The State, Adoption, and Matron Ivy McGregor

Authors

  • Bernadette McCabe

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1017/S1321816600002233

Keywords:

Adoption, cultural phenomenon, changes in Queensland law

Abstract

This paper explores the rise of adoption as a cultural phenomenon by examining some crucial changes in Queensland law.

Author Biography

  • Bernadette McCabe

    Bernadette McCabe completed her Honours degree at Griffith University in 1995, with a dissertation entitled 'In and Out of Trouble: Adoption and the Management ofIllegitimate Pregnancy in Queensland 1935-1965'. She now works in the area of family policy.

References

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The Adoption of Children Act of 1935 (Qld) (26 Geo. V No. 7).

Queensland Parliamentary Papers (QPP). Annual Reports, Director, State Children Department, 1931–66.

The Adoption of Children Act of 1964 (Qld) (13 Eliz. II No. 54).

Swain, Shirlee with Howe, Renate, Single Mothers and Their Children: Disposal, Punishment and Survival in Australia (Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 1995), 131. This text refers to private adoption agencies, but does not acknowledge their non-existence in Queensland, claiming that the Victorian data on which their comprehensive study is based can be applied Australia-wide (p 4). Department of Children's Services, Centenary of Care for Children (Brisbane: Queensland Government Printer, 1979), 25.

Pateman, Carole, The Sexual Contract (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988).

Pateman, Carole, The Disorder of Women (Polity Press, Cambridge, 1989).

See Kidd, Rosalind, The Way We Civilise (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1997) and Margaret Humphreys, Empty Cradles (London: Corgi, 1996).

McCabe, Bernadette, ‘In and Out of Trouble: Adoption and the Management of Illegitimate Pregnancy in Queensland 1935–1965’, Honours dissertation, Griffith University, 1995; Swain with Howe, 141; Juliet Harper, ‘Reflections on Entitlement to a Child in Australian Women's Journals 1947–1987’, Children Australia 15.4 (1990): 8.

Queensland Parliamentary Debates (QPD), Vol. CLXVIII, 1935.

Department of Children's Services.

Department of Children's Services; QPD, Vol. CLXVIII, 1935: 376; Swain with Howe, 133.

Swain with Howe, 132; Kate Inglis, Living Mistakes: Mothers who Consented to Adoption (Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1984), x.

Department of Children's Services.

QPD, Vol. CLXVIII, 1935: 456.

Department of Children's Services; Lynette Finch, The Classing Gaze: Sexuality, Class and Surveillance (Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1993), 74.

Interviews with random group of thirty relinquishing mothers, 1993; Wendy Selby, ‘Unwanted Children? Nursing Homes and Illegitimate Children Queensland, 1900–1950’, unpublished paper, 1993: 11–12, Swain with Howe, 124.

QPD, Vol. CLXVIII, 1935: 376.

See Rosalyn Diprose, The Bodies of Women: Ethics, Embodiment and Sexual Difference (London, Routledge, 1994).

Swain with Howe, 11.

QPD, Vol. CLXVIII, 1935: 457.

QPD, Vol. CLXVIII, 1935: 456.

QPD, Vol. CLXVIII, 1935: 456.

Selby, 12.

QPD, Vol. 239, 1964: 1422; Inglis, 3.

Jill Julius Matthews, Good and Mad Women (Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1984), 86.

Swain with Howe, 41; Anne Else, A Question of Adoption: Closed Stranger Adoption in New Zealand 1944–1974 (Wellington: Bridget Hutter Books, 1991), 9; Harper, 8; Marline Spensky, ‘Producers of Legitimacy: Homes for Unmarried Mothers in the 1950s’, Regulating Womanhood: Historical Essays on Marriage, Motherhood and Sexuality, ed. Carol Smart (London, Routledge, 1992), 108.

‘We Should Do More for Our Unmarried Mothers’, Woman's Day, 4 Nov. 1954.

Swain with Howe, 79.

Interviews, 1993.

Department of Children's Services.

Home Mission Echoes (HME), Church of England, Brisbane, quarterly, 1932–66.

Home Mission Fund Committee Minutes, 1947, Anglican Church Archives: SOC WEL/B1 BNI.

HME, 1944.

Home Mission Fund Committee Minutes, 1947.

HME, 1952.

HME, 1951.

HME, 1951.

Finch, 104.

HME, 1959.

HME, 1956.

HME, 1952.

HME, 1960.

HME, 1954.

HME, 1956. QSA files relating to communications with St Mary's Home and selected from Letter Registers of the Department of Health and Home Affairs were inexplicably missing from their bundles.

HME, 1960, 1962.

Anglican Church Archives: SOC WEL B10 BN2.

Interview, 1993.

HME, 1946.

Swain with Howe, 143.

Swain with Howe, 131.

Interview, 1993.

QPP, Director Harris' Annual Report 1957–58.

Interview, 1993.

QPP, Director Clark's Annual Report 1960–61; Swain with Howe, 139 reports that other Australian states experienced a similar preference for girls.

QPP, Director Harris' Annual Report 1957–58.

Swain with Howe, 175; Inglis, 1; Harper, 8.

Interviews, 1993.

Swain with Howe, 142.

Interviews, 1993.

The Sunday Mail, 27 Aug. 1995.

QPP. Director Clark's Annual Report, 1962–63.

The Sunday Mail, 27 Aug. 1995.

QPD, Vol. 239, 1964, 1423.

QPD, Vol. 239, 1964, 1427.

HME, 1964.

The Sunday Mail, 27 Aug. 1995.

QPD. Vol. 239, 1964, 1423.

QPD, Vol. 239, 1964, 2053.

Selby, 2.

QPD, Vol. 239, 1964, 2048.

QSA, Department of Health and Home Affairs, COL/236.

Interview, 1993.

QPD, Vol. 239, 1964, 1423.

Swain with Howe, 144.

QPD, Vol. 239, 1964, 1423.

QPD, Vol. 239, 1964, 2048–2049.

Sayer, Paul, ‘Death in Queensland: The Administration of Deceased Estates’, Brisbane History Group. Brisbane: Archives and Approaches II, Papers No. 7 (1988), 134.

QPD, Vol. 239, 1964, 2047.

QPD, Vol. 239, 1964, 2049.

Published

2000-10-01

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

McCabe, B. (2000). The State, Adoption, and Matron Ivy McGregor. Queensland Review, 7(2), 85-98. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1321816600002233