Journey of making ‘Ward of State’ – part 2

The journey of making Ward of State

PART 2 – Research and development of the idea.

In June 2012, I visited the Abbotsford Convent in Melbourne.  It was suggested it as a potential location for the ‘next project’ by someone who knew I like old buildings.

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I’m a terrible photographer, but here are photos I took on my phone when i visited… just to give a sense of the space.

IMG_1997Abbotsford Convent was definitely an eerie place. I was given a guided tour of various parts of the convent , which is now mostly in use by artists and community groups. I wasn’t interested in the newly refurbished spaces, but rather in the older parts that were decaying and that smelt old and musty.

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I didn’t know that much about the history of the space when I visited. It wasn’t until I did more research that I became aware of some things that had happened to children at the Abbotsford Convent when it functioned as a convent and industrial school. You can read more about that here:

http://abbotsfordblog.com/memories-on-abbotsford-convent-on-an-ebay-discussion-forum/

 

“The Victorian Government estimates that more than 100,000 children were placed in institutional or foster care in Victoria between 1928 and 2003 and over half of these children were made wards of the State… A large number of Victorian State Wards have experienced ward-ship that has had a profound influence on their health, well-being and disconnection from their families”

 “Most were not orphans. They were removed from their families when poverty, parental separation or neglect resulted in family breakdown, or because their parents were not married, or because they were deemed by social workers and police to be in ”moral danger'”.   – Kate Gaffney – The Age October 29, 2009.

 

Strange timing:

Strangely timed, the week that I visited Abbotsford, my Mum and her cousin Judith, who have been doing research into our family genealogy, had learnt that my Nan’s Grandmother “Sarah” was a ward of the state in Victoria in the 1860’s and 1870’s. Judith had found the records of Sarah and her brother John. This is Sarah’s record which commenced from 1864 (when she was 8 years old) and details where she were stationed and information about her “sentence”:

 

sarah buckland3 copy

 

Victoria had no legislation relating to the ‘care’ of ‘neglected’ children until 1864. Before this date, under the Criminal Law (Infants) Act 13 Vic., No.21 1849, children could be assigned by the Supreme Court to persons willing to undertake their ‘maintenance and education’. The Immigrants’ Aid Society was responsible for the ‘care’ of hundreds of ‘neglected’ children before the 1864 Neglected and Criminal Children Act came into being.

Sarah had spent her childhood in numerous convents and institutions in Victoria (including Princes Bridge mentioned below). Given the timing of this discovery and my visit, I became more interested in making work around this subject matter.

The Immigrants Home was the name early colonists gave to ramshackle buildings on either side of St Kilda Road at Princes Bridge. Over time, the Immigrants Home came to serve a similar function to an English workhouse, operating a night shelter, convalescent hospital and providing shelter for deserted wives, single mothers, and the disabled and ‘neglected’ children. In 1865, conditions at the buildings at Princes Bridge were very poor and unsuitable. An Inquiry described the buildings as ‘crumbling into decay, infested with bugs and so dried up that a single spark might execute a conflagration…’

http://www.findandconnect.gov.au/ref/vic/biogs/E000351b.htm

 

A lengthy sentence:

I didn’t realise how much like a prison sentence Sarah’s records read (and all children who were wards of the state for that matter). Although the children had nothing to be sentenced for, and had done nothing wrong (neither had their parents in so many cases too), but many were raised to feel as if they had done something wrong – like criminals. This was often reinforced by the institutions where they were placed. But in many of  the worst cases, it was the  institutions, and people who were supposed to care for the children who displayed the criminal behaviour toward the children. In my wider research, I looked at many stories and examples. This is one of the more disturbing stories that I read:   http://www.smh.com.au/national/come-clean-on-chambers-of-horrors-sufferers-plead-20120818-24fqx.html

For most children, the  social stigma of being a ward of the state had long lingering ramifications later in life. For a girl to want to become a nurse (in the case of my Nan’s sister), if you were a ward of the state, it was simply not permitted. And that is ridiculous.

In many ways being a ward of the state was similar to having a prison sentence or criminal record. Through my research I’ve learnt that things that a child could become a ward of the state were:

  • Following the death of parents or guardian
  • Following divorce and the mother could not afford to support to care for them
  • On the advice of a local community member (or neighbor)
  • Brought here against their will by extended family members
  • As protection against a family member
  • After having a child out of wedlock
  • If parents were imprisoned
  • For loitering
  • For vagrancy (living in poverty without employment)
  • Children of parents who failed to keep a tidy house
  • For being too attractive and considered at risk of being taken advantage of
  • If over developed for their age & considered at risk of being taken advantage of
  • New migrants would leave their children in institutions whilst they got on their feet
  • They were children of mixed race parents

 I wondered why Sarah was a ward of the state. I was somewhat surprised to learn that Sarah’s brother’s records stated that their mother was in Pentridge Prison, noting ‘a lengthy sentence’.

In February and March I made two visits to Melbourne. One was to continue my research into my family history at the Public Records Office in Victoria, and the other was to attend Dance Massive. I continued to do research while in Melbourne, and I spent a few days at the Public Records office of Victoria looking at the female prison records, trying to find out who Sarah’s mother was.  Some progress was made with that research, but that’s a whole blog in itself.

 

Old Maps

1871 map

Maybe I have watched The Goonies too many times, but in wanting to know more about my Nan’s grandmother Sarah, I found an old map of Melbourne in the 1870’s and found the street where she had lived for a short while. The reason for the old map was that the cross section of streets no longer exists, so I had to find an older map. The first map I found was an 1850’s map, but it didn’t even have the street drawn in yet. However I found a map from 1871 that had the streets shown as existing (above). It was exciting to spend some time walking around Melbourne and trying to find the street where she was listed as living and to imagine life back then. I have to admit, it was all pretty hard to imagine. A DeLorean with a flux capacitor (fluxing) would have been much easier.

Photo above: the old 1971 map. Photo below: me on my expedition (yes, i used the old map to find the location, rather than an iphone).

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Closer to home:

My experience of visiting Abbotsford Convent, and later researching Abbotsford played on my mind a lot. Initially I was interested in my Great Great Grandmother’s life as a starting point for the film, and Abbotsford Convent seemed like an ideal location, especially given the reaction I had to the space there. But as I mentioned in the previous blog, I wasn’t successful in any of the submissions to make the project happen, but I’d kept developing the Ward of State project (in my head anyway), and my research continued.

Closer to home, and not as far back in time, I knew that my grandmother (who I called Nan) had been raised as a ward of the state in Queensland in the 1930’s. It was quite strange that my Nan’s grandmother had been a ward of the state too. But my Abbotsford visit led me to wonder about my Nan’s time as a ward of the state. It was something she didn’t talk about. The ramifications for her and her sisters lasted a lifetime. I also researched the street when my Nan lived before she was a ward of the state. And that was in West End in Brisbane. So much closer to home, and very surreal to think about.

Paralleling this, my ideas for the dance film were evolving to be more about the story of the parents of the girl. I started considering why my Nan’s parents (Emily and Charles) were not able to look after their children/ and why my Nan and her two older sisters were taken. This significantly impacted on the development of the story. I also became interested looking at thing from both sides of the story –  from the children’s perspective, as well as questioning what must have been going on for the parents. I made a few interesting discoveries with researching my Nan’s father Charles Thyer, which I blogged about in an earlier post here: https://www.clairemarshall.com.au/278/.

Compared to my Nan’s father’s story, what I have learned of my Nan’s mother was definitely more tragic and ties in a lengthy struggle with mental illness after the event of her children being taken, which may have existed before that.  Sadly, Emily (my Nan’s mother, ie. my great grandmother) died in the late 1950’s in Toowoomba’s Baillie Henderson Hospital. My Mum recently shared the records she obtained a few years ago. It was a very surreal thing to read, and I felt very sad for Emily.

I wondered how differently things would have been for Emily today with so much more support and understanding of mental illness. To put things into perspective, this is an interesting link about Mental Health in the 1930’s. http://prezi.com/fcbq6xa4cdzi/mental-illness-in-the-1930s/

 

Secrets of the past can’t escape Google.

Even the deceased can’t escape the era of modern digitisation! A search on trove.nla.gov.au can produce some interesting results. I found some newspaper clippings detailing accidents reported of my Nan’s sisters. The clippings I found suggest that neglect may have been a factor.  But then again, the incidents may have been just typical childhood accidents. But maybe the fact that the two accidents reported had occurred quite close together, as well as the injuries being quite significant, suggests that neglect was the case. That was somewhat sad to contemplate.

I started creating character profiles for Emily and Charles, trying to understand what went wrong. But just like trying to imagine like in the 1870’s, I also found it hard to imagine life in the 1930’s. It’s not that far back. They were just like us, but society was different. There were different attitudes towards lots of things – particularly mental illness.

While I fail to understand the reasons that things happened in the case of my grandmother’s parents, research and other people’s personal stories infiltrated the development of the script. It didn’t seem right to base the entire story on people when I didn’t have the entire facts or know the full story. It’s a bit unfair on them. Below: discoveries of above mentioned news clippings on the trove.nla.gov.au site. It was quite an interesting but sad thing to read these because my family has never really had any conclusive information about why my Nan and her two sisters were taken. I wasn’t sure about posting these. But given things were never spoken about back in the day, and  that I’m making a film based on the subject matter, I think it’s an important discovery to mention.

 

violet thyer 30 december 1927 courier mail copy Violet thyer accident wednesday 16 may 1928

Other peoples stories and additional research:

Adding to this was the continued research with some people sharing their stories. This continued to impact on the project right through to when we were shooting.  And there were also some really valuable resources on the internet and links that were recommended by people. Here are some that were particularly valuable in my research:

The time researching and developing the idea definitely resulted in richer story with greater depth of the characters than if I’d created the project in 2012. All the above research had been simmering away in my mind, and I put together a draft of a story (with lots of pictures and references) that I sent to director Sarah-Jane Woulahan, which she translated into a more  formal script, and helped develop it further.

In my next blog, I will share more about the making of the project!

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