According to the Police Citizens Youth Club website, the organisation is “about young people”, but it wasn’t always that way. This year, the PCYC is celebrating its 75th anniversary of “getting young people active”, “developing young leaders”, and “protecting young people”, but if you were a girl back in 1938, you could pretty much get bent as far as the cops were concerned.
According to the side of the Burwood branch, it’s about boys. Who knows, in another 75 years, it may even include old people.
My father was one of the founders of the ‘boys club’ movement, and the assistant superintendant of the Burwood club until his untimely death in 1959 aged just 40. You probably need to comprehend the reasons behind the formation of the whole boys club movement in the leadup to WW2 in Sydney, Many young males at this time were children of WW1 veterans, and from low income. and broken families. Young girls at this time were vastly better looked after in their family homes, while the boys were basically let run wild on the streets. It was a whole different life back then. The idea was to get the young boys off the streets, and to a large degree it worked. I was born in 1948, and I’ve actually just had a phone call from one of the old ‘Burwood Boys’ who still remembers my Dad, and me being born.