Transcript Episode 14: The Brookside girls

Duration 32 min

From the podcast series ‘Look History in the Eye’

Written, produced and presented by Tara Oldfield and Public Record Office Victoria

Music and sound design by Jack Palmer

A Bird in a Gilded Cage performed by Tara Oldfield (vocals) and Sarah Harris (piano)

Guests: Erica Cervini, with additional voice acting by Natasha Cantwell, Asa Letourneau and Sebastian Gurciullo.

Tara Oldfield 

Please note that this episode contains details of child abuse in institutional care and may be upsetting for some listeners.

By a Special Reporter. 2nd of August 1899.
 

Natasha Cantwell 

Brookside Reformatory for Girls…lies about twenty-four miles south of Ballarat and ten miles from Scarsdale, on the branch line to Linton... There are 450 acres of fair grazing land, lightly timbered, and the buildings consist of two good-sized, straggling cottages, and the over-seers house…In one cottage are nine girls; in the other, four…The matron admits that girls have to saw and chop wood, cart gravel and empty nightpans…The fact remains that wood chopping is of no use in qualifying them to earn a living. Their youth is passing, and it is not being employed, as the Government ought to insist it should be employed, in fitting them for the future… 
For absconding, a recognised offence, the penalty has been to have their hair cut off, boots and stockings taken away, and sometimes isolation as well. Canings appear so frequently that one would think their futility with such big girls would have suggested itself ere now... Another entry is of three hours exercise, walking around the house in sight of all, tied up in a straight-jacket…
My conclusions then are that the authorities at Brookside are untrained and unsuited for their difficult task; that the system pursued is antiquated and non-reformatory in its effects; and that the inspection is so inefficient and casual as to be practically a negligible quantity.               
 

Tara Oldfield 

Those are excerpts from The Argus, words of journalist Alice Henry, voiced by Natasha Cantwell.
Alice Henry was a Richmond-born journalist and women’s rights advocate who used her writing to publicise progressive causes, particularly issues affecting women. Here she set her sights on Brookside Reformatory – Victoria’s first privately run Protestant reformatory for girls, in operation between 1887 and 1903. 
But Alice Henry wasn’t the first to express concern for the 257 girls sent to Brookside throughout its run. And her issues with their treatment just scratched the surface of allegations made. What was initially hailed as a picturesque farm homestead run by a lady who made it her life’s work to rescue young girls in trouble, would soon turn sour.
 

Erica Cervini 

Her article was taken seriously, really seriously. And from that time on, people did start to question what on earth was going on at Brookside. Was this the great experiment it was supposed to have been?
 

Tara Oldfield

I’m Tara Oldfield, and you’re listening to Look History in the Eye, produced by Public Record Office Victoria, the archives of the state government of Victoria. Where over one hundred kilometres of public records about Victoria’s past are carefully preserved in climate-controlled vaults. We meet the people who dig into those boxes, look history in the eye, and bother to wonder… why.  
Erica Cervini is an award-winning education journalist, researcher and family historian. She has spent more than twenty years delving into the public records and newspaper reports of the girls of Brookside. In 2024's Provenance Journal she published some of her findings in an article titled Wayward Immoral and Evil. Prior to reading this article I had never heard of Brookside or the girls who resided there. I found it particularly relevant still today and was keen to learn more about this place and its origins – beginning with the woman who started it all – the aforementioned lady who made it her life’s work to rescue young girls in trouble, Elizabeth Rowe. 
 

Erica Cervini 

She was born in November 1843 in Pitchress Potsbury in North Hampton England... she was the eldest daughter of the local vicar, Theodore Stretch, her mother was Martha Butler... Her father interestingly was secretary of the church missionary society in England. And of all the children it was only Elizabeth that inherited this missionary zeal. Elizabeth was about ten when the family moved to Australia... because her father took a position as the christ church vicar in Geelong. Her father also helped to establish Geelong Grammar. So you can see how important in society this family was. Elizabeth married William Rowe in 1863 and he’d also gone to Geelong Grammar... And it was actually her husband’s family property that gave Brookside a home.  
And in 1857 the Rowe family bought the adjoining property Glenfine, where Elizabeth and William moved to after their wedding, and they had 12 children. This is the point, I think is really important in giving us a sense in why Brookside came about, Elizabeth’s father was eventually made arch deakin of Melbourne and this bought Elizabeth in contact with George Guillaume. He was a devout Anglican who was also concerned about the welfare of the so-called neglected children. And he was made secretary of the neglected and criminal childrens department in 1883... and they both had similar ideas about the so called salvation of children. Both of them wanted to encourage a family life for these girls and were encouraged in their views by an English child rescuer called Mary Carpenter. Both George Guillaume and Elizabeth Rowe didn’t like large dormitories. And it’s interesting because around this time also in the 19th century middle class women were assigned the special role as caretakers of morals and religion, so Elizbeth Rowe and George Guillaume were often encouraging other women to take up this role, child rescuing, looking after the religion of the children. They wanted to place children in country cottages under the guidance of a Christian and family oriented woman. And Elizabeth would say, and this is to quote her: it would operate as a large family. 
 

Tara Oldfield 

And so in 1887, Brookside Reformatory for Girls was born at Elizabeth and William Rowe’s property not far from their own residence at Glenfine. Girls, young children, seen to be troubled, who would have previously been sent to dormitories alongside Pentridge Prison, would instead go to cottages on a farm near Cape Clear. 
 

Erica Cervini 

So as you can imagine it was quite isolated for the girls and when it opened just before Christmas in 1887, there were ten girls. Um so very very different to what the girls had previously experienced, the laneways of the inner city coz most of the girls came from the inner city Melbourne. Um, terrace houses, hotels on every corner, and here they were, at a farm. Far away from anything, not even close to Ballarat.  
 

Tara Oldfield 

Though isolated, reports early on were favourable. An 1890 report, Farm Life for Reformatory Girls, A Visit to Brookside, was written like a novel, recounting how the beautiful homestead was run like a farm the girls called ‘home’. 
‘Green fields, most people will agree, are a very much more wholesome restraint than iron bolts and bars’ the report declared, and it continued:
 

Asa Letourneau 

The farm buildings…nestle on well wooded ground, which descends on the other slope to a stream called the Western Creek, and are just visible from the road. Beyond is the dense belt of forest land skirting the Pitfield Plain, which rolls away south and west far as the eye can reach in gentle savannah-like undulations.
…There is no lock and key supervision here, but liberty to scamper among the fields, full and free, trust when the cows have to be brought home, hay has to be made in the paddock beyond the Creek, or the wood cart has to be loaded in the forest land still further away. 
…I was impressed from the first with the wholesome spirit of enjoyment in their duties which every girl manifested.
 

Tara Oldfield 

The report writer went on to describe tending to animals, horse riding, picnics, splashing and laughing in the creek, baking, and sewing. Also described is a young Aboriginal baby being cared for by one of the girls on behalf of Elizabeth’s daughter who was visiting. It’s unclear exactly what relationship the baby had to Elizabeth or her daughter. 
Erica tried to find out more, but was unable to learn who he was or what his connection was to the Rowe’s. 
Then, the report recounts the stories the young girls carry with them into Brookside.
 

Asa Letourneau

Black and sad stories, some of them; up-bringing amidst the most terrible surroundings, a father’s drunkenness, a mother’s loss of all sense of shame, parental instigation to the commission of crime—such are among the sad causes which threatened their undoing at the very threshold of life. All the girls at Brookside, it may be explained, have some circumstance attaching to their record that precluded their being boarded out in foster homes under the Neglected Children Act. It is sad, indeed, to have pointed out to you a small child of 10 or 12 years of whom it has to be said that she knows too much of immorality in the worst phases to be trusted among children who are pure and uncontaminated. However, in such a case, especially if the girl passes young into the hands of the authorities, much good can be done in a year or two at such a place as Brookside. 
…But the labour of love does not cease when a girl bids good-bye to the farm home at Brookside. She goes to a carefully selected “service home.” 
…The establishment at Brookside has now been in existence for over two years, and not one of the girls— they are “reformatory” girls, be it remembered, and of their class by no means the best type — has attempted to abscond. 
 

Tara Oldfield 

But abscond they soon did, leading to questions as to how accurate reports like this really were – particularly their descriptions and assumptions about the Brookside girls. 
 

Erica Cervini 

Because the girls came from what was considered the lower, so called lower classes, there were assumptions that if they were out at night, oh they’re upto no good. They might be engaged in prostitution, or they might be out stealing, that they were promiscuous, uncontrollable, some newspaper articles even talked about them being evil, which, we’re talking about young girls. But there was this idea that girls seen out when it was dark, was not good. Often the word wayward was used in newspapers, headline a wayward girl.
 

Tara Oldfield 

Erica delved deeper, behind the headlines, and found records of the Brookside girls among the Ward Registers in Public Record Office Victoria’s collection. Jessie Nairn’s record was one of them.
 

Erica Cervini 

I think I looked at Jessie’s life because hers kind of reflected a lot of the lives of the girls who were sent to Brookside. And she was two years old when her parents Margaret and Robert sailed on a steamship from Glasgow and ended up in Melbourne. 
So, Jessie settled with her parents at 196 Queensbury Street, North Melbourne, not far from here, and Jessie would remain an only child. And I think life in Melbourne would have been very different to what the family had dreamt of. They were obviously coming here for a better life, but …reading between the lines, Jessie’s father seemed to be having quite a few difficulties and Jessie wasn’t enjoying home life. 
So, by 1895 family relationships were strained and Jessie ran away.
And Jessie’s mother appealed in the police gazette for her 12-year-old daughter to return home, in the police gazette there’s actually a description of Jessie. And she was described as having a stout build, fair complexion and hair, large blue eyes, and she looked older than her 12 years. She was wearing a spotted pinafore covering her dress, and a straw hat trimmed with brown ribbon. She was found and then she was sent to the Melbourne bench where she was charged with being neglected. 
And this is interesting, all, that most of the girls actually hadn’t committed what we would think of as a crime, they would be charged with being neglected. Jessie actually told the department of neglected children that her parents had quote “intemperate habits” that made her homelife quite tricky. So, Jessie was initially sent to the girls’ reformatory at Coburg, which was an annex to Pentridge prison.
 

Tara Oldfield 

It was 1896, and she wouldn’t stay at Coburg long. For she was one of the girls sent off to Brookside. One can only imagine what must have been going through 12-year-old Jessie’s head as she travelled out. Surely a farm environment would be a better place for her than Coburg, or the home she’d run away from? Perhaps she thought she’d learn more than she could at home, maybe make friends, line up a good job. But the farm was just so different from the North Melbourne life she was used to. 
 

Erica Cervini 

Mrs Rowe actually employed a farm overseer and his wife to direct the girls in their farm work and that included feeding pigs, milking cows, clearing the bush, cutting chaffe for working horses, and actually killing lambs as well. Jessie and the other girls tended 1,000 sheep, 50 head of cattle, grazing on 15,000 acres. So vegetables were also grown, so for someone like Jessie and the other girls there was little time for formal education in reading and writing. These skills weren’t considered important for them because you know they were going off to do domestic work anyway so it just wasn’t considered important.
Jessie would have also learnt to make bread, and candle making, laundry work, she would have done her own laundry and that of the locals and that earned Brookside ten shillings a week. This is an example of how Elizabeth Rowe wanted the girls to work. Hard. Elizabeth Rowe had a new iron wash house that had been installed at Brookside, but Elizabeth ignored all labour-saving devices, such as ringers. Because she believed that the girls had to get used to leading a simple farm life. We’ve also got to remember how cold it gets in this area of Victoria. Freezing, absolutely freezing. But after girls like Jessie had learnt farm work, they were sent out to service. And she was sent out four times to isolated farms across Victoria and she’d return to Brookside in between being sent out to these placements. 
I’ve tried to find out how the girls were treated on these isolated farms and I just can’t find anything. Probably because there were no inspections, there was no one going out there to find out how the girls were going.
And the work on these farms was also tough. It was the same soulless and brutal work at Brookside.
 

Tara Oldfield 

So what’s a girl to do but escape!
In 1899, when Jessie was 17 years old, she, accompanied by six other girls ranging in ages from 12 to 17, escaped in the dead of winter. It appeared their escape may have been unplanned, as they were not rugged up for such an endeavour, but they saw an opportunity to make a run for it, and they took it. They remained hidden in bush for 48 hours, until they couldn’t survive the cold and starvation any longer. 
 

Erica Cervini 

So the time that they were away from Brookside must have been absolutely terrifying for them. So cold. And we’re only talking about young girls. Teenagers. I can’t imagine what was going through their minds at the time.
Tara: They handed themselves in to police and took the opportunity to bend the kind constable Clifford’s ear. Though the constable had no choice but to send them back to Brookside, he was so concerned by what they told him, he wrote a detailed report and sent it straight to his superiors. 
 

Sebastian Gurciullo 

“I have to report on the evening of 13th inst Constable Stephens of Napoleons, bought some girls whose ages ranged from 12 to 17 years to the lockup. 
These girls had absconded from the Brookside Reformatory on the 11th inst and after wandering in the bush fell into his hands at Epfield. Their condition when found was pitiable, being hatless and poorly clothed. They were returned to the institution under escort of Constable Shaw by the 11.25am train on this date.
At the watch house they collectively complained of the tasks and treatment meted out to them and stated that they had to fell, saw and split trees, and afterwards with the aid of a horse, cart the wood home, dig post holes, and erect fencing, load and cart gravel from a neighbouring gravel heap (to repair roads and potholes), plough, harrow, assist in harvesting operations, as well as to do the washing and other domestic duties. 
The slightest neglect or insolence on their part in performing any of those duties earns the delinquent a flogging with a heavy leather strap, (portion of a discarded belly band) and two of the girls had marks on their arms corroborative of the severity of a whipping which they had been administered a few days previously. It was also stated that a 12 year old girl is now confined to her bed at the Reformatory, her hands tied, and her body covered with black and blue bruises, the result of a flogging given her by the matron, the alleged offence being that the girls had torn or destroyed a portion of her clothing. 
They expressed a lively apprehension of the consequences that would follow on their return to the Reformatory asserting that their hair would be cut off, that they would be fed only bread and water for at least a month, with liberal applications of the belly-band, and further that they would have to follow their tree felling and gravel carting labours without boots or stockings. Considering the nature of the work and the severity of this climate, this last seems to be to me, if true, very cruel indeed.”    
 

Tara Oldfield 

After Jessie’s bold escape, Clifford’s report made the papers and an investigation was called. All girls involved, including Jessie, were called into a room, with a staff member of Brookside, where they were questioned and apparently, unsurprisingly, downplayed some of their claims and recanted others. What choice did they have, probably fearing the consequences of their actions, and with their previous admissions about Brookside resulting only in them being marched right back! 
Dr Raymond, who was Elizabeth Rowe’s doctor and regularly attended Brookside, responded to the constable’s accusations. His explanations were not denials so it’s a wonder the investigators were satisfied with such a report – but they were. 
In relation to binding girls’ hands behind their backs, Dr Raymond said that “I have had to order this occasionally for example in the treatment of masturbation…” As to corporal punishment, he says this is very rare indeed and “I have instructed the Matron occasionally before the inmate that such a course would have to be adopted if she persisted in some vicious habit. Some of our cases are these of moral depravity…” 
Of confinement in a cell he said “the cells or cubicles are little rooms detached from the main building in which girls are placed apart from their fellows for a few hours.” For punishment by curtailing diet “the diet is cut down occasionally to bread and water for misdemeanours…” Of cutting hair “This is reserved for escapees and is considered a very severe punishment by the girls.”
Concerning their desire to run away he says “It is found that girls are apt to repeat the offence – the ringleaders having run away before and persuading others.”
Yet concludes “I have always found the girls well cared for in every way and apparently happy and contented.” 
So, in other words, everything the girls have said is true, but that doesn’t equate to poor treatment. 
As you can imagine, with this kind of treatment, investigations going nowhere, and newspapers going on to report the girls as liars, Jessie and her friends were not the first or last to try and escape. Annie Duce was regularly in flight. More on her later! But first, what became of Jessie?

Erica Cervini 

Well in 1900 Jessie turned 18 so that was her time to leave Brookside. It’s unclear what she did immediately after she left, but she may have worked as a domestic because that’s what she’d been trained to do. And in 1904 at the age of 21, she married Australian-born Archibald Kidd, a 27-year-old labourer. And they married in Fitzroy, in a northern suburb of Melbourne, and they settled in North Melbourne. So she went back to her childhood roots in North Melbourne and she never left the suburb. 

Tara Oldfield

Jessie had four children, two of whom sadly died in childhood, and five grandchildren at the time of her death at 61 years of age.

Erica Cervini

...there’s no record of Jessie being in trouble with the law after leaving Brookside and her death notice suggests she was really well loved.
 

Tara Oldfield 

Supporters of Brookside may say that Jessie’s happy and trouble-free life was a result of the teachings of Brookside, others would say it was in spite of Brookside. Who’s to know what impact her treatment had on her emotional wellbeing into adulthood. 
Now, the doctor, you’ll remember, mentioned that when it came to escaping, some girls would repeat the offence, no matter the consequences. Annie Duce was in this repeated escapee category. She was sent to Brookside about five years before, and gone by the time Jessie arrived. 
 

Erica Cervini 

It sounds like Annie had an interesting life. She was one of the girls who was actually born in Tasmania. In 1874. I’m not quite sure when she came to Victoria but she was a state ward and she’d been sent to Coburg Reformatory for girls in 1891 because she had actually stolen some items, a silver watch, pendant and gold chain. She was working as a domestic for a family. I think the family, they were living in Essendon at the time, Annie did go to pawn shops to sell what she had stolen. 
Anyway she was sentenced to 6 months in gaol. And she was only 16 when she was caught stealing, she was 4 foot 10, so she was little as well, brown and blue eyes. She spent the first part of her sentence in Melbourne gaol, and then she was transferred to the Coburg reformatory, and from Coburg she was sent to the Brookside Girls Reformatory.  
 

Tara Oldfield 

Brookside’s lack of lock and key supervision allowed Annie to escape multiple times both from the Reformatory itself and from homes she was sent to service. After her last escape, she was taken to Old Melbourne Gaol to finish out her sentence. She was released in June of 1893.
 

Erica Cervini 

Going back to that other point of how the girls were described in newspapers and I have kind of mentioned this but the idea that they were never encouraged to do anything else but domestic work. They really didn’t have a lot of reading, writing, except in their religion classes. It comes back to they’re from a certain class, we can’t hope for anything better.
Some of the girls may have stayed in service at the farms they were sent to, but from what I gather a lot of them came back to the city.
 

Tara Oldfield 

And what of Brookside?
 

Erica Cervini 

It actually closed in 1903, Elizabeth Rowe had already died in 1900 and one of the Matrons who was working there actually bought it but by this stage there was increasing criticism about Brookside. The methods used. That the girls weren’t actually really learning and there was also changes in policy that there needs to be inspections of institutions and Brookside just wasn’t getting…well it was isolated. There was no one really inspecting it.
People started getting the idea that hmmm maybe it’s not such a nice place after all. The girls aren’t running free and roaming about, ar it was actually sold to the methodists so they could continue their philanthropic work.
Once again this comes back to the idea of silence, and silence has become something that I think we’re becoming more aware of how children have been treated in institutional care. Silence and coverups. And at Brookside, there was silence, and authorities did try to cover up what was happening there. Alice Henry’s article changed things and people started realising maybe things aren’t as good. And we see this with inquiries into institutional care how there’s been cover ups and silence. And I think that’s, and Brookside’s just one example, of that and you know it may be just over 120 years ago since Brookside closed but it still has resonance for today about, messages about, also believing the children too. That constable Clifford did believe the girls had been treated badly at Brookside but the authorities, editors at newspapers, except for the Argus, you know they, no no these are the kind of girls who would lie, they’re lying about what’s happened. So I think although this is well over a hundred years ago, it still has a lot of lessons for us today. 
 

Tara Oldfield 

Thank you Erica Cervini, and my PROV colleagues who put voices to some of the records. To learn more about Erica’s research, and see original records from our collection, visit the episode page at prov.vic.gov.au or read Erica’s article ‘wayward, immoral and evil’ dispelling the myths of Brookside in the 2024 issue of our online Provenance journal. 
The song A Bird in a Gilded Cage you’ve been hearing throughout this podcast was composed in 1900 by Tilzer and Lamb. I’ve sung it here, with Sarah Harris on piano. You can it in full in a few moments. 
You’ve been listening to Look History in the Eye, the podcast of Public Record Office Victoria. 
 

Song lyrics, A bird in a gilded cage:

She's only a bird in a gilded cage,
A beautiful sight to see,
You may think she's happy and free from care,
She's not, though she seems to be,
'Tis sad when you think of her wasted life,
For youth cannot mate with age,
She’s only a bird in a gilded cage,
A bird in a gilded cage.
I stood in a churchyard just at eve',
When sunset adorned the west,
And looked at the people who'd come to grieve,
For loved ones now laid at rest,
A tall marble monument marked the grave,
Of one who'd been in a cage,
And I thought she is happier here at rest,
Than to live in a gilded cage.
She's only a bird in a gilded cage,
A beautiful sight to see,
You may think she's happy and free from care,
She's not, though she seems to be,
'Tis sad when you think of her wasted life,
For youth cannot mate with age,
She’s only a bird in a gilded cage,
A bird in a gilded cage.