ORPHANAGES NECESSARY BUT NOT SUFFICIENT When Governor Hotham laid the foundation stone for the Melbourne Orphan Asylum in Emerald Hill (South Melbourne) in 1854, he warned that it was not just a matter of supporting the ‘innocent victims of misfortune’, but the citizens of the colony had another political duty. ‘Remember,’ he said, that these orphans, […]
Lost & Found: State Children in Victoria (2)
THE LARGE INSTITUTIONS In 1849 the Mayor of Melbourne, approached a charitable organisation, the Dorcas Society, for urgent help with the children of a man who had murdered his wife. A stop-gap was found for these and other urgent cases of destitute and homeless children, the ‘uncriminal orphans and friendless children’. In 1850 the Dorcas […]
Lost and Found: State Children in Victoria (1)
Paper presented to the Hotham History Project, North Melbourne Town Hall, 25 July 2017 I am posting this very long paper in separate sections so as not to tax my readers too much. It should be noted that the paper was presented to an audience with a particular focus on the history of North Melbourne and neighbouring suburbs and that influenced my choice […]
Employment of Women
I found this gem when I was trawling through the Report of the Victorian Royal Commission on the State Public Service (1917). The Commission was chaired by one Alexander Gooch, Esquire. I quote from the Report verbatim. Employment of women Until the war forced the position, the powers given by the Public Service Act […]
Loud Fences
Associate Professor Jacqueline Wilson and I have published this article in the latest issue of International Journal of Heritage Studies http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/IVwwDQZhmM8saZwXSuJF/full
Archives: The Care Leaver’s perspective
This article based on my presentation at the ASA Annual Conference in Parramatta in October 2016 has just be published in Archives and Manuscripts – links below. The Care Leaver’s perspective Frank Golding Cite this article as: Frank Golding (2016) The Care Leaver’s perspective, Archives and Manuscripts, 44:3, 160-164, DOI: 10.1080/01576895.2016.1266954 To link to this […]
Redress – Claytons or Fair Dinkum?
Redress – Claytons or Fair Dinkum? In late October/early November I was invited to Sweden along with Associate Professor Jacqui Wilson of Federation University (another Care Leaver) to talk about the state of play with the Australian Royal Commission’s recommendations on redress. We planned to present an essentially negative story about why the Australian government had rejected the Commission’s […]
Lost and Found: Reconstructing a family at war
Lost and Found: Reconstructing a family at war This was the title of a paper I presented at the Australian Catholic University, Melbourne on 13 December 2016 at a conference entitled (Re)Examining Historical Childhoods: Literary, Cultural, Social. The conference was organised by the Australasian Society for the History of Children and Youth. I am working this paper up as […]
The Past is Not a Closed Chapter
The Past is Not a Closed Chapter – It Shapes the Whole Book of Our Lives This was the title of a talk I presented in Adelaide on 30 November 2016 at a workshop as part of the Routes to the Past Project, co-sponsored by the University of Melbourne, CLAN and the Dulwich Centre located in Adelaide. […]
Our childhood lives – in our own words
UPDATE: Reaching back into a strange past There was a gratifying amount of interest in my presentation at Parramatta on 20 October as part of a panel on Righting the Record: Towards a National Summit. The Archivists Society of Australia has placed a live video of the presentation on U-Tube at: Furthermore, it will appear in the next issue […]