Highgate Hill Police Station

The police station in Lincoln Street, Highgate Hill, was built in 1897. It consisted of a charge room and two lock-up cells. Living quarters for the officer in charge were added in Smith Street in 1906. Apparently there was enough room in the area behind the station to keep a cow.

In 1907 the officer in charge at Highgate Hill was Corporal Patrick O’Halloran. He visited Alice Mitchell’s home in Edward Street in February 1907, and was disturbed by what he found. After the death of baby Ethel Booth in Perth Hospital, Corporal O’Halloran did much of the investigation that lead up to the inquest and Alice Mitchell’s subsequent trial for murder.

The full story can be found in The Edward Street Baby Farm, which will be published by Fremantle Press on 1 October 2020.

Edward Street

Edward Street sign

Edward Street, Perth, is where Alice Mitchell was living at the time of her arrest in 1907. It lies just north of the railway line and the Farmer freeway, to the east of Perth’s central city area. As in 1907, the street today has a mixture of residential buildings, workshops, offices and vacant land. But unlike in 1907, it’s now fully paved and sewered. The area is no longer swampy in winter, and you can’t smell the Claisebrook ‘drain’ on summer evenings.

This wasn’t the only address where Alice Mitchell ran her ‘baby farm’. Between 1901 and 1907 she and her family rented houses at six different addresses, all around the inner city. They moved to Edward Street in early 1905.

Alice kept very poor records, so it’s difficult to know how many babies were in her care at this address. But besides Alice and her husband, the house was also occupied by one of her married daughters and her family, a married couple who were lodgers, and a live-in servant.

The Edward Street Baby Farm, published by Fremantle Press, will be on bookshelves and available as an ebook from 1 October 2020.

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