Old World ... New World: From a picnic at La Perouse to the Western Front

By Tony Matchett

Australia was, is, and always will be a nation of immigrants. Most arrivals since 1788 came here as ‘guests of His Majesty’, as refugees, or as free settlers. Certainly, the two global conflicts of the twentieth century resulted in a diaspora of races, cultures and ethnicities from long established civilisations in Europe to the relatively modern nation of Australia.

Three of my four grandparents were English: Reg Chapman from Newcastle-on-Tyne and his wife Annie Kipling from Ferryhill in County Durham; and Sara Ongley from Brixton in London. Reg served with the British army and married Annie prior to being medically discharged at the end of the Great War. They remained in England for a further eight years before being declared as ‘Approved Immigrants’ to Australia.

Sara was the cousin of the deceased first wife of my sole Aussie grandparent, Bob Matchett, the Anzac who took a shine to the schoolteacher in Stockwell who was born and raised south of the River Thames. Despite being from a close and loving family, Sara chose to become a new Australian and was destined never to see any of her family again.

Old World...New World provides backgrounds to my grandparents’ formative years in northern and southern England and in Redfern, Sydney, their experiences during four years of world war, and their familial relationships and tragedies from the 1920s to Sara’s death in 1977.

By no means did Reg, Annie, Bob and Sara achieve fame or fortune throughout their lives in England or Australia. They did, however, leave their marks in ancestry and the genetic makeup of the later members of the family trees.

Many people are ambivalent about who came before them and records and recollections are unfortunately lost. Sociology and societies are facile concepts and realities that evolve over time and should not be ignored. I chose not to overlook the contributions of my grandparents and Old World ... New World is the result of my perseverance.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: May 12, 2014
• ISBN: 9780992489809

Tony Matchett

A career in the public service did not provide any stimuli for writing a best seller (or a worst seller for that matter). The key to putting pen to paper, which shows how old school I am, before typing the text, was my retirement from administrative banalities and a subsequent introduction to stressless domesticity – oh, and a determination to find out more about my recent ancestors.At the age of 59 I am a late starter to the writing caper, but I have always maintained a keen interest in the English language from an early age when I used to read dictionaries (mmm...get a life Tony!). History, geography, sociology, psychology and the arts have also been subjects of great fascination over the years, though I haven’t only had bookish pursuits. Participation in many varied sports has helped to keep me relatively fit until the later years when I now tend to rant about the inadequacies of the wannabe football team I support – talk about loyalty!I am not religious but have spiritual attractions to my loving wife and daughter...and to good wine. Also, the close relationships with my immediate and extended families have made it easy to obtain source material for Old World...New World.Researching and writing this book, or any publication as many people will attest, was mentally stimulating and greatly rewarding. The potential for further books is just an idea away.

Book preview

OLD WORLD …

NEW WORLD

From a picnic at La Perouse to the Western Front

by

Tony Matchett

Copyright © 2014 Tony Matchett

All rights reserved

This is an IndieMosh book

brought to you by MoshPit Publishing

an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd

PO Box 147

Hazelbrook NSW 2779

http://www.indiemosh.com.au

First published 2014

© Tony Matchett

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Smashwords Edition, Licence Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the author and publisher.

Cover design: Tony Matchett

Cover photo: ‘Picnic at La Perouse’ (Matchett Collection)

Cover layout: MoshPit Publishing

Preface

It was at my brother Peter’s 60th birthday party in 2010 that the inspiration came to me to write this family history of sorts. I was talking to Peter’s son Andrew about our ancestors, when he confessed that he knew nothing about those who came before his grandparents on his father’s side (my mother and father). Although I was able to satisfy his curiosity with a brief outline of his paternal antecedents, I was sure Andrew was not the only relative who had a limited knowledge of his or her ancestry. A year or so later my cousin Jenny also revealed that she didn’t know anything about our shared maternal grandfather.

Gaps in the knowledge of family members about who came before them and the lives they led were the stimuli for writing Old World…New World. Accordingly, the research and subsequent documentation about my grandfathers’ and grandmothers’ lives before, during and after World War I became my ‘retirement project’ – the type of activity that would, hopefully, keep my brain stimulated.

My father Jack had for many years been the family historian, and since his death in 2008 I have willingly taken up this role, and have, gratefully, acquired most of his library, written records, letters and other documents relating to the family tree. These have been valuable resources, as have the first hand recollections of aunties and uncles, and my reading of books, books…and more books!

In fact, my interest in history, geography and the written word was most likely spurred on by not so idle times as a youngster reading dictionaries and poring over atlases. This explains why since my early school days I have had a preference for non-fiction instead of imaginative narratives. Such an attitude is obviously a genetic ‘hand-me-down’ because there have been occasions in more recent years when Jack showed me newspaper articles and other publications riddled with errors in spelling, grammar and syntax and we would joyfully demonstrate that sort of linguistic superiority that only pedants can do.

My mother Gwen was also a valuable source of information about the decades of the thirties and forties, and with her cheery disposition she often reminded her offspring about the ‘good old days’. But it’s not just the elderly who pine, through rose-coloured glasses, for the simple pleasures of their youth. I am beginning to realise that most people over the age of 50 cling on to those links with nostalgia, which in my case, was an impetus to writing this story.

Some may feel that the need to delve into a family’s ancestry is a pointless indulgence, but if I didn’t record this research, the life and times of my grandparents would remain a mystery to current and future generations. Of course, papers, letters, artefacts and photos can always be retained; however, my intention was to organise, collate, and make sense of them all.

I believe I have to record these minutiae of life, otherwise they merely become the detritus of past lives.

Tony Matchett

April, 2014

Introduction

All four of my grandparents were born in the 19th century and only one, Robert Matchett, was Australian–born. Robert’s second wife, Sara Ongley, and Reginald Chapman and Annie Kipling (maternal grandparents) were born in England.

In writing about these four ancestors I’ll do so in chronological order of birth, beginning with Robert, or ‘Bob’, as he was known to family and friends.

Attitudes, relationships and families during the latter part of the 19th century were strikingly different even to what an older living person would know about his or her upbringing during the 1920s, yet there were still some similarities to modernity. Families and familial cohesion were important in Victorian times despite the relatively strict hierarchy within each household where the father was the breadwinner and ‘boss’. However, the view that children must be ‘seen and not heard’ is more relaxed these days. In other areas attitudes toward law and order, social status, religion, sex, politics, employment and health contrasted with most views held in modern times.

When Bob was born in 1880 the settlement of Sydney was less than 100 years old. Only two years earlier the first cricket match played at the rebuilt Sydney Cricket Ground was a public service contest between the Audit Department and the Government Printer. In 1880 the total population of Australia was only 2.2 million, and it was also the year that Ned Kelly was hanged. ‘Such is life’, he uttered in finality.

Life in Sydney in 1880 was tough for many and the law of the land was as harsh as that experienced by their colonial forebears, with the punishment seldom fitting the crime. And there was the irony that despite advancements in economic matters and ‘technology’, a strict moral code still existed among the ruling classes, in which the church heavily influenced community standards and behaviour. Flogging, although abolished some years earlier, was brought back in the early 1880s. A man could receive 30 lashes for scrawling obscene graffiti, or could be sentenced to 10 years hard labour for stealing a horse. Yet the sentence for child bashing or wife assault was ludicrously light.

Also harsh were the views held by newspapers on those who transgressed the law. A common view was that the miscreants were easily identifiable. One journalist, when describing the criminal types of the day, referred to them as having ‘low foreheads, misplaced ears, full eyes, protruding underlips, square determined chins, and badly shaped heads, with either too much or too little back to them’.

Robert’s wife Sara Ongley was born in London in 1888 at the time of widespread community fear about the vicious murders committed by the notorious serial killer named ‘Jack the Ripper’. At that time salacious newspaper stories about brutalities in the seamier parts of London enthralled English readers. Grim reports about the dark and gothic underside of Victorian society appealed to the comfortable and safe lives of the middle and upper classes. As it was, the identity of the ‘Ripper’ was never revealed, despite many theories and much speculation. Ironically, my maternal grandmother had the same (married) name of one of the Ripper’s victims, Annie Chapman. Many years ago, when she was alive, Annie was none-too-pleased to be reminded of this by her grandchildren!

Sara grew up in Brixton on the south side of the River Thames, a place where the nationality of its inhabitants is remarkably different in the 21st century to what it was in the 1890s, when almost all residents were Anglo-Celtic. During the 1950s there was an influx of immigrants from West Indian nations and other Commonwealth countries that lead to conspicuous cultural changes in the area.

Further to the north of England Reginald Chapman was born in the Newcastle area in 1895. Reg was to become a coal miner, just as many other males in this part of the country did from a young age. People from Newcastle were called Geordies, and they had, like residents of other British towns, villages and regions, a distinctive accent that identified their roots.

The woman whom Reg was to marry, Annie Kipling, was born in 1899 and raised nearby in County Durham. I recall that, despite living in Australia for 49 years until her death in 1975, Annie still had a discernible accent where the emphasis was placed on the first syllable in words such as ‘CONtentment and CONdition’. Regional accents are with you for life. Sara also carried her less noticeable south London accent for the rest of her life, as I recall the way she pronounced days of the week such as ‘Monday’ and ‘Tuesday’ as ‘Mond’y’ and ‘Tuesd’y’.

Intricate details about the formative years of both Reg and Annie and personal accounts of their experiences have not been freely available during my research into their lives. Daughter Nancye and son-in-law John (my aunty and uncle) have said that little was told about the years prior to the Great War. Despite this I have been able to piece together first-hand accounts, family documents and forms, and other information relating to those times to present an illustration of how they lived their lives in war…and peace.

Chapter 1

The Early Years until 1914

Robert ‘Bob’ Matchett

Born on 19th December 1880 Bob was the eldest of four sons of William and Matilda Matchett, who lived in Redfern, Sydney. William and Matilda also had two daughters, Mary J and Mary E, who both died in infancy in the 1880s.

At this time Sydney was a place of commerce, industry, development and steady population growth. Yet, while there was entrepreneurial wealth that brought political and social status and grand buildings throughout the city, ringing the business district were factories and the down-market suburbs that supplied their labour. Redfern was then, and for many years after, a working class area that still had a sense of community, albeit with obvious hardships.

Despite the tough times there were significant events that galvanised the residents of Sydney, regardless of their status in society. One of these events was in early 1885 when Bob was one of an estimated crowd of 200,000 (many of whom came from the suburbs and country areas) who lined the streets when a contingent of soldiers marched from Victoria Barracks to Circular Quay. These barracks in Paddington were built between 1841 and 1846 and were originally occupied by British soldiers until 1870, when it became a training site for New South Wales colonial forces.

The departure of those troops to Sudan represented the first men to be sent by a self-governing Australian colony to fight in a foreign war. To many this was a clear indication of the burgeoning role of New South Wales in international affairs, and it also coincided with the actions of influential and visionary people to form a nation of federated states called the Commonwealth of Australia.

During the 1880s Redfern was the end of the line for country and suburban trains. To the north, up to where Central Station now lies, was the Sandhills cemetery, later known as ‘Old Devonshire Street Ground’. Due to its proximity to the streets of Redfern the cemetery was a popular playground for Bob and the other local children. Unfortunately, because of official disuse, this burial ground had been in a bad state for some time, moving one contemporary, though disgusted, historian to write:

‘I saw the filth of the neighbourhood unrestrictedly finding its way there. Graves were open in many cases and boys burrowing underneath. From the numerous cavities showing the old timber and the remains of brick vaults the stench was terrible. The places were used for common purposes of nature with a most revolting and disgusting disregard of decency’.

By 1886 Bob’s parents, who were quite poor, responded to his need for education by sending him to a ‘Ragged School’. These schools were originally introduced into London in the early 1800s and the concept spread to Australia in the mid 19th century. They were available ‘for children whose habits or destitute conditions precluded them from attending other schools’. Their principal aim was to ‘reform and improve the poorest sections in society with the schools providing a mixture of elementary education and industrial training’. By the time Bob attended one of these schools, their purpose had changed due to a greater emphasis on evangelism to ‘reclaim’ the children. Clearly, this was part of the ‘strict moral code’ defined in the Introduction, whereby the hapless students were imbued with religious provenance to make them pious and respectable citizens later in life.

However, in the formative years of the schools in 1819 England the pupils and the institutions themselves were not well regarded. In the early 1820s author Charles Dickens visited one of the Ragged Schools, which he described as having ‘miserable rooms…in a miserable house’. He went on to describe the children in attendance as being ‘wretched creatures’ with ‘nothing frank, ingenuous or pleasant in their faces; low browed, vicious, cunning, wicked, abandoned of all help but this; speeding downward to destruction, and UNUTTERABLY IGNORANT’.

I would like to think that the Ragged Schools in Sydney had a little more upside to them by the late 19th century, despite the relative toughness of the ‘education’.

When Bob was a pupil at the Ragged School at St. Silas Church, Waterloo until 1891, conditions were difficult; uniforms and footwear were optional, and discipline was sometimes brutal. However, Bob was quite obviously a reasonably conscientious student in view of his award of a book prize for ‘excellence in arithmetic’ at the conclusion of his final year.

Despite his apparent competence in arithmetic, his general education was inadequate when he left school at the age of eleven in 1891. His son Robbie (my uncle) indicated that Bob couldn’t read or write well because of his lack of schooling. As an adult, Robbie also said, his father would buy a newspaper to give the impression he was learned.

Bob’s father William died in 1888 at the young age of 30 and some years later his mother Matilda married Patrick Brandon and had six more children (twelve children in total – six of one and a half dozen of the other!). Matilda was a large, formidable woman, whom Robbie believed was something of a reprobate. At the church or grave site of the funeral of her second husband Paddy, Bob’s daughter Eris later recalled that Matilda ripped the silver handles from the casket before it was interred (on another occasion when talking to Jack Eris indicated it was at the funeral of William Ongley, though I tend to believe that it was Paddy’s).

Like his son Jack and a number of grandsons, Bob was a keen cricketer and played on Saturday afternoons during the late 1890s and early 1900s for a team in the local competition called ‘Waterloo Hero’, mostly at Waterloo Oval. He bowled offspin and received a trophy for taking a hat trick and a medal for being leading wicket taker in 1906.

From 1908 Bob supported his local South Sydney team in the newly established rugby league competition. Jack said that his dad was a member of the old Sydney Sports Ground (where the Sydney Football Stadium now stands) and regularly took young Jack to Souths games at the ground in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Bob was to remain a Souths fan until his death in 1941.

Nothing is known about Bob’s employment details immediately after leaving school, though he did commence a long term job with the Monier Pipe Company in the mid to late 1890s. Monier was the inventor of reinforced concrete, which was widely used in the construction of bridges and buildings from 1901.

In 1903 Bob married Frances Ongley at St. Paul’s Redfern. The actual date of birth/age of Frances is open to conjecture. Various documents say she was born in 1880, and others, 1882. According to the Ongley family tree (inherited from Jack), her date of birth is shown as 15 September, 1880, so I will accept this as the starting point in the life of Frances.

The father of Frances, William, certainly had an interesting life. When he was 18 his English parents thought he was a ‘bit of a lad’ and sent him to sea, where they believed discipline and responsibility would help him mature. Initially, this course of action was successful, as he eventually attained the rank of midshipman. Unfortunately, he lived up to his parents’ primary opinion of him when, on a voyage to Australia, he misbehaved while in the port of Bombay and was put in