About Hay Institute for Girls

The Hay Institution for Girls was opened in the old Hay Gaol in 1961. It was annexe of Parramatta Girls Training School, and held 12 girls aged 15 to 18 who had committed offences, including rioting to protest their treatment, while they were in Parramatta.

The first girls were transferred from Parramatta in September 1961. Transfers occurred at night with girls escorted by officers on the long train journey to Narrandera, then placed in a lockup van. Girls were usually sedated with largactil or valium during the journey. On arrival they were issued with institutional clothes, had their hair cropped short and were locked in a ‘scrubbing’ cell, usually for a period of 10 days. After this they were placed in another cell, known as ‘cabins’, for the remainder of their stay. Each cell was furnished with a single bad, thin mattress, a blanket, sheets, pillow, Bible and a night can.

Discipline at Hay was brutal, with girls’ every movement, action and word controlled and directed by officers. The daily routine was designed to humiliate and control. All communication occurred via a reporting procedure, where girls remained silent, standing six feet apart, with ‘eyes to the floor’. Girls had no privacy and did not receive visitors, schooling or mail.

Education and training amounting to hard labour: smashing concrete paths; digging; scrubbing; hand sewing leather, and other repetitive tasks, interspersed with physical exercises known as ‘practices’.

The Hay Institution for Girls became the subject of widespread community condemnation and closed in 1974. 

Source: https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/entity/institution-for-girls-hay/