Mother of Ten (10 page)

“If
you want to know what it was like in the Orphanage, read
Orphanage
Survivors: A true story of St. John’s, Thurgoona
, by Howard C. Jones,”
Audrey said when I asked her about her childhood at St John’s.

Because
she was not able to remember her life there in detail, I did as she suggested
and bought a copy of the book. Audrey told me that she was in one of the group
photos reprinted in
Orphanage Survivors
so I decided to see if I could
pick her out. Having listened to her talk about some of her experiences, her
feelings about the Orphanage and how she saw herself as a ‘throw-away child’, I
looked for a little girl who might have that reflected in her face. It did not
take me long to spot her and Audrey later verified that I was correct.  I
also read about many of the girls who were in St John’s; an institution which
was founded by the Sisters of Mercy in 1882 and created in the ‘strict
discipline of the Irish Catholic orphanage’. Some of the women have fond
memories of their girlhood in the Orphanage but Audrey and others have painful
memories. Audrey remembers several of the girls quoted in
Orphanage
Survivors
and she also recalls some of the incidents related in the book.

Marie
Rooney who arrived at St John’s with her three sisters in 1952 states in
Orphanage
Survivors
: ‘I was nine. The four of us huddled together at the big front
gate and cried for a week. We were waiting for our family to come and get us
but no one came. It was frightening.’

I
also heard the poignant phrase ‘no-one came’ from Audrey’s lips.

The
Rooney sisters eventually settled in and Marie recalls: ‘It was a tough life,
because there was no one to cuddle you when you felt bad, but eventually there
were lots of good times.’

For
Ruth Robinson, ‘It was always bad. We went without meals for punishment, or
were locked up or stretched across a bed and flogged.’

Audrey
remembers Margaret Coyne who was described in
Orphanage Survivors
as ‘a
very naughty girl’.

‘The
nuns used to put her in the cellar and put a hessian bag on her for a dress. Once
they put her in a big flour bin. I was there when they tied her to a tree by an
anthill,’ recalls Olive Bryan.

Virginia
Savige states: ‘We didn’t keep anything. I remember being given a doll in a big
box, but it was taken away.’

One
woman recalls that on her first night at the Orphanage she refused to eat the
sago she was given so a nun ‘grabbed her by the hair and force-fed her’.

‘When
I proceeded to spew, she just kept spooning it up and feeding it to me until
the superior made her stop.’

Having
several acres of land allowed the Orphanage to grow most of their own food and
keep cows on the property. The staff and older girls made butter and bread and
most of the girls worked in the vegetable garden. They also rose very early in
the morning to milk the cows and separate the milk.

 ‘I
was nine years old and we went barefoot,’ recalls Ruth Robinson. ‘When it was
cold we waited for the cow to drop her shit and we put our foot in it to warm
it up.’

Audrey
and the other girls at St John’s lived in daily fear of punishment. One girl
recalls being belted and ordered to stand in the dark until 2 a.m. because she
had asked if she could put her cardigan on. Perceived bad behaviour or sins
such as bedwetting would result in girls being deprived of food, flogged or
locked in cupboards. This sort of physical and emotional cruelty was not
uncommon. Neither was it uncommon for an orphanage to use a small, confined
space such as the cupboard under the stairs to lock children in. A child could
be kept in isolation for hours, or even days.

Audrey
recalls these severe punishments and remembers spending hours scrubbing the
floor area of the Orphanage verandas with a small brush - another common
penance. She was in trouble a lot and was often punished for things she did not
do. On one occasion, Audrey had to kneel on the hard floor with her hands held
out while a nun repeatedly slapped her palms with a cane. One nun vented her
anger on Audrey by repeatedly whipping the backs of her legs with a cane,
determined to make the child cry.

 “I’ll
break you if it’s the last thing I do!” yelled the nun.

 However,
Audrey refused to cry. When the beating was over, she told the nun she had been
punished for something she did not do.

“You’ll
be the death of me, yet,” retorted the nun.

One
day, not long after she arrived at St. John’s, probably at the age of three,
the nuns dressed Audrey in a pretty blue dress for a visit to her mother. When
she returned to the Orphanage after her visit with Myrtle, the nuns yanked the
dress off so roughly that her arm was pulled out of its socket. She curled up
on her bed and cried. Later, she was pacified with a bar of chocolate which
must have been a luxury for any orphanage child.

The
Orphanage environment was a harsh one and, like the other inmates, Audrey was
not shown any affection. She yearned for love and she yearned to be touched;
touched in the casual, familiar way that happens as a matter of course in a
family situation.  

A
typical day was an early rise in the morning for a 6 a.m. shower with the other
50 or 60 inmates. Their naked bodies were exposed to the watchful eyes of the
nuns standing guard, fully dressed in their habits. Before eating their
breakfast of lumpy porridge, toast and milky tea, the girls were required to
say prayers. After breakfast they were shepherded to the school room for the
day’s lessons. 

No
food was offered at the 11 a.m. break but at lunch time the girls filed into
the dining hall for stew and bread before returning to the class room. After
school, the girls had to work; setting the table for dinner, washing dirty
dishes and scrubbing in the laundry. The sound of a cow bell signalled dinner
time. The evening meal was usually the same as lunch with an added treat such
as fruit and custard. School homework had to be completed before bedtime at
around 7 p.m. At weekends, there was time for play provided the girls did not
participate in unladylike activities such as climbing trees for which they
would be severely punished.

There
were few acts of kindness but on one occasion Audrey, a frail and skinny child,
was peering longingly through the kitchen window at the women who were baking
and preparing food when one of the older women gave her two slices of bread
with jam and cream. It was a rare treat that she remembers to this day.

She
also recalls visits from her mother. Later, Etti Webb (Myrtle’s mother) visited
her. I suspect Etti visited when Myrtle was no longer able to because she had
left Albury to start her new life in Orbost. However, as time passed, Audrey
recalls that ‘no one came’.

Perhaps
Etti Webb felt unable to continue the visits for personal reasons. It is also
possible that her visits ceased because the nuns at the Orphanage thought it
would be kinder to Audrey if family members did not visit. This was certainly
the case at other orphanages.

Lorraine
Davis who was in Launceston Children’s Home from the age of three is quoted in
Orphans
of the Living
as saying: ‘My mother wasn’t allowed to visit us at the home,
as they thought it would upset us too much.’

Frank
Golding, who was in Ballarat Orphanage in the 1940s, relates in his submission
to the
2004 Australian Senate Inquiry
into children in institutional
care how the superintendent claimed: ‘Your father upsets you; I’m going to cut
out these visits.’

I
have no proof that Etti ceased her visits as a result of advice from the
Orphanage; there might have been an entirely different reason. Another possible
reason is that once the final legal documents sealed Henry Bishop’s custody of
the children in 1947, he exercised his power and desire for revenge by
forbidding Myrtle and her mother to visit. I have no proof of that either.

Like
most children in orphanages, Audrey fantasised about having a family. She spent
her young years wanting desperately to be someone’s daughter. At about the same
time that Myrtle gave birth to my twin brothers Kevin and Georgie in 1952,
Audrey’s dream of being part of a family almost came true. A Catholic couple
applied to adopt the lonely twelve-year-old. Permission had to be given by Audrey’s
father who had retained legal custody of Audrey and her brother, Noel.

Unfortunately,
Henry Bishop, who was Church of England, refused to allow the adoption to go
ahead on the basis that he did not wish his daughter to be become a Catholic.
This is mystifying since the children at St John’s were brought up as Catholics
anyway. All Audrey wanted was a family. She wanted to be hugged and kissed
goodnight.

She
did not know whether her mother was still alive. Furthermore, she did not know
she had an older brother living a few kilometres from St John’s and a younger
brother 400 kilometres away, across the state border in Ballarat, Victoria.

Ballarat,
just over one hundred kilometres from Melbourne, is home to the Wathaurong people
and was first settled by Europeans in 1837. In less than twenty years the
region developed dramatically into a city of 100 000 people as a result of the
1851 Gold Rush. The city’s affluence led to an increase in public buildings
such as the Ballarat District Orphan Asylum in Victoria Street which was built
on an old mining ground. This large two storey red brick mansion of Gothic
design accommodating 200 children was built in the 1860s.

By
1945 when Noel, the youngest of Myrtle’s first three children, was sent there,
the institution had been renamed Ballarat Orphanage. It was set on several
acres and included a swimming pool, a library, a football ground and tennis
courts. In those days, there was no attempt to keep siblings together in
orphanages.

In
his submission to the Senate Inquiry, Frank Golding writes: ‘The staff saw no
reason to treat brothers and sisters as part of a family. Instead, children
were separated into age groups and some siblings were even sent to different
orphanages.’

Boys
in the Riverina district were usually sent to Gumleigh Boys Home 180 kilometres
from Albury in Wagga Wagga.  I do not know why Noel was sent instead to a
city 400 kilometres away in a different state. It is possible Gumleigh did not
take toddlers; Noel was three years old at the time of his placement. It could
have been that there were simply no vacancies. The abundance of children in
Australia as a result of the post war baby boom meant there were not enough
places for children in the available Homes.

Arriving
at an orphanage must have been an especially traumatic time for children who
were sometimes taken by their parents, sometimes sent by train with a relative
and sometimes escorted by the police. Phyllis Davies was sent on her own, at
the age of nine, from Melbourne to Albury by train. She arrived around midnight
after what would probably have been a four or five hour journey in those days.
She was to be admitted to St John’s Orphanage and was told to ‘find a
policeman’ when she arrived and tell him ‘there was a note in my bag’. (
Orphanage
Survivors
)

Noel
was accompanied by his father on his train journey from Albury to Ballarat
Orphanage. He remembers sitting on a park bench at the railway station under a
huge flagpole, swinging his feet which were not able to reach the ground. When
the train reached Melbourne, Noel and his father took another train to
Ballarat. Noel does not recall arriving at the Orphanage but Frank Golding who
was there at the same time as Noel, recalled his own arrival vividly in his submission
to the Senate Inquiry:

‘
It
was a terrifying experience to be dragged to the doorway of this huge,
two-storeyed institution, ‘Orphan Asylum’ in large letters outside and 200
other orphans inside. I remember it was my brother Bob’s fourth birthday so I
must have been two and a half. Bill, our half-brother, was a little older.

I
snatched at each shaft of the iron fence as the policeman pulled us towards the
great double gate. The gravel crunched under our feet as we drew near the
dark-red building. Looking up to the balcony on the second floor, Billy read to
us the cast iron words ‘ORPHAN ASYLUM 1865’. This was a grim place, this
Ballarat Orphanage. Solid, like a fortress.

Billy
and Bobby clutched my hands tightly as we came to the grand front doors. A
child cried down the long passage. Bobby tried to pull back and we joined in.
That was futile. Our escort pushed us past the large front doors into the vast
entrance hallway where Miss Sharp awaited. Arms crossed, she filled the hallway
like a giant. A watch hung from a heavy chain on her massive bosom. She
searched our faces. Her scrutiny hurt and my eyes welled up. I whimpered like a
timid dog.’

Frank
Golding also wrote a book about his childhood called
An Orphan’s Escape,
in
which he recalls the Orphanage as a grim place with stern staff where ‘there
was no privacy; not even for the most personal needs’.

Orphanage
children slept in dormitories where there was not only a lack of privacy but
also no personal space at night. They lived regimented lives under the control
and in the presence of authority. An optimistic assessment of Ballarat
Orphanage published in the Melbourne newspaper
The Argus
in 1924 states:
‘...in the little locker assigned to each inmate there is a little store of
week-day and Sunday clothing, orderly as in a soldier’s kit. And the little
people do all this for themselves; the nurse or attendant directs, and nothing
more.’

During
the day, there was nowhere for children to go to be by themselves. Neither
Audrey nor Noel had the luxury that I had of being able to escape from my
brothers and the outside world by curling up in the hayshed with a book.

Bath
time was another occasion when children in private homes might be afforded some
privacy but not orphanage children who had to line up naked and wait their
turn. Bath night in orphanages was usually only once a week and, as in many
private homes at that time, the bath water would not be changed until all the
children had had their baths. Noel remembers sharing the bath with twenty other
children on Friday nights when he was in the toddlers’ block. They were dried
off by the older Orphanage girls in an assembly line.

When
they were in their pyjamas, a female staff member read them all a bed-time
story. I am glad that Noel at least has this memory of warm interaction with an
adult. Such moments were few, and a close relationship with a trusted adult was
non-existent. Noel had the same problems as Frank Golding who had no-one to
answer the questions that ‘gnawed’ at his brain. “Where could you turn for
answers or reassurance? We dealt with the mysteries and meanings of life as
best we could. The staff were too busy for such childish nonsense and questions
were answered with a silent rebuff, or worse, a sudden smack for being a
nuisance. The staff had no time for a child’s sobbing. I clammed up because it
was safer. I coped as best I could.”

Noel
started his day in a dormitory of twenty children, their cast iron cots lined
up in two straight rows with the bed-wetters separated at one end. At seven
o’clock he joined the throngs of children heading to the dining room for
breakfast. They lined up in front of large buckets of gluggy porridge and
served themselves one scoop with a long handled ladle.

At
the table, the children stood to attention to say grace before hungrily
devouring their food. When he was older, Noel was given the job of getting up
early to stoke the boiler and cut the wood before breakfast; a job he loved.

After
breakfast the children went to the school room where they sat in desks in long
rows in unheated class rooms despite Ballarat’s cold climate where winter
temperatures could drop to as low as three degrees Celsius with overnight lows
of minus five degrees Celsius. Alan Radcliffe, in his submission to the Senate
Inquiry, recalls suffering from the cold at Ballarat Orphanage to the point of
getting chilblains on his ‘ears, fingers and toes’.

 The
children were drilled in the basics of spelling and the multiplication tables.
As was the custom in Victorian schools at the time, reading was taught using
the
Victorian Readers
, one for each year. The
Readers
included
poems such as
The Owl and the Pussy Cat
, fairy tales and other stories
including
The Hobyahs.
I can imagine what might have been in the minds
of the Orphanage children when they read
The Three Wishes
in the Third
Book.

 
Teachers could choose to
inflict punishment, such as ‘the cuts’ or a caning, on children who did not
spell words correctly or gave wrong answers to their times tables. However,
Noel remembers his teacher as being patient and caring. She would sit beside
him if he did not understand something and explain it to him.

At
midday, the children stopped for lunch, which was usually a hot meal such as
stewed rabbit, followed by steamed pudding or other dessert. The staff watched
the children to make sure they ate all the food put in front of them. One day,
when Noel refused to eat his steamed pudding, a staff member pushed his head
down onto his plate and slammed his face into the sticky pudding. Noel
retaliated by picking up the plate of steamed pudding and throwing it at the
man. After that, Noel was not forced to eat pudding he did not like.

The
school day ended at 3.30 p.m. Then there was work to be done. The children
worked in the vegetable garden or the pigsty, chopped wood for the boiler and
milked the cows. The tradition of hard working orphans was established early at
Ballarat Orphanage where ‘every boy and girl is taught to work, first in the
way of cleanliness and order. ...Girls will, by the time they leave the
orphanage, be good plain cooks, they will be able to make their own clothes and
will understand all about laundry.’
(The Argus
, 1929.)

Noel’s
evening meal at five o’clock was usually bread and butter with jam or treacle and
a cup of milky tea. Orphanage children often had to endure the mouth-watering
aroma of delicious food served to the staff while they forced down their mass
produced fare.

At
bed time, the children were sent to their dormitories which, like the school room,
were unheated. After warning the children not to wet the bed, the staff
patrolled the corridors alert for any child breaking the rules by talking. If
caught, the guilty child was made to stand by their bed for ten to fifteen
minutes, shivering with cold.

Violence
was another hazard faced by the children at Ballarat Orphanage. Noel remembers
retaliating against staff members who used physical violence. According to
Frank Golding, most of the staff at the Orphanage used physical intimidation.
In his submission to the Senate Inquiry he recalls: ‘Charlie McGregor, the head
‘carer’, set the tone. Not a day went by without him wielding his waddy,
banging heads together, dishing out a backhander, a slap across the lug, or a
box over the ears. Even the toddlers knew to keep out of the way of his vile
stick. The schoolyard was his point of ambush. McGregor stood at the gateway
with yard broom at the ready for those who were slow in coming out. Over the
years many a broom handle broke over a kid's back or bum. The quickest children
avoided him. The slowest bore the brunt. We all feared and loathed him.’

Sexual
abuse of children in orphanages, including Ballarat Orphanage, has now been
well documented. Staff and older boys would take advantage of vulnerable young boys
who were desperate for affection. The other boys lived in dread of it happening
to them. Golding writes: ‘...whenever sexual abuse happened, I felt grubby
because there seemed no good reason that it wasn’t me.’

Luckily,
Noel escaped sexual abuse at Ballarat Orphanage. He recalls an approach by a
staff member on one occasion but he took defensive action by running away and,
on passing a line of football boots, picked one up and threw it at the man. He
was a kid who was ready to fight and therefore not a soft target for an abuser.
Perhaps that is why he was spared this betrayal, at least.

For
Noel too, no-one came.  He says it did not bother him because he did not
know any better. However, some children felt the pain of loss on visiting days
and would go off on their own and watch, unseen, the other children with their
parents. Some, like Lorraine Rodgers, who was at Ballarat Orphanage the same
time as Noel, ‘would go in hiding, so no-one would know that I was crying’.
(Submission to
Senate Inquiry
.)

 Noel
does remember one visitor when he was around ten years old; a lady who called
herself Aunty Marj and gave him a copy of
Gullivers Travels
. I would
like to think that this was Myrtle posing as Noel’s aunty but I cannot imagine
how, given our family financial situation and her commitments as a wife and
mother, she would have been able to travel from Orbost to Ballarat. She had a
friend who lived in Lydiard Street, Ballarat and they corresponded regularly so
perhaps, assuming Myrtle even knew where Noel was, her friend took the book to
him. On the other hand, it might have been a relative on his father’s side.

Like
his sister Audrey, Noel suffered the disappointment of just missing out on
being adopted. The owners of the milk bar in Queenscliffe where the children
from Ballarat Orphanage spent their summer holidays had a son the same age as
Noel. The two boys got on well and the family sometimes took Noel on holidays
with them to Mildura. When Noel was thirteen they decided to adopt him.
Unfortunately, he was only six weeks into his six month probation period when
the family circumstances changed as a result of an accident. Adoption plans had
to be shelved. Noel was sent back to the Orphanage. His adoption did not seem
to be subject to his father’s approval as was the case with Audrey. It is
possible the superintendent of Ballarat Orphanage was deemed his legal guardian
because his father had not paid the mandatory maintenance. Orphanage records
state: ‘The father paid the maintenance for about three months and left the
state. The Police and our Solicitor have been unable to contact him.’

Agnes
Bishop appears to have aided and abetted her son in his deception of Ballarat
Orphanage. In 1948, in response to an official registered letter from the
Orphanage’s solicitors addressed to Henry Bishop, she wrote: ‘I am returning it
to you as he hasn’t lived here for some considerable time, about two years.’
The information she supplied in the letter was probably true but the
implication was that she did not know where he was living and that was
certainly not true. Ultimately, her efforts to conceal the whereabouts of her
son were in vain because in 1948, the Ballarat Orphanage managed to locate
Henry Bishop through the Albury Police.