War Depression War: Social History Series, #2

By Gerard Charles Wilson

A history of Australia, not of the famous and heroic, but of the small people, the anonymous people who were the heartbeat of a growing nation.

The second book of the Social History Series.

 

In 1901, the author's great-grandparents, James Patrick and Mary Jane Wilson, moved from rural Tallawang near Gulgong to the fledgling suburb of Chatswood on Sydney's North Shore.

 

Accompanying them were Bert (the author's grandfather), Bert's sister Elizabeth and his younger brother Leo. Older brother Percy followed later. Bert, Percy and older brother Tom began a business, building houses from Chatswood through to Hornsby on Sydney's northern border.

 

The breakout of the First World War saw dramatic changes. Rowland Wilson, Bert's nephew, enlisted only to be engaged shortly after his arrival in France in one of the bloodiest battles of the War – the battle over Pozieres. His remains are mingled with the mud and dirt of Pozieres' farmlands. Leo, Rowland's uncle, followed a year later. The author gives an account of their terrible experiences. On the author's mother's side, it was his grandfather Steele's brother, Percy Steele, who endured the same frightening ordeal, carrying a lifelong war wound.

 

Australians were hardly over the War when the Depression struck, causing many builders to lose their businesses. The Wilsons hung on by the skin of their teeth, improvising as best they could, while the Steeles, always with work with the New South Wales Railways in clerical positions, did much better.

 

The author provides an engaging account of his parents' upbringing before they met at Chatswood in 1938. They were from very different backgrounds. The class difference would cause them heartache. The Second World War intervened. His father was a leading sick berth attendant on HMAS SYDNEY during the great cruiser battles in the Mediterranean. It was a deadly period, but the SYDNEY survived and returned to Australia where his parents were married in 1941. Tension was never far away between his father and his mother's parents. Among all these happenings were much drama and excitement.

 

The book ends with the author's father building their first house at Lane Cove, a suburb adjacent to Chatswood. Book 3, ME AND PETE, covering the author's early childhood, was released in 2020.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gerard Charles Wilson Publisher
• Release date: Jul 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9781876262174

Gerard Charles Wilson

After a lifetime working in the book business (mostly educational publishing) I now concentrate on my writing. One of my formative experiences was living in Holland with my Dutch wife for two and a half years. On returning to Australia, I completed a major in Dutch Language and Literature before a master’s degree in philosophy. My studies and immersion in another culture and language, together with my Catholic faith, form the biggest influences on my writing. But shaping those influences are my mother and father. One could not have more principled parents. My master’s thesis was on Edmund Burke whose thought permeates my writing. My preoccupations are social and cultural from a Catholic and (Burkean) conservative perspective. This reflects my acceptance of the Catholic idea of the reciprocal relationship between faith and reason. My favourite fiction authors are Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and Evelyn Waugh. Evelyn Waugh’s style and mastery of English have been my biggest influence – not in vain, I hope. My favourite modern non-fiction author is philosopher Roger Scruton. I spend my leisure time reading and occasionally walking along the nearby shores of Port Phillip Bay. I love opera, musicals, and the ballet (The Nutcracker is my favourite.) I enjoy fifties rock ‘n’ roll and forties big band. Mozart is my favourite classical composer, but I am acquiring a liking for Bach. My novels are in the genre of the ‘Catholic novel’. They are in the style of Catholic novelists Evelyn Waugh, Grahame Greene, and Morris West. I deal with similar political, philosophical, and moral issues. The difference from general fiction is the assumed philosophical framework. Most modern fiction assumes a materialist framework while the Catholic novel assumes a natural law framework (See the ‘Catholic Novel’ page on my website.) Finally, there is always a romantic content in my stories. Love relationships are an incisive way of exploring the human person.

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Wilsons move to Sydney

WHAT FASCINATED me while writing Prison Hulk to Redemption was the emergence of flesh and blood individuals from the dry historical documents I had unearthed. In the Old Bailey court records, for example, James Joseph Wilson was an 18-year-old sentenced to death for burglary in 1827. The sentence was commuted, and he was dispatched to the Australian colonies. The Colony needed boots on the ground for work and community growth. From a mere name in the records, James Joseph grew into a personable young rascal who cheekily defied the authorities. He languished for some time in a prison hulk on the Thames before arriving in Sydney Cove in September 1827. From there, he took advantage of his second chance. Still showing an appeal that won hearts, he developed a sense of responsibility and an understanding of farming. From jostling people and wading through the dirt and stench of Spitalfields market in central London, he ended up on the back of a horse, expertly herding sheep and cattle. He settled in the Mudgee area, 164 miles northwest of Sydney, and married 15-year-old Jane Harris, the daughter of free settlers from Wiltshire. Jane and James Joseph had four children before tragedy struck.

Factory boy Michael Jones, at 16 years, robbed a poor silk weaver from Chadderton of his fortnightly wages. Chadderton was about six miles out of Manchester. He was a part of a heartless gang preying on defenceless people in the streets of Manchester. Barely escaping the noose, he was shipped to the colonies, arriving in Sydney in December 1828. Like James Joseph, with whom he became great mates, he took advantage of his opportunities, showing even more than James Joseph a talent for farming and managing his life. He married Elizabeth Harris, the older sister of Jane Harris. Something mysteries happened in this tight little group. Under the influence of a young Irish priest who visited the Rylstone area, north-west of Sydney, where the Harrises had their farm, Jane Harris became a Catholic just before she married James Joseph. Fr Dunphy baptized their first child, James Patrick. Six months later, Fr Dunphy drowned while attempting to cross the flooded Cudgegong River.

The conversion is mysterious because the Harris family were Baptist-style Protestants, James Joseph nominally Church of England, and Michael nominally Catholic. The Baptists in those days were less than favorable towards Catholics. Jane’s conversion would influence the Wilson and Jones families through to the 1960s. The two couples (great-great-grandparents) set up successful farming enterprises outside of Coonamble, 325 miles northwest of Sydney. Then tragedy shattered their lives. Jane died at twenty-four. There is no record of the cause of death, but one presumes she died in childbirth. It was a crushing blow for the former burglar, for whom everything until then had cooperated.

It took longer for tragedy to touch Michael and Elizabeth Jones’s family. After his successful farming venture in Coonamble, Michael moved his family down south to Muswellbrook, where he began to diversify his wealth. In January 1860, a debilitating brain disease dissipated all Michael’s vigor and enterprise. He died at forty-nine, leaving his much younger wife vulnerable to the flattery of a smooth-talking Irishman. Despite warnings from her sober-minded daughter, Mary Jane, Elizabeth married Luke Conroy. Conroy abused her and squandered her fortune.

James Patrick Wilson and Mary Jane Jones were first cousins. They had grown up together in the Coonamble area before James Patrick set out on his own farming venture and Mary Jane moved with her family to Muswellbrook. They married in 1866 and settled in the Muswellbrook district. In 1878, they packed up and moved to their newly acquired selection (land) in Tallawang, 17 miles north of Gulgong. Their children numbered five—Thomas 12, Lily 10, Michael 8, Percy 5, and Bert 3 years. Three more children followed at Tallawang, Jennie in 1878, Elizabeth in 1882, and Leo in 1884. Life was hard, but they were happy and fruitful. We know about this period because Percy wrote a memoir, Bits and Pieces, his efforts now a Wilson family treasure. Percy and his younger brother Bert (Bernard) were close mates, so Percy’s narrative, reminiscent of Steele Rudd’s popular On Our Selection, includes Bert. Bert was my grandfather. In Prison Hulk to Redemption, I included an edited version of Percy’s memoir to the time James Patrick and Mary Jane decided to sell the farm and live in Sydney. The decision came after a visit to one of Mary Jane’s sisters in 1901.

For a long time during my research, I thought the crippling drought and recession of the 1890s were the reasons James Patrick and Mary Jane were in Sydney by 1906. The only record I had was for 1906. It’s likely the drought and recession were important considerations together with James Patrick’s advancing age when they finally decided. But not solely. James was fifty-five in 1900, and the demanding life on the land would have taken its toll, as it did with Michael Jones. He and sensible Mary Jane had surely been talking about a time after the farm. But it was a visit to Sydney in 1901, recounted by Percy in his memoir, that gave the final impetus—and resolved once and for all why and when life in Tallawang ended. Percy writes:

Between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day of 1901, when the Commonwealth celebrations were held, Dad and I took a trip to the city to see the celebrations. We stayed with an aunt on the North Shore [of Sydney Harbour] but spent most of our time in the city. We would have our lunch in town. We found an eating-house in King Street. We had a plate of ham, bread and butter, and a pot of tea for the large sum of 4d [four pence]. What struck me most was the coal arch in Macquarie Street and the fine horsemanship of the Indians.

Percy is talking about the celebrations to establish the Commonwealth of Australia, the legal agreement of the existing self-governing colonies to become a federation with a national government. The many decorations around the city and the Indians’ horsemanship were part of those celebrations. Percy could not help having a bit of fun with his father, as he had done throughout his memoir.

One day Dad was in the city by himself. When he got home to the aunt’s place, he was highly pleased with himself. He was sporting a gold ring he had got for five shillings. He said he was walking along the street when a well-dressed man made his acquaintance. They were walking together when the man made a grab at something on the ground. He picked it up and said as they were both together, he would share the find. He told Dad he could have the ring for 5/- [five shillings]. It was an old trick that was played on folk from the country. No doubt he could smell the gum leaves on Dad.

However strong the lingering smell of gum leaves and however silly James Patrick must have felt at falling for an obvious con trick, he soon put it behind him. He had made a momentous decision. The Gulgong Advertiser announced early in 1901:

Auction sale. A.W. Wood has received instructions from Mr. JAMES WILSON of Tallawang to hold a clearing sale on his property on 7 February, as he is leaving the district.

Percy explains:

The outcome of our visit to the city through talks with several relations of the Mater [mother] was that we were living on the North Shore in the following March [1901]. Dad was told there was plenty of work for carriers in tile and brickworks, and as the Mater’s sisters were all living on the North Shore, she was only too pleased to come to the city. Dad sold out and took up residence on the North Shore of Sydney. [They] moved into a cottage near the [Northbridge] suspension bridge.

Percy writes matter-of-factly about the move, but the decision to leave what he had described as a ‘paradise’ and a ‘land of milk and honey’ must have been a violent rupture for James Patrick and Mary Jane and the children who accompanied them—Bert, Leo and Elizabeth. Percy followed shortly after. It was true that Mary Jane was joining her much-loved sisters, Elizabeth Linton, Caroline Dorney, and Annie Jane Laffan. They had moved down to Sydney not long after marrying and had kept close contact with her. But she was also leaving behind brothers and other Jones and Harris relations who had been just as close. She could not stop herself from visiting them in the years following the move. Considering the signs and what followed, she saw no other alternative. It was worse for James Patrick. He was not joining close relations in Sydney, apart from his sister Mary Ann, and we don’t know how close he was to her, but he was leaving his brother, Charles, and all the Jones and Harris cousins and nephews who, by 1901, had swelled the populations of Tallawang, Coonamble, and Muswellbrook.

Cherished memories of Tallawang and his upbringing there never left Percy. Often his memories are full of nostalgia while he bemoans the changes creeping over Tallawang and Gulgong. Life had been hard and primitive compared to the comfort of later life, but it was carefree, idyllic, and of a child-like freshness. Visits to the district in later years were bound to disappoint:

About twenty-six years ago [in 1930], I visited the locality where I went to school. I was just in time to see the last of the school being carted away. It had been sold to a farmer. There was no further use for it. Most of the settlers had died, and the majority of my schoolmates had left the district. At the moment, I can count about ten living about the suburbs here near the city [on the North Shore]. A few that I know have died here. I often meet folk that I knew years ago in the back country. Only this week I met a man and his wife that have been living within a stone’s throw of my home. They were members of a family I knew as a boy. I have seen a great change in the country near my old home. I saw few birds. The paddocks were bare. The only green trees I saw were in the lanes that separated the holdings. What wasn’t cleared was nothing but dry trunk and branches—skeletons as far as I could see. After fifty-four years, one must expect changes. The changes I saw weren’t for the better.

Here is a short article copied from the Sydney Morning Herald dated 21 September 1930, Gulgong: The continued drift to the city was deplored by Mr. A.L. Anderson at a public farewell to Mr. and Mrs. I.P. Gormly who were going to live in Lane Cove. ‘There is something very much amiss with our system,’ he said, ‘when we see old residents of country towns and young people, too, drifting to the city.’ In the early part of the year [1956], the wife, daughter, and a son and I took a run up to Gulgong. When we arrived there, I felt a stranger in a strange land. I never met man woman or child that I knew years ago ...’

Percy could mourn the fading or disintegration that the passing of time brings to the objects of one’s childhood and youth. But he should not forget that James Joseph and Jane Wilson’s eldest son and Michael and Elizabeth Jones’s daughter had come a long way with their family since those dark lonely nights when James Joseph, fresh from the convict ship The Prince Regent, and as Robert Lowe’s hutkeeper, kept vigil over the flocks in the unfenced fields of an unimaginably immense land. The dirty teeming crime-ridden capital of England and the poverty of Manchester streets were far behind, far more so than the circumstances of a happy childhood, sadly disappearing into the nation’s forgetfulness. The open fields and happy, carefree days of Tallawang might have gone, but the manly virtue—the honesty, the fair-go, the decency, and their simple faith—remained. It was the heritage the Wilson brothers unconsciously carried.

Percy does not speak about Sydney with the opened-mouth wonder that one would expect from a country hick, exhaling the odour of gum leaves, which leaves me to think he and his brothers had been there on and off through the years. The house he and his father stayed at during the 1901 visit would undoubtedly have been Caroline and Stephen Dorney’s at 30 Bellevue Street, North Sydney, where the Jones sisters’ mother, Elizabeth Jones/Conroy, long separated from Luke Conroy, died in 1896. It would have been a casual walk from Bellevue Street to catch the ferry at Milsons Point across to the other side of the harbour where Percy and his father enjoyed their ham sandwiches and a pot of tea. With their adult children, James Patrick and Mary Jane moved to a cottage in Northbridge close by the Dorney household. Percy continues, providing valuable information about the times as well as the whereabouts of the family:

My parents moved into a cottage near the Suspension Bridge [Northbridge]. The bridge was closed at the time. An old lady by the name of Johnson had the keys of the gate leading onto the bridge. Anyone wanting to go on the bridge was charged 3d [threepence]. We learned a man named Armstrong lost a fortune when the company failed. You could walk across from the bridge to where the tram now goes to Crows Nest without seeing a cottage. Where Cammeray is now, there were only one or two cottages. At the time, there was no Crows Nest as we know it today. Over the bridge on the north side, there was nothing but scrub.

At the time my parents moved to Sydney, I had a fairly large block of land about two miles from Peak Hill [about 40 miles south of Dubbo], and until I sold it, I made several trips to the city. Not long after my parents came to the city, and I was down for a spell from Peak Hill, I saw the fire that ruined Anthony Horden’s department store [10 July 1901]. I went over a few days later to have a look at the ruins ...

I sold my property at Peak Hill a little later and came to the city. I think the population then was about four hundred thousand. The shops kept open till ten o’clock at night. Gas lit up the streets. At night, a man would go around with a rod that had a small hook on the end. He would hook it to a small chain that was attached to the pilot light and pull. The principal entertainment at night was the theatre at the time when actor and entrepreneur Bland Holt was popular ...

After remaining on the shore for about 2 years, we bought a cottage in Nelson Street, Chatswood. Another brother [Tom], Bert, and I went into the building trade [ca 1903]. The first job I had was with a German. He had bought a block of land between Boundary Street, Roseville, and Chatswood. He intended building two cottages ... We finished the two small cottages, and they still stand there today, and I often pass by them. They bring back memories of fifty years ago.

Bert and I branched out on our own, and we built many cottages between Artarmon and Hornsby. Land was cheap, also bricks and timber.

The cluster of adjacent suburbs that Percy writes about was the geographical backdrop of my childhood: Chatswood, Lane Cove, Roseville, and Artarmon. You can add Willoughby, which merges into Chatswood. They were on Sydney’s North Shore, that part of Sydney beginning directly across the harbour from Sydney Cove and running north. In 1903, when James Patrick and Mary Jane moved with their family to Nelson Street, close by the railway and Lane Cove Road, Chatswood was well-established. Abel and Mary Baldry, arriving with their family from London in 1857, were the first to settle there. Cutting timber gave them a living. They laid Chatswood’s main road, Victoria Avenue, which ran west from Lane Cove Road (later the Pacific Highway) over the railway east to Penshurst Street, Willoughby’s main thoroughfare.

In 1903, Chatswood was still semi-rural. Gas lamps, turned on at dusk and extinguished early morning, lit the streets, which were kept neat and clean. Shops catering to the full needs of settlers were along Victoria Avenue, most concentrated near the railway station. Dairies also operated. Cows were sometimes found wandering the streets at night. One old-timer relates how they had to kick the cows away from their front gates on returning home after a night out. The dairy farmers, trudging the streets daily, sold their milk from tanks mounted on a horse-drawn cart. The people brought their billy cans, pots, saucepans, and other containers to be filled from taps at the back of the tanks. Some cheeky boys succeeded now and then in opening the taps when the vendor was distracted. They got more than a boot up the backside if caught. Businesses delivered everything to one’s home—eggs, butter, bread, meat, soft drinks, ice, and so on. There was pocket money to be earned by enterprising youngsters willing to help.

Besides the railway line, which ran from Milsons Point on the harbour to Pearce’s Corner at Wahroonga, about 14 miles north, trams were available from Crows Nest to Chatswood station. Despite the advances in transport, Hansom Cabs continued to wait outside the railway stations for the ease of customers unwilling to walk the distance home. The development of the railways brought a sharp increase in the North Shore population. In 1891, there 3,411 people. By 1911, the number had swelled to 13,000, and between 1915 and 1916, it skyrocketed to 24,835. Most of the increase was in Chatswood. The Wilsons had chosen their place of work and abode well. The postman came twice a day, blowing his whistle to announce his deliveries. The mail was so efficient that a postcard or letter posted in the city during the morning would arrive at Chatswood in the afternoon. One businessman used the mail to tell his wife if he knew in the morning he would be home late.

The major business in Chatswood was Mashman’s pottery factory. The Mashman brothers, William and Henry, whose father had trained at the Royal Doulton factory, Lambeth (UK), opened their works in Victoria Avenue in 1892. Tanneries and brickworks were in Willoughby and Artarmon. A significant feature of the Chatswood-Willoughby area was the many Chinese gardens. They were beyond the bottom of Victoria Avenue and Penshurst Street, along Eastern Valley Way towards Middle Harbour. I remember my father talking about them. Some called the area China Town. Although the Chinese kept to themselves, preserving their traditions, they were quite approachable, especially for the children to whom they gave sweets during the Chinese New Year celebrations. As housing and other building increased, the Chinese gardeners left the district. By 1930, they were all gone.

The best day of the year for children was Empire Day on 24 May. One old-timer says they went to school, but there were no lessons. The school gave them ‘a corn beef sandwich, a rock cake or jam tart, warm red cordial, and a twist of lollies’ after which they processed to the nearby picture theatre where they suffered the boring speeches of ‘dignitaries’ and ‘sang patriotic songs.’ The biggest thrill, as it was for me as a kid, was the fireworks at night.

IN A STRANGE coincidence, James Joseph’s grandson Bert (my grandfather) would marry a girl from Petersham seventeen years after James Joseph died at 2 Merton Street, Petersham. Amy Gertrude Bugden was born in Grove Street, Petersham (now Marrickville) in 1887, within walking distance of Merton Street. When eighteen-year-old Amy married thirty-year-old Bert, she lived with her parents in Willoughby, on the other side of the harbour. Her father worked at one of the tanneries while Bert still lived with his parents in Chatswood. It is perhaps an even stranger coincidence that Amy Bugden descended from Thomas and Elizabeth Bugden (her grandparents), who came from Donhead St Mary in Wiltshire, a little hamlet just a few miles south of Semley where Jane and Elizabeth Harris were born.

I cannot conceive that the Bugdens were not acquainted with the Harrises before breaking their ancestral connection with those Wiltshire villages. While grazier Charles Marsden contracted the Harrises to come out to Australia, Catholics Thomas and Elizabeth Bugden were brought out on an assisted passage by William Macarthur, son of John Macarthur, and one of the finest sheep breeders in the Colony. Perhaps they responded to the same call for labour in the Colony that did the rounds of the poor farm laborers of Wiltshire and even discussed the venture they were contemplating.

Thomas was a labourer and Elizabeth a servant, both able to read and write, which is surprising. They disembarked in Sydney Cove a year after the Harrises in 1838 and went to William Macarthur’s property near Taralga, north of Goulburn, about 130 miles south-west of Sydney. They left the Macarthurs to strike out on their own as independent farmers, and by 1853 they were settled in Camden, a historic town near Campbelltown, south-west of Sydney and now just outside the metropolitan area. Thomas died in 1898 and Elizabeth in 1889, the same year as James Joseph. Among my father’s research papers, there was a letter from a great-grandson x 3 of Thomas and Elizabeth’s. In addition to the above information, he wrote the following:

Family stories I have heard say that Thomas was a very serious and religious man. He frowned upon dancing and music (Elizabeth loved dancing and music). During his life, he claimed to have seen the Blessed Virgin twice, once while working in the fields and the second time on his death bed.

Albert Stephen Bugden, Thomas and Elizabeth’s second youngest son (of fourteen children) was Amy’s father. Her mother was Sarah Jane Burgess, daughter of Joseph Burgess and Anne Whitehill, my great-great-grandparents. Joseph Burgess was born in Essex in 1811. He was convicted for poaching and sentenced to seven years transportation. Anne Whitehill was born in 1821 in Belfast to William Whitehill and Julia Walsh, my great-grandparents x 3. William was convicted in County Louth for ‘cow stealing’ and sentenced to transportation for life. I had always thought, whatever my family background, most of my ancestors were Catholic. I was surprised enough to find James Joseph was Protestant, and then more than a little bemused to learn that on my grandmother Wilson’s side, it was only the Bugdens who were Catholic. The Essex Burgesses were Protestant. Even the Irish Whitehills were Protestant. So, it seems that the papist farm labourers and the converted Baptists from that little out-of-the-way corner of Wiltshire were mostly responsible for the potent strain of popery in our family.

Albert Bugden was born at Mount Hunter, near Camden. Mount Hunter is today a small settlement not far from Camden. Albert married Sarah Jane Burgess at Ashfield in 1886. They had only three children, Amy Gertrude, Arthur, and Lucy Maud. It is curious that Arthur, the second of the three children, was born at Goulburn in 1888 while his older and younger sisters were born at Petersham. The 1891 Census, however, has them living at Fairfield in western Sydney. By the early 1900s, they were living at Willoughby.

On 2 August 1905, Bert Wilson, having long given up roaming carefree in the Tallawang bush with Percy and their pack of ‘poodles’ (mongrel dogs), left the family home in Nelson Street, Chatswood, to marry Amy in nearby Our Lady of Dolours church. The marriage certificate says that Bernard Charles Wilson was thirty and a carpenter, while his bride is a mere eighteen years. Her parents had to give their permission for their teenage daughter, still living with them, to marry Bert. Bert’s father, James Patrick Wilson, is listed as a farmer. The transition from farming to a trade has taken place in the third generation of Wilsons. Percy James Wilson and Lucy Maud Bugden are the witnesses. Bert and Amy both sign their names in full, and in a neat, confident hand. I remark again that the Wilson and Jones family members, despite their humble rank in society, showed an admirable level of literacy.

Amy’s father, Albert, died at forty-five on 3 April 1906. It seems from the death certificate that Albert had a drinking problem. He died suddenly in the Royal North Shore Hospital from a gastrointestinal hemorrhage. He suffered from cirrhosis of the liver. Alcoholism probably played a role in his 1894 bankruptcy, which was officially due ‘to sickness and loss of business.’ It must have been a shock for eighteen-year-old Amy only eight months after marrying Bert. She could at least be happy that her father, of whose habits she was undoubtedly aware, had been at her wedding. The informant of the death is listed as Bernard Charles Wilson, ‘son-in-law’, now living with his young bride in Hampden Road, Artarmon. He is also listed as one of the two witnesses at the burial at Gore Hill Catholic cemetery.

Just four months later, Bert’s father passed away on 8 December 1906 at sixty-two years. According to his death certificate, he