PDF (Whole thesis) - UTas ePrints - University of Tasmania

299
anything to eat but pig potatoes , not even a cup of tea or a slice of
bread, and was sent alone into the bush to hunt for bul locks . In fact,
so many girls, maltreated and ruined, appealed to the Society for support
of themselves and offspring, that the Executive Committee brought the
matter to the notice of the Government in October 1865 , urging the
appointment of a responsible person to visit all children apprenticed from
the institution, or to place them under the guardianship of the clergyman
of the denomination to which they belonged in the district. 8
In its organisation, in the harmonious cooperation shown by the
executive officers, in the ready relief it afforded in its own defined
area of activity, the Benevolent Society was eminently successful; none
the less, it was only a stop-gap, a temporary substitute for an urgently
needed welfare programme at Government level, a small success story in an
otherwise grim reality. Not unnaturally, therefore, Hall used his
position as Executive Chairman to give him credit and credence in the wider
sphere of his other charitable work at this time. Even if he had wished
to do so, the conditions and circums tances of the years 1863-75 did not
allow him to restrict his work to the Benevolent Society if his conscience
were to remain clear. There was so much confusion and uncertainty, so
much to be done. The first ten to twenty years of the New Colonial Society
were not easy: parliamentari ans were inexperienced in government and
ins ecure in office; goals and policies were not yet clearly defined;
the colony was isolated from the stimulation of example; the economic
situation was difficult; the colonists, ordered for so long by autocratic
representatives of the Imperial Government , were apathetic and lacking in
dr,ive and initiative; there were relics of the old convict system to be
disposed of - large numb ers of worn out , old, sick and invalid convicts
and the increas ing poor, a legacy from an unfortunate immigration policy -
there was a lack of suitable institutions , and , ab ove all else, a scarcity
of finance with which to deal with this multiplicity of prob lems . As if
that were not enough, there were reigious differences between Catholics
and Protestants to plague the community; especially the charitable
institutions bequeathed by the British Government were suspect, their
demands on the public revenue bitterly resented by the taxpayers .
Nowhere in this social maelstrom were all these problems more
forcibly exemplified than in the Orphan Asylum which Hall regarded as his
8
Hall's evidence; H.A.P. 1867/38 .