Set sail for adventure

Okay, my kids will groan and tell me this is pathetic (at least, the teenager will, the younger one will just look at me like I have finally lost my mind), but I am off on an adventure.

Airship Pirates RPG cover. Image owned by Abney Park

No, not that kind (although I wish it was. I hope that one day soon it will be, although there may not be airships involved - sigh) - a genealogical research adventure.

I wrote last year about my great great uncle William O'Toole, the hairdresser and tobacconist who ended up in Callan Park Mental Hospital and then died in Parramatta Mental Hospital. Well, I have applied to look at his files. Gosh, that sounds simple, but it was an exercise in itself. You see, there are strict rules governing mental health records in NSW, as there should be. For starters, the files are closed for 110 years. That's okay for the first part of William's institutionalisation (he was admitted in 1895) but not for the last part (he died in Parramatta in 1919). So, if I wanted to look at the whole record set I had to ask for permission.

A phone call to State Archives at Kingswood set the ball in motion. The very helpful gentleman I spoke to told me who to contact at Western Sydney Local Health District, which holds the records for Parramatta Mental Hospital. He also told me that William was likely to have been transferred to Parramatta soon after killing Bartolomeo Vuscovitch as Parramatta housed the criminally insane. He also told me that when I got written permission, I would need to give the Archive five days' notice so they could extract the records for William while ensuring I would not see anyone else's.

So I rang Western Sydney Local Health District and spoke to a lovely lady named Margot Gover. Now it started to get complicated. Requesting permission was not enough. I had to prove my relationship to the patient and supply a copy of his death certificate. Fortunately I already had that. The question arises of what proves my relationship. Have I enough hard evidence in my files to satisfy a government department? If this doesn't test the veracity of my genealogical research I don't know what will.

A letter was carefully composed stating my request and outlining the salient details of William's life. Attached were copies of:

William's death certificate

William's birth certificate

John O'Tooles birth and death certificates (my great grandfather and William's younger brother)

My grandfather's birth and death certificates with a statement that he was my maternal grandfather

Lastly a family group record for Laurence O'Toole and Anne Groves ni Leonard (you should know who they are by now)

All posted off in a fat envelope.

Then I waited.

Finally, a couple of weeks ago, it was my turn to receive a fat envelope. Permission granted. I have to bring the two enclosed letters to the Archive, along with identification to prove who I am. They attached copies of all the documents I had sent, so I suppose I will bring those along too, just in case.

Monday of last week I contacted State Archives. Oh yes, I was told, contact us Friday if you haven't heard from us. We are open weekends if that suits for visiting. We'll get on to it.

To be honest, my greatest fear with all this has been that there will be nothing, or very little, in the file. A couple of entries in a book, a few slips of paper, little if anything beyond what I have gleaned from the papers.

Friday strolled around so I rang back. "We are still going. We keep finding more". We started talking about William. It turned out that the records stopped almost mid sentence with the words "transferred to free wing". Was that in 1917? I asked. Yes. So I told the beautifully efficient staffer that that was when William was deemed never fit to stand trial. She got quite excited, set on a new trail. I was told that I would be rung when it was all ferretted out, and apologised to for the delay. Apologised to - because it was taking longer due to sheer volume. I don't think an apology was needed, do you?

And then this week I got a call from the lovely staffer. Everything has been found, here are instructions, when can you come? We have never seen a file this size, there is a lot to go through. be warned, mental health records can be hard going (I know that, oh god I know that).

I am going down on Saturday, and my staffer will be on duty that day. She is so pleased to be the one to guide me, which makes me pleased too. Every adventurer needs a guide.

When I return from the wilds of darkest Kingswood I shall regale you with tales of my discoveries, or at least write a modest blog post.

Indiana Jones, eat your heart out.

A Tale from the Burragorang

My grandmother, Eda Elecia Elizabeth Shoobridge, was born in the Burragorang Valley in the early part of the 20^th Century. The Burragorang Valley was up in the Blue Mountains. I say “was” because it is now the site of the Warragamba Dam. All the farmers and other inhabitants were moved out and their homes flooded so that Sydney could have a secure water supply, a supply which is now under threat from mining.

My grandmother's family weren't the first to settle in the Burragorang, but they were among the first. Her great grandfather, George Pearce, came to the Valley in the 1830s, having worked off his convict sentence (I am working on a Matter of Conviction post for George, but his brother is complicating matters). He worked first as a cattle duffer (that's a cattle rustler, for those who were wondering) and then selected and cleared some land and began farming around 1836.

So, alright, not a super long tradition of being there, but after 70 years of her family being farmers in the area, it is safe to say that Eda was a Valley girl through and through. As I have stated in early posts, she didn't like talking about the past, but one thing she did talk about was her childhood in the Burragorang. Eda clearly loved the place and greatly missed it when her family moved up the mountains to Wentworth Falls when she was 13.

One of Eda's favourite tales of Valley life was one of our favourites too. We never tired of hearing it and it was frequently the requested topic of conversation. I shall do my best to recount it, but shall not do it justice.

My great grandfather, George Shoobridge, was a farmer on the Cox's River in the Burragorang Valley and my great grandmother, Hannah Maria Amelia ni Pearce, was a farmer's wife (read unpaid farm hand), mother and assistant to the local midwife (she later became a respected midwife in her own right).

George and Hannah in Wentworth Falls taken in Wentworth Falls in the late 1940s. Photo in private collection

Houses in those days were simple. There were few rooms, sometimes only one, and I don't mean bedrooms, I mean rooms. My grandmother remembered her home as being unlined wooden walls but neat as a pin. She and her sisters, Sarah and Isabella Ruth (known as Ruth), shared a room and all slept in the same bed. I don't know where their brother, Oliver George (known as George) slept. There had been a third sister, Sylvia, Ruth's twin, but she had died as an infant.

Farming was tough. Everything came from the farm that possibly could, and make do and mend was the motto to live by. But some essentials couldn't be provided and had to be bought in. When money was tight you did without. It wasn't poverty. My grandmother couldn't remember having to go hungry, and Hannah always made sure her children were neatly clothed, although running around on a farm and in the bush meant they didn't come home in the state they went out.

"Eda Shoobridge and friend" taken about 1910-12 in the Burragorang Valley. Any clues as to who the "friend" may be? Photo in private collection

Eda's memories were of a happy and peaceful existence, with one exception.

Every so often George Shoobridge would have to travel up out of the Valley to Wentworth Falls to buy the things they couldn't produce for themselves. The Burragorang was not an easy place to access¹, this was not a quick trip down to the shops.

There was a local gang, Nanna called them bushrangers, led by an aboriginal man who fashioned himself King Billy. Whether he really was a leader warranting the title or just someone big-noting himself I can't say. Either is possible. This group, made up of Aboriginal and European ne'er-do-wells, kept an eye on the farmers in their area, watched their comings and goings. They knew that when George set out on his horse heading up to Wentworth Falls that he would be gone for several days and that Hannah and the children would be home alone. They duly turned up outside the house. A shot or two would be fired as a sort of hello and King Billy would come up and knock on the door. On hearing the shots, Hannah immediately ordered her children to hide under her bed and be absolutely quiet. Then, on the knock, she would answer the door. Billy always asked nicely for the same thing – tea and damper for him and his men. Hannah had little choice, but she never panicked or showed any fear. She put the kettle on, got out mugs and started making damper. The gang would sit outside and smoke and talk, sometimes fighting amongst themselves, sometimes singing or joking. Under the bed the four children lay quietly and listened to everything that was going on, not daring to make a sound.

Finally the gang would be ready to leave. King Billy always thanked my great grandmother most politely, priding himself on being a gentleman, but there was never any suggestion of paying for the food and tea they had had. Sometimes there was a parting shot as they left, just as a reminder of how things stood.

The children crept out from under the bed and helped wash up. The yard was tidy, Billy saw to that, part of his gentlemanly charade.

One day King Billy and his gang stopped showing up. It must have been a relief to Hannah, but the children wondered what had happened. Had he died? If he and the gang had been caught surely it would have been big news. Had they just moved on to pastures new? Eda never found out, but even as an old lady she would smile as she told us of her brush with bushrangers and the quiet courage of her mother.

1  See Owen Pearce's “Rabbit Hot Rabbit Cold” for a good description of the precarious roads and paths that farmers and visitors had to use.

A Tale from Balmain

As I have made clear, my interview technique when I was 12 was not great (there is strong argument that it has not improved much since). But my grandfather, Leslie Keith Ashton O'Toole, did tell me some stories before I blew it. The following is my favourite.

The O'Tooles were all great swimmers. Les's dad, John O'Toole, was a founding member of Balmain Swimming Club and his mum, Mary Marcella ni Hall, a founding member of the Balmain Ladies' Swimming Club. Younger brother Will was a regular member of the swim team and the whole family could often be found at Balmain Baths (now Dawn Fraser Baths) or at one of Sydney's numerous beaches. They were not, however, to swim in the Harbour as Marcella was concerned about sharks.

Balmain Baths, from Town and Country Magazine, 4 Jan 1902, p.23. Image from Trove

When Les was about fourteen (which would have put this around 1915) he and his friends would dare each other to do mad things – jumping off moving trams, climbing things (I think buildings, but I am not quite sure) and swimming in the Harbour. The Harbour swim was Les's favourite dare because 1) it was easy and 2) he wasn't allowed to. The routine was this: “I dare you to swim from X to the ferry wharf”. Les would strip off and enter the water. His friends would then collect his clothes and secrete them near the wharf. They knew he had succeeded because he would meet them later clothed but damp. As he completed each dare, the swims got longer.

The O'Tooles were living in 21 Hampton Street at the time, just up the steps from the Balmain Baths and with a view out towards Cockatoo Island. When Les said “swim in the Harbour” he meant that side of the Harbour, not round near Circular Quay or Darling Harbour. The ferry wharf where the clothes were left was Balmain West Ferry Wharf off Elliott Street. Swims had been from the Baths round to the ferry wharf and from other spots on the Birchgrove side.

Les O'Toole, taken around 1914. Photo in private collection

Les never worked out how his mother found out. I wonder if she saw him at some point, either near the Baths or near the wharf. Nevertheless, Marcella found out. But it is a mark of the woman that she did not say anything to her son about it.

Impressed by his swimming prowess, Les's friends set him a big challenge – to swim from the point near Callan Park under the Iron Cove Bridge to the ferry wharf. No problem. Les and his friends walked round to the point, Les stripped down and began his swim. His friends bundled up his clothes and headed for the wharf. Unbeknownst to all, the friends were being followed.

Les completed the swim without any trouble. He told me he had seen sharks from time to time during his Harbour swims, but I don't know if he saw any that day. Let's just say that sharks became the least of his worries. He easily reached the wharf and waited till the coast was clear. Then he made his way to the place where his clothes were usually stashed.

Nothing.

He looked about for them.

Still nothing.

He started to search frantically, all the while trying to stay out of sight. This was after all 1915 in built-up Balmain and he was stark naked.

Still nothing.

So began a furtive and seemingly endless trip home, through back streets and pan man's alleys. Most toilets were pan toilets outside. The pans needed regular emptying and the pan men needed access, so Sydney had an extensive network of alleys. If you go to areas like Balmain, Newtown and Redfern you can still see them. Little lanes about 3 feet wide running behind yards or between buildings. So there was Les, ducking under cover, scooting down alleys and making a break for it when necessary if the coast was clear. It's about 500m from the wharf to Hampton Street as the crow flies, but a 14 year old boy, clothed or naked, isn't able travel as the crow flies. Les couldn't say how long it took, except to say that he felt like he would never get there.

The starting point of Les's swim is marked with the red star in the bottom left. Iron Cove Bridge is marked with "A40". The Ferry Wharf is the red star at the top. 21 Hampton Street is circled. This does not convey the route taken to get from the wharf to home. I don't think my grandfather was paying enough attention to have later mapped it at any rate. Image from Google Earth. Marking added with Microsoft Paint.

Finally he reached 21 Hampton Street, sneaking into the yard. He crept into the house and into his room which he shared with his younger brothers.

There, neatly laid out on his bed were his clothes.

Realising the gig was up, Les quietly dressed and went out to the kitchen to eat his tea. All Marcella said was “How was your afternoon?”

When he told his friends the next day they laughed like drains.

But Les never swam in the Harbour again.

Told to Megan Hitchens ni Ellem sometime in March 1980

Pitfalls of Research - or - Sometimes It Hurts to Uncover the Past

I first got interested in genealogy when I was twelve. Our Year 7 history teacher (whose name escapes me at the moment) set us an assignment to look into our family tree. It was tied in with more general concepts of history and was clearly designed to give us a sense of people as part of history. We had to do timelines with our own short life in there, along with our parents and grandparents and major events. It was a good idea and it really sparked my interest, but it also nearly ended it.

One of the things we were asked to do was, if possible, interview our grandparents. My mother's parents, Leslie Keith Ashton O'Toole and Eda Elecia Elizabeth ni Shoobridge, lived with us, so that was easy.

Leslie and Eda with granddaughter Joanne, Dee Why, 1967. Photo in private collection

Bear in mind I was twelve, and twelve year olds are not always known for their sensitivity and tact. Mum had over the years told us stories of her life and the lives of her parents and I assumed that, having not been told otherwise, all of this was fine to discuss.

It all started well. Nanna and Grandpop knew I had the assignment to do. They told me about going to school, some tales of their parents and of their lives growing up. They had some photos to show me (one of which has since vanished without trace – aaargh). They told me how they met in the tearooms up at Wentworth Falls and about my uncle Jack's birth, 9 months and 3 weeks after they were married and how Nanna prayed he wouldn't be early (a potential disaster in 1926). And then, because I had to fit them into the timeline, I asked about their lives during the Depression. It went very quiet. Grandpop looked away and Nanna got decidedly terse. I couldn't work out what was wrong, but plunged on regardless. “Mum said you were ill,” I said to my grandfather. “No,” said my grandmother, “she has got that wrong.” And that was that. Interview over. Bundled out.

I say in my grandparents' defence that this was very unusual behaviour. They were otherwise in the whole time I knew them sweet and loving. Nanna didn't take any crap from us, but she was never awful about it, just firm, and she would do anything for us. Grandpop made each of us feel like the centre of his world and he always made time to listen to us, or to go on walks with us. I wish I could find Steamroller sweets as he was always giving them to us. I still love strong mints to this day.

Allen's Steam Rollers "The Perfect Peppermint". From Power House Museum

Poor Mum was the meat in this debacle of a sandwich. She consoled me and said my grandparents were very sensitive about Grandpop's illness and he always felt it was his fault. The poor woman apologised for not telling me it was an issue. Then she went in to talk to her parents and soothe those troubled waters. All repaired, but I never dared talk to my grandparents about family history again, and I realize now how much I could have learnt. I have so many questions and I can't ask them.

So what did happen? Yes, Grandpop was sensitive about this, and some may think that I shouldn't raise this on such a public forum. But my grandfather always blamed himself and felt great shame, and I want the world to know IT WASN'T HIS FAULT.

The truth is Grandpop spent a large part of the Depression in the Queen Victoria Sanitarium in Wentworth Falls being treated for tuberculosis. He was only in his late 20s when he went in. My Uncle Jack was very young. Nanna went from having a comfortable family life (my grandfather was an accountant) to having no real means of support. Her parents lived next door and did what they could, but Nanna had to find work. She took in ironing, became a cleaner, did whatever it took. It must have been hard for her, but like many people of the time, she did what she had to do. Then Uncle Jack had a fall off the verandah on his trike and broke his hip. He was three at the time. He ended up in hospital down in Sydney. So now Nanna was visiting Grandpop in the Sanitarium down the road, travelling down to Sydney by train to be with her son and spending the rest of the time cleaning and ironing to make ends meet.

Grandpop took this very hard. He had gone from a breadwinner to a burden as he saw it.

Then the situation worsened. My grandfather responded well to treatment, but was in hospital for some years. In the meantime, Uncle Jack developed TB in the hip. He spent about three years in hospital (he told me he watched the Sydney Harbour Bridge being built) and when he was released he was left with one leg permanently shorter than the other, not that that ever stopped him doing anything he loved. He was always up to mischief, encouraging his cousins in all sorts of madness, became an avid hiker in the Blue Mountains in his late teens and early twenties, drove sports cars, and was golf mad, only getting himself a buggy in the last few years of his life.

Grandpop did not take such a light attitude. He blamed himself for my uncle's disability and for his lost childhood years in the hospital ward. No wonder my grandmother was terse that day I interviewed them both. She fully understood the hurt I was inadvertently causing and so she cut it short as quickly as she could.

It puzzled me over the years where Grandpop's TB had come from. Okay, it was more prevelant back then than it is now (Les was born in 1901), and treatment these days is more effective, but still I wondered. Then one day my mother and I went walking round Balmain, looking for the addresses where my great grandparents had lived and the places where my grandfather would have been as a boy. We went to Birchgrove Public School, where Grandpop and his siblings were first educated, and Mum pointed out the shiny new development next door, built over a coal mine. I was horrified. There had been a coal mine right next to a school. And I mean RIGHT next to it. No 2km set back here. Not even a 20m set back. RIGHT NEXT DOOR. Birchgrove Public School opened in 1885, the Balmain Colliery opened in 1897 and closed in 1945¹. It had “poor working conditions and suffered several disastrous accidents”². It was the deepest mine ever worked in Australia and was not a commercial success. The mine extracted coal from under the harbour. All the sifting, sorting and loading was done, naturally enough, on the surface, and the surface workings were slap bang next to a primary school.

We have a good understanding these days of the effects of coal dust on humans, particularly the ultrafine particles that are inhaled and cause lung cancer and all sorts of other respiratory illnesses (and yet our pollies still think it is fine to subject people to this). Back then there wasn't as much known, but people still knew about lung diseases and the dangers of too much exposure to coal dust, and yet the mine was approved and went ahead. Next to a school.

I went looking for connections between the school and mine-related respiratory illnesses. There is a little bit on the adverse health outcomes for miners, but almost nothing about the rest of the population, as if the problem was restricted only to the mine. The Balmain Observer was very much supportive of the mine, frequently trumpeting its cause, but not, that I have found, mentioning its location in relation to the school. In 1903 a Mr Robert Hitchen complained to Balmain Council of disturbances from blasting during the driving of the second shaft and there were concerns from a number of residents about potential damage to property and anxiety caused by excessive noise and vibration from the blasting³ (we have seen from the Hunter Valley and elsewhere that blasting, vibration and dust go hand in hand). While a number of councillors, including the mayor, thought it appropriate to pursue the matter with Sydney Harbour Collieries Limited (the owner of the mine), Alderman Cox thought such action would interfere with “the progress of the district” and he thought “the trams, for instance” were a bigger nuisance⁴. Does any of this sound familiar?

Archie Jackson, famous Australian cricketer, attended Birchgrove Public School as a boy. He died of TB in 1939 aged 24. Dawn Fraser and her family lived in Birchgrove while the mine was still operational, and Dawn attended Birchgrove Public. She and her father both suffered from asthma. “When she was twelve it was so bad her parents thought she was suffering from tuberculosis”⁵

That's only a handful and doesn't prove anything, but it does raise suspicions. I would like to know if there were ever any studies done on the health of the children of the school, both during their time there and later in life. Did others have or contract respiratory illnesses.

Maybe the mine did cause my grandfather's TB, maybe it didn't. As I stated earlier, it was more prevelant in the C19th and first half of the C20th. Maybe Grandpop was just a victim of that fact, as were so many others. But I can't help thinking that living near and going to school next to a mine could well have been a major contributor, if not the cause. I just can't prove it. Maybe Uncle Jack got TB in his hip because Grandpop was ill, maybe he got the infection in hospital, maybe he just got it.

Regardless of any of that, this fact is clear:

GRANDPOP – IT WAS NOT YOUR FAULT.

1Lawrence, Joan and Warne, Catherine, “A Pictorial History of Balmain to Glebe”, Kingclear Books, Alexandria, 1995, p. 28

2Leichhardt Municipal Council Report, Corporate and Information Services, Item B17 – Balmain Colliery Plaque, 11 June 2013, p.161

3 "Balmain Coal Mine Explosions" The Evening News (New South Wales), 29 Oct 1903, p. 3, col. 4; digital images, Trove - Digitised newspapers and more (http://trove.nla.gov.au : accessed 14 Feb 2014).

4 "Dangers of Blasting" The Eveing News (New South Wales), 14 Oct 1903, p. 2, col. 6; digital images, Trove - Digitised newspapers and more (http://trove.nla.gov.au : accessed 14 Feb 2014).

5Macneall, Pippa “Dawn Fraser: 1964 Australian of the Year”, http://www.docstoc.com/docs/123897451/Dawn-Fraser, p. 3