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days nearly £800 were subscribed, and when Baudin, the French navigator, was in Sydney he generously gave £50 to the Institution. There were nearly 1000 children in the colony—a large proportion illegitimate.

"Finer or more neglected children were not to be met with in any part of the world.^[1] The sight of so many girls between the ages of eight and twelve verging on that brink of ruin and prostitution, which several had fallen into, induced me to set about rescuing the elder girls from the snares laid for them, and which the horrid example and treatment of many of their parents hurried them into." [Kent's house was therefore conditionally purchased.] A committee, consisting of the chaplain, three other officers, Mrs. King (the Governor's wife), Mrs. Paterson (Colonel Paterson's wife), accepted the office of managing this institution. Forty-nine girls from seven to fourteen years old were received into the charge of as eligible people for that purpose as could be selected in the colony. They are victualled by the Crown, but every other expense attendant on this institution has been defrayed by contributions, fines, duties on shipping, &c., with no other expense to the public except the house."

A new building was commenced in 1801.

King contributed funds for the orphans. Forfeitures and fines for the benefit of the Orphan Fund gleam constantly through King's Orders.

In Oct. 1802, when, obstructed by Colonel Paterson, he dispensed with his military body-guard and improvised a guard of emancipated convicts under Lieut. Bellasis, it was ordered that any persons convicted of polluting the stream^[2] (running where Pitt-street now is) should forfeit £5 to the Orphan Fund for each offence, and that their houses should "be taken down."

The Rev. Mr. Marsden was entitled, as treasurer, to 5 per cent., but he "presented the amount to the institution on resigning the treasurership when he went to England." In spite of all these provisions, King wrote (Aug. 1804) that but for the most rigid economy and perseverance on the part of the committee the institution must have languished. To provide for its future he had endowed it with a grant of 12,000 acres of land at Cabramatta. The grant, with a farm of nearly 600 acres at Petersham, near