Caroline Emily Clark

Who was Caroline Emily Clark?

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" 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.