Welfare worker and pioneering police officer, Kate Cocks (1875-1954), was in kinship care as a teenager.

Fanny Kate Boadicea Cocks was born in Moonta, South Australia. Her father, Anthony Cocks, was a miner and her mother, Elizabeth (née George), was a schoolteacher.

Fanny Kate Boadicea Cocks was named by her father…

…after two of the women he admired most in the world – his mother Fanny Tabb Cocks and Queen Boadicea the Celtic warrior queen (Kate Cocks Childcare Centre).

When Kate was two, the family took up farming.

The move was a disaster, with years of prolonged drought resulting in the family scattering across the nation to work and pay off debts (Anderson).

Kate was fourteen when she was sent to live with relatives in Victoria; there she completed her formal education.

In 1900, the Cocks family moved to Adelaide and during that year Kate began training to become a teacher. She was posted first to Thomas Plains Primary, east of Kadina and then, in 1901, she joined the South Australian State Children’s Department. For the Department, Kate worked as a teacher and assistant matron at the Edwardstown Industrial School.

The Edwardstown Industrial School was a “a receiving home for State children” (Find & Connect) some of whom had been abandoned, deemed “neglected” by the state, or had physical and/or intellectual disabilities. Many of the children were at Edwardstown only briefly before being fostered or despatched to other institutions.

After three years at the Edwardstown Industrial School, Kate took up a position as a juvenile court probation officer, a role she worked in for nine years and which…

…took her into the slums; she decided that prevention was better than prosecution and her work lessened the number of children on parole who were placed in institutions (Mune)

In 1915, Kate Cocks became South Australia’s first woman police officer. She was “hand-picked for the role” and:

…was the first woman in the British Empire to enjoy the same salary as her male counterparts, and to receive the same powers of arrest. Asked if she wanted six additional policewomen in her tiny office in Adelaide’s Victoria Square, she replied: “No, give me one woman. I don’t even know what I am going to do yet (Anderson).

That “one woman” was Annie Ross and the two policewomen:

…were established in a rented room in a row of houses…They were appointed with the object of safeguarding the moral welfare of women and children, and, as far as possible preventing acts of misconduct that often led to disaster in the lives of young women (Adelaidia).

Writes Lainie Anderson:

Most of the time, Cocks walked the beat, patrolling railway stations, beaches and parklands to 60 hours a week in prim neck-ankle civilian outfits and one-and-a-half-inch heels. But Cocks was instrumental in solving several major crimes too.

Kate Cocks was awarded a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1935.

Also in 1935, after she retired in order to care for her dying mother, Kate Cocks provided “temporary accommodation” to a “distressed unmarried mother with a new born baby” (Find & Connect)

Over the ensuing weeks more women and babies in similar need joined her. Concerned about the lack of shelter and support for these women, Miss Cocks approached the Methodist Women’s Association and suggested the establishment of a Home (Find & Connect).

In her speech, Kate Cocks convinced the power brokers of the time, that rather than shun those that had broken the social norms of the time to become pregnant out of wedlock, that the church should instead provide ‘shelter, compassionate care, training and rehabilitation to those young women whose moral weakness (sic) have led them into difficulties for which they were unable to extricate themselves without some competent spiritual and material assistance’ (Kate Cocks Childcare Centre).

The Methodist Home for Babies and Unmarried Mothers opened in 1937 and Kate Cocks worked there—without pay—for fifteen years.

Run by the Methodist Church, it accommodated single girls who were pregnant or had given birth to their first child. It also took in other children in need of shelter and care (Find & Connect).

When Kate Cocks died on 20 August 1954,

…her home and estate, which was valued for probate at £3344, were left to her Church and the Methodist Home for Babies and Unmarried Mothers, renamed the Kate Cocks Babies’ Home in 1954 (Mune).

The Kate Cocks Memorial Babies’ Home closed in 1976 and was later implicated in the practice—the peak period of which was between 1951 and 1975—of what is called ‘forced adoptions’, that is, the practice of removing babies from unmarried mothers and other women regarded as ‘unfit’ mothers, against their will and often using unethical and coercive means. The babies were then put up for adoption.

In 2011, UnitingCare Wesley Adelaide Inc and Uniting Church of South Australia made a joint submission to the Commonwealth Contribution to Former Forced Adoption Policies and Practices inquiry in which they stated that there were no remaining records detailing…

“… the way the agency went about conducting adoptions” and nor was there “any direct reference to specific adoption practices used during Kate Cocks Homes involvement as an adoption agency” (Submission).

However, they did issue an apology:

If mothers involved in the Kate Cocks Memorial Babies Home were coerced or forced to give their children up for adoption we unreservedly apologise to those affected.

If children involved in the Kate Cocks Memorial Babies Home were forcibly removed from their parents we unreservedly apologise to those affected (Submission).

From the mid-1970s, the Kate Cocks Memorial Babies Home gradually transitioned into what is now the Kate Cocks Community Children’s Centre and which provides early education child care in the suburb of Hove.

In 2017, the City of Adelaide honoured Kate Cocks by naming a small area of Bonython Park/Tulya Wardli (Park 27) Kate Cocks Park.

References:

Anderson, Lainie. “Hidden women of history: Kate Cocks, the pioneering policewoman who fought crime and ran a home for babies – but was no saint.” The Conversation, 8 November 2022. https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-kate-cocks-the-pioneering-policewoman-who-fought-crime-and-ran-a-home-for-babies-but-was-no-saint-191008

“Edwardstown Industrial School (1898-1949).” Find & Connect, 2021. https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/guide/sa/SE00064

Mune, Marie. “Fanny Kate Cocks (1875-1954).” Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1981. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cocks-fanny-kate-5705

Kate Cocks Park (Park 27). City of Adelaide. https://maps.cityofadelaide.com.au/journey/c0d2622c-9e19-11e9-96fe-067ec0c7e8f4/the-adelaide-park-lands/default/journeymapfeature:3a88de94-9e1b-11e9-96fe-067ec0c7e8f4/info

“Kate Cocks, MBE.” Adelaidia. https://adelaidia.history.sa.gov.au/people/kate-cocks-mbe

“Kate Cocks MBE.” City of Adelaide. https://www.cityofadelaide.com.au/blog/kate-cocks-mbe/

“Kate Cocks Memorial Babies’ Home (1954-1976).” Find & Connect, 2023. https://au.sports.yahoo.com/hidden-women-history-kate-cocks-190142969.html

 “Kate Cocks. Life of a pioneering policewoman in the early 1900’s.” Moonta Mines Heritage Site. https://discovermoonta.com.au/moonta-mines-stories/kate-cocks/

“Our History. Kate Cocks Childcare Centre.” Kate Cocks Community Children’s Centre. https://www.katecocks.com.au/

“Park 27.” Adelaide Park Lands Association. https://www.adelaide-parklands.asn.au/park-27

“Submission: Apology regarding past forced adoptions.” Uniting Communities, 9 November 2011. https://www.unitingcommunities.org/news/apology-regarding-past-forced-adoptions

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