Fenn Place {Part 1}

Fenn Place, 2012

Fenn Place is now a walkway through UniSA City West. It runs between North Terrace and Hindley Street and has a cafe and some university buildings, including one of the largest collections of Hawke-era memorabilia. Basically, it's an ordinary university thoroughfare. 

In the 1800s and early 1900s, it was the place to be...if opium dens, sly grog shops, thievery and the occasional shoot-out were your thing! 

I found a surprisingly large amount of information about Fenn Place, so I've decided to split into several posts, each focusing on a different aspect of life in Fenn Place. This one is about the Salvation Army Women's Shelter. 

The Salvation Army was active in the West End of the city throughout the late 1800s/early 1900s - the first Salvation Army Hall in Australia was built in Light Square in 1880. The Army ran several homes in the city - a Rescue Home in Gilbert Street; a maternity home in Carrington Street; a children's home in Norwood, among others. The Women's Shelter was originally in Rosina Street, but it moved to Fenn Place in about 1907 when "the gradual development of that quarter into a business street and the removal of many poor families to localities farther west induced the Army authorities to seek new premises in the western part of the city." (The Advertiser, 10 September 1909, p. 8). In 1907, The Advertiser referred to the Rosina Street shelter as a 'Slum Post' and admitted that Rosina Street was once one of the "lowest quarters" of the city, but had since become a respectable business thoroughfare so the Army decided to move further into the slums. Fenn Place is only about 600m west of Rosina Street, which only goes to show the vast differences in streets within Adelaide's Square Mile.

An old 2-storey building on Fenn Place
(Honestly, I don't know the history of this building - it just looks pretty)

The Women's Shelter was a two-storey building with seven beds - three upstairs at 6d. a night and four downstairs at 3d. a night. Its intention was to keep women off the streets at night and, perhaps, seeking a bed through 'immorality'. It was available only to women and they could not arrive before 5pm and had to leave by 8am. If they asked to stay the night on Saturday, they were allowed to stay until Monday and were given Sunday lunch. If the women wanted a meal, they received a cup of tea and a "big" slice of bread for a penny. Adjutant Scott, who ran the shelter in 1909, admitted that women did not always pay. Some women slept there regularly and paid regularly, but others "only promise to do so. You see, we take them in, and in turn they take us in, but still we are not hard, and again and again the same thing happens."

The "best" of the women earned money and meals with domestic work, and Adjutant Scott could not say how the others occupied their time. Life at the Shelter was not easy, for the volunteers who ran it and the women who lived there. "There are some dreadful characters among them, and they abuse us horribly when, because there is no vacant bed, we are compelled to refuse them admittance...As you can see the place is kept clean and fresh, and I assure you it is not a nice undertaking to have to clean the dormitories after they have been occupied by some women, who are as unpleasant in their habits as it is possible to be." The Salvation Army volunteers (known as "Slum Post girls" in 1907) wore wide-brimmed hats and white aprons with 'For His sake' emblazoned in red on their chests. These girls supplied food, cleaned houses and cared for children if the parents were unwell, as well as supervising the women at the Shelter and organising their meals. They moved about 'the lowest parts of the city', but were never "interfered with" or "insulted". (The Advertiser, 27 June 1907, p. 6)

The same old 2-storey building on Fenn Place

The Shelter also distributed food to needy families and, in 1909, there were about thirty families receiving assistance. They received bread and vegetables sourced from market gardeners who were "exceedingly good to us. When vegetables are plentiful they are generous indeed, and the poor people at this end of the city should be grateful, as we are, to the growers who present large parcels of their produce to us weekly."Since the Army did not "wish to be taken advantage of", officers visited the homes of the people asking for assistance and made enquiries as to "his other habits, and so forth". 

An apology, a TV recommendation, and a list

I'm sorry for not blogging for awhile and leaving you hanging with the photo from the last post.

It's Bonython Hall at the University of Adelaide on North Terrace and, unfortunately, I don't actually have a post for it right now! HERE is a photo of it when it was first built and HERE is some brief information about its history. I love that Bonython wanted it to have sloping floors so people couldn't dance there!

I feel like all I do lately is make apologies for not being able to do anything besides uni work, but the year's almost finished and then I'll have plenty of time to write here!

Have any of you been watching Tony Robinson's Time Walks? Adelaide is the last episode and I can't wait to see where he visits!

For now, I have a list of some Adelaide history questions that have been running around my head for a couple of weeks and, I'm sure, will be answered here at some point:
1. Why is there a statue of Robert Burns outside the State Library?
2. What was on the State Library site (the new building with the glass front) before? I know there was the library built in the 1960s, which was demolished for the new library, but what was there before that?
3. What was on the UniSA City West site before UniSA City West? I know it has street names (George Street, Fenn Place, Register Street), so I assume it had houses - I've done a little bit of research into this already and, let me tell you, it's pretty juicy. 

Corner of Fenn Place and North Terrace: I have a feeling this little angel face could tell some amazing stories if they could talk!

Have a photo...

I was going to do a post today, but Trove is down so that's that.

Have a photo instead :)

It's a clue about the next post...

If you guess what the building is, make a comment. There's no prize for a correct guess, sorry, but there's no penalty for an incorrect guess, so that's nice. :)

PS: Suggestions

If you have any more suggestions, let me know! You're welcome to comment as 'Anonymous' but you can leave a first name if you want, just so I don't have to keep writing 'the person who suggested...'! Thanks! :)

Little House on Payneham Road

A few weeks ago, someone commented on this post that they wanted to know what the building at these coordinates [34.9152263 S , 138.62305790000005 E] was. I haven't had time to visit in person, but I looked it up on Google Maps and I could just make out some words at the top:

Heating and Water Systems Installed / Gasfitter and Drainage Contractor

The person who commented thought it might have been a general store or even the remains of an old mortuary. No such luck, I'm afraid.

I looked it up in Sands & McDougall's South Australian Directory. The earliest ones were a little too vague to be particularly helpful, so I started with 1901. There weren't many buildings on Payneham Road between Baliol Street and Marlborough Street and I'm as sure as I can be that it was...a plumber's and gas fitter's shop!

In 1901, David Bell - plumber and gas fitter - was listed as living there. In 1918, he was still there and it was now known as '13 Payneham Road'. By 1946, David Bell, plumber, lived at 15 Payneham Road and 13 Payneham Road was the Central Provision Store (but I think the street numbers must have changed...or he could've moved next-door). 

I then went back to 1891 and there were only five listings for Payneham Road between Baliol and Marlborough Streets, and none of these were for gas fitters or plumbers. There was a boot maker, a woodyard, a storekeeper, the East Adelaide Timber Company and Mrs. John Penaluna - who actually lived there until at least the 1940s. 

So, there you are. Not a mortuary, although it might have been a general store but it was most probably a plumber and gas fitter's shop. Of course, there could have been a mortuary on the site in the 19th century; I'll have to do more research before I can totally rule that out.

If you want to look at Sands & McDougall's (and, I mean, who doesn't?! Actually, no, it really is quite interesting!), the State Library has a few of them in their Family History collection. 

I found the Ship Inn!

I found the Ship Inn…

Remember Sophia? She was the one who gave birth in a hen house in a garden on Currie Street. Earlier in the morning, she'd had a nobbler of brandy at the Ship Inn and the hen house was next door. I had never heard of the Ship Inn before learning about Sophia. It wasn’t the name of any pub I knew in Adelaide. I looked on the digitised newspapers, but ‘Ship Inn’ disappears soon after Sophia’s time and I couldn’t find anything else. Until I found this.

It's a bit small, but part of it says: "Going through Light Square, which at this time [1860s] was occupied by fallen women, we pass a number of cottages until we arrive at The Ship Inn, now the Bedford. A little farther on were a number of cottages and a large block of land, and so we come to Gray street." The author clearly ignored North Street, or it didn't exist at the time. 

This article popped up when I searched for ‘Currie Street’ (I guess ‘Ship Inn’ didn’t read well on their search engine). So, by World War I, it had been renamed the ‘Bedford’. So, I did another search for Bedford Hotel, Currie Street and found a photo from 1891, some ten years after Sophia’s time. I won’t post the photo here, as it’s under copyright and I don’t want to get in trouble(!), but the link is here [opens in a new window] if you want to look at it yourself. I think it looks quite nice. The caption underneath reads: “Currie Street, north side, right side of the Bedford Hotel is 2 yards west of Elizabeth Street and frontage is 15.5 yards”.

Two yards west of Elizabeth Street (estimated, of course. I didn’t bring a ruler with me) is now…not a hotel. Unfortunately, I couldn't take a photo because the building is being renovated and there were fences up. I did get a photo of the side of the building, though. The wall is made of stone and looks old - who knows what it could tell us if it could talk?!

Mrs. Gearing, the woman whose hen house Sophia gave birth in, lived next to the Ship Inn. I found this carpark on Elizabeth Street – maybe this was where Sophia’s baby was born? Maybe not? If Mrs. Gearing lived on the other side of the Ship Inn, Sophia might have given birth in this carpark. 

All I can say is there’s a lot more than meets the eye. There are buildings in Adelaide that look old and look like they could tell a lot of stories, but this one – at first glance – is not one of them.

When the weather is a little nicer, I'm going to explore more of the west end and take lots more photos. Until then, have a photo of Light Square...just because. [You can see how dark and miserable it was - this is the middle of the day!]

Suggestions, anyone?

Hey all,
I haven't posted anything for a while - I've got a couple of ideas in the pipeline, but they're going to take a while so I apologise.
In the meantime, if anyone has any suggestions as to what I should write here - or what you want to read/see here on the blog - I'm open to them! I'll research/write anything, as long as it's SA-based. Please comment below if you have any ideas.
Thank you!