Caroline Chisholm, humanitarian and philanthropist
Caroline Chisholm (1808-1877) never lived in Maitland, but she has an honoured place in Maitland’s history. She was the originator of the Caroline Chisholm Barracks (or Cottage) at 3 Mill St, East Maitland, known in times past as the Maitland Benevolent Asylum (one of the area’s first hospitals) and the East Maitland Immigrants’ Home.
Born in England in 1808 and raised to believe in the dignity of the individual human being, Chisholm arrived in Sydney in 1838 on the Emerald Isle with her army officer husband, Archibald, and their children. She quickly noted the hardships of many other new arrivals - some were landing with no job, family, contacts, money or accommodation - and she moved to alleviate their situations by helping people to find work and establishing hostels for them to live in.
Portrait of Caroline Chisholm, Thomas Fairland lithograph from painting by Angelo Collen Hayter, 1852.
(National Library of Australia)
The original oil painting is in the State Library of NSW.
Life’s work
Chisholm’s efforts began in Sydney’s Hyde Park, where her ability to interest authorities in humanitarian projects first became evident. She convinced Governor Sir George Gipps to allow her to establish a home for girls: this became the Female Immigrants’ Home which accommodated nearly a hundred young women.
She sought to get these women jobs, mainly outside Sydney on farms and in small towns from Goulburn to Brisbane, and she established several hostels in which they and other disadvantaged people could live. Her work thus combined the accommodation provision and employment agency functions.
Chisholm helped thousands of people to establish themselves in New South Wales. In Britain she pushed politicians to improve conditions on immigrant ships and in Australia she sought to publicise the dreadful living conditions endured by many during the depression of the 1840s and later on the Victorian goldfields. To finance her hostels and other endeavours, she raised money by giving lectures in England, on the continent and in Australia. She lobbied politicians, media figures and even the Pope for help.
She was particularly noted for the assistance she gave young immigrant women. Some of them, robbed, exploited and destitute, had had to resort to prostitution to survive. On the wharves of Sydney Harbour Chisholm met many newly-arriving young women, took them under her wing and shielded them from potential disaster.
The Maitland connection
One of Chisholm’s hostels was located in East Maitland in a building that still exists: it is the only one of her hostel buildings that has survived to the present day. It was established in 1842 in a row of very basic, low-cost, one-storey sandstone terraces built between 1831 and 1835 by ‘Gentleman’ John Smith to accommodate labourers working in his flour mill and other commercial establishments nearby. Smith had been one of the original convict settlers of Wallis Plains in 1818 and had later come to prosperity in property development and farming in the Maitland area and in Newcastle. He rented part of what was at the time known as ‘Smith’s Row’ to Chisholm for her Mill St hostel.
Athol D’Ombrain photographs of 3 Mill St, 1972
(University of Newcastle Collection)
Legacy
Long after her death in England, Chisholm’s legacy was recognised in Australia. For nearly 30 years from the late 1960s her image adorned the $5 note, and the suburbs called Chisholm in the ACT and Maitland in NSW were named after her. A shelter on the northern edge of Melbourne, an old Anglican church in Breadalbane and the Caroline Chisholm Centre in Tuggeranong were also named in her honour.
Her Cottage in Mill St was protected by a Permanent Conservation Order in 1987 and added to the NSW State Heritage Register in 1999. It is one of the oldest buildings in Maitland and the most famous in the locality once known as ‘Moontown’ which comprised Mill, Emerald, Courtland and Villa streets. A Heritage NSW blue plaque honouring Chisholm’s legacy was affixed to a wall of the Cottage in 2022.
3 Mill St, Maitland, 2019
(Photograph by Stewart Watters)
Caroline Chisholm’s gravestone in Northampton is inscribed with the words ‘The Emigrants’ Friend’. She was an idealist with a practical bent, and her endeavours benefited many people in Maitland and elsewhere.
References
Iltis, Judith ‘Chisholm, Caroline (1808-1877)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol 1, 1966.
Keys, Chas, ‘Our past: humanitarian and philanthropist, Caroline Chisholm left her mark on Maitland’, Maitland Mercury, 22 July 2023.
