St Vincent de Paul’s Orphanage, South Melbourne

For further information about this Home, please refer to: A Piece of the Story.

Named St Vincent de Paul’s Girl’s Home from 1960s (more gallery images available under that name); Sisters of Mercy ran it 1857–1867 for boys and girls, then from 1867 Christian Brothers ran it for boys only.

The Sisters took charge of the St Vincent de Paul’s Orphanage early in 1861. An almost immediate effect was a separation of the sexes. The Board of Management had applied for extra land for a separate girls’ orphanage in the late 1850s, and the Sisters set about building a Girls’ Orphanage in 1863 moving the girls before it was completed. Although it was separated from the boys’ orphanage by only a laneway, the girls’ orphanage soon became an enclosed world, with no contact, even for siblings, with residents in the adjacent orphanage. The Sisters continued to teach the boys until 1874, though they were anxious to hand them over to the care of a male religious order. Finally, in 1874, Bishop Gold was able to prevail upon the small band of Christian Brothers who had arrived in the colony in 1868 to take charge of the Boys’ Orphanage.