George Edward ARDILL

ARDILL, GEORGE EDWARD (b. Parramatta, NSW 17 Dec 1857; d. Stanmore, NSW, 11 May 1945). Evangelist, welfare worker.

George Ardill was the second surviving son of an Irish immigrant, Joshua Ardill, a builder and later a storekeeper in Parramatta. He was educated at the National School there and in 1878 established himself in business in Sydney. He spent his evenings in distributing Christian literature and became acquainted with the intemperance, vice, and prostitution in the city. He resolved to relinquish business and give himself to the evangelisation of the outcast and the welfare of the needy. Ardill's significance lies in the multifarious enterprises he initiated, the varied programmes he undertook, and the energy with which he pursued them over a long life.

His motivation derived from the dominant interests of his youth—evangelism and temperance. These were moulded by his family and church backgrounds. His father was an officer of the Parramatta Baptist Church. From Ireland his paternal grandmother, of the aristocratic Irish St Leger family, wrote of her distribution of Christian literature. His mother, a devout Christian, was a cousin of Bp Carpenter of Ripon, England. From his earliest years Ardill's family were supporters of the Parramatta Benevolent Society. These influences were reinforced by the concerns motivating the leaders in the Parramatta Baptist Church - evangelism, temperance, and concern for the patients in the Benevolent Homes. The minutes of the Church between 1876 and 1886 reveal Ardill's propensity for management, preaching, and social work. The church fostered his interest in indoor and street preaching, leading in 1878 to his application to the Baptist Union to support him in training at Spurgeon's Pastor's College. An alternative offered by the Union to support him at the Congregationalist Camden College, Sydney, was not taken up. In 1880 he took charge of the Book Department of the Baptist Evangelist Society supplying literature to itinerant evangelists in country areas. Later he was to conduct a Christian Book Depot in connection with his evangelistic work. The officers of the church vigorously supported the temperance movement and in 1878 some of them, including Ardill, formed the Haste to the Rescue Total Abstinence Society. Another of Ardill's special interests, the needs of Aborigines, was stimulated by the church's support of one of its officers who arranged regular preaching in the camps of the Aborigines at Eastern Creek, Blacktown, and Penrith. George joined the Aborigines Protection Society and in 1886 became its secretary. For some years until 1916 he served on the Aborigines Protection Board. Here he promoted an interventionist and pessimistic attitude which climaxed in the Board's promotion of family-destruction policies—the removal of so-called light-skinned children from their mothers and their placement (inevitably, given Ardill's methodology) in training institutes designed to promote their 'passing' into white society.

Ardill also engaged with his church colleagues in visits to the Parramatta Hospital and the Parramatta Asylums for the Aged and Infirm where a gospel program was presented and Christian literature distributed. However he severed his connection with the church in 1886 'owing to his heavy engagements in evangelistic and rescue work in the city' (Church Minutes 31 Aug 1886). From that time he belonged to all denominations.

From his teenage years he was probably familiar with the gospel temperance movements in the USA and UK, for he employed terms current in those countries in the 1860s and 1870s. His first effort at social work in the city of Sydney was to organise in 1883 the Blue Ribbon Gospel Army which engaged in temperance work and street preaching. He then joined the Local Option League and became involved for 30 years with the NSW Temperance Alliance as a Councillor and officer. He soon realised that the needy to whom he preached and the alcoholics whom he sought to rescue had problems that required addressing if they were to be able to respond meaningfully. Especially was he concerned for the humiliations and hardships of homeless women. In 1884 he established an All-Night Refuge and also the Home of Hope for Fallen Women, with which was associated a Lying-in Hospital. To give employment to residents in the Home of Hope, who were mostly prostitutes together with some refugees from seduction and pregnancy, and to train them for future occupations, a commercial laundry and a needlework service were established. A Society for Providing Homes for Neglected Children established Our Babies Home (1886), Our Children's Home (Liverpool 1887), and Our Boys Farm Home (Camden 1890). Societies of which he was founder or director multiplied - The Gospel Union, The Discharged Prisoners Mission, Registry Office for Female Servants, Day Nursery, Adoption Agency, Women's Crusade, and the Mission for Waifs and Strays. It was the most substantial array of philanthropic societies ever achieved in Australian history, and it was done virtually singlehanded.

To finance all these works he founded the undenominational but Christian Sydney Rescue Work Society, which attracted support from church leaders and philanthropists of all protestant denominations. Ebenezer Vickery (q.v.), wealthy Methodist philanthropist, was closely involved both in personal efforts and as a trustee. The first president was the Chief Justice, Sir Frederick Darley, while governors, premiers, and politicians attended its annual meetings. His many philanthropic labours were acknowledged by his appointment as MBE 1934.

As a member of the Evangelical Council of NSW he helped promote evangelistic missions. He deployed his brilliant administrative skills yet again as joint secretary of the Chapman-Alexander Mission of 1908. Through his United Preachers Association he arranged preachers for outlying areas and pastorless churches. He encouraged the building of undenominational gospel halls and he himself conducted missions in them.

Among a number of other organisations in which he was involved were the Social Purity Society and the All Nations Missionary Union.

Ardill was an action-oriented evangelical intent on gospel-proclamation and resisting the devil. His sociology was conservative and individualistic, his methodology dominated by institutional solutions and his confidence in his own capacities and propositions. His achievements, however authoritarian, were vast, both ameliorative and reformative. In his generation he most completely modelled the dedicated, active Christian warring on behalf of the Kingdom.

He was married twice. Both his first wife, Louisa Wales (q.v.), and his second, Kelsie Starr, were deeply involved in his work.

ADB 7; B Dickey, No Charity There (Sydney, 1987); Sydney Rescue Work Society, The Rescue (Sydney, 1892-1905); Sydney Rescue Work Society, Centenary Brochure (Sydney, 1983); H Watkin-Smith, Baptists in the Cradle City (Eastwood, 1986); K Heasman, Evangelicals in Action (London, 1962)

HUBERT WATKIN-SMITH