The Randwick Asylum for Destitute Children occupied a large government grant near High Cross, Randwick, from 1858. It was run by the Society for the Relief of Destitute Children (incorporated 1857), which had first opened an asylum at Ormond House, Paddington, in 1852. Rising numbers of orphaned and abandoned children in gold-rush Sydney pushed the Society to build a purpose-designed sandstone “barracks” asylum on about 60 acres at Randwick, occupied from 28 March 1858, with capacity later doubled by an 1863 wing to around 800 children.
Most inmates were young (commonly about three to ten). A whooping-cough epidemic in 1867 killed dozens; funds associated with singer Catherine Hayes helped build a hospital on the site named after her. From the 1880s “boarding out” (early fostering) reduced institutional numbers; government funding for the Asylum ceased in 1888, though it continued privately with fewer children.
In 1915 the remaining children were moved to cottage homes or boarded out, and the Commonwealth took the site as a military / repatriation hospital for wounded First World War servicemen. From 1953 the campus became the Prince of Wales Hospital. Archaeological work in the mid-1990s recovered remains of children buried in the grounds; a memorial garden and interpretive signage stand near the Barker Street entrance.