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NEWS
• MACKAY LOCAL NEWS
Thursday, 15 July, 2021
Time to mark graves of 33 orphans ground floor dormitory with a dirt floor for the children. “The first three Nuns from the Sisters of St Joseph’s did not sleep on the ground and slept over one metre above the ground in a timber cottage and then on the first floor.” “Technically many of these babies and infants were not orphans and came from destitute young families facing almost impossible hardship who were unable to care for children with just one parent.”
By JOHN BELL THE time has come to mark the graves of 33 babies and five-to-six year-old very young children, who died after living in appalling conditions at Mackay’s St Joseph’s Bucasia Merara Orphanage at Shoal Point. Unlike airconditioned comforts in 2021, in between 1879 and 1885, 126 very young girls and boys under 12 years of age, where most were aged five to six, slept on damp, mosquito-ridden dirt floors next to the beach at St Joseph’s orphanage. Mackay archivist and historian, Doug Petersen explained that 19 babies and very young children died at St Joseph’s orphanage, four died after being transferred to the Mackay Hospital from the Orphanage and another 10 children died within six months of being transferred from St Joseph’s Orphanage. “Importantly, I may have found these dead childrens’ unmarked graves, which are recorded in the Queensland Government Valuer’s hand-drawn 1885 map, which circled cleared ground next to the beach opposite St Joseph’s Orphanage,” Mr Petersen said. “It was not possible in the 1880s to know what exactly killed these babies and very young children and the cause-ofdeath on death certificates lists consumption and from illnesses that these children may have bought with them. “However, other historians have suggested that damp living caused these very young children to die. Diseases included pneumonia, malaria and hook-worm and St Joseph’s Nuns also suffered from malaria. “This was because Mackay’s Bucasia
SAD: Doug Petersen with a plaque honouring the buried orphans Orphanage was built on a low sandy ridge facing the sea and surrounded on three sides by a large swamp. “There is evidence that wet sleeping conditions and constant mosquito infestations may have caused vapours from the swamp and malaria weakening conditions, which made these babies and very young children vulnerable to other illnesses. “These included ‘anaemia or poverty of the blood which caused by long standing exposure to malarial poison,’ or mosquito bites and isolation of children with infectious diseases was not understood.” EXCELLENT CARE Mr Petersen said Magistrate Mowbray visited the Bucasia Orphanage with
Mackay’s Dr Cutfield, but Magistrate Mowbray ‘was of the opinion that the care of the orphans was excellent’. However Mackay’s Bucasia Orphanage was forcible closed when Magistrate Mowbray was transferred to Bundaberg in 1887. “Mackay said residents protested against the closure of St Joseph’s Bucasia Orphanage, as they had donated goods, materials and raised 400 pounds for the Orphanage. “But Dr Cutfield reported that the children ‘had an unhealthy appearance and suffered a heart condition, which he believed came from a malarial disease from being located in a swampy area and suffered from ‘Malarial Poison’. “The Orphanage consisted of a house for the priest to live in when he visited, a two-story dwelling for the Nuns and a
NO UNEMPLOYMENT This was because the state of Queensland, (prior to the formation of Australia in 1901) did not have unemployment, deserted wives and single parent’s pensions and so fathers whose wives died in childbirth and wives whose husbands died in tough working conditions, often sent their children to orphanages. Mackay’s Police Magistrates Captain William Goodall and Thomas Mowbray were also Inspectors of Orphanages and St Joseph’s Bucasia Orphanage received a small allowance when Magistrates sent children to the Orphanage. Historian and Archivist, Doug Pearson’s book about children at the Bucasia Orphanage is heartbreaking and is available for sale from The Mackay Local News. In his tragic and well researched book, Mr Petersen described a family of four children sent to the Bucasia Orphanage, where only two survived. “A police enforced inmate of Bucasia’s orphanage included a half-caste Aboriginal, Anthony Nebo. Anthony was arrested aged four under the letter, ‘Order In Council’ and sent to St Joseph’s Buca-
sia orphanage to ensure that he might not associate amongst the Indigenous population and his Indigenous mother.”
OTHERS WHO DIED Other young babbies and young children who died after being sent to St Joseph’s Bucasia Orphanage and buried next to the beach and across the road in unmarked graves at St Joseph’s Orphanage Cemetery include: n JOSEPH SMITH, who died aged nine, allegedly from heart disease. ‘Joseph had a habit of getting up at night, walking across a paddock to get in through a pantry window to steal good food and sugar and give scraps to the dogs, night after night until detected’; n ERNEST MAY who died aged three after suffering for a week from dysentery. Ernest was sent to the St Joseph’s Bucasia Orphanage ‘after being rescued from the hands of Chinamen with whom the mother was living’. ‘The child being the offspring of a white man would very likely be ill-treated’; n ALICE ARMSTRONG, 11, was sent from Rockhampton to St Joseph’s Bucasia Orphanage suffering from eye sores and farmed-out into service to work for Mr Fay at Pioneer Plantations. ‘A month later she was returned to the Orphanage as the young girl became extremely delicate and died six months later’; n WILLIAM BAKER was sent to St Joseph’s Bucasia Orphanage aged three and died three years. His father, Robert was a miner at Cooktown who agreed to pay one pound and ten shillings a month to the Police Magistrate after his 30-yearold wife Elizabeth died aged 30;
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