The Parramatta Female Factory Precinct Memory Project
Not many Australians know that the first forced removal of children from their mothers in Australia originated in our colonial penal system at the Parramatta Female Factory. Few of us realise the role this intervention played in laying foundational ideologies in the provision of welfare services for women and children. This site in Parramatta is a crucible, where ideas of female immorality, criminality and insanity melded; realised in the hybrid institutional architecture of the Refuge, Workhouse, Asylum, Penitentiary, Orphanage, Girls Industrial School, Girls Training Home, Children's Shelter and Women’s Detention Centre.
