Some people are doomed to a life of misery. John Thomas Edge was one such.

Born in 1886 in Collingwood to Charles and Rachel Louisa Edge, he was the youngest of five children. The children lived in an abusive, drunken home in a slum tenement.

In 1892, their father, a bootmaker, was arrested and remanded in custody on a charge of assaulting his wife.

He had dragged his wife, known as Louisa, by the hair into the passage from the room where she was hiding.

Once she was lying there, Edge assaulted her. Louisa was taken to hospital with serious wounds to the head.

When Charles was arrested, Louisa refused to give evidence against her husband.

However, the magistrate had enough evidence to send Charles Edge to gaol for a month.

When Louisa abandoned the marriage and her children to take up with another man, Charles Edge faced a dilemma common to a single parent with children in an age without social welfare — how to earn money and at the same time look after their children.

Charles Edge gave up the task in quick order. In 1894, he consigned his youngest child, John, to the care of Miss Selina Sutherland, a prominent Melbourne child welfare advocate. John was eight.

At the time, Sutherland and her close friend, Mrs Marie Armour, ran an emergency service out of rented premises for destitute children needing temporary care.

Sutherland’s view was that a destitute child was better placed with a family than being sent to an institution.

Later, she would champion the solution offered by the horrors known as industrial schools.

Later still, she championed the benefits of her Home for Neglected and Destitute Children, established in 1908.

The four older Edge children remained at home. The elder girl, Louisa, 11, was later found begging in the street in 1899 and was removed from Charles’ care as a neglected child.

In 1900, eldest son, Charles Jnr, was arrested after assaulting a woman who called him a loafer. Both he and the woman were very drunk.

The violence and drunkenness of the Edge children’s early environment had affected them all.

When Sutherland received John Edge for temporary care,he was in a filthy and neglected condition.

She believed him “weak in intellect, on account of the way he had been neglected” and of very unclean habits.

Sutherland arranged John to be sent to Mr and Mrs Leckie living near Euroa.

They were to arrange accommodation and employment for him.

During the two weeks that he stayed with the Leckies, the boy kept himself clean and neat.

John was then sent to work at Thomas Robinson’s farm as a cowherd. The farm was in Molka, north-west of Euroa.

Winter that year in the district was the coldest in living memory. Instead of herding Robinson’s cows, for which he was employed, the boy often stayed by a fire that burned near the homestead.

At first, Robinson found the boy to be clean, but this changed as the winter wore on.

Robinson complained that the boy was lazy and had become dirty.

To get John to wash, he took him to the Castle Creek repeatedly and put him in the water.

Robinson also complained that John stole food and tried to run away several times.

Each time, he was found or returned to the Robinson farm.

Robinson forced John to live in a tent in the barn. By then, he had begun to soil himself several times a day.

Robinson spoke to Mrs Leckie and arranged for John to be returned to Melbourne.

On June 29, the day when John was to be transferred there, Robinson found him in a filthy state.

He took him to the creek, and put him in the water to clean himself.

Robinson watched John until he’d washed himself. The farmer left after telling the child to dry himself with his shirt.

On July 19, Robinson found John’s body in Castle Creek, downstream about 40 metres from where he had left him.

Robinson had not thought to search for his employee even though he’d been missing for three weeks.

Mr McKenna, the coroner, found that the shock of immersion in the cold water had killed John Edge.

At the inquest, Robinson swore that he had seen the boy begin to dry himself on the creek’s bank.

George Fox, the doctor who performed the autopsy, found no signs of violence on the boy’s body.

Instead, John was suffering malnutrition. There was no fat at all on him. His muscles had begun to waste away.

The eight-year-old cowherd had been betrayed by those who were to take care of him. He’d been starving.

That’s why he had been stealing food. Starvation had made him appear lethargic.

This, Robinson misunderstood as laziness.

As John’s starvation worsened, diarrhoea had set in. He was seriously ill.

The coroner stated that Robinson had not shown the care that he ought in looking after John.

Questions about the boy and his treatment by Robinson were raised in Victorian Parliament.

The last time, the member representing the Attorney-General in the Legislative Council was asked when Robinson was to be charged with manslaughter.

The member pointed out the relevant documents about the case had just been forwarded to him.

There was a clear case of manslaughter against Robinson for causing death by reckless or negligent disregard, but no charges eventuated.

Thomas Robinson escaped all consequences for the boy’s death. John Edge was too insignificant.

On July 20, 1894, after a short life of misery, neglect and abuse, John Thomas Edge was consigned to an unmarked pauper’s grave in Euroa Cemetery.

In 2018 a metal frame was erected to the right of the cemetery’s entrance.

Small aluminium rectangles are riveted to it. These show the names of some of those buried in unmarked graves there. On one rectangle the following words are stamped:

John Edge.

Aged 7 years. Cowherder.

An abandoned child from Miss Sutherland’s Orphanage.

20. 7. 1897.

As a result of John Edge’s death Lady Sybil de Vere Brassy, the wife of the then governor of Victoria, formed a voluntary organisation known as the Victorian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, its aims were to protect children from cruelty and neglect.

Its role was taken by the Child Protection Society in 1971.

– John Barry

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Friday, 23rd February 2024

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