Hello readers!
As you can probably tell by the total and utter lack of posts for the last four years (I honestly didn't think it was that long, but looks like it was!), this blog isn't active anymore.
I'm not deleting it or anything, so feel free to read what I've written and comments are still open, but I'm not planning on adding to the blog in any significant way in the immediate future. If I think of something, of course I'll re-launch it!
Thanks,
Amy (a.k.a. The History Girl)
Monday, 4 June 2018
Sunday, 8 June 2014
The Russell Street Babies
I don’t know why, but I’ve been thinking a lot lately about
the women I wrote about in my thesis (THREE YEARS AGO!) and I’ve decided to
write about four of them here. The information in this post is available
online, from Trove, Genealogy SA, and an essay by Patricia Sumerling that was published
by the Professional Historians Association (South Australia). I also used
Margaret Barbalet’s “The Adelaide Children’s Hospital” for background. I
haven’t referenced every individual article, but I have noted when I used
Sumerling’s essay or the Genealogy SA database. A list of references is at the
end.
'Nolle Prosequi', Chronicle and Weekly Mail, 28 February 1880, p. 11
[No title], Register, 13 January 1880, p. 1
Sumerling, Patricia, “Adelaide’s West-End”. In William Shakespeare’s Adelaide 1860-1930, ed. Brian Dickey, 27-41. Adelaide: Association of Professional Historians Inc., 1992. [Available online: http://www.sahistorians.org.au/175/documents/patricia-sumerling-the-west-end-of-adelaide.shtml]
Alice Ann Lemm lived in Russell Street, Adelaide near
Tidmarsh’s Soap Factory. Russell Street still exists and runs between Wright
Street and Gilbert Street. The soap factory was on Sturt Street, with frontages
on Norman and Russell Streets, so I can only guess Alice’s house was near the
corner. She probably lived in a small terraced single-storey house, similar to
the ones in this photo of Sturt Street from 1877.
The fact that ‘near Tidmarsh’s soap factory’ was mentioned
in the newspaper articles about Alice Lemm is very interesting. In 1878, it was
referred to as ‘J. Tidmarsh & Co.’s stink factory’. In 1883, a person
identifying him-or-herself as ‘Citizen’ wrote a letter to the “The South
Australian Advertiser” stating:
“I beg to state that while I was residing
in King William-street south (from 1875 to 1882) I and my family have
continually been annoyed and sickened by the horrible stinks arising from that
soap factory whenever the wind blew from that direction. Generally when after a
spell of hot weather a cool change set in we were obliged to keep all our doors
and windows shut on account of the smell, and could not get our rooms cooled
like other people who lived farther away…My idea is that it emanates from every
part of the factory, and not only from the fluid running into the sewer. My
chief reason for leaving my residence in King William-street was the obnoxious
smell from that soap factory, and I think it would be a blessing for the whole
of South Adelaide if the factory could be stopped and re-established a long way
out of town.”
A house so noticeably close to the factory would have been
cheap to rent, and I can’t imagine the living conditions would have been too
pleasant. Alice shared the house with four babies, one of whom was her own and
the other three were the children of women Alice had met in the Lying-in ward
of the Destitute Asylum whilst confined with her own baby.
Her three charges were named Edward James Satchell, William
Frederick Garten Thomas and Annie Harris. She had also cared for the child of a
woman called Hannah Saunders, but Hannah took her baby away after only two
weeks. Edward and William both died in November 1879 – Edward was sixteen weeks
and William was seven months.
When Edward died, a death certificate was given and his body
was buried without an examination. According to the Genealogy SA database, an
Edward Satchell died in 1879 and his relative was given as his father, James Wallace
Tormey. Following Edward’s death, the City Coroner (Mr. Ward) made further
enquiries and he and Detective Hammill found Alice living with the three other
children, all of whom were extremely emaciated. Two were “lying on a deal box
in an empty room with nothing but rags to lay on and cover them, and their
lower extremities were very cold”. The Local Board of Health was notified to
the situation, and the Coroner believed that two of the remaining three
children were not likely to live. These two children were probably Alice’s
child and Annie Harris, as witnesses at the inquest into William’s death said
he was the strongest-looking of the three. Alice was also reported to the
police by neighbours, who reported hearing the babies ‘roaring’ and that they
were dirty and thin.
Grace Thomas, William’s mother, planned to take William to
the Destitute Asylum for medical treatment but he died the day before. Dr. John
Scott Wilson, junior house surgeon at the Adelaide Hospital, saw William before
he died and gave a death certificate when asked for one, giving the cause of
death as marasmus (a severe protein deficiency). William’s relative was listed
as his mother, Grace Thomas. However, William could not be buried until the
coroner had been consulted because another child in Alice’s care had also
recently died.
The coronial inquest, held at the Old Queen’s Arms Hotel,
found that William had been with Alice for two months and she was engaged as a
‘dry nurse’. He was fed bread, Neave’s food (a formula for babies and invalids)
and a mixture of milk, water and sugar. After Edward’s death, Alice had asked
William’s mother, Grace Thomas, to care for William herself but Grace pleaded
with Alice to keep him for another week. Grace took charge of William a week
before he died and had made arrangements to go to the Destitute Asylum with
him.
Patricia Sumerling’s essay, “The West End of Adelaide”,
mentions that three children died within a space of ten weeks. The Genealogy SA
databases show an Annie Harris, daughter of John Bowden, and an Edith Alice
Lemm, daughter of Alice Lemm, both dying in 1880.
In January 1880, Susan Harris was charged in the Adelaide
Police Court with “abandoning her infant, whereby its health was permanently
injured”. Following the inquest into William’s death, Susan gave Annie to a
Mrs. Ashton and promised to pay her 10s a week. Susan then went to Lacepede Bay
and did not pay Mrs. Ashton anything, so Annie was ‘sentenced’ to the
Industrial School for three months, while charges were laid against Susan.
Annie was “in a very emaciated condition, and it is doubtful whether [she] will
live.” On Wednesday, 25 February 1880, a certificate stating that the
Attorney-General was of the opinion that there was no case against Susan Harris
was filed in the Supreme Court.
Alice Lemm, Grace Thomas, Theresa Satchell and Susan Harris
were all ‘confined’ in the Lying-in ward of the Destitute Asylum and were
typical of its younger inhabitants. Alice, Susan and Grace were all recent
migrants (Theresa might have been too, but it wasn’t mentioned in the reports).
Alice was a domestic servant in Adelaide
before she fell pregnant. Susan Harris also lived with her, but it appears that
she must have worked and Alice cared for the babies. Grace worked as a general
servant at the Buck’s Head Hotel in North Terrace. Theresa was also a domestic servant and was unable to find work with her son,
which is why she gave him to Alice. 84%
(449 out of 533) of unmarried mothers of children born in the Destitute Asylum between
1873 and 1883 were domestic servants.
An article that appeared in the Chronicle on 7 July 1883 pointed out that domestic servants rarely
had any other home in the colony besides the one in which they worked. If they ‘offend[ed]
against morals’, their options were extremely limited. With no job and no ‘parental
roof’, the Destitute Asylum was the only place for them. This appears to have
been the case with Alice, Grace, Theresa and Susan.
The ‘Alice Lemm case’ was spoken about in Parliament and it,
along with other ‘baby farming’ cases (although Alice Lemm was not, strictly, a
‘baby farmer’) that occurred around the same time, led to the establishment of
the State Children’s Department and the changes to the Destitute Persons’ Act
that made unmarried mothers remain at the Destitute Asylum until their babies
were six months old.
References:
‘An Alleged Nuisance’, Advertiser,
25 January 1883, p. 5
Barbalet, Margaret. The Adelaide Children’s Hospital 1876-1976. Adelaide: The Adelaide Children’s Hospital, 1975.
‘Coroner’s Inquests: A Case of Baby Farming’, Advertiser, 26 November 1879, p. 6
‘Death of an Infant’, Register,
7 November 1879, p. 4
‘Maternity of Children: Destitute Asylum’, Chronicle, 7 July 1883, p. 5'Nolle Prosequi', Chronicle and Weekly Mail, 28 February 1880, p. 11
‘Suspicious Death of an Infant’, Register, 26 November 1879, p. 6
Friday, 20 December 2013
Fish Don't Wear Clothes
Yesterday was the third-hottest day on record in Adelaide. I, thankfully, was inside and thanks to the wonders of air conditioning, I wasn't uncomfortable!
I've been looking at Trove to see how the hot weather was reported on in the newspapers eighty-two years ago, and I found this beautiful piece!
It was published in the Port Pirie 'Recorder' on Monday 18 January 1932, page 3.
So, lesson for the day from 1932, if you wear skimpy bathers, note that you might get ogled by a man in a suit and bowler hat. On a beach.
Enjoy!
I've been looking at Trove to see how the hot weather was reported on in the newspapers eighty-two years ago, and I found this beautiful piece!
It was published in the Port Pirie 'Recorder' on Monday 18 January 1932, page 3.
So, lesson for the day from 1932, if you wear skimpy bathers, note that you might get ogled by a man in a suit and bowler hat. On a beach.
Enjoy!
Tuesday, 20 August 2013
Miss Estelle
On 16 December 1911, Tormore House School (now Walford) celebrated its annual speech day at the Adelaide Town Hall. Amongst the prizes awarded that night was one for 'physiology diagrams' for Estelle Bowen, Sixth Class.
Now, you're probably thinking, 'um, History Girl? This is a bit different from your other posts - what does this have to do with anything?' [And that is the last time I'll write in the third person!] Well, Estelle Bowen, who was apparently very good at drawing physiology diagrams, grew up to be Stella Bowen, the common-law wife of author Ford Madox Ford.
I decided to do a post about Stella Bowen for a couple of reasons: 1, I think she's a very interesting person; 2, Parade's End (based on Ford's novels) was recently turned into a mini-series and the character of Valentine Wannop - awesome name! - was (reportedly) based on Stella; 3, Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby was released recently and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald were in Stella's circle of friends.
I think Stella is honestly one of the coolest people to ever come out of Adelaide, yet she's not particularly well-known. She left Adelaide in 1914 (yes, at the very beginning of the then-Great War) to study art in London, using money from her parents' estate. She was friends with actors, writers, artists and bohemians. Soon after she met Ford, they moved to Sussex and lived on a farm before moving to Paris and livin' it up bohemian writer/artist French style. The recent(ish) Woody Allen movie, Midnight in Paris, is about the bohemian Paris of the 1920s with the Fitzgeralds and Hemingway among others, but I don't believe Ford or Stella are in it (probably because they were English/Australian and not so well-known in America?).
Stella Bowen was born Esther Gwendolyn Bowen on 16 May 1893. Her father, a surveyor, died when she was three and her mother died several years later, when Stella was twenty. Her parents, Thomas and Esther Eliza (nee Perry) married at St Giles' Church, Oxford on 2 February 1892 and settled in North Adelaide. From 1897-1913, Stella lived at 59 Mills Terrace, North Adelaide, which is still a private residence and it has a blue plaque commemorating it as her home out the front. A link to a pdf file published by the Adelaide City Council about the house can be found HERE. A quote from the pdf, quoted from (what I believe is) Stella's autobiography is:
I was born in the sort of house that must inevitably end its days as a boarding house. It was sizeable, rather gloomy, at a sufficiently good but not fashionable address, detached, with two little lawns and a summer house in front and a backyard behind containing clothes line, a stable and a coach house, a see-saw and a swing. Being in Australia, it had a front verandah with balcony above, and its roof was largely smothered in Banksia roses, bougainvillea and other greenery. There was a trellis of vines covering the path from the front to the back and figs, apricots, lemons and oranges grew around the backyard. There was a pampas-grass in the garden, and an aspidistra in the drawing-room. There were no modern conveniences. The nicest thing about it was the view. Being placed high on the edge of the town's oldest suburb, it looked down over low-lying park lands where cattle grazed...
She was, as I wrote before, educated at Tormore House School - which then had campuses in North Adelaide and Unley Park - and was known in Adelaide as 'Estelle' (presumably to differentiate between her and her mother, who was also called Esther). A report about Tormore House from 1909 can be found HERE - Stella was thirteen in 1909. During that year, young Estelle won prizes for French history and botanical diagrams. Interesting note: one of the senior students of that year was Paquita Delprat, who later married Sir Douglas Mawson.
Following her mother's death, Stella left Tormore and Adelaide behind her and set sail for London, to study at the Westminster School of Art. Her departure from Adelaide was mentioned in the Chronicle's 'Social Notes' (on page 56!):
Miss Estelle Bowen sailed for England by the Marmora on Thursday, February 25.
Stella's actual departure was probably far more interesting than that. She was a young, unmarried woman and we can guess that social propriety (and probably her mother) prevented her from leaving her home until after her mother's death. Mirabel Osler, who was the daughter of Stella's friend Phyllis Reid, wrote about Stella in her autobiography The Rain Tree. Stella described Adelaide as 'a queer little backwater of intellectual timidity'. She was only meant to be away from Australia for a year, but 'never used the return half ticket'.
Her post-Adelaide life with Ford is fairly well-documented - there are numerous biographies of Ford Madox Ford and Jean Rhys (author of, among others, The Wide Sargasso Sea and one of Ford's best known mistresses), and Stella wrote her own autobiography (which is now out of print). Since the television production of Parade's End, I've noticed a lot of articles about Ford and, in particular, his relationship with Stella. But I'm not going to write about that. I'm going to write about Miss Estelle Bowen, the daughter of (the late) Mr. and Mrs. T. Bowen of North Adelaide. Miss Estelle attended parties and wore pretty dresses, which were described in great detail in the Adelaide newspapers. She and her mother went on holiday, which was announced in the Adelaide newspapers. And, oh yeah, she was an artist.
On 17 May 1911, Miss Estelle Bowen looked well in a white satin frock made with a silk net tunic, finished with a rouleaux of satin, and border of handsome old Honiton lace; the same 'lace was introduced on the bodice and silk cord girdle; broad white satin band in the hair at a 'charmingly arranged and altogether delightful dance' at the North Adelaide Institute, hosted by Miss Davies Thomas. Her mother, Mrs. T. Bowen, was also in attendance and wore 'grey silk with black Maltese lace tunic and bodice finishings'.
At "one of the most sumptuous and well arranged dances of the season...given by Mr. and Mrs. William Pope at their residence, 'Mount House,' Strangways-tce, North Adelaide, on Wednesday, August 9 [1911]", Miss Estelle Bowen wore a pretty frock of apricot satin over which was mounted a lovely- Mechlin lace tunic. As in May, her mother also attended and I think she was wearing the same dress as before ("grey silk with Maltese lace tunic")! At this party, another guest was Dr. Helen Mayo. Helen Mayo was one of the first (I believe the second?) female medical graduates from the University of Adelaide and she became one of the best-known authorities on babies' health. She wore black crepe-de-chine with lace effects.
On 23 August 1911, Miss Estelle Bowen wore yellow crepe-de-chine with folds of brown velvet on the corsage on a night out at a 'Two-Step Dance' at Miss Kathleen Kyffin Thomas' house at Brougham Place. The billiard room was used for dancing, and a dainty supper was served in the dining room. How sweet! Kathleen Kyffin Thomas was her cousin and Brougham Place and Mills Terrace are a little over a kilometre apart - a 20 minute walk, according to Google Maps.
In February 1912, she and her mother returned from a trip to Melbourne. I can only assume that they left earlier in the year(!)
On a Saturday night in October 1913, she was noticed in the audience at Brewster Jones's recital. Sadly, we don't know what she was wearing that night...
Although it appears that she was noticed more in Adelaide for her dress sense, she was an artist and was exhibited in Adelaide before moving to London. She was a featured artist in the fourteenth annual Federal Art Exhibition, shown at the Institute, North Terrace (the old building on the corner of North Terrace and Kintore Avenue), in November 1911 - when she was eighteen. I don't know how many paintings of hers were exhibited and I can't find if any of them sold.
After fleeing the 'little backwater', and adopting the ever-so-slightly cooler name Stella, she was rarely mentioned in the Adelaide press. In 1927, she was one of four Australian artists featured at the autumn exhibition at the Paris Salon. When her autobiography, "Drawn from Life", was published in 1941, a favourable review appeared in the Chronicle, which mentioned Stella and Ford's daughter and their 'partnership', "which ended without any bitterness". In 1944, she was appointed an official war artist by the Australian War Memorial and this brought her back to the general Adelaide consciousness, despite living in London at the time.
Stella Bowen died on 30 October 1947 in London. A brief obituary (and photo) was published in The Advertiser on 26 November 1947. Despite not having lived in Adelaide since the beginning of the First World War, she was described as "S.A. War Artist". An earlier article from 1944 describes her as the second South Australian woman to be appointed as a war artist - the first being Nora Heysen, daughter of Hans Heysen (as in, tunnels). Two years after her death, her daughter (Julia, with Ford) visited Adelaide as 'Mrs. Roland Loewe' with her husband (that would be Mr. Roland Loewe) and their son, Julian. Mr. Loewe planned to settle in Australia, but I'm not sure if they ever did.
PS: I've had this post in draft for a couple of months, but I've been umming and ahhing about putting it here because there aren't any pictures. I don't like using images on the blog that I haven't taken myself, due to copyright, but this post is about an artist and it feels odd not including some art. So, HERE is a link to some online images of her art from an exhibition at the Australian War Memorial.
I have a single photo for you. When Stella was eighteen, she exhibited paintings (or just one painting - I'm not sure!) at the Federal Art Exhibition at 'the Institute'. Here's a window I think looks cool (and a random photo I happen to have on my computer!) - I doubt it's changed much from Stella's time.
Now, you're probably thinking, 'um, History Girl? This is a bit different from your other posts - what does this have to do with anything?' [And that is the last time I'll write in the third person!] Well, Estelle Bowen, who was apparently very good at drawing physiology diagrams, grew up to be Stella Bowen, the common-law wife of author Ford Madox Ford.
I decided to do a post about Stella Bowen for a couple of reasons: 1, I think she's a very interesting person; 2, Parade's End (based on Ford's novels) was recently turned into a mini-series and the character of Valentine Wannop - awesome name! - was (reportedly) based on Stella; 3, Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby was released recently and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald were in Stella's circle of friends.
I think Stella is honestly one of the coolest people to ever come out of Adelaide, yet she's not particularly well-known. She left Adelaide in 1914 (yes, at the very beginning of the then-Great War) to study art in London, using money from her parents' estate. She was friends with actors, writers, artists and bohemians. Soon after she met Ford, they moved to Sussex and lived on a farm before moving to Paris and livin' it up bohemian writer/artist French style. The recent(ish) Woody Allen movie, Midnight in Paris, is about the bohemian Paris of the 1920s with the Fitzgeralds and Hemingway among others, but I don't believe Ford or Stella are in it (probably because they were English/Australian and not so well-known in America?).
Stella Bowen was born Esther Gwendolyn Bowen on 16 May 1893. Her father, a surveyor, died when she was three and her mother died several years later, when Stella was twenty. Her parents, Thomas and Esther Eliza (nee Perry) married at St Giles' Church, Oxford on 2 February 1892 and settled in North Adelaide. From 1897-1913, Stella lived at 59 Mills Terrace, North Adelaide, which is still a private residence and it has a blue plaque commemorating it as her home out the front. A link to a pdf file published by the Adelaide City Council about the house can be found HERE. A quote from the pdf, quoted from (what I believe is) Stella's autobiography is:
I was born in the sort of house that must inevitably end its days as a boarding house. It was sizeable, rather gloomy, at a sufficiently good but not fashionable address, detached, with two little lawns and a summer house in front and a backyard behind containing clothes line, a stable and a coach house, a see-saw and a swing. Being in Australia, it had a front verandah with balcony above, and its roof was largely smothered in Banksia roses, bougainvillea and other greenery. There was a trellis of vines covering the path from the front to the back and figs, apricots, lemons and oranges grew around the backyard. There was a pampas-grass in the garden, and an aspidistra in the drawing-room. There were no modern conveniences. The nicest thing about it was the view. Being placed high on the edge of the town's oldest suburb, it looked down over low-lying park lands where cattle grazed...
She was, as I wrote before, educated at Tormore House School - which then had campuses in North Adelaide and Unley Park - and was known in Adelaide as 'Estelle' (presumably to differentiate between her and her mother, who was also called Esther). A report about Tormore House from 1909 can be found HERE - Stella was thirteen in 1909. During that year, young Estelle won prizes for French history and botanical diagrams. Interesting note: one of the senior students of that year was Paquita Delprat, who later married Sir Douglas Mawson.
Following her mother's death, Stella left Tormore and Adelaide behind her and set sail for London, to study at the Westminster School of Art. Her departure from Adelaide was mentioned in the Chronicle's 'Social Notes' (on page 56!):
Miss Estelle Bowen sailed for England by the Marmora on Thursday, February 25.
Stella's actual departure was probably far more interesting than that. She was a young, unmarried woman and we can guess that social propriety (and probably her mother) prevented her from leaving her home until after her mother's death. Mirabel Osler, who was the daughter of Stella's friend Phyllis Reid, wrote about Stella in her autobiography The Rain Tree. Stella described Adelaide as 'a queer little backwater of intellectual timidity'. She was only meant to be away from Australia for a year, but 'never used the return half ticket'.
Her post-Adelaide life with Ford is fairly well-documented - there are numerous biographies of Ford Madox Ford and Jean Rhys (author of, among others, The Wide Sargasso Sea and one of Ford's best known mistresses), and Stella wrote her own autobiography (which is now out of print). Since the television production of Parade's End, I've noticed a lot of articles about Ford and, in particular, his relationship with Stella. But I'm not going to write about that. I'm going to write about Miss Estelle Bowen, the daughter of (the late) Mr. and Mrs. T. Bowen of North Adelaide. Miss Estelle attended parties and wore pretty dresses, which were described in great detail in the Adelaide newspapers. She and her mother went on holiday, which was announced in the Adelaide newspapers. And, oh yeah, she was an artist.
On 17 May 1911, Miss Estelle Bowen looked well in a white satin frock made with a silk net tunic, finished with a rouleaux of satin, and border of handsome old Honiton lace; the same 'lace was introduced on the bodice and silk cord girdle; broad white satin band in the hair at a 'charmingly arranged and altogether delightful dance' at the North Adelaide Institute, hosted by Miss Davies Thomas. Her mother, Mrs. T. Bowen, was also in attendance and wore 'grey silk with black Maltese lace tunic and bodice finishings'.
At "one of the most sumptuous and well arranged dances of the season...given by Mr. and Mrs. William Pope at their residence, 'Mount House,' Strangways-tce, North Adelaide, on Wednesday, August 9 [1911]", Miss Estelle Bowen wore a pretty frock of apricot satin over which was mounted a lovely- Mechlin lace tunic. As in May, her mother also attended and I think she was wearing the same dress as before ("grey silk with Maltese lace tunic")! At this party, another guest was Dr. Helen Mayo. Helen Mayo was one of the first (I believe the second?) female medical graduates from the University of Adelaide and she became one of the best-known authorities on babies' health. She wore black crepe-de-chine with lace effects.
On 23 August 1911, Miss Estelle Bowen wore yellow crepe-de-chine with folds of brown velvet on the corsage on a night out at a 'Two-Step Dance' at Miss Kathleen Kyffin Thomas' house at Brougham Place. The billiard room was used for dancing, and a dainty supper was served in the dining room. How sweet! Kathleen Kyffin Thomas was her cousin and Brougham Place and Mills Terrace are a little over a kilometre apart - a 20 minute walk, according to Google Maps.
In February 1912, she and her mother returned from a trip to Melbourne. I can only assume that they left earlier in the year(!)
On a Saturday night in October 1913, she was noticed in the audience at Brewster Jones's recital. Sadly, we don't know what she was wearing that night...
Although it appears that she was noticed more in Adelaide for her dress sense, she was an artist and was exhibited in Adelaide before moving to London. She was a featured artist in the fourteenth annual Federal Art Exhibition, shown at the Institute, North Terrace (the old building on the corner of North Terrace and Kintore Avenue), in November 1911 - when she was eighteen. I don't know how many paintings of hers were exhibited and I can't find if any of them sold.
After fleeing the 'little backwater', and adopting the ever-so-slightly cooler name Stella, she was rarely mentioned in the Adelaide press. In 1927, she was one of four Australian artists featured at the autumn exhibition at the Paris Salon. When her autobiography, "Drawn from Life", was published in 1941, a favourable review appeared in the Chronicle, which mentioned Stella and Ford's daughter and their 'partnership', "which ended without any bitterness". In 1944, she was appointed an official war artist by the Australian War Memorial and this brought her back to the general Adelaide consciousness, despite living in London at the time.
Stella Bowen died on 30 October 1947 in London. A brief obituary (and photo) was published in The Advertiser on 26 November 1947. Despite not having lived in Adelaide since the beginning of the First World War, she was described as "S.A. War Artist". An earlier article from 1944 describes her as the second South Australian woman to be appointed as a war artist - the first being Nora Heysen, daughter of Hans Heysen (as in, tunnels). Two years after her death, her daughter (Julia, with Ford) visited Adelaide as 'Mrs. Roland Loewe' with her husband (that would be Mr. Roland Loewe) and their son, Julian. Mr. Loewe planned to settle in Australia, but I'm not sure if they ever did.
PS: I've had this post in draft for a couple of months, but I've been umming and ahhing about putting it here because there aren't any pictures. I don't like using images on the blog that I haven't taken myself, due to copyright, but this post is about an artist and it feels odd not including some art. So, HERE is a link to some online images of her art from an exhibition at the Australian War Memorial.
I have a single photo for you. When Stella was eighteen, she exhibited paintings (or just one painting - I'm not sure!) at the Federal Art Exhibition at 'the Institute'. Here's a window I think looks cool (and a random photo I happen to have on my computer!) - I doubt it's changed much from Stella's time.
Saturday, 4 May 2013
20 Things You Might Not Know About Adelaide...
HERE's an AdelaideNow article (so I guess it would be in "The Advertiser" too) about Queen Adelaide, the city's namesake. At the end of the article, there's a list of 20 obscure things about Adelaide - I knew a few of them, but not all! You learn something new everyday...
Friday, 3 May 2013
The Ghrimes Girls
This is a bit of a different post. I've got a couple of posts in draft that require a bit more research and fixing, so this is a post because, frankly, I just felt like writing one. No pictures with this post, I'm afraid, but there might be a supplementary post with some pictures later.
When I was about 10 or 11, I read the "Tea Tree Gully Sketchbook" by Ian Auhl. It was in my nanna's bookcase and it was small with a bright green cover. I was interested in history when I was that young, but I preferred historical fiction to actual history. Anyway, I got to the page on the Greenwith Methodist (now Uniting) Church and I found something - that even at that age - I thought was pretty interesting. I haven't read this book in years, but I still remember it really well: there was a small paragraph at the end of the page that said the church used to be the Upper Dry Creek School, the teacher was Mrs. Elizabeth Ghrimes, and she had three daughters who died in a diphtheria epidemic and were buried at the Golden Grove Cemetery (across the road from the nearby Golden Grove Presbyterian - also now Uniting - Church). I got my dad to take me to the Golden Grove Cemetery and I found their grave - Marian, Charlotte and Louisa all died within a few days of each other and were buried together. There was a little fence around it that, in a strange way, made it feel almost cosy - like they were protected. Their grave is one of the oldest in the cemetery.
Obviously, I found their story very sad. Charlotte and Louisa were younger than I was and Marian was the same age as me at the time. This was when my interest in 'real' history began to grow. I wanted to know about these girls, who they were, where they lived, what they did. This is in an era before Trove, and before I had any sort of workable research skills. I put their name into a couple of search engines a few times in my teens but nothing came up. I now know that one of their brother's descendants has done some genealogical research into their mother, but all that is known about the girls is that they died young. And that's probably all I'm going to find out.
I've not been able to find anything about the 'diphtheria epidemic', but all three died from diphtheria within a few weeks in December 1862. Diphtheria was prevalent throughout South Australia in the early 1860s (and before and after) and there were cases of diphtheria in December 1862 in Meadows. Cases of diphtheria actually decreased in the last half of 1862, when the girls died from it. Saying that, a quick review of death notices from that time shows an enormous amount of people - especially young children - who succumbed to diphtheria.
On 9 January 1863, the girls' brother Wallace ("Lacy") broke his leg (this is why I love the old newspapers - being able to pinpoint an event down to the day like that). He was playing with young horses at a neighbour's property "when he was thrown down by them and had his leg broken." Elizabeth, their mother, was not told for "a day or two" because she was suffering from diphtheria and was "altogether prostrate from [the deaths of her children] and her sudden and severe calamities". The paper states that two of the girls had died within the fortnight before the accident. If I remember correctly, one of the girls - I think Charlotte - died on Christmas Eve. The newspaper also wrote that Mrs. Ghrimes was beloved by her pupils and respected by everyone in the district.
I don't know where the girls were born but the genealogy websites have told me that their parents, Elizabeth and Robert, were English and arrived in Australia in 1849. A newspaper report tells me that they arrived in South Australia on 27 October 1849 and travelled on the "Senator", a 619 tonne barque. They were not travelling with any servants or children.
Their mother was a teacher in a small country town, so I can only assume they (or at least Marian and Charlotte, who were eleven and seven) went to her school. Elizabeth Ghrimes applied for a teaching licence in 1859 and she was already a teacher at 'Upper Dry Creek', so she must have had a few students already. The girls would have been eight, four and one in 1859. In March 1860, Mrs. Ghrimes requested government aid for her school and the Reverend J. A. Boake wrote to the Education Board asking for this. He stated that the school was very good and "he had received excellent character [references?] from the inhabitants."
In 1861, a year before the girls died, the school was inspected. The report reads: "This school is under the management of a competent teacher. The pupils, although drawn from a purely agricultural neighbourhood and often required for service at home, have made good progress. The school-room is very defective." The foundation stone of the Greenwith Church wasn't laid until 1863, so were using another school room. Mrs. Ghrimes was encouraged to find an alternative building by an Inspector of Schools, but there was a bit of a controversy when she took up the Greenwith Church. It was close to another school at Golden Grove run by Miss Cate, who complained to the Inspector of Schools that there shouldn't be two schools so close to each other. In 1869, nineteen families petitioned to Board to keep Mrs. Ghrimes as a licensed teacher, but she doesn't appear to have been inspected after 1869, indicating to me that she left teaching at this time. As I understand it, there was never an official schoolroom at Upper Dry Creek/Greenwith, but there was a schoolroom and teacher's residence at Golden Grove. Golden Grove was preferred as the local school because it was older and was built for the purposes of a school. The Board of Education wanted a male teacher to teach the boys, who were getting too big for a female teacher to manage!
Marian, at least, must have been taught in the "very defective" schoolroom and I really wish I knew where it was. On 20 September 1861, the school students were examined and it was written about in the "South Australian Register":
"The scholars were tested in reading, spelling, English and sacred history, general geography, writing, and the principles of English grammar. Specimens of drawing and needlework were minutely inspected by the company, and at the conclusion prizes were distributed to the most meritorious pupils. Mr. Kerr [the examiner] congratulated the parents for the neat and very imposing appearance of their children, and also Mrs. Ghrimes for the highly praiseworthy manner in which she seemed to have performed her duties during the past year...The happiness of the evening was kept up to a late hour by music and many recreative [sic] amusements."
Through Trove, I've since learned that Elizabeth Ghrimes was a widow by 1872 and she took up 177 acres on Section 105, Golden Grove. Each acre cost 1 pound, so the whole property would've cost her 177 pounds, which is quite a large amount of money. My next step is to look at old maps with the sections marked on them to see if I can find where she would have lived. I know sections in the 2000s are in present-day Golden Grove, near the Golden Grove Village. Since the Greenwith Church (which is actually in Golden Grove) is nearer present-day Greenwith and the original Golden Grove property is probably about 1km from the church, I think the earlier sections would be in that area.
And that's all I have. I understand that there wouldn't be that much information out there about three girls who died young, and I've been fortunate to find the little information I have. There's a lot of information available about pioneer families of the Tea Tree Gully area, but the Ghrimes family don't seem to fall under this category. There aren't any streets named after them, nor no known property owned by them. The only place I've been able to visit that I've known for certain they've been too is the cemetery. The church was their mother's workplace for many years, but it pre-dates the girls.
Since Elizabeth was also suffering from diphtheria, no doubt caught from her daughters, I wonder who organised the girls' funeral and burial. I haven't been able to find a funeral notice for any of them. I don't know where the funeral would've been held, as there were no churches in the area. I wonder who took care of Wallace after his sisters died and his mother was ill. I wonder who took care of Elizabeth. Wallace's broken leg was set by Dr. Bosch - did he provide medical care to the girls too? Did he take care of Wallace? When I research, I often ask more questions than I'm able to answer and this family is difficult because, basically, they were an ordinary country family. I think they lived hard lives and are admirable - Elizabeth ran a school with four small children; the youngest was still a baby when she started teaching and I'm sure there weren't childcare facilities for her. (More questions: who cared for Charlotte and Louisa when their mother was teaching? Did she bring them with her?) I have a picture of them in my head, of three little girls running through the long grass near what is now Golden Grove Road, their mother standing outside the school ringing an old-fashioned school bell and calling them in for lessons. It's sentimental and romantic, but it's what I feel.
Thanks for reading.
REFERENCES
Tea Tree Gully Historical Society
Marian, Charlotte and Louisa Ghrimes' gravesite
Elizabeth K. Grimes [Ghrimes?] Inspectors' Reports
"South Australian Register", 31 October 1849, p. 3
"South Australian Register", 4 April 1850, p. 2
"South Australian Weekly Chronicle", 16 July 1859, p. 3
"South Australian Weekly Chronicle", 11 February 1860, p. 7
"South Australian Register", 6 March 1860, p. 3
"South Australian Register", 12 October 1861, p. 2
"South Australian Register", 15 January 1863, p. 3
"South Australian Register", 6 March 1863, p. 3
"South Australian Weekly Chronicle", 16 July 1864, p. 3
"South Australian Weekly Chronicle", 3 December 1864, p. 4
"South Australian Chronicle and Weekly Mail", 5 June 1869, p. 14
"South Australian Advertiser", 1 March 1872, p. 7
When I was about 10 or 11, I read the "Tea Tree Gully Sketchbook" by Ian Auhl. It was in my nanna's bookcase and it was small with a bright green cover. I was interested in history when I was that young, but I preferred historical fiction to actual history. Anyway, I got to the page on the Greenwith Methodist (now Uniting) Church and I found something - that even at that age - I thought was pretty interesting. I haven't read this book in years, but I still remember it really well: there was a small paragraph at the end of the page that said the church used to be the Upper Dry Creek School, the teacher was Mrs. Elizabeth Ghrimes, and she had three daughters who died in a diphtheria epidemic and were buried at the Golden Grove Cemetery (across the road from the nearby Golden Grove Presbyterian - also now Uniting - Church). I got my dad to take me to the Golden Grove Cemetery and I found their grave - Marian, Charlotte and Louisa all died within a few days of each other and were buried together. There was a little fence around it that, in a strange way, made it feel almost cosy - like they were protected. Their grave is one of the oldest in the cemetery.
Obviously, I found their story very sad. Charlotte and Louisa were younger than I was and Marian was the same age as me at the time. This was when my interest in 'real' history began to grow. I wanted to know about these girls, who they were, where they lived, what they did. This is in an era before Trove, and before I had any sort of workable research skills. I put their name into a couple of search engines a few times in my teens but nothing came up. I now know that one of their brother's descendants has done some genealogical research into their mother, but all that is known about the girls is that they died young. And that's probably all I'm going to find out.
I've not been able to find anything about the 'diphtheria epidemic', but all three died from diphtheria within a few weeks in December 1862. Diphtheria was prevalent throughout South Australia in the early 1860s (and before and after) and there were cases of diphtheria in December 1862 in Meadows. Cases of diphtheria actually decreased in the last half of 1862, when the girls died from it. Saying that, a quick review of death notices from that time shows an enormous amount of people - especially young children - who succumbed to diphtheria.
On 9 January 1863, the girls' brother Wallace ("Lacy") broke his leg (this is why I love the old newspapers - being able to pinpoint an event down to the day like that). He was playing with young horses at a neighbour's property "when he was thrown down by them and had his leg broken." Elizabeth, their mother, was not told for "a day or two" because she was suffering from diphtheria and was "altogether prostrate from [the deaths of her children] and her sudden and severe calamities". The paper states that two of the girls had died within the fortnight before the accident. If I remember correctly, one of the girls - I think Charlotte - died on Christmas Eve. The newspaper also wrote that Mrs. Ghrimes was beloved by her pupils and respected by everyone in the district.
I don't know where the girls were born but the genealogy websites have told me that their parents, Elizabeth and Robert, were English and arrived in Australia in 1849. A newspaper report tells me that they arrived in South Australia on 27 October 1849 and travelled on the "Senator", a 619 tonne barque. They were not travelling with any servants or children.
Their mother was a teacher in a small country town, so I can only assume they (or at least Marian and Charlotte, who were eleven and seven) went to her school. Elizabeth Ghrimes applied for a teaching licence in 1859 and she was already a teacher at 'Upper Dry Creek', so she must have had a few students already. The girls would have been eight, four and one in 1859. In March 1860, Mrs. Ghrimes requested government aid for her school and the Reverend J. A. Boake wrote to the Education Board asking for this. He stated that the school was very good and "he had received excellent character [references?] from the inhabitants."
In 1861, a year before the girls died, the school was inspected. The report reads: "This school is under the management of a competent teacher. The pupils, although drawn from a purely agricultural neighbourhood and often required for service at home, have made good progress. The school-room is very defective." The foundation stone of the Greenwith Church wasn't laid until 1863, so were using another school room. Mrs. Ghrimes was encouraged to find an alternative building by an Inspector of Schools, but there was a bit of a controversy when she took up the Greenwith Church. It was close to another school at Golden Grove run by Miss Cate, who complained to the Inspector of Schools that there shouldn't be two schools so close to each other. In 1869, nineteen families petitioned to Board to keep Mrs. Ghrimes as a licensed teacher, but she doesn't appear to have been inspected after 1869, indicating to me that she left teaching at this time. As I understand it, there was never an official schoolroom at Upper Dry Creek/Greenwith, but there was a schoolroom and teacher's residence at Golden Grove. Golden Grove was preferred as the local school because it was older and was built for the purposes of a school. The Board of Education wanted a male teacher to teach the boys, who were getting too big for a female teacher to manage!
Marian, at least, must have been taught in the "very defective" schoolroom and I really wish I knew where it was. On 20 September 1861, the school students were examined and it was written about in the "South Australian Register":
"The scholars were tested in reading, spelling, English and sacred history, general geography, writing, and the principles of English grammar. Specimens of drawing and needlework were minutely inspected by the company, and at the conclusion prizes were distributed to the most meritorious pupils. Mr. Kerr [the examiner] congratulated the parents for the neat and very imposing appearance of their children, and also Mrs. Ghrimes for the highly praiseworthy manner in which she seemed to have performed her duties during the past year...The happiness of the evening was kept up to a late hour by music and many recreative [sic] amusements."
Through Trove, I've since learned that Elizabeth Ghrimes was a widow by 1872 and she took up 177 acres on Section 105, Golden Grove. Each acre cost 1 pound, so the whole property would've cost her 177 pounds, which is quite a large amount of money. My next step is to look at old maps with the sections marked on them to see if I can find where she would have lived. I know sections in the 2000s are in present-day Golden Grove, near the Golden Grove Village. Since the Greenwith Church (which is actually in Golden Grove) is nearer present-day Greenwith and the original Golden Grove property is probably about 1km from the church, I think the earlier sections would be in that area.
And that's all I have. I understand that there wouldn't be that much information out there about three girls who died young, and I've been fortunate to find the little information I have. There's a lot of information available about pioneer families of the Tea Tree Gully area, but the Ghrimes family don't seem to fall under this category. There aren't any streets named after them, nor no known property owned by them. The only place I've been able to visit that I've known for certain they've been too is the cemetery. The church was their mother's workplace for many years, but it pre-dates the girls.
Since Elizabeth was also suffering from diphtheria, no doubt caught from her daughters, I wonder who organised the girls' funeral and burial. I haven't been able to find a funeral notice for any of them. I don't know where the funeral would've been held, as there were no churches in the area. I wonder who took care of Wallace after his sisters died and his mother was ill. I wonder who took care of Elizabeth. Wallace's broken leg was set by Dr. Bosch - did he provide medical care to the girls too? Did he take care of Wallace? When I research, I often ask more questions than I'm able to answer and this family is difficult because, basically, they were an ordinary country family. I think they lived hard lives and are admirable - Elizabeth ran a school with four small children; the youngest was still a baby when she started teaching and I'm sure there weren't childcare facilities for her. (More questions: who cared for Charlotte and Louisa when their mother was teaching? Did she bring them with her?) I have a picture of them in my head, of three little girls running through the long grass near what is now Golden Grove Road, their mother standing outside the school ringing an old-fashioned school bell and calling them in for lessons. It's sentimental and romantic, but it's what I feel.
Thanks for reading.
REFERENCES
Tea Tree Gully Historical Society
Marian, Charlotte and Louisa Ghrimes' gravesite
Elizabeth K. Grimes [Ghrimes?] Inspectors' Reports
"South Australian Register", 31 October 1849, p. 3
"South Australian Register", 4 April 1850, p. 2
"South Australian Weekly Chronicle", 16 July 1859, p. 3
"South Australian Weekly Chronicle", 11 February 1860, p. 7
"South Australian Register", 6 March 1860, p. 3
"South Australian Register", 12 October 1861, p. 2
"South Australian Register", 15 January 1863, p. 3
"South Australian Register", 6 March 1863, p. 3
"South Australian Weekly Chronicle", 16 July 1864, p. 3
"South Australian Weekly Chronicle", 3 December 1864, p. 4
"South Australian Chronicle and Weekly Mail", 5 June 1869, p. 14
"South Australian Advertiser", 1 March 1872, p. 7
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Wednesday, 16 January 2013
Heatwave, 1908 style
Anyone in South Australia at the moment will be aware of the weird weather we've been having! It's been as hot as 45 and as cold as 14!!! But anyway, whenever I think it's way too hot to do anything, I'm grateful for air conditioning and cold water on tap and that, as a 21st century woman, it's socially acceptable for me to go out in public with my knees on display! In January 1908, SA had a record of six days over forty degrees, which is still a record. This is a time before air conditioning, before proper refrigeration, and when men would've been outside in suits and women in long dresses and corsets.
Now, I saw the new 'Slip Slop Slap' ad the other day ("slip on a shirt, slop on sunscreen, slap on a hat, slide on sunnies, seek shade"), which is in a wonderful contrast to how 1908 women were advised to avoid sunburn. Back then, slipping on a shirt and slapping on a hat weren't a problem, as it was unseemly to walk the streets topless and hatless, but ladies also carried parasols or wore veils. Of course, even with all those clothes, sunburn still occurred and ladies needed to break out the rose-water and tincture of benzoin.
Here is how sunburn was dealt with in 1908, taken from an article in Mount Gambier's "Border Watch", 4 January 1908:
THE COMPLEXION IN HOT WEATHER
To avoid sunburn, it is well to walk on grassy sides of the path when out in the country, as reflected light from the glaring white road injures the skin. Similarly as regards the light from sea and river, which burns no matter how sheltered the face may be from the direct rays of the sun.
Another important point is the colour of the parasol and veil. These should be dark coloured to keep away sunburn effectually.
As for remedies for sunburn: lemon juice in rose-water is as good as any, though parsley which has been well boiled gives a juice to which some ladies attribute marvellous powers.
Tansy put in a teapot with a little hot buttermilk and allowed to infuse for an hour was our grandmother's remedy, and it still holds high repute.
A good emollient cream to rub gently on the face and the superfluity gently taken away with a piece of white silk can be made up as follows: an ounce each of rose-water and Vaseline, half an ounce of lanoline; and 20 drops of tincture of benzoin beaten into a cream.
I now leave you with a poem, "Hot Weather Rhymes", by Mark Thomson (note the different spelling of 'cola'). Until the last stanza, it's quite a sweet poem about ice cream and cold drinks, but it takes a slightly sadder and morbid turn. It was published in the "Chronicle" on 8 February 1908:
When the sun's burning beam
Flares down from the sky,
The penny ice cream
Is a good thing to buy.
The sweet ginger pop,
And the cool Kola beer
In the little 'luck shop'
Are easy to clear.
Whatever is wet
And has been on the ice
That the small boy can get.
He drinks in a trice.
At the gaudy street stall
The youngsters are thick,
For ices they call,
And swallow them quick.
It's a wonder to me
They don't all of them die.
And to cooler realms flee
Up there in the sky.
References
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-01-28/adelaide-suffers-through-hottest-day-in-70-years/275958
Now, I saw the new 'Slip Slop Slap' ad the other day ("slip on a shirt, slop on sunscreen, slap on a hat, slide on sunnies, seek shade"), which is in a wonderful contrast to how 1908 women were advised to avoid sunburn. Back then, slipping on a shirt and slapping on a hat weren't a problem, as it was unseemly to walk the streets topless and hatless, but ladies also carried parasols or wore veils. Of course, even with all those clothes, sunburn still occurred and ladies needed to break out the rose-water and tincture of benzoin.
Here is how sunburn was dealt with in 1908, taken from an article in Mount Gambier's "Border Watch", 4 January 1908:
THE COMPLEXION IN HOT WEATHER
To avoid sunburn, it is well to walk on grassy sides of the path when out in the country, as reflected light from the glaring white road injures the skin. Similarly as regards the light from sea and river, which burns no matter how sheltered the face may be from the direct rays of the sun.
Another important point is the colour of the parasol and veil. These should be dark coloured to keep away sunburn effectually.
As for remedies for sunburn: lemon juice in rose-water is as good as any, though parsley which has been well boiled gives a juice to which some ladies attribute marvellous powers.
Tansy put in a teapot with a little hot buttermilk and allowed to infuse for an hour was our grandmother's remedy, and it still holds high repute.
A good emollient cream to rub gently on the face and the superfluity gently taken away with a piece of white silk can be made up as follows: an ounce each of rose-water and Vaseline, half an ounce of lanoline; and 20 drops of tincture of benzoin beaten into a cream.
I now leave you with a poem, "Hot Weather Rhymes", by Mark Thomson (note the different spelling of 'cola'). Until the last stanza, it's quite a sweet poem about ice cream and cold drinks, but it takes a slightly sadder and morbid turn. It was published in the "Chronicle" on 8 February 1908:
When the sun's burning beam
Flares down from the sky,
The penny ice cream
Is a good thing to buy.
The sweet ginger pop,
And the cool Kola beer
In the little 'luck shop'
Are easy to clear.
Whatever is wet
And has been on the ice
That the small boy can get.
He drinks in a trice.
At the gaudy street stall
The youngsters are thick,
For ices they call,
And swallow them quick.
It's a wonder to me
They don't all of them die.
And to cooler realms flee
Up there in the sky.
References
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-01-28/adelaide-suffers-through-hottest-day-in-70-years/275958
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