Brian Dickey - No Charity There: A short history of social welfare in Australia

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NO CHARITY THERE

Ration day at the asylum.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR:

Politics in New South Wales 18561900 Melbourne: Cassell, 1969 Rations, Residence, Resources. A History of Social Welfare in South Australia Adelaide: Wakefield, 1986, Brian Dickey with contributions from Elaine Martin & Rod Oxenberry

South Australia's Foundations: Select Documents Adelaide: Wakefield, 1987, Brian Dickey and Peter Howell

BRIAN DICKEY

NO CHARITY THERE

A short history of social welfare in Australia

First published 1980 by Allen & Unwin

Published 2020by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Brian Dickey 1980, 1987

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Dickey, Brian, 1939
No charity there.
2nd. ed.
Includes index.
ISBN 0 04 301291 4.

1. Social serviceAustraliaHistory. 2. Public welfareAustralia History. I. Title.
361'.994

Set in 10/11.5 pt Times by Setrite Typesetters, Hong Kong

ISBN-13: 9780043012918 (pbk)

Contents

1. ii
2. viii
3. ix

Guide

This book is dedicated to the memory of 'Old Gran', Polly Dickey

The first edition of this book found ready acceptance as an introductory survey of its subject. No other has yet appeared to replace it, so, with the aid of Allen & Unwin, I have been able to present this second edition. In it I have sought to embody new research and new interpretations, with the aid of the endnotes. Because this is a work of synthesis, citations to original evidence have generally been limited to matter quoted directly; in addition, references to scholarship are broad rather than particular, sustaining substantial sections of the text. Elsewhere, my own original research underlies the argument. Some material peripheral to the argument has been removed, notably that purporting to discuss Aboriginal 'welfare'. This controversial subject deserves specific and extensive attention, which it is beginning to receive. The issues involved increasingly seem divergent from those addressed in this work. Much else has been restated in what I hope will be clearer terms.

In addition to the people acknowledged below, my thanks to Matthew Kelly, Ros O'Neill and Wray Vamplew.

Brian Divkey
The Flinders University
of South Australia

Preface to the first edition

The convictions and structure upon which this book is based are outlined in the Introduction. While some of it is based upon my own research in the field, much of the detail reported in this book draws on the work of many other scholars. Their work is acknowledged in the notes. I am grateful to them all.

I have been fortunate in the encouragement I have received from a number of academic colleagues, and I wish to thank them now: Marian Aveling, Cyril Cummins, Adam Graycar, Michael Horsburgh, Roy Hay, Peter Howell, Richard Kennedy, Ron Mendelsohn, Jill Roe, Kay Rollison.

Several groups heard me out, offering criticism and encouragement. They include my colleagues at Flinders University, the Adelaide Social History Group, and the History Department of the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. I am also grateful for the contributions made at a conference of the Australian Historical Association, and especially for the work done by Anne O'Brien of the University of Sydney on the St Vincent de Paul Society and G.E. Ardill.

With the aid of funds and time provided by my university, I was able to benefit from research and consultations in England. In particular I wish to thank Gillian Sutherland, Eric Evans, Harold Perkins, and Peter Townsend. I owe a personal debt to the patience, accuracy and commitment of the typists at Flinders University who prepared innumerable drafts: Joan Stephenson, Dorothy Tynski, Jean Lang, Jean Stokes.

Acknowledgement for permission to reproduce illustrations in this book is made to the AMA Museum; Brotherhood of St Laurence; Herald and Weekly Times Ltd; John Oxley Library; La Trobe Library, State Library of Victoria; Mitchell Library; Medibank; National Trust, Tasmanian Branch; New South Wales Government Printer; Prince Henry's Hospital; Royal Perth Hospital; State Library of South Australia, Archives; and Sydney Hospital.

Brian Dickey

As a boy I sat and listened to my grandmother, an aged yet indomitable figure, a representative of the respectable working classes. Her parents had made the transition from the untidy, unkempt Rocks district, leading down to Millers Point in Sydney, to the new workingman's suburb of Bexley. Granny knew her roots lay in the Rocks and, like her grandson, she remembered talking with her grandmother. She told of joyous girlhood escapades, scrambling over the roofs and fences of the steeply raked housing of the Rocks. She told too of the struggles of her grandmother's family to stay alive. Her grandmother had been born in 1834, probably in the Rocks district, and perhaps of convict forebears, as Hannah Elizabeth Wheeler. She had married William Williams in 1852: he had been born in Hampshire. Perhaps gold had lured him to Australia. Be that as it may, it is with Hannah's girlhood in the difficult years of the 1840s that this little tale is concerned.

When Grandma Williams was a girl she had red hair and, I suspect, a pert manner. As she had related it to her grand-daughter, she had usually been the one sent by needy parentsperhaps during the bad years of the 184244 depressionto trudge the long two miles up George Street on a Tuesday morning to the Benevolent Society to face the ladies of the Acting Committee in search of rationsoutdoor relief to the deserving poor, as the Committee would put it. She might have had more appeal or a readier tongue than the rest of the family But, she recalled, and my grandmother related, 'You got no charity there'.

It is a bitter piece of oral history. Was Grandma Williams really conveying a judgement from below on colonial society: that it was harshly inquisitorial and lacking in love and generosity towards the needy? Or was she just unlucky? But if she 'got no charity there', what did she get? How far was the process of distributing outdoor relief, or medical care at the Sydney Infirmary, or admission to an asylum for destitute children or aged peoplehow far were these activities part of the mechanisms by which nineteenth-century Australian society protected itself and controlled the problems it perceived these poor people posed? Was it still true in the 1890s, or the 1940s, or the 1980s, that 'you got no charity there'? Might you not then get something different, or even better: a cash payment as a right from a government department, or some subsidy after evidence of personal expense and endeavour?

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