched for a week. All Mrs Powell’s foster children were removed. She accused the Department of unfair treatment and refused to return the children’s clothing because:	39
It is very discouraging to one who has done their utmost for the benefit of these children for some years past, & I can truthfully say that I have at all time been at my post & done my duty.69
There was some truth in Mrs Powell’s complaint about unfair treatment, as she had been caught by the change in administration between Seager, who allowed things to slide so as to retain homes, and Packer, who did not compromise his principles.
The difficulties of laundering and, for girls, the demands of modesty, meant that even basic wardrobes had many clothes, which was a considerable expense. Clothes did not belong to the child but to whoever provided them. When a child was committed to the Department an outfit worth 25 shillings was purchased, but after that the foster mother was supposed to maintain the wardrobe. If she did not, then the Department could deduct an equivalent amount from her final pay. Some foster mothers pretended that the clothes they had been given were inadequate so that the Department gave them a new set and they could make a small profit. The outfit’s value meant that it sometimes became the focus of a dispute between the Department and foster mother that was really about something else. Women like Mrs Powell, who felt they had been unjustly treated, might withhold clothing or return it in disrepair.70	40
While some children were victims in disputes between the Department and foster mothers, others were shown a firm loyalty. When Leonard fell out of a tree, Mrs Townsend told the Department she would visit him in hospital every day, adding that ‘I think the little chap will get on alright’.71 Foster mothers often maintained an interest in children after they left their care. Elsie, placed with Mrs Gibbs in 1911, went back to her in 1927 after finishing in a place of service, and stayed for her 18th birthday.72 Occasionally a foster mother enlisted the Department’s help on a child’s behalf. Mrs Rowlands told Packer about her foster son’s caning at school and he complained to the head teacher. He told Mrs Rowlands that next time he would tell the director of the Education Department.73 Miss Baily asked G.H. Butler, the chief secretary, to prevent the Department from apprenticing Louisa, her foster child of ten years. Miss Baily objected because the child was only 12, not 14, as the Department claimed. Miss Bailey wrote: ‘I ... trust you will give this matter your favourable consideration and prevent what must be a hardship to the child whom I reared’. Her request was granted.74	41
Getting on Alright? Relations Between Foster Mothers and Children
The difficulties of rearing state children was a deterrent to foster mothers which probably invited further leniency from inspectors like Pearce. In a letter to the Department, Mrs Kerr summed up her feelings about the children in this way:	42
I have had my heart sick & sore with anxiety, would to God I had not seen them, they have been such a trouble one way & another. I have been told Providence sent them to me. I don’t know I am sure but what I do know I have lost many a night’s rest through them....I have attended much to their moral training while I have had them which has had to be constant work... I feel I cannot bear more through them.75
Mrs Kerr’s views were not universal, but her letter shows that children’s behaviour was another potential difficulty.
While some children were amenable to training, others saw it as a challenge to their integrity which must be resisted. Many reacted instinctively to stress produced by disrupted lives in either their natural families or the Department’s care, and sometimes both. Although the Department tried to provide them with a settled environment, it did not always succeed; children were moved because their foster mothers gave up the work, became ill, or because of personality clashes. When Packer became secretary, a number of children were removed because their homes were considered ‘unsuitable’. Some had many different homes, up to six in nine years. Siblings had to be separated if there were no foster mothers with enough places for big families. These changes took place over and above the strain of having lived with impoverished parents, the disruption of committal, and separation from family, friends, and a familiar environment. In addition, foster mothers were preoccupied with their own concerns which might be at odds with the children’s best interests. These preoccupations must have sometimes caused disinterest, lack of respect, or even mistreatment.76	43
Children’s protests encompassed a range of ‘disobedient’ behaviours, some more conscious than others. Bad language, unpunctuality, truancy, stealing, telling lies, and absconding, are common examples. Contentment indicated the Department’s success, so that children who were sullen or refused to play undermined official satisfaction with the system. For some children, the emphasis that training placed on certain behaviours, instead of improving discipline, suggested what they could do to upset officials and foster mothers.77	44
Foster mothers varied in their ability to manage difficult behaviour. Although they could ask for the Department’s help, it might seem like an admission of failure. Moreover, they needed to maintain an appearance of authority or risk losing the children. After Mrs Machin’s two foster sons absconded, they were moved to a foster mother with a ‘firmer’ hand. 78 Other foster mothers seemed adept at managing ‘troublesome’ children. In 1911, Launceston’s inquiring officer, William Welsh, transferred Walter, who was ‘troublesome, & bad tempered’ to Mrs Large. He was sure that she could manage him as ‘she is the very essence of kindness’.79 Mrs Townsend had a reputation for a ‘firm hand’ and difficult boys were often sent to her, sometimes as a last resort before the Boys Training School.80 Encouraged by some foster mothers’ success in managing recalcitrant boys, Seager placed a few offenders in the boarding-out system, as was done in Ontario.81	45
Some ‘troublesome’ behaviour was probably prompted by unkindness, even abuse in the foster home. It too had to be concealed because the child was removed if poor treatment was detected. Foster mothers could deflect the blame from themselves by portraying the child as difficult. One accused a nine-year-old girl who absconded of misbehaviour. Pearce, believing the child was frightened, transferred her to another place.82 In another instance, a boy aged 12 had become ‘very Disobedient, untruthful and dishonest’, having taken three shillings from his foster mother’s purse. The inspector suspected that the behaviour was prompted by the foster mother’s indifference. His disapproval of her was palpable:	46
I told Mrs. Bester, that I was sorry to hear of so many complaints against the boy and said it could not be very satisfactory to herself or the Department and that the boy would in all probability be removed.83
In many other cases the bonds were strong and yet the child had to be given up eventually, sometimes at short notice. No doubt some foster mothers coped by remaining detached, probably accounting for some neglect. But for those who were fond of the children the parting could be so hard that, according to Pearce, they considered giving up fostering. Conflicts developed between the Department and foster mothers over the removal of children. Mrs Creely, given a few hours warning of Herbert’s adoption, refused to bring him into the office. She eventually apologised for the refusal saying she had been ‘upset’. Although Mrs Creely did not, many foster mothers in her situation asked to adopt.84	47
Most foster mothers who wanted to adopt waited until the child was old enough for an apprenticeship, often receiving a sympathetic hearing. Pearce thought it ‘most painful’ to see the distress of both foster parent and child when faced with separation.85 In 1908, two unmarried sisters were so upset about losing a foster son that they would ‘cry like children’. They were allowed to adopt him since two other adopted sons had ‘turned out steady young men’.86 Other foster mothers feared that the children would not be well treated. Miss Baily adopted a boy in 1907 because, according to Pearce, she ‘ever anxious after the welfare of the children under her charge feel that she cannot part with him for fear that he might not get a good home’.87 Officials were sympathetic to requests for adoptions, believing that the foster mother was entitled to the wages and assistance of adolescent children which they had raised – a concession to working-class practices.	48
If the relationship between foster mothers and children went back to babyhood, officials were especially accommodating.88 Twelve-year-old Lena, fostered by Mrs Clements, was chosen to become a domestic servant for the wife of ‘a prominent government official’. The Clements asked to keep her even though they could not afford the adoption for two years. Lena had gone to the family just after the death of their baby and as Mrs Clements explained, ‘it will be very hard for us to part with her’. The nurse said that it was	49
only rational she [Mrs. Clements] should become attached when, she had also had the trouble of rearing her, a delicate [sic] baby, and now when she is becoming useful it seems very hard she should be expected to part with her.
Addison agreed that these were ‘exceptional circumstances’ and the adoption took place when Lena was 14.89
Foster mothers were expected to find suitable work for their adopted children when they reached the age for apprenticeship. This was to the foster mother’s advantage since children usually handed over their entire wage packet, and once board and pocket money, about sixpence a week, were deducted, there was a small profit. For the child, if it resulted in training for skilled work, adoption by foster mothers could provide good employment prospects. For instance, children were apprenticed to a dressmaker, collar maker, chemist and shoemaker. In 1911, Miss Baily adopted her foster son who had just completed a 12 months scholarship to Queen’s College. Now she wanted to get him an office job, taking every opportunity of ‘pushing him on’. Harold Miller was kept at school for an extra year by Mrs Greeney, who then found him work at the Launceston Examiner. He planned to study accountancy.90	50
These arrangements reflected working-class assumptions that older children should contribute to the family income in exchange for their upbringing. Mrs Hardy expressed this idea when asking to adopt Thomas:	51
[P]lease let me have him I will give him a trade when he is of age to do so. I think I ought to have the first offer as I have had him the last six years.91
Children understood the obligation. Horace said he would like to stay with his foster mother when he was apprenticed, to ‘repay the kindness she has shown me’.92 Officials accepted that adoption was, in part, an economic arrangement. The inspector said of Mrs Cutler that, ‘of course she finds it hard to get along, being a widow and that she is only too glad to have the care of the children’.93 Children who acknowledged a duty to foster mothers were praised because they indicated the Department’s success in turning out reliable workers with a sense of family responsibility. Leonard was adopted by his foster mother in 1900 and apprenticed to a milkman. In 1901 he was earning 4s a week and giving a proportion to her. Welsh said that he was ‘developing into a fine young fellow, & bears an excellent character and [is] attentive to his duties’.94
These cases represent some of the most successful boarding-out cases of all, indicating that the relationships between adopting foster mothers and children had stability. Only a few such relationships broke down. For instance, David Hammond, adopted as a baby, was accused of ‘stealing & lying’ and being ‘absolutely beyond control’ by his parents when he became adolescent. They later disowned him.95 Ada had a ‘vile temper’ according to Pearce, and often threatened to hit Mrs Coglans. She did not contribute to her support, and went out with boys. Pearce thought her ‘a foolish girl and had a good home but now I do not know what to do with her’.96	52
Conclusion
In 1918, the Neglected Children and Youthful Offenders Act was superseded by the Children’s Charter. Despite the loyalty of many foster mothers, it was those that flouted the system, who put the children to work, clad and fed them badly, or whose behaviour gave rise to suspicions of abuse, that informed the legislation. What had previously been discretionary was now mandatory. Weekly inspections became compulsory, and the children had to be produced, or their absence explained. They had to be questioned out of the foster mother’s hearing. Clothing, accommodation, and food were legally required to be available for examination. Although there was no longer a prison sentence for mistreating a state child, the fine was increased from £10 to £20. As well as being of ‘good character’ and capable of caring for infants, foster mothers had to be ‘in good health and free from any constitutional disease or complaint’, presumably in response to the children who contracted tuberculosis in foster care. These tougher provisions were probably due to higher standards induced by progressivism. In addition the legislators were mandating informal but established practices which seemed to work. Apart from the weekly inspection, which could not be managed in rural areas, the new provisions were also extended to the adoptive parents and employees of state children. Foster mothers were therefore caught up in an attempt to reduce the mistreatment of those children.97	53
However, a provision that allowed foster mothers to find apprenticeships for the children gave them a new autonomy in the care of adolescents. It recognised many foster mothers’ belief that they were entitled to the financial assistance, loyalty, and affection of a child they had raised. It also acknowledged the distress many felt at parting with children who had been apprenticed. Linked as it was to the financial and emotional well-being of foster mothers, this was an important concession.98	54
The records of Tasmania’s Neglected Children’s Department provide an unusual opportunity to glimpse the ways in which working-class women dealt with officialdom. They demonstrate not the passivity, but the resourcefulness of such women in negotiating better working conditions for themselves within an unequal relationship. Drawing on traditional working-class ways of mothering and working, foster mothers were, in many instances, able to turn poorly paid, potentially exploitative work to their advantage. Their initiatives, interpreted by middle-class public servants, had implications for the Children’s Charter.	55
Endnotes * I would like to thank Elisabeth Wilson, Dianne Snowden, and two anonymous referees for their assistance with this article. The names of all children and foster parents have been changed and are shown in italics. The only exception is Mrs Greeney, who fostered Germaine Greer’s father in a private arrangement with his mother and so has been well-publicised. See Germaine Greer, Daddy, I Hardly Knew You, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1989. 1. For an example of a liberal history, see Joan Brown, ‘Poverty is not a Crime’: Social Services in Tasmania, 1803-1900, Tasmanian Historical Research Association, Hobart, 1972. Histories incorporating a neo-Marxist perspective include: R.A. Cage, Poverty Abounding, Charity Aplenty, Hale and Iremonger, Sydney, 1992; John Shields, ‘A Dangerous Age: Bourgeois Philanthropy: the State, and Young Unemployed in NSW in the 1930s’ in Sydney Labour History Group (eds), What Rough Beast? The State and Social Order in Australian History, Allen and Unwin and the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, Sydney, 1982, pp. 151-170; Bob Besant, ‘Children and Youth in Australia’ in Bob Besant (ed.), Mother State and her Little Ones: Children and Youth in Australia, 1860s-1930s, Centre for Youth and Community Studies, Phillip Institute of Technology, Melbourne, 1987, pp. 7-17; Donella Jaggs, Neglected and Criminal: Foundations of Child Welfare Legislation in Victoria, Centre for Youth and Community Studies, Phillip Institute of Technology, Melbourne, 1986. For examples of feminist historiography, see: Jill Roe, ‘The End Is Where We Start From: Women and Welfare Since 1901’ in Cora V. Baldock and Bettina Cass (eds), Women, Social Welfare and the State in Australia, Sydney, 1983, pp. 1-15; Marilyn Lake, Getting Equal: the History of Australian Feminism, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1999, pp. 49-63; Marilyn Lake, ch. 8 in Patricia Grimshaw et al (eds) Creating a Nation, McPhee Gribble, Melbourne, 1994, pp. 179-186; Marilyn Lake, ‘The Politics of Respectability: Identifying the Masculinist Context’ in Susan Margery et al (eds), Debutante Nation: Feminism Contests the 1890s, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1993, pp. 1-15; Vicki Pearce, ‘A Few Viragos on an Old Stump: the Womanhood Suffrage Campaign in Tasmania, 1880-1920’, Tasmanian Historical Research Association: Papers and Proceedings, no. 4, December 1985. Richard Kennedy, Charity Warfare: the Charity Organisation Society in Colonial Melbourne, Hyland House, Melbourne, 1985, p. 6. 2. Brian Dickey, No Charity There: a Short History of Social Welfare in Australia, Nelson, Melbourne, 1980, pp. xvii, 97-104; Robert Van Krieken, Children and the State: Social Control and the Formation of Australian Child Welfare, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1991, pp. 91-109. 3. Van Krieken, Children and the State, p. 108. 4. Caroline Evans, Protecting the Innocent: Tasmania’s Neglected Children, Their Parents and State Care, 1890-1918, PhD Thesis, School of History and Classics, University of Tasmania, 1999, pp. 51-52. 5. Janet McCalman, Struggletown: Portrait of an Australian Working-Class Community, 1900-1965, Penguin, Melbourne, 1988, p. 20. 6. Christina Twomey, ‘Gender, Welfare and the Colonial State: Victoria’s 1864 Neglected and Criminal Children’s Act’, Labour History, no. 73, November 1997, pp. 22-46; Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives: the Politics and History of Family Violence, Boston, 1880-1960, Viking, New York, 1988; Margaret Barbalet, Far From a Low Gutter Girl: the Forgotten World of State Wards in South Australia, 1887-1940, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1983; Shurlee Swain and Renate Howe, Single Mothers and their Children: Disposal, Punishment and Survival in Australia, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1995. 7. Social Welfare Department (hereafter SWD) 1/10/675-8; See also 1/6/373-6, Archives Office of Tasmania (hereafter AOT). 8. SWD 1/9/584; 1/14/912; 1/6/384; 1/10/670; 1/22/1242, AOT. For examples of press advertisements, see Mercury, 3 October 1903; 11 September 1903; 2 September 1903; SWD 1/11/ 717-8, AOT. 9. Neglected Children’s Department Annual Report (1912), Parliamentary Paper (hereafter PP), (1912) no. 30, Chief Secretary’s Department (hereafter CSD) 22/152/115/6/11; 22/160/115/1/12, AOT. 10. Marilyn Lake, ch. 9 in Grimshaw et al (eds) Creating a Nation, pp. 228-229; Marilyn Lake, ‘The Republic, the Federation and the Intrusion of the Political’, Journal of Australian Studies, no. 47, 1996, pp. 5-32; Jill Roe, ‘The End is Where We Start From: Women and Welfare Since 1901’ in Baldock and Cass (eds), Women, Social Welfare and the State in Australia, pp. 1-15; The role of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in promoting the Neglected Children and Youthful Offenders Act is demonstrated in Evans, Protecting the Innocent, pp. 44-56; Michael Roe, Nine Australian Progressives, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1984, pp. 1-18; Caroline Evans and Naomi Parry, ‘Vessels of Progressivism? Tasmanian State Girls and Eugenics, 1900-1940’, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 32, no. 117, November 2001, pp. 322-333; Infant Life Protection Act (1907) 7 Edward VII, no. 51; Mental Deficiency Act (1920), George V, no. 50. 11. For examples, see Critic, 17 May 1912; 9 September 1912. 12. Daily Post, 30 July 1917; SWD 1/27/1464, AOT. 13. Daily Post, 7 July 1917. 14. Mercury, 7 June 1905; According to a 1905 Tasmanian government inter-departmental memo, ex-nuptial infant mortality rates were more than double those of infants born in wedlock. CSD 22/ 86/99 AOT; Only Judith Allen argues that ‘baby farmers’ murdered their charges. Shirley Fitzgerald, Rising Damp: Sydney, 1870-90, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1987, pp. 192-196; Kathy Laster, ‘Frances Knorr: She Killed Babies Didn’t She?’ in Marilyn Lake and Farley Kennedy (eds), Double Time: Women in Victoria 150 Years, Penguin, Melbourne, 1985, p. 150; Ellen Ross, Love and Toil: Motherhood in Outcast London 1870-1918, Oxford, 1993, pp. 135-136; Evans, Protecting the Innocent, pp. 74-87; Judith Allen, ‘Octavius Beale Reconsidered: Infanticide, Baby Farming and Abortion in NSW, 1880-1939’ in Sydney Labour History Group (eds), What Rough Beast, pp. 111-129; Shurlee Swain and Renate Howe, Single Mothers and their Children, pp. 100-104. 15. SWD 1/6/378; 1/18/1068, AOT. 16. SWD 1/20/1143, AOT. 17. Adoption of Children Act (1920) 11 George V no. 5; Neglected Children and Youthful Offenders Act (1896) 60 Victoria no. 24. 18. SWD 1/13/812-3, AOT. 19. SWD 1/16/972, AOT. 20. SWD 1/10/175-8; 1/17/1001, AOT. Employers could be prosecuted under the Prevention of Cruelty and Better Protection of Children Act (1895) 59 Victoria, no. 10 or the Masters and Servants Act (1856) 19 Victoria, no. 28. 21. SWD 1/17/1001, AOT. 22. Non-State Records 337/5, AOT. 23. For instance, see J.S.C. Elkington, Health in the School, University of Queensland Press, London, 1907, p. 9. 24. CSD 22/85/92/05, AOT. 25. CSD 22/68/92/03, AOT. 26. CSD 22/114/25/2/08, AOT. 27. SWD 1/7/440; 1/1/43-7, AOT. 28. CSD 22/107/92/10/07, AOT. 29. SWD 1/17/1039, AOT. 30. SWD 1/14/857-9, AOT. 31. CSD 22/107/92/10/07, AOT. 32. CSD 22/85/92/05, AOT. 33. CSD 22/95/92/06, AOT. 34. CSD 22/114/25/2/08, AOT. 35. SWD 1/10/662, AOT. 36. SWD 1/12/791, AOT. 37. SWD 1/12/791, AOT. 38. SWD 1/2/127; 1/2/121; 1/5/344-5; 1/2/111; 1/15/920-1, AOT. 39. SWD 1/8/502; 1/2/111, AOT. 40. SWD 1/6/407, AOT; CSD 22/114/25/4/08; 22/139/42/17, AOT. 41. SWD 1/2/127; 1/2/121; 1/4/221; 1/2/107; 1/9/570-1; 1/10/662; 1/14/883; 1/7/46; 1/8/517; 1/ 2/121; 1/4/221; 1/2/107, AOT. 42. SWD 1/1/121; 1/1/33; 1/2/111; 1/5/280-2; 1/12/781-2; 1/7/46, AOT. 43. First Report of Work under the Children’s Protection Act (1894) Sessional Papers nos 47, 57 Victoria (Toronto) p. 26; Catherine Helen Spence, State Children: a History of Boarding Out and its Developments, Adelaide, 1907, p. 128; CSD 22/16/126; 22/41/25, AOT; SWD 1/10/670, AOT; Neglected Children’s Department Annual Report (1911) PP no. 32; Children of the State Department Annual Report (1921) PP no. 57; CSD 22/61/203/02, AOT. 44. CSD 22/85/92/05, AOT. 45. CSD 22/107/92/10/07, AOT. 46. CSD 22/95/92/06, AOT. 47. Boarding-Out Committee Annual Report (1881) PP no. 13; Royal Commission into Charitable Institutions (1888-9) PP no. 50; SWD 1/15/958, AOT. 48. CSD 22/46/118/01; 22/41/25/01, AOT; Launceston Examiner, 30 July 1901. 49. Neglected Children’s Department Annual Report (1911) PP no. 28. 50. SWD 1/16/972, AOT. 51. Children of the State Department Annual Report (1919-20) PP no. 45. There are occasional references to the unavailability of homes in the children’s files. SWD 1/14/857-9; 1/18/1055; 1/24/1329, AOT. 52. Children of the State Department Annual Report (1920) PP no. 67. 53. SWD 1/12/781-2, AOT. 54. SWD 1/1/2-7, AOT. 55. SWD 1/12/759-62, AOT. 56. SWD 1/9/570-1, AOT. 57. CSD 22/114/25/2/08, AOT. 58. SWD 1/8/486, AOT. 59. CSD 22/120/115/17/08, AOT. 60. SWD 1/12/781-2; 1/24/1299, AOT. 61. CSD 22/46/118/01, 22/41/25/01; Launceston Examiner, 30 July 1901; For a discussion of the importance of children’s role in the family economy, see Anna Davin’s ‘Loaves and Fishes: Food in Poor Households in Late Nineteenth Century London’ in History Workshop Journal, issue 41, Spring 1996; Jan Kociumbas, Australian Childhood: a History, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1997, p. 108, 118-119; Women and Children Employment Act (1884) 48 Victoria no. 20; Factories Act (1910) 1 Geo V no. 57; Education Act (1885) 49 Victoria no. 15; Education Amendment Act 3 George V no. 14; Wimshurst, Kerry, ‘Child Labour and School Attendance in South Australia 1890-1915’, Australian Historical Studies, vol. 19, no. 76, 1981, pp. 388-411; Anne O’Brien, Poverty’s Prison: the Poor in New South Wales, 1880-1918, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1988, pp. 172-175; For Tasmania, see Michael Sprod, ‘The Old Education: Government Schools in Tasmania, 1839-1904’, Tasmanian Historical Research Association Papers and Proceedings, no. 2, June 1984, pp. 30-31. Children’s labour and welfare policy in Tasmania is addressed in Evans, Protecting the Innocent. 62. CSD 22/114/25/2/08, AOT; SWD 1/15/942, AOT. 63. SWD 1/8/482-5, AOT. 64. SWD 1/7/431-4, AOT. 65. SWD 1/13/812-13, AOT; Neglected Children’s Department Annual Report (1914-15) PP no. 28. 66. SWD 1/17/1001, AOT. 67. SWD 1/2/137, AOT. 68. SWD 1/2/140, AOT. 69. SWD 1/15/920-1, AOT. 70. SWD 1/2/121; 1/13/814-5; 1/2/86; 1/16/972; 1/12/759-62, AOT. 71. SWD 1/11/685, AOT. 72. SWD 1/14/862, AOT. 73. SWD 1/7/431-4, AOT. 74. SWD 1/9/582, AOT. 75. SWD 1/1/2-7, AOT.