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Showing posts with the label orphans

Remembering the Papatoetoe Orphan Home

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Fifty years ago on 5 August 1963 the Health Department's Division of Mental Health began using the former Papatoetoe Orphan Home as a hospital for children with special learning and living needs. The home, also previously and variously known as St John’s Orphanage, St Mary’s Home and the Church of England Orphan Home was now renamed St John’s Home. St John’s Home eventually became a satellite home of the Mangere Hospital (in Robertson Road) for young people with intellectual challanges. Papatoetoe Orphan Home had been laid out according to a 1907 plan by the architect George Selwyn Goldsbro’. Ref: AWNS-19070815-5-1, plan for the proposed orphanage in Papatoetoe, 1907, Sir George Grey Special Collections However because of budgetary constraints it would be built in stages.  Only three of the four dormitory blocks were built initially. (The fourth dormitory block was never built). The blocks were linked by corridors.  There was a dining hall and laundry building behind t...

Children's Home & Orphanages in Hawkes Bay

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A book about the children who lived in children's institutions in Hawkes Bay has been written by Dr Kay Morris Matthews , an acclaimed academic historian and author. It will be launched on 22 November by John McKinnon, a Hastings resident who grew up in France House, a home in the Esk Valley for teenage boys.  Ref: 4-3681A-57, Parnell orphanage, Sir George Grey Special Collections Entitled entitled 'Who Cared? Childhoods within Hawke’s Bay Children’s Homes and Orphanages 1892-1988', the books covers the experiences of thousands of youngsters who were orphaned, illegitimate, abandoned or destitute.