Welcome
This website aims to help researchers locate entries of interest in the historical records of the Sydney Benevolent Asylum for the period 1857-1900.
Between 1995 and 2007 we created this index of the inmates of the Asylum from records held at the Mitchell Library in Sydney. The resulting database contains over 78,000 records and, as far as possible, is a listing of all Asylum inmates between 1857 and 1900.
We are grateful to The Benevolent Society for permission to prepare this index and to the staff of the Mitchell Library for their co-operation with our project.
We also thank the State Library of NSW for permission to reproduce the image 'Benevolent Asylum' (Government Printing Office, State Library of NSW ref 1-08079) on this website.
To date we have answered over 4500 enquiries and many of these have resulted in researchers breaking down brick walls and making exciting discoveries about their inmate ancestors. We encourage you to search the free index provided on this site and to contact us for details of any Notes associated with matches you find.
Please remember we only answer queries covering the period 1857-1900 for the Sydney Benevolent Asylum - we don't cover other institutions or admissions/discharges outside of this time frame.
Heather Garnsey & Martyn Killion
Sydney, Australia
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