This is an ongoing study of the Lying-in Department 1, which was operated by the Destitute Asylum in Adelaide, South Australia (SA) from 1878 to 1918. The aim of this study is to investigate the pregnant, destitute, mostly unmarried women admitted for lying-in relief in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and their infants. During the period under study, the Destitute Asylum was the only place in SA that offered public facilities that catered for the confinement of single, destitute women. The alternative was a home birth, which necessitated the cost of a midwife or nurse in independent practice for confinement at a private address; Adelaide Hospital did not accept lying-in cases 2.
Built on land traditionally owned by the Kaurna people 3, the Lying-in Department is situated on Kintore Avenue colloquially known in former times as “Destitution Road.” 4 It was located on the north-western perimeter of the Destitute Asylum site, itself located to the south of the River Torrens and just off North Terrace, which bordered the commercial and administrative district of what was then known as South Adelaide (now known as the City of Adelaide; Figure 1).
Adelaide is the capital of SA, Australia’s first free settler colony established by the British in 1836 5. It lies to the south of Port Adelaide, flanked on the west by Gulf St Vincent and on the east by the low-lying Mount Lofty Ranges. Williams (1974) 6 highlighted the unique urban layout of the original Adelaide plan:
It consists of a core of “town lands”, for business and commerce, called the City (split into North and South Adelaide by the River Torrens), a surrounding belt of parkland reserved for public uses, and a peripheral zone of “suburban lands” beyond, which lead eventually into the rural sections.
Plus, Hirst (1973) 7 provided an evocative description of the city applicable to the period under investigation:
Adelaide lay between the hills and the sea in a rich well-watered plain. It was surrounded by farms, orchards, olive groves, vineyards and market gardens. By 1870 suburbs had grown up on its north-western and on part of its eastern boundary, but elsewhere open fields still abutted the parklands. A few miles beyond the suburbs and the parklands were a number of small villages, which had grown up in the first place to serve the rural community, but from the 1850s had also become the home of many of Adelaide’s wealthy men. Mansions and large villas were built in the countryside all around the city, but they were concentrated in the villages – Woodville midway between the city and the port, Walkerville in the Torrens Valley north-east of the city, and on the rising ground towards the hills Magill, Burnside, Glen Osmond and Mitcham.
The Destitute Asylum had a system of categorising and accommodating women admitted for lying-in relief into three classes according to a social and moral code, which reflected the dominant ideology of the period: married women, and single women having their first child; single women who had previously had a child or children; and prostitutes. 8 Since information regarding classification was not systematically recorded, it is not possible to discern exactly how many women were confined in the Lying-in Department building itself.
Even so, available records indicate that the total number of women and young girls admitted at least once to the Destitute Asylum for lying-in relief between 1880 and 1918 was 1,840. These females ranged in age from 13 to 49 years. Nearly half of the women were between 20 and 24 years old (n = 774), with over one-third aged between 15 and 19 years (n = 615). Ten of the admissions were under the age of 14. The majority (n = 1,416) of these women and girls were born in Australia. Of these, five records suggested Aboriginal origins. Most of the women and girls were single (n = 1,744) and three-quarters (n = 1,285) were employed in domestic and general service. Three percent (n = 51) of women were engaged in prostitution. 9 From 1880 to 1909, 1,678 babies were born at the Destitute Asylum. 10
In 1849 the South Australian government formed a Destitute Board, comprising a group of clergymen, to supervise the relief of the destitute poor. 11 A few years later, in 1852, the Destitute Asylum was established to offer indoor relief, and by the mid-1850s a system of outdoor relief had been created, which extended beyond the city of Adelaide to encompass the whole colony. 12 From the outset, the Destitute Board was tasked with providing indoor relief to a diverse range of individuals, including the aged, the sick, the unemployed, children, and women without a male breadwinner. Piddock (2001) provides an informative analysis of the Destitute Asylum buildings; while not purpose-built, the institution comprised an assortment of structures, which evolved on an ad hoc basis for the duration of its existence with room use allocated according to changing needs. 13 Overcrowding was an ongoing issue.
From the late 1860s, the Destitute Board 14 and the Committee of the Legislative Council on Destitute Establishments in the Colony 15 were concerned with the inadequacy of the women’s quarters at the Destitute Asylum, the desire to separate lying-in women from other female inmates, and the inability to accommodate different classes of pregnant women. In his report of 31 December 1866, Edward Holthouse, Superintendent, lamented: “… in more cases than one, during the last six months, respectable married women have been compelled to go through the trials of child-birth in the same crowded ward with the diseased prostitute.” 16
Ten years later, the two-storey Lying-in Department, designed by George Thomas Light, the Government Architect, was constructed by Brown and Thompson Contractors (Figure 2). 17 18 Reflecting the dominant architectural style of mid-Victorian Adelaide, combined with elements of Georgian architectural design, it was built of bluestone with red brick quoins, 19 with a hipped roof constructed from galvanised iron sheeting. 20 The front of the building faced east into a yard, and featured a balcony with a balustrade incorporating a simple cross-bar pattern above a verandah, all of timber (Figure 3). 21 The ends of the first-floor balcony were screened off to prevent women from communicating with anyone in the street. 22 The rear of the building faced onto Kintore Avenue to maintain security and privacy (Figure 4). 23
During construction the plans were altered, at the request of the Chairman of the Destitute Board, to include the addition of a small kitchen with a bedroom overhead at the southern end of the building. 24 At the same time, to save money, the windows on the first floor at the rear of the building were removed. 25 Thus, the building was constructed with only one window at the rear, which afforded light to the turn in the internal staircase. 26
The internal accommodation, designed to accommodate about 30 women at a time, was modest, featuring slate fireplaces, wooden panel doors and timber floors (Figure 5). 27 The second floor consisted of two lying-in wards 30 feet long by 20 feet wide and 13 feet high. 28 A third ward of similar dimensions was incorporated into the ground floor accommodation, which also included quarters for the matron consisting of three rooms. Each lying-in ward was used to separate the three classes of women described above. 29 Although, there is a discrepancy regarding this information; in 1883, the then Chairman of the Destitute Board, Mr T. S. Reed, asserted that, with one or two exceptions, women who had “fallen” more than once were accommodated in the Destitute Asylum proper. 30 And, by c. 1890, the ground floor lying-in ward was recorded as a dining-room (Figure 6). 31
With the enactment of the Maternity Allowance Act 1912, 32 which introduced a payment of £5 for new mothers, equivalent to two weeks wages and intended to cover medical costs, the need for lying-in facilities at the Destitute Asylum was sharply reduced. 33 In addition, from 1917, the Queen’s Home at Rose Park, SA’s first maternity hospital, had finally agreed to accept unmarried women, a development it had resisted since its opening in 1902. 34 35 In the same year, the Destitute Asylum relocated from its city location to the suburb of Magill, with space set aside for lying-in relief. 36 37 The Lying-in Department building closed in 1918. 38
Following its closure, the building was renovated and upgraded for use by the Government’s Department of Chemistry, which continued to be used in this capacity until 1978. 39 Confirmed as a State Heritage Place in the SA Heritage Register in 1986, 40 the old Lying-in Department is only one of a handful of Destitute Asylum buildings that survive in 21st century Adelaide. Today, it forms part of the Migration Museum, Adelaide complex (Figures 7-8). The first floor is occupied by museum staff with the ground floor used for exhibitions. A permanent exhibition, “In this place: a history of the Migration Museum site,” 41 can be found in what were the Matron’s Quarters.
The social welfare context in SA differed from other Australasian colonies in that the Destitute Asylum was government funded and controlled; similar institutions elsewhere were financed and managed by non-government philanthropic and charitable organisations. 42 The prevailing belief of the South Australian government was that it was the legal responsibility of family members to provide maintenance for destitute individuals. The Destitute Persons Act 1881 43 legislated for the Destitute Board to recover the costs of maintaining a pregnant, destitute woman in the Lying-in Department from her relatives. In the case of illegitimate children born at the Destitute Asylum, the law also empowered the Destitute Board to seek out and establish the paternity of the putative father with the aim of recovering the indoor maintenance costs for his illegitimate child. Where a mother had financial means, such as personal savings, she was required to contribute to her child’s support.
In terms of expenditure, as an example, the weekly cost of maintaining a woman in the Lying-in Department in 1890 was, on average, 11 shillings 2¾ pence. This was just over double the average cost per head of an “inmate” in the Destitute Asylum itself. 44
Women in the Lying-in Department formed an isolated group, segregated from the rest of the Destitute Asylum. The Chairman of the Destitute Board, T.S. Reed, reported in 1881, “… the inmates have been kept in thorough privacy and seclusion, unvisited by any save a nearest relative, so as to conceal, as far as possible, this portion of their life from those outside.” 45
Following the introduction of the Destitute Persons Act 1881, each woman was required to sign a formal Agreement 46 between herself and the Destitute Board prior to admittance for lying-in relief. Compulsory residence was a condition of the Agreement. New mothers were fully occupied with nursing and looking after their infants. They were required to feed their babies naturally for a minimum of six months, a practice that the Destitute Board perceived would increase maternal affection, which in turn would reduce the incidence of early infant mortality and baby-farming. 47 In addition, the mothers were required to undertake domestic duties delegated by the Matron, which included carrying out large amounts of washing for the other inmates of the Destitute Asylum. 48
Unless the mother was a married woman, was taken home by relatives, or offered a place in one of the non-government refuges, residence in the Lying-in Department was obligatory until an infant reached the age of six months. A woman could leave the Destitute Asylum earlier provided that the person accompanying her had signed an undertaking that the new mother would suckle her infant as if she had remained under care of the government and until it reached six months of age.
The professionalisation of nursing and midwifery in medical practice is evident from the earliest days of the Lying-in Department’s operation. Records demonstrate that fully trained and qualified midwives were employed as Matrons for the Lying-in Department. For instance:
In the early years of the Lying-in Department, the Asylum’s medical officer, Dr William Talbot Clindening, maintained a collaborative relationship with matron, Ellen Thompson, attending cases that she could not manage. Later, Dr James Alexander Greer Hamilton, employed by the Adelaide Hospital to oversee home births in the absence of a dedicated midwifery ward, and Dr Edward Willis Way, a lecturer on midwifery at the University of Adelaide, were summoned to assist. 51
Audrey Lady Tennyson (b. 1854) was a frequent visitor to the Lying-in Department from 1889 to 1903 when her husband, Hallam Lord Tennyson, was Governor of SA. 52 Capitalising on her position, one of her major projects was South Australia’s first maternity home for women, the Queen’s Home, which opened in Rose Park in 1902.
However, the most significant people associated with the Lying-in Department were the destitute, pregnant, mostly unmarried women themselves, whose records highlight the gender inequalities and power dynamics that existed within late 19th and early 20th century families, government institutions and wider society. These gender roles and power imbalances were upheld by problematic social and cultural norms and beliefs, which embodied feminine stereotypes that focused on the immoral character of unmarried women and unacceptable sexual activity outside marriage. The women’s records provide insights into the challenges they faced regarding their destitute circumstances and their unmarried, pregnant status, as well as the obstacles associated with lone parenting and finding employment.
Geyer, Mary. (2008) Behind the wall: the women of the Destitute Asylum Adelaide, 1852-1918. Kent Town, South Australia: Wakefield Press.
Jones, Helen. In her own name. Women in South Australian history. Netley, South Australia: Wakefield Press.
Genealogy SA, https://www.genealogysa.org.au/
Migration Museum. In this place: a History of the Migration Museum site. https://migration.history.sa.gov.au/events/in-this-place/ : accessed 01 August 2023.
Register of admissions – Destitute Asylum, GRG 28/5 series
Register of admissions to the Lying-in Home, Destitute Asylum, GRG28/13, 13 June 1886-20 April 1896, https://www.familysearch.org/
Register of infants born in the Destitute Asylum, GRG 29/15 series
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