Dr Edward ‘Ned’ Officer

One of the factors that led me to write The Edward Street Baby Farm was the unexpected backgrounds of the three main characters. I found them intriguing. Alice Mitchell, the ‘baby farmer’, was related to some of the most influential families in Western Australia. Irish-born Harriet Lenihan made her living as a music teacher before she became Perth’s first female health inspector. And Dr Ned Officer was one of Victoria’s top footballers before he graduated from medical school.

Dr Ned Officer (Edward Albert Officer)

Edward Albert (Ned) Officer was born in Tower Hill, Victoria in 1869. He began playing football for Essendon while he was a medical student , when the team was still part of the Victorian Football Association. Between 1891 and 1894 he played in four VFA premierships , helping the team to win in consecutive years. He played his last premiership with Essendon after the team moved into the VFL in 1897 (which they also won).

Football friends described Ned Officer as a big, broad-chested man, who on first appearance looked unfit. But on the ground he was fast, strong and intelligent, capable of a high mark and a long kick. As a full back, he wasn’t afraid to come through the opposition ‘like an avalanche‘. One commentator described him as ‘the terror of the opposing forwards‘. At the time of his death, thirty years after his last game, he was still remembered as one of the VFL’s best players of all time.

After moving to Perth in 1901, Dr Officer set up as a specialist in child health. He became a key witness in the baby farming trial in 1907, due to the fact that his name appeared on the majority of the death certificates provided to Alice Mitchell. The prosecution questioned why he had done nothing to notify the authorities about the alarming death rate among children in Mitchell’s care.

But apart from this unwelcome publicity, ‘the genial doc’ was known as a generous citizen, respected by his colleagues and loved by his patients and fellow sportsmen. His funeral in 1927 was one of the biggest the state had ever seen.

The Edward Street Baby Farm

The Edward Street Baby Farm is published by Fremantle Press and will be released on 1 October 2020. The ebook can be pre-ordered from online book retailers such as Amazon, ibooks, Google books, eBooks and Kobo.

Old Police Court buildings, Perth

In March 1907, Perth’s acting Coroner, James Cowan, held an enquiry into the death of 5-month-old Ethel Booth. The baby had been in the care of Alice Mitchell in Edward Street prior to her death. The inquest took place in the coroner’s court, located in what is now referred to as the old Police Court building on Beaufort Street, Perth.

At the time, this building was quite new, having been completed in 1905. It was built with dressed stone from Donnybrook, in the state’s south west. Many buildings in Perth were faced with Donnybrook stone, but the Police Court was unusual in being constructed entirely of stone. The mansard roof was said to be “in French regency style”, while most of the interior furnishings were of local jarrah. Hillson Beasley, the state’s acting chief architect, designed the building.

The court formed part of a complex, with separate police barracks facing James Street, and a yard for stabling horses. Four cottages, which housed police officers and their families, also stood on the site. The cottages were replaced in the 1970s by the new Art Gallery of WA. The gallery now incorporates the old Police Court building and uses it to display works from the state art collection.

Entrance to the Police Court building, Beaufort Street Perth

When the court was opened on 17 July by Police Magistrate Roe, the newspapers noted that it was a vast improvement on the “dingy and malodorous surroundings” of the previous court building in Barrack Street. The first person to be tried that morning, James Walker, had his charge for drunkeness dismissed by Mr Roe in honour of the occasion.