City Park, Launceston – The Children’s Jubilee Fountain
In 1887, the children of Launceston were invited to contribute their pennies to a fountain. It would be theirs, the organisers said. Every boy and girl in the town would have a share in it, a sense of ownership. It would stand at the gates of City Park as a monument to their generosity and to Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, and it would be called the Children’s Fountain.
Eleven years later, the Mayor had it moved because the children’s wouldn’t stop playing it it.
The Children’s Pennies
The idea began with a surplus. A Jubilee Festival in 1887, celebrating the fiftieth years of Queen Victoria’s reign, had left the organising committee with somewhere between £10 and £12 unspent. The decision was made to put it towards something permanent; a fountain, to be funded by public subscription and presented to the city in the children’s name.
The subscription drive had a particular focus. It wasn’t the adults’ money that was wanted.
It is the children’s pennies that are wanted, in order that every boy and girl in the town may feel they have a share in the undertaking and a sense of ownership in the fountain when erected.
Launceston Examiner, 30 January 1888
To raise the rest of the £200 needed, a Juvenile Industrial Exhibition was held at Albert Hall. Schoolchildren contributed examples of handwriting, plain sewing, darning, and fancy work. Manufacturers put on displays. The children of Launceston worked, and stitched, and raised their pennies. Then they waited.
They waited rather longer than expected. The fountain wasn’t installed until Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee; a full decade later in 1897, due to the considerable expense.
Cast in Scotland
The fountain was chosen from MacFarlane’s Casting Catalogue, produced by the Saracen Foundry in Glasgow. It was, by any measure, an elaborate piece of work. The Launceston Examiner described it in 1891:
It is a handsome design, the fountain proper being covered with an octagonal canopy, supported on pillars standing 18ft high. The canopy is elaborately ornamented with griffins and other mythical figures, and is surmounted by an eagle with outspread wings. Around the top will be placed jubilee portraits of Her Majesty, alternated with the civic coat of arms. The fountain rises up in the centre to be height of about 5ft, and is provided with the necessary drinking cups. The inscription it will bear will be – “Presented to the city by the children of Launceston in commemoration of Her Majesty’s Jubilee, June 20, 1887″.
Launceston Examiner, 18 June 1891
Small drinking cups hung from chains at the central tower, pressed against valve studs to release the water. The MacFarlane’s catalogue was forthright about the civilising purpose of public drinking fountains. Supplying water to the outdoor population, it suggested, encouraged temperance, humanity, and the moral and physical improvement of the people.
The full MacFarlane’s Castings Catalogue has been digitised and can be accessed here. Pages 12-13 show the chosen fountain.
The inscription the fountain would bear was decided from the start: Presented to the city by the children of Launceston in commemoration of Her Majesty’s Jubilee, June 20, 1887.
The Fountain at the Gates
When it was finally installed in 1897, the Children’s Fountain stood at the main Cameron Street gates to City Park; exactly where the children’s pennies and plan sewing had intended it to be. Early postcards show it there, presiding over the entrance, griffins and eagle intact.
The fountain at the Cameron Street gates, shortly after installation in 1897 – the position it would occupy for just eleven years [Postcard from private collection]. 
The fountain in its current location, looking down Cameron Street [State Library and Archives of Tasmania] 
The fountain in its current location, with the much-loved City Park train – late 1970s or early 1980s [Postcard from private collection].
It stayed at the gates for eleven years.
The Mayor’s Problem
In November 1908, the question of the fountain’s future came before the Mayor. The citizens of Launceston wanted to know why it was being moved. The Mayor was candid.
The mayor said that the fountain where it was at present situated was a perfect nuisance, owing to mischievous children throwing the water about. Almost every morning he had to give orders to have the entrance cleaned up, only to find it as bad as ever in the evening. It was right in the way of the gates, and destroyed the appearance of the entrance.
Daily Telegraph, 27 November 1908
When pressed on whether children would not simply play in the water at its new location, the Mayor was reassuring. The groundsmen would be in the vicinity, he said. Working.
A small drinking fountain, he added, would be installed near the caretaker’s house.
The Children’s Fountain was moved on 17 December 1908, to the site of a former band rotunda deeper within the park. The entrance, one assumes, was much improved.
The Fountain Today
The fountain still stands in its 1908 location, not far from the conservatory. The ironwork is intact – the griffins, the eagle, the octagonal canopy, the civic coat of arms. If you visit the Cameron Street gates and look down, you can still see the hexagonal pattern of bluestone blocks set into the ground where it once stood.
Closing
The fountain has stood in its current location, well away from the gates and well within range of the groundsmen, since December 1908. The hexagonal bluestone base where it once stood is still visible at the Cameron Street entrance, if you know to look for it.
The children’s pennies are long spent. The children themselves are long gone. The Mayor, one assumed, got his clean entrance.
The fountain is still there.
What We Know
- The Children’s Jubilee Fountain was purchased by public subscription in 1887 to mark Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, funded in part by contributions from Launceston’s schoolchildren.
- Due to the cost of the fountain, £200, installation was delayed until Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897.
- The fountain was cast by MacFarlane’s Saracen Foundry in Glasgow.
- It stood at the Cameron Street gates to City Park until December 1908, when it was relocated to its current position within the park. It still stands there today.
More From Tasmania’s Past
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References
Daily Telegraph, 27 November 1908, City Park Fountain: The Proposed Removal, p. 3
Daily Telegraph, 18 December 1908, Local and General, p. 4
Launceston Examiner, 27 September 1887, Advertising, p.4
Launceston Examiner, 30 January 1888, Weekend Daily, p.2
Launceston Examiner, 18 June 1891, Current Topics, p. 2
Macfarlane’s Casting Catalogue [accessed 12 January 2022]
Researched and Written by Jodie Lee
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