I looked at Papers Past for information about the Burnham Industrial School and entries were from Court news where children were sent to the school. There was supposed to be an article about the opening of the school in October 1874 but I couldn’t find the article on Papers Past. The earliest entry that I found was in March 1875 where two children aged 4 and 5 were sent to the school for 5 years. Their mother was found drunk and semi naked in Salt’s Gully. Note Salt’s Gully is now Hawkhurst Road in Lyttelton.
In 1876 two cottages were to be built and in 1879 the infirmary was completed. In 1880 there were ads regarding building two classrooms. There was a band plus a sports team. The school mostly had boys but there were a few girls as well. It eventually was for boys only but couldn’t find a date for when girls were sent elsewhere. In May 1918 the boys were sent elsewhere and by 1920 it was taken over by the Defence Force and became Burnham Camp.
The children were sent here for various reasons. Some were considered troublemakers but the majority were neglected children with drunk parents being a big problem. In many cases the fathers had disappeared leaving the mothers to struggle. The mothers made a living by the only way possible for many women those days and became prostitutes. Other children were orphans.
Life was hard and the lucky ones were fostered by caring adults. Several stories about the boys being flogged and many people in Canterbury considered the children to be the dregs of society. I did find a photo of the buildings but it was copyrighted so I couldn’t take a copy of it.
I possibly had some indirect ancestors who ended up here and it does explain why Nana Cave was so anti drink as she would have seen the affects on members of her mother’s family.
The reason I ended up writing about this school is because a couple of people asked me about it plus there was an amusing episode in the weekend. I had borrowed a book from the library for a friend who doesn’t live in Christchurch. The book was a non fiction book about Woodend and my friend had several ancestors settle in this little town. I read the book myself before driving out to Rolleston. In the book there was a story about four children who were fostered by a family in Woodend. The children had ended up in the Burnham Industrial School thanks to a mother with a drink problem. The father had disappeared to Wellington. These children had the same surname as a family that was in my friend’s family tree so we discussed at length trying to work out how they fitted into her family. When I got home I did some research and discovered that these children weren’t related to my friend but they were related to me. They were first cousins to my grandmother on her mother’s side. My friend and I had a good laugh about this.
