Mother of the Regiment and Other Remarkable Women of Newfoundland and Labrador

By Susan Chalker Browne

An advocate for veterans, a photographer, a writer, a suffragist, an opera singer. Five remarkable women who pushed boundaries and made a difference at the turn of the twentieth century. But history then was about men, and no one wrote about these women. Their stories faded from memory and then disappeared for decades. Here now are those stories.

May Furlong — Advocate for Veterans

Elsie Holloway — Photographer

Lydia Campbell — Writer

Armine Gosling — Suffragist

Georgina Stirling — Opera Singer

Five biographies detailing the ambition, intelligence, compassion, and grit they all shared. The obstacles they overcame, the tragedies they endured, the incredible success they achieved. Discover how May Furlong, Elsie Holloway, Lydia Campbell, Armine Gosling, and Georgina Stirling pressed against the social norms of a century ago and helped change life and attitudes in Newfoundland and Labrador.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Flanker Press
• Release date: Apr 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9781771177344

Susan Chalker Browne

Susan Chalker Browne is a writer living in St. John’s, Newfoundland. The Secret Life of a Funny Girl is her tenth book for children and her first young adult novel. Her other works include Goodness Gracious, Gulliver Mulligan; The Land of a Thousand Whales; and Freddy’s Day at the Races. Susan has won writing awards from the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Awards, the Cuffer Prize, and the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia Writing Competition. She is married to Dennis Browne and they have four grown children.

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Flanker Press Limited

St. John’s

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Mother of the regiment : and other remarkable women of Newfoundland and Labrador / by Susan

Chalker Browne.

Names: Browne, Susan Chalker, 1958- author.

Description: Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190063637 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190063645 | ISBN 9781771177337

(softcover) | ISBN 9781771177344 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781771177351 (Kindle) | ISBN 9781771177368 (PDF)

Subjects: LCSH: Women—Newfoundland and Labrador—Biography. | LCSH: Newfoundland and Labrador—

Biography. | LCSH: Women—Newfoundland and Labrador—Social conditions—20th century. | LCGFT:

Biographies.

Classification: LCC FC2173.1.A1 B76 2019 | DDC 920.7209718—dc23

—————————————————————————————————— ——————————————————————

© 2019 by Susan Chalker Browne

All Rights Reserved. No part of the work covered by the copyright hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical—without the written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping, or information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed to Access Copyright, The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, 1 Yonge Street, Suite 800, Toronto, ON M5E 1E5. This applies to classroom use as well.

Printed in Canada

Cover design by Graham Blair

Flanker Press Ltd.

PO Box 2522, Station C

St. John’s, NL

Canada

Telephone: [phone] Fax: [phone] Toll-free: 1-866-739-4420

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9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

We acknowledge the [financial] support of the Government of Canada. Nous reconnaissons l’appui [financier] du gouvernement du Canada. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country. Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation for our publishing activities.

For

my grandmother,

Katherine Galway

and for her youngest daughter,

My mother, Barbara

and for my mother’s eight sisters, my aunts,

Mary

Katherine

Mercedes

Gertrude

Sheila

Teresita

Carmel

Isabelle

All strong, determined, remarkable women

who continue to influence and inspire me every day.

CONTENTS

May Furlong

Mother of the Regiment

Elsie Holloway

Photographer

Lydia Campbell

Author

Armine Nutting Gosling

Suffragist

Georgina Stirling

Opera Singer

Acknowledgements

Sources

Index

May Furlong

Mother of the Regiment

On July 1, 1938, a dozen middle-aged men gathered at a narrow gravesite in Belvedere Cemetery in St. John’s. They carried forget-me-nots, the delicate blue flower officially adopted by the Great War Veterans Association of Newfoundland to remember Memorial Day and the Battle of Beaumont Hamel. The men—all veterans of the Great War—sprinkled their forget-me-nots over the grave as a sign of respect and honour. The date was the twenty-second anniversary of the tragic Battle of Beaumont Hamel, when the Newfoundland Regiment was decimated. And the grave belonged to Miss May Furlong—patriot, activist, businesswoman, philanthropist—lovingly known to all as the Mother of the Regiment.

She liked to be called Miss May Furlong, never May Furlong, wearing her singular status like a badge of honour in an era when it was anything but. By the time she died at the age of nearly seventy-seven, she’d had an audience with the Pope, been presented to the King of England, and been awarded the Order of the British Empire. She was a successful Water Street merchant in a business world completely dominated by men, a leading figure in the St. John’s society of the early 1900s, but most of all an advocate and activist for the young soldiers and eventual veterans of World War I.

May Furlong was born in Oderin, Placentia Bay, on February 15, 1861. Five years earlier, in 1856, her father, Patrick, had married Caroline Williams of Bay Bulls, and the couple settled in Oderin. Their first child, Margaret, was born in 1858, followed by May three years later. Then over a period of eleven years, six boys were born, and by the time the last one appeared in 1875, the family had relocated to St. John’s.

Patrick Furlong’s father, John Furlong, was born in Ireland and immigrated to Chatham, New Brunswick, where he later died. Patrick was born in Chatham but moved to Oderin, Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, most likely with his uncle James, who had also come from Ireland to Chatham, New Brunswick.

When Patrick Furlong married Caroline Williams in 1856, the Royal Gazette referred to him as . . . Patrick Furlong, Esq., merchant of Placentia Bay, nephew of the Hon. James Furlong. James Furlong had established a large business in Oderin, made a considerable fortune, and was also a member of the first Legislative Council in Newfoundland. James died relatively young in 1856, and his last will and testament showed him to be business partners with his nephew Patrick. Patrick carried on as a merchant in Oderin, also serving as a Justice of the Peace. When the Furlong family moved to St. John’s, Patrick became a clerk at the Custom House, which in those days would have been a managerial post and a position of some rank.

Patrick and Caroline’s eldest child, Margaret, was also known as Maggie. Like May, Maggie never married, and the two sisters were very close. In later life they lived together in May’s house on Waterford Bridge Road in St. John’s.

Of Patrick and Caroline’s six sons, one died as a child, while two more died in their twenties. Of the three remaining sons, William John married in Montreal and died in New York around 1925; Frederick also moved to New York and died in 1955; while Martin remained in St. John’s.

Martin Williams Furlong led a life of some distinction. According to the Who’s Who and Why of 1912, he was educated at St. Bonaventure’s College, attended the University of London, and became a lawyer in St. John’s practising with the firm Furlong and Conroy at the corner of Prescott and Duckworth Street. From 1893 to 1897, he was elected to the House of Assembly as the Liberal member for St. John’s West, and he and his family lived at Winterton, a charming home located at the end of Winter Avenue. Martin died in a Montreal hospital in 1916 at the age of fifty-one. His only son, Robert, later became the Chief Justice of the Newfoundland Supreme Court, and later of the Court of Appeal, serving from 1959 to 1979.

According to the 1890 edition of Might’s Directory of St. John’s, Patrick and Caroline Furlong lived at 173 Duckworth Street, close by the Custom House, about where the Sir Humphrey Gilbert Building stands today. Also living at 173 Duckworth was thirty-two-year-old Maggie, who worked as a clerk at M. Fenelon and Company, twenty-six-year-old Martin, who was a barrister, twenty-one-year-old Patrick, who had no occupation listed, and nineteen-year-old Fred, who worked as a bookkeeper for Newfoundland F&M Company Limited. May’s youngest brother, William Stephen, was a fifteen-year-old schoolboy in 1890 and also living at home. Her twenty-five-year-old brother William John had married the year before in Montreal, and another brother, Robert Stafford, had died in 1878 at the age of eleven.

Surprisingly, the 1890 Might’s Directory does not show May Furlong living with the rest of her family at 173 Duckworth Street. Instead, her address is listed as 4 St. John’s Row, Duckworth Street, and her occupation is given as a milliner with Miss E. Carbery. This represents a major break with tradition; in 1890 most single women remained in the family home and did not set out on their own. It also demonstrates a solid streak of independence in the twenty-nine-year-old May Furlong, which she may well have absorbed from her employer and mentor, Miss Ellen Carbery.¹

Ellen Carbery was a fascinating woman in her own right. Born in 1845, she grew up in Harbour Grace and moved to St. John’s in 1865, where she quickly found employment as a sales clerk in the department store of Peters, Badcock, Roche and Company, working in the women’s section under the supervision of Agnes Mitchell. Ellen was intelligent and learned the business quickly, so much so that by 1883 she was Mitchell’s right-hand woman, by which point Mitchell was the major shareholder and operator of the business. Three years later, in 1886, and with Mitchell’s approval and blessing, Ellen Carbery launched out on her own, opening her Ladies Emporium on the ground floor of the prestigious Atlantic Hotel. The Atlantic Hotel was located on Duckworth Street east, also on the site of the present-day Sir Humphrey Gilbert Building. The ground floor of the hotel opened onto Water Street, and a number of small shops were situated there.

When Ellen Carbery started her own business in 1886, May Furlong was twenty-five years old and had been working in the millinery business for a number of years, so it’s possible she had also worked for Agnes Mitchell, following Ellen Carbery when she started up her Ladies Emporium. If so, she was learning from the best in the trade. Ellen Carbery had a mind of her own and broke a few traditions herself. At that time all major suppliers of women’s clothing, millinery, and accessories were British, and buyers travelled to England several times a year to acquire stock. Up to this point the buyers had always been men. But Ellen felt she knew the needs of her customers far better than any man and was well able to make her own selections on what merchandise should be offered in her shop. Accordingly, on February 22, 1887, she became the first woman buyer to leave St. John’s and travel unescorted across the Atlantic Ocean to England, purchasing goods for her store.

Ellen Carbery was a clever businesswoman and a true lady, dignified, gracious, and popular. Faultlessly groomed, she was always stylishly attired, a walking advertisement for her shop. Young May Furlong likely saw these qualities in her mentor as essential to success, gradually assuming them herself.

The Ladies Emporium quickly became a major success in the upscale Atlantic Hotel. But on July 8, 1892, the Atlantic Hotel was burnt to smouldering ash when the Great Fire of 1892 devastated most of St. John’s. Before the fire reached Duckworth Street, however, Ellen and her staff (which would have included May Furlong) rushed to remove most of the merchandise from her shop, safely storing it in another part of town. This coupled with insurance meant she was able to reopen her Ladies Emporium at 13 Queen Street by early 1893. May Furlong followed Ellen Carbery to Queen Street, continuing to work as a milliner, absorbing every aspect of the business. Like Ellen, May was smart and ambitious and definitely not content to work for someone else all her life. She had big plans of her own and, following two decades learning the trade, launched into business herself. Ellen Carbery could hardly argue with this turn of events, having done exactly the same thing thirteen years earlier.

On September 14, 1899, when May Furlong was thirty-eight years old, the following announcement appeared in the Evening Telegram:

The Golden Opportunity of the Season

The opening today of

MISS MAY FURLONG’S

New Millinery Establishment

New and Decided Attractions in

Millinery, Ribbons, Gloves, Mantles,

Flowers, Collars and Cuffs, Waterproofs,

Feathers, Chiffons, Umbrellas,

Veilings, Silks, Blouses, Trimmings,

Ornaments, Underclothing, etc., etc

The best selected and most desirable assortment of

NEW STYLES

Now awaits your inspection

282 Water St. Opp. Bowring’s

Miss May Furlong, seated centre, president of the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the Great War Veterans Association, along with other members. The Veteran, December 1922.

Miss May Furlong, left, president of the Ladies’ Auxiliary of the GWVA, along with colleagues Mrs. W. B. Fraser, vice-president, and Mrs. A. McKeen, treasurer. The Veteran, April 1928.

Veterans standing around the grave of Miss May Furlong, having just scattered forget-me-nots in her memory, July 1, 1928, as published in the Veteran.

Miss May Furlong.

Courtesy of Anne Walsh.

It was the beginning of what would become a long and fruitful career as an independent Water Street merchant, so much so that by the time May Furlong retired in 1918, the Daily Star lauded her as the Queen of Milliners of St. John’s.

But in 1899 all that was in the distant future, and as a single woman, May took a major financial risk in starting a business venture. Despite the success of entrepreneurs like Ellen Carbery, at that time professions and jobs of every sort were nearly completely controlled by men. Most women stayed in the home whether they had family to care for or not and, in 1899, were decades away from possessing the right to vote.

But none of this daunted May Furlong. She had used her time wisely at Miss Carbery’s, observing buying habits, serving customers, and eventually sailing across the Atlantic on buying trips to London and Paris. By the time she parted ways with Ellen Carbery, she knew the business intimately. And although she didn’t have a large amount of capital to invest, she did possess shrewd business instincts and an engaging and dynamic personality.

The advertising notice of September 14, 1899, was not the first time May Furlong’s name appeared in the local papers. In fact, only ten days previously the Personal Notes of the Evening Telegram advised that Miss May Furlong, who was about to open a millinery establishment on Water Street, had just arrived back in the city on the Dahome. In those days the comings and goings of prominent citizens were duly noted in the local papers, and May Furlong’s name often appeared there.

As early as March 28, 1893, the Evening Telegram mentions Miss May Furlong as one of the saloon passengers on the Barcelona, which had just arrived from Liverpool. The saloon is a large room on a ship where passengers sit and relax and in 1893 would have been reserved for the well-heeled. May would have been thirty-two at the time, and this journey may have been a buying trip for the Ladies Emporium or might simply have been a holiday.

On January 19, 1898, the Evening Telegram noted that Miss May Furlong was a bridesmaid at the wedding of Mr. Louis Mullowney and Miss Bride Walsh at St. Patrick’s Church. On March 7, 1898, her name pops up again as having contributed a handsome paper knife to a Fancy Fair at the Presentation Convent. And on April 14, 1899, the paper noted under Local Happenings that Miss May Furlong won a gold watch at another Fancy Fair with the winning ticket #361 purchased from Miss B. Galway. Clearly the newspaper deemed the minute activities of the St. John’s upper crust to be of popular interest to everyone.

Once May Furlong launched her new millinery store with the large advertisement in the Evening Telegram of September 14, 1899, she immediately followed up in successive days with more large ads, all on the front page of the paper. She instinctively knew the value of advertising as essential to the success of a business, and in the years that followed, her ads appeared in the local papers too many times to count. They also appeared in other publications, such as the St. Bonaventure’s College Adelphian, the Old Home Week Songster, and the Newfoundland Quarterly. In addition to this, every time May Furlong boarded or disembarked a ship in St. John’s harbour, it was duly reported in the Evening Telegram. Many of these voyages were buying trips for her shop, and this fact was reported as well, along with detailed descriptions of the goods purchased. May Furlong required public attention for her millinery establishment to succeed, and she sought that attention any way she could.

Just two years after May’s grand opening, however, disaster struck. Her millinery store was completely destroyed by fire. On October 25, 1901, the following news item appeared in the Evening Telegram:

LAST NIGHT’S FIRE

A few minutes before 7 o’clock an alarm of fire was sent in last evening. The Central and Western firemen quickly responded. The fire was found to be in the millinery store of Miss May Furlong, Water Street, who lives on the premises upstairs, and who had been engaged in lighting some fancy lamps for decoration purposes, when the fire burst forth. Evidently gas had been escaping for some time, and when the light was made caused the blaze. In a minute the whole place was ablaze, and the goods being very inflammable, the store was completely gutted before the fire was got under control at 7:50. Miss Furlong was seriously burned about the hands in her endeavor to put out the fire. The loss is estimated at upwards of $5000. Miss Furlong’s stock is insured in one of the local companies.

In less than an hour, May Furlong not only lost her business but her home as well; like many downtown merchants, she lived above her shop. The fire at 282 Water Street came just nine years after the Great Fire of 1892, when May would have watched her living quarters incinerated as the fire roared through the east end of Duckworth Street. In the space of a decade, May had twice suffered the loss of her home to fire.

May didn’t own the building at 282 Water Street—city records show she rented it from Minnie Donnelly—so, the damage to the building was not her responsibility. May had carried insurance on her business and stock, so the catastrophe did not keep her down.

The day after the fire, in the very same edition of the Evening Telegram that carried the above article, May Furlong purchased a front page advertisement which read:

Miss May Furlong is at present at Mrs. Pennock’s residence, Water St., opposite the store of Mr. John Anderson. Those having business to transact will find her there.

Then on November 6 this announcement, which ran for several days:

Miss May Furlong has taken rooms over Mr. T.W. Gale’s Fruit Store. Parties wanting to see her on business can do so between the hours of 9 o’clock am and 6 pm.

And five months later this advertisement, which appeared on April 12 and 14, 1902:

OPENING ANNOUNCEMENT

Miss May Furlong

Beg to intimate that she is prepared to meet her Friends and Patrons in her New Store, on the old site, with better facilities than ever to cater to their requirements. Her Stock is replete with the latest and most Fashionable Designs in English, Parisian and American Goods. All personally selected. It would be superfluous to enumerate any particular line, as our whole stock is New, Fresh and up-to-date. Miss F. would take this opportunity to thank all friends and patrons for their very liberal patronage in the past, and that no effort shall be spared to merit a continuance of their custom.

Clearly it would take more than burned hands and the loss of her home and business to keep May Furlong down. On the very day following the fire, she let the public know she was still in business. Less than two weeks later, she had re-established herself in a temporary location. And in the space of five months, her premises were reconstructed and improved, and she had travelled abroad to personally choose the new stock for her store.

Transatlantic travel was simply a fact of life for the St. John’s merchants of the early 1900s. By the time May Furlong retired from business in 1918, the Daily Star reported that she had made eighty-six purchasing trips across the Atlantic to destinations such as London, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. This was how merchants obtained the goods for their shops; they travelled for weeks at a time to personally inspect and select their wares. And they travelled in all seasons of the year, regardless of weather. In fact, the newspapers of the day often provided details of the weather on these sailings, which included dense fog, gales of wind, heavy ice, high seas, hurricane-force winds, and hulls, decks, and rigging coated with ice.

It was a risky business and not for the faint of heart. And this didn’t include the dangers that sprang up with the outbreak of World War I. On September 9, 1915, the following notice appeared in the Evening Telegram:

NOT ON HESPERIAN – Miss May Furlong who had been purchasing goods in the Old Country, was not a passenger on the torpedoed Allan Liner Hesperian, according to a cable received from her. She is now in England and will be probably leaving Liverpool on Saturday next for Halifax en route to St. John’s.

May Furlong’s former boss and mentor, Ellen Carbery, was not so fortunate. She was on board the Hesperian when it was torpedoed on September 5, 1915, and thirty-two passengers lost their lives. Carbery had been to England on a buying trip for her Ladies Emporium, also visiting the men of the Newfoundland Regiment. Although Carbery was in one of the first lifeboats to leave the ship, at seventy years of age, the attack took a severe toll on her. Huddled together with others in the open boat, shivering in the cold night air and listening to the screams of drowning passengers, Ellen Carbery died of shock early the next morning before the rescue ship arrived on the scene.

May Furlong was also in England at this time, on a buying trip and visiting the soldiers of the Regiment, so it’s quite possible the two women saw each other there. In any event, Carbery’s sudden death from the torpedo attack must have been traumatic for May Furlong. Ellen Carbery had taught the younger woman everything she knew about the millinery business, and May had very likely modelled herself and her business after her ambitious and determined mentor.

But not all Atlantic crossings were so perilous. In fact, when sailings ran smoothly, they were often full of fun and socializing among the local merchants who knew each other so well. On February 28, 1906, the Evening Telegram published an account written by none other than Ellen Carbery, who was then making the transatlantic journey with a number of business friends. Entitled Notes of a Trip from St. John’s to Glasgow, the article describes in lively detail the seven-day journey of the Allan Liner Laurentian from St. John’s to Glasgow, which departed on January 30. It would appear from this account that Ellen Carbery and May Furlong remained on good terms, despite being in direct competition with each other.

As the steamer moved off from Shea and Co.’s pier about four o’clock that afternoon, an Irish pedlar on board favored the company by playing on an accordion Come Back to Erin and The Girl I Left Behind Me. Putting out to sea we had a glorious evening, causing Mr. P. Kennedy to remark that it was just as if we had left our measure for it.

. . . By noon of this day we had put 230 miles behind us, Mr. J. S. Rennie remarking that we had gone too far now to swim back. In the smoking-room this day, Hon. John Anderson and a Mr. Ward, of Sheffield, had a hot political discussion. Hon. Mr. A. was very forcible and interesting, and, on a vote being taken, he was deemed the winner of the argument, a kindness he acknowledged by passing the cigars freely around.

. . . Three hundred miles more were notched up by noon this day, and a sweepstake, the first for the trip, was won between Messrs. Johnson and Galway*, and a Mr. Hann, late gunner on the Calypso, three sovereigns each being the result of their luck.

. . . It was such a lovely day and so many birds were following the ship that Mr. Geo. Motty regretted that he did not have his gun. Saturday turned out a beautiful day also, the officers say they never saw the like of it.

. . . Mr. O’Sullivan got a nasty fall on the deck, but Father Murphy, who was beside him, comforted him with the remark that the just man falls seven times a day, and he had six more to go.

. . . All the passengers were most social and pleasing to each other, the old buyers particularly were most sociable with the younger element. It was a pleasure to see Messrs. Blair, Robertson, Steer, Macpherson, Rennie and Lumsden and Honorable J. Anderson enter into all the sports and games with all the vim and energy of youth. Miss May Furlong also contributed greatly to the general enjoyment.

Then on March 22, 1911, the Evening Telegram published the following article, which had appeared in the Sydney Record a few days before:

Newfoundland Travellers

Party form an En Route Club at the Sydney Hotel –

Miss May Furlong is the President –

Clever St. John’s Business Woman

is the Life of the Party.

Newfoundland was well represented at the Sydney Hotel yesterday by a party of chance-assembled wayfarers, all of whom were anxiously waiting to take the Bruce for the