Legislation Neglected Children's Act 1887

In 1887 following the proclamation of the Neglected Children's Act (No.941) and the Juvenile Offenders' Act (No.951) responsibility for neglected children was transferred from the Department of Industrial and Reformatory Schools, to a Department for Neglected Children. A Department for Reformatory Schools assumed responsibility for convicted juveniles. Although responsibility was statutorily separated in this manner it is evident that both departments continued to be administered jointly within the Chief Secretary's Department.

One feature of the Neglected Children's Act was that it expressly stated that there was no power given to the government to create any more industrial schools. The Secretary of the Department wrote in 1891 that this provision reflected how by the late 1880s, 'the foster-home, to which the child is sent from the receiving depot, [is] recognised as the proper home in future for all non-offending wards of the state'.

In a 1998 article Swain wrote that Victorian child rescuers, had a strong influence on the provisions of the 1887 Act. The Act made it 'mandatory' (previously it had been 'permissive') to commit a child to the 'care' of the Department if he or she was living in a brothel. As Jaggs has observed, these provisions gave legal sanction to the work already being carried out in Melbourne's brothels by child rescuer Selina Sutherland.

Swain writes that the legislation gave child rescuers powers of intervention 'which paralleled those of the police'. The Act gave new statutory powers to 'specially authorised' private persons for apprehension and guardianship of children (Part IV of the Act).

Another prominent child rescuer, William Forster of the Try Society, was consulted in the course of developing the 1887 Act. As a result of Forster's information about children's involvement in street-trading and hawking, s18(4) of the Act amended the definition of 'neglected child' to include any child 'engaged in casual employment' after dark.

The Neglected Children's and Juvenile Offenders Acts of 1887 provided that all neglected and reformatory children were to be made wards of the state.

Books

• Jaggs, Donella, Neglected and criminal: foundations of child welfare legislation in Victoria, Centre for Youth and Community Studies, Phillip Institute of Technology, Melbourne, 1986. Details

Journal Articles

• Swain, Shurlee, 'The state and the child', Australian Journal of Legal History, vol. 4, 1998, pp. 57-77. Details

Reports

• Guillaume, George; Connor, Edward C., The Development and Working of the Reformatory and Preventive Systems in the Colony of Victoria, Australia, 1864-1890, Government Printer, Melbourne, 1891. Also available at http://catalogue.slv.vic.gov.au/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=1275188. Details

Online Resources

• 'Victoria [excerpts from Victorian legislation]', in To remove and protect: laws that changed Aboriginal lives, This section of the AIATSIS website is a part of the online exhibition, 'To remove and protect: laws that changed Aboriginal lives'. It contains digitised excerpts of legislation from Victoria and other states and territories in Victoria that are relevant to the removal of Indigenous children from their families. Many of these laws are not specifically in relation to Aboriginal children, and are thus relevant to child welfare in Victoria for non-Indigenous children as well., Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, 2008, http://www1.aiatsis.gov.au/exhibitions/removeprotect/leg/vic_leg.html. Details