Caroline Emily Clark

rdf:langString Caroline Emily Clark

rdf:langString Caroline Emily Clark (6 September 1825 – 18 November 1911), invariably known as Emily Clark, was a South Australian social reformer well known for championing the cause of children in institutions and founding the "boarding-out system" for settling orphan children with foster families in Adelaide. She was born in Birmingham, the eldest of the family of Francis Clark, a silversmith of Birmingham, and his wife Caroline, a sister of Rowland Hill. The family settled in Adelaide, South Australia in 1850. A delicate child with poor eyesight, she was an apt and industrious student like her brother Howard. In 1837 she was sent to stay with her grandmother Hill in Tottenham, half a mile from Bruce Castle, to study at "Miss Woods School" in a nearby town, perhaps Upper Clapton. Around 1840 scarlet fever struck the family and Emily was left with rheumatism in her hands. In 1863, shortly after the death of brother Howard's wife Lucy, Emily joined him in his newly built "Hazelwood Cottage" (a few hundred metres from the original "Hazelwood Homestead") to care for his three young children: Frank, Nellie and new-born Lucy, and stayed there until Howard's marriage to Agnes McNee in 1865.