Servants' Home from 1876 in Flinders Street, Adelaide city, gives immigrant, unemployed girls a safe, caring place
The Servants’ Home. finally fully set up on the corner of Flinders Street and Freeman (later Gawler Place), Adelaide city, from 1876 and extended by 1878. This later became part of the site for South Australian government education department offices.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia
The Servants’ Home. finally fully set up in Flinders Street, Adelaide city, in 1876 came from the need to fix the plight of newly-arrived immigrant or unemployed domestic servants in South Australia.
In 1856, the government's female immigrants depot off North terrace, Adelaide city, was shut down after turmoil from d=squabbling among staff and revolt theatrened by most of the girls. That year, Baptist and later Congregational minister and educationist Edward Dewhirst in 1856, put the case for reclaiming “fallen females” and pleaded the cause of domestic servants, most of them Irish, whose “virtue has been attacked” and had left jobs in the country and returned to temporary accommodation in Adelaide, to find “there is nothing before them but a choice of evils: starvation or prostitution”.
Dewhirst argued for a “home for servants ... where respectable young women, out of place, could find a temporary abode at a very low payment, and whither ladies could repair to engage their domestics”. His call wasn’t taken up until1862 when a committee of 12 women, including Mary Colton, started the Servants Home.
Initially, the home was for servants out of situations (jobs) and was supported by voluntary contributions supplemented by the South Australian government. This role extended when immigration agent Dr Handyside Duncan asked for the home to take single women from each ship as it arrived. In November 1862, 13 female immigrants, at the government’s requet, were received from the ship Sir John Lawrence into a home in King William Street, Adelaide city, Here, supervised by matron Carolyn Stapley, they were treated with care and kindness.
The committee advised the girls to regard the institution as their home in a land where they were strangers. The home was at several sites before premises were leased at the Freeman (later Gawler Place) and Flinders streets corner, Adelaide city. The government later bought this property and the house next door. By 1878, the two houses became one, with well-ventilated rooms and accommodation regarded, generally, as excellent. At a corner office, persons wanting to hire servants were received. Another room was used only for hiring those who arrived from overseas.
Among lower apartments, the committee had a boardroom, while a bedroom was set apart for the matron of the ship for immigrants staying at the home. The immigrants' main dining room seated 60. Two kitchens were provided and four bathrooms opened off the yard, with a lumber room and a place for baggage and bedding. The 24 sleeping rooms, looking onto Freeman Street, were for servants returning to the home to be employed again. An apartment looking into Flinders Street housed 18, while a bigger room overlooking the yard, had 32 – taking total accommodation to 84.
A registry book had each newcomer's name, her ship and its arrival date, the days she'd been maintained by the government, when she left the home and her employer’s address. This last entry was important, as all letters for single female immigrants first came to the home. On their first evening, the girls were visited by a church minister who advised them on their future course in the province and ended his visit with devotional exercises. On Sunday morning, new arrivals were drafted off to the various churches and, in the evening, a committee member held a kind of service. Catholics were allowed to attend their own church.
The committee only received back girls recommended from their last employer as to character. They paid 10 shillings a week or 1/6d. a day for board. The matron had occasional trouble with newcomers with many seeking more freedom than could safely allowed. Persons of bad repute visited the home after ships arrived trying to lure some newcomers away. A ship’s arrival on a Saturday caused most trouble, as the sailors, off duty and drunk, visited the home to see the girls from the ship. In the home’s first 16 years, 5,690 persons were received from 92 ships and 4,023 returning servants accommodated and employed again.