Dr Barnardo’s Homes

Thomas Barnardo was born and raised in Dublin. As a young man he experienced a strong religious conversion and became an evangelical Christian. In 1867, he arrived in London at the age of twenty to train as a missionary with the China Inland Mission. However, despite his ardour, its directors suggested he should train as a doctor before going further. It was a time of grim economic depression in the East End and while still a medical student Barnardo commenced work in a Ragged School in that part of the capital. The plight of the children touched his conscience and within two years he had established his first home for destitute and abandoned youngsters.

Other evangelicals, Annie Macpherson and William Booth among them, were immersed in the same work and for some church workers emigration seemed the only way to break the tragic cycle of grinding poverty. In this desperate situation, Annie Macpherson and Maria Rye pioneered child migration to Canada in 1869. Barnardo began to send children to Canada as early as 1872 through Macpherson’s organisation. By 1881, he decided to throw himself wholeheartedly into child emigration and visited Canada to meet government officials and others interested in this work. He established a receiving home in Toronto for boys and increased numbers of young children were sent. Another home was later acquired at Peterborough, Ontario, called Hazlebrae and used mainly for girls.

Over the next twenty years, Dr Barnardo became the towering child care personality of the age and by the termination of most child migration to Canada in 1930, his organisation had sent 20 000 youngsters to the dominion. By comparison, Barnardo’s involvement with Australia was small-scale. In 1871 a family of three children who had spent time with Barnardo after rescue from the London slums came to live on a sheep station in Australia. Seventeen years later, to show their appreciation, they sent twelve frozen sheep carcasses to Dr Barnardo’s Stepney home. In 1883, an unofficial group of older Barnardo’s boys arrived in Fremantle aboard the sailing vessel Charlotte Padbury but details of their later lives in Australia are sketchy.

Barnardo’s Homes extended their field to Australia in a systematic way after World War I under the auspices of the Millions Club in Sydney whose president was Sir Arthur Rickard. The first meeting of the NSW branch of the association was held on 11 April 1921 under the Presidency of Lord Forster, the Governor-General. The work was organised similarly to that in Canada. A home at Ashfield was purchased as a receiving centre, a temporary residence for boys on arrival or as a convalescent home for any whom became sick or unemployed. It was named ‘Barnardo House’. At this stage the boys and girls who arrived were older teenagers but their numbers were small – by comparison with the association’s Canadian operation. In 1921, 47 children came; in 1922, 50; in 1923, 106; in the following year, 155; and over the next four years another 523 children arrived in Australia.

There was no problem placing the children as, for example, in 1928 – before the onset of the Depression – twenty farmers applied for each boy available and forty homes offered for each girl graduating as a domestic servant.

In 1927, the President of Barnardo’s Homes in the United Kingdom, the Duke of York, visited New South Wales. It was decided to establish a training home for children under fourteen years of age. The Minister for Labour approved and the society purchased Mowbray Park near Picton, one hundred kilometres south of Sydney, the following year. The property was somewhat isolated, but was purchased on the contemporary view that the children should have beautiful surroundings to compensate for the squalor of the urban slums and their lack of family life. When they came to establish homes of their own, this would give them an ideal to which to aspire.

Mowbray Park was opened in 1929 by the Governor of New South Wales. The boys were to be trained as farm labourers, the girls as domestic servants, while accommodation was on the cottage principle, with six cottages constructed to accommodate around two hundred children. This was close to best contemporary child care practice. In spite of the virtual cessation of migration during the Depression, Barnardo’s Homes was permitted to bring children to Mowbray Park to keep its Australian care viable.

As with other juvenile immigration, World War II ended arrivals for the duration. Seven years later, in 1946, in preparation for a renewal of child migration, the clause requiring boys to work on the land and girls to be placed in domestic service, was removed from the Barnardo’s charter. All children were given a free choice of occupation within their vocational skills and interests. In 1947 the first postwar party of Barnardo’s Homes children arrived in New South Wales, to be followed soon after by a tour of inspection by Mr W Kirkpatrick, the General Superintendent of Homes (UK), to see that standards were appropriate. There had been some criticism of child migration in the British press.

In 1950, Greenwood, an eleven acre property at Normanhurst with four large buildings, was purchased as a hostel closer to Sydney. Boys and girls were to be trained on the same property, a departure from previous practice. In 1956, the arrival of the British Fact-Finding Mission – opposed to child migration – inspected, but its reports, both public and confidential did not particularly criticise Barnardo’s, but pressured the association to continue modernising its regime.

In 1957, Karingal at Lindfield was opened as a small transitional home for working girls while they became established in employment. Thereafter, development was vigorous. The first family branch home, Tarana, was established at Belmont near Newcastle two years later. It was agreed to dispense with large institutional homes and replace them with smaller, mixed family group accommodation. A number of family group homes were opened: Hartwell House in Kiama for boys and girls; Ladd House for older girls and Fairfax House for older boys on the Normanhurst property.

In 1960, the Mowbray Park Picton property was sold and another large farm near Scone, Tooloogan Vale was purchased to establish a farm training school for immigrant boys of post-school age. Lindfield became a family group home. By 1962, additional family group homes were opened at Cronulla and West Ryde.

Since Barnardo’s Homes executives knew their Australian care arrangements were state-of-the-art they continued child migration when other organisations abandoned the practice. The British Catholic ‘Rescue Societies’ ceased sending children to Australia in 1956 and there were few, if any, children coming through the Protestant churches. However, in 1967 the last party of seven child migrants under Barnardo’s Homes auspices arrived in Sydney by air. It was the last phase of a policy which had its origins in the early seventeenth century.

The Big Brother Movement

The Big Brother Movement was the most successful and enduring of the youth migration organisations. Its genesis appears to have been discussions between certain Australian and British business leaders at the 1923 Wembley exhibition; talks concerned with stimulating youth migration to Australia. Its basic idea was simple enough: each youth emigrating (the ‘Little Brother’) would be given an adult person in Australia (the ‘Big Brother’) who would provide encouragement, advice and support during the young migrant’s early adjustment period in the new country. In one sense, it was a Victorian response to the Dreadnought Trust, but over time, the Big Brother Movement became better established in New South Wales. Its founder was (Sir) Richard Linton, businessman, philanthropist, freemason and after 1927 a conservative member of the Victorian Parliament. Later he became Victoria’s Agent-General in London.

The critical factor limiting youth migration was understandably the natural reluctance of parents to permit the migration of their sons so far from the British Isles when they were so young and inexperienced. The ‘Big Brother’ provision was intended to respond to parents’ fears. However, the British agent in Australia, Bankes Amery, gave an additional and plausible reason for the founding of the Big Brother Movement when he wrote in a memorandum, 2 October 1926:

The basis of the Big Brother Movement was the establishment of a set of conditions that would attract a better class of boy to Australia; a boy who had been brought up in a better class of home and who had up till the moment not been induced to leave Britain in any numbers… The boys whom the Big Brother Movement was out to cater for were the type who obtained Commissions during the war by promotion from the ranks… no previous scheme has been sufficiently attractive to middle-class parents.

The movement was launched in London on 14 July 1925, and much of its appeal would rest on its ability to recruit reliable ‘Big Brothers’ who would treat their obligations as more than nominal. The Big Brothers were usually recruited from service organisations such as the Royal Agricultural Societies, Rotary, the RSL and the Chambers of Commerce. They were usually city business and professional men and of the same religion as the ‘Little Brother’ whom they promised to assist. Each undertook no financial or legal responsibility beyond what he would accept voluntarily, but agreed to carry out the following important duties:

• to care for the moral and general welfare of his Little Brother until the latter attained the age of 21 years;
• to meet the Little Brother on arrival, to spend the first day ashore in getting to know him and introducing him to his family and friends; and
• to act as mediator between the Little Brother and his employer, and with the full weight of the movement behind him to further the Little Brother’s cause.

The Little Brother was intended to be a physically fit, upright, clean-cut, well-mannered British young man who was determined to work hard on the land in Australia. His application to Australia House was to be accompanied by references as to ability and character from his school, a minister of his church and another leading citizen. He then had to pass the usual medical checks at Australia House and, if accepted, was granted an assisted passage to Australia. Before sailing, the Little Brother signed a statement containing the following undertakings:

• to follow the advice of his Big Brother;
• not to leave the employer to whom he was allotted without his Big Brother’s permission;
• to consult his Big Brother, or the Headquarters of the Movement, if in trouble;
• not to drink spirits or gamble;
• to open an account at a Savings Bank and to save at least half his wages;
• to write to his parents and to his Big Brother at least once a month;
• to resign immediately from the Movement if he left the land and took up other employment;
• to be prepared, if necessary, to accept a position in any state of the Commonwealth;
• to subscribe 12 shillings per year to a welfare fund.

These conditions, voluntarily accepted, enshrined middle-class virtues of sobriety, thrift and respect for social superiors and were intended to appeal to middle-class parents. The conditions were not legally binding.

As with all human endeavour, theory is one thing; practice another. Such was the case, naturally, with the Big Brother Movement. Its leaders wished to recruit immigrants from a social class which did not usually migrate, and to an extent did so. Of the first 1 515 Little Brothers brought to Australia (1926–29), 121 had attended a Public School and some 914 of the remainder had some secondary education, when ‘secondary education’ was ‘middle-class education’. However, there was a tendency in Big Brother circles to exaggerate the social standing of its recruits, while its leaders railed in private that Australia House was sending them boys who could not reasonably be admitted to the houses of their Big Brothers. On the other hand, many Dreadnought boys, when offered the chance to come under Big Brother auspices readily did so: a ‘Big Brother’ was no load to carry!

It was natural that Big Brothers varied widely in the degree of support they could offer their proteges, and the degree of interest they brought to their responsibilities. The Big Brother was a city businessman or lived in a provincial city; the Little Brother was often stationed on a remote rural property. In this situation their chances of meeting were rare and the provision that the young man would write to his mentor once a month had an element of make-believe. During the Depression many Big Brothers were in financial difficulties and their Little Brothers could not be further from their minds. During the 1930s, some 350 ‘Little Brothers’ returned to Britain.

The movement received financial support from governments at various times over the next half-century to assist with office expenses, capital works and after-care. The Big Brother Movement had an office in Australia House in London, and was treated with consideration out of proportion to the number of young men recruited. It was lauded in many files as the ideal form of migration. When depression came and its activities were curtailed, depleted office staff did their best to see that Little Brothers were kept in employment, when so many in the community were unemployed. The offices in London, Sydney and Melbourne treated the Little Brothers as members.

In 1937, when assisted migration resumed, some young men came to New South Wales and Victoria under the auspices of the Big Brother Movement but the outbreak of war terminated immigration, though again staff tried to maintain after-care for those who had arrived recently. However, the strains of financial stringency, depression and war proved too much for the Victorian organisation and its affairs were wound up in 1941, the remaining assets being given to the Boy Scout Association of Victoria.

In 1947, the Big Brother Movement, NSW, resumed its activities and in some ways, the 1950s and 1960s were its halcyon years: as many as 400–500 youths a year arrived in Australia under its auspices during that time. The buoyant Australian economy encouraged immigration, and the movement accepted that not all its proteges were suitable for rural employment, so ordinary city positions were a possibility. A small Tasmanian branch was opened, taking young men only for rural employment.

Since the Big Brother Movement did not recruit school-age underprivileged children, it was not plagued by the controversy over child migration. However, the end of the ‘white Australia’ policy in 1966, the election of a Labor government in 1972, and the termination of preference for British immigrants in Australia’s immigration policy which followed, all made its privileged position at Australia House and in official rhetoric an anachronism. Gradually the Big Brother Movement ceased to recruit young British migrants and was transformed into a service organisation with a social club role.

There is massive coverage of all phases of the activities of the Big Brother Movement, and the voluminous material could be of interest to academic historians, former ‘boys’ brought out by the movement and to family historians.

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