Lying-in hospital one of few surviving buildings of large 19th Century complex for destitute asylum in Adelaide city
The lying-in hospital, a surviving part of the 19th Century destitute asylum complex in Adelaide city, accommodated destitute pregnant women from the 1880s and had 1,678 babies were born there over its 30 years.
The lying-in hospital, with the chapel, store and female section, were the only surviving parts of the South Australia’s 19th Century destitute asylum, a large complex set up off the later Kintore Avenue in Adelaide city.
The destitute asylum grew from the 1850s into a large complex clustered around three quadrangles with a collection of buildings described as “largely official Jacobean imitation”. The four surviving buildings were grouped around one of the quadrangles.
The destitute asylum was a government institution that cared for some of the colony’s poor and infirm. A destitute board was set up in 1849 to superintend the “relief of the destitute poor” and to manage the asylum started in 1852. After temporary accommodation had been provided from 1851 at the military barracks on North Terrace, Adelaide, and the asylum complex’s first building, the Native School, was opened in 1857.
Many other buildings were constructed on the asylum site by 1885. The most important building in the complex was the former lying-in hospital to provide welfare for destitute pregnant women. No other agency at that time was prepared to take on this responsibility. Over the lying-in hospital’s 30 years, 1,678 babies were born there.
Besides the old and sick, poor pregnant women and abandoned children, the superintendent, matron, and attendants also lived at the asylum complex. For 65 years, the asylum admitted thousands of colonists and provided “what aid the community, in the guise of the officials who worked there, thought they deserved.” Alongside the destitute asylum were housed a military garrison and a police force. In 1859, the Imperial Garrison built a barracks used by them until 1870. Between 1863-66, when the imperial garrison was involved in the Maori wars, its barracks was taken over by the asylum when the problem of housing for destitute children was acute.
The accommodation crisis was eased by the new industrial school at Magill and the purchase of the Grace Darling property at Brighton. From the 1870s, there were alternatives to the asylum's lying-in hospital such as St Joseph’s Refuge, the Norwood Female Refuge and the Salvation Army.
The lying-in hospital of the destitute asylum rapidly declined in popularity but continued to function until 1918 when the commonwealth government introduced maternity allowances for all expectant mothers. The state government’s department of chemistry took over the lying-in hospital when it closed in 1918. A new brick laboratory was built and the existing buildings modified.
Most of the destitute asylum was demolished from the 1920s to the 1950s. Of the individual surviving buildings, the chapel was originally built in 1865 as a schoolroom for the orphaned children of the destitute asylum. It became the home for the South Australian Migration Museum.
