Ann Larkins and the Spaces of the King’s Female Orphan School, by Ann-Marie Ezzy.
When the King’s Female Orphan School opened in Hobart Town in 1828, it was touted as a place of refuge and education for the colony’s children. With her mother’s death and her father’s loss of his ticket of leave, Ann Larkins was “admitted on the foundation” in the latter part of 1828 and remained at the orphanage for three years until her father could retrieve her. Ann Larkins was not remarkable for any great doings, but exploration of her small story can give a more complex understanding of our past. She was a minority: a child, a female, and came from a subordinated social class. One way to understand what life was like for Ann, for whom there are minimal records, is to explore the where and why. Scrutiny of the spaces of the orphanage creates not only insight into the discrepancy between intent and actual practice, but also how its operation connected to the wider world. Thinking about the local within the global illuminates colonial social anxieties and the impacts of gendered and classed understandings.
Jointly sponsored by the State Library and Archive Service of Tasmania and the Professional Historians Association Vic & Tas, the Libraries Tasmania Talks are a series of monthly public lectures held at the Hobart Library. They can be attended free at the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts or viewed online via the Webinar.
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