NRS-782 | Applications for admission into the Orphan Schools

Full description

This series consists of the applications for admission into the male and female orphan schools approximately during the period that the schools were administered by the Trustees of the Clergy and School Lands Corporation. The applications were required for to determined whether the child proposed for admission met the necessary criteria. The start date of this series coincides with the appointment at the Female Orphan School, of the Rev. William Walker, and at the Male Orphan School, the Rev. Robert Cartwright.

These volumes comprise the petitions of parents (usually widows or widowers) or guardians of destitute or orphaned children addressed to the Committee of the Orphan Schools (sometimes direct, but often through the Clerk to the Corporation, the Archdeacon, or the Colonial Secretary) and begging that the child or children named in the petition be admitted to the said schools.

Some of the petitions were submitted on printed forms; others are entirely in manuscript. The petitions were at some stage bound into volumes, however the binding was removed to enable the petitions to be microfilmed. The petitions are in chronological order.

This series of records was transferred from the Public Library of New South Wales, and previously transferred from the Lands Department 12 December 1919 and 16 September 1937.

The following publication draws heavily upon this record series:
John Ramsland, Children of the Backlanes: Destitute and neglected children in Colonial New South Wales, Kensington, New South Wales University Press, 1986.