Paupers, Poor Relief and Poor Houses In Western Australia 1829–1910

The story of poor relief in Western Australia intersects closely with the stories of convicts and assisted immigrants. The wealth of Western Australia was built largely on the hard work of thousands of indentured labourers, convicts and penniless immigrants.


But the problem of unemployment frequently plagued the workers in a society with few resources and no charitable institutions. Who fed the indentured servants who were cast adrift by their masters? What was the government’s solution to the general problem of unemployed paupers, many of them ex-convicts? And what became of the destitute women and children and the sick and insane?


Penelope Hetherington’s meticulous research discusses the system of nineteenth-century poor relief in Western Australia, illuminating the state’s social, economic and political history.