Sarah Ann Jenyns (1865–1952): The Life, Hardships and Successes of a Woman Who Designed a World-Acclaimed Corset and Forged a Company That Continued for Four Generations

By Patricia Anne Jenyns

This story started from convict grandfather and birth in Largs, NSW, to traveling from Sydney with her husband and five children to the coalfields in a gospel wagon. They eventually traveled to Brisbane and designed and patented what was to become a world-acclaimed corset. This is about the forging of a company that continued for four generations. They constructed a three-story building in 1917 in George Street, Brisbane, which is now Heritage listed. She traveled to China with her eldest daughter in early 1937 and then lost her to small pox. She got caught up in the invasion of China by Japan and finally returned to Brisbane in August 1938.

Sarah was inducted into the Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame in 2014. This is the life of Sarah Ann Jenyns.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Dec 15, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543404784

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Patricia Anne Jenyns.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2017916614

ISBN:                      Hardcover                      978-1-5434-0480-7

                                Softcover                         978-1-5434-0479-1

                                eBook                              978-1-5434-0478-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Rev. date: 12/15/2017

Xlibris

1-800-455-039

www.Xlibris.com.au

768385

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Foreword

Sarah’s Maternal Grandparents

Sarah’s Paternal Grandparents

Largs, Ayrshire, Scotland

Largs N.S.W

Sarah’s Parents

Herbert James Thompson 1876-1954

John Richard Thompson 1859-1939

Sarah Ann Jenyns 1865-1952

Ebenezer Randolphus Jenyns 1865-1957

The Married Life Of Sarah And Dolph

Early History Of Beaudesert

Sarah And Dolph’s Life In Beaudesert

Brisbane In Early 1900’S

The Chronological History Of The Jenyns Patent Corset Company/House Of Jenyns

Sarah Jenyns

1910-1913

In 1913 Sarah Sets Off On Her Own To London

Symington & Co.

The Jenyns Patent Corset Company 1915-1918

1918-1920

1918… Letters From Herbert To His Sister Sadie

1919 Endorsement By The Institute Of Hygeine, London

1920-1925

1926

Huntingtower (Sarah’s Home)

Corset Patents Dispute 1927

Sarah’s Donation To Tamborine Mountain 1926

1930

History Of The Corset

1937 China

1939-1945

1945 - John Takes Sarah To Court

The Formation Of A Private Company

Minutes Of The First Meeting Of The Directors Of The Jenyns Patent Corset Pty. Ltd.

1947 – 1953 Another Court Case

Sarah’s Legacy

The Last Will And Testament Of Me Sarah Ann Jenyns

The Queensland Business Leaders Hall Of Fame 2014

THIS BOOK IS DEDIC

ATED

TO

THE DESCENDANTS OF SARAH ANN JENYNS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Since marrying my husband in 1965 and, having spent many years working in the company Sarah founded, I have always been aware of the importance of the part his grandmother Sarah played in the design of corsets and the formation of the original company. However, it was not until Ron Jenyns and his daughter Sally, Ken and myself were approached by Emeritus Professor Peter Little AM and Ray Weekes, two members of the Governing Committee of the Queensland Business Leaders Hall of Fame, that my greater interest was sparked.

They informed us that Sarah had been selected for induction into the Hall of Fame. They had researched Sarah’s business past and put together a wonderful record to be digitally stored at the State Library of Queensland.

This caused me to want to know more about this pioneering woman who had made such a contribution in establishing a business of wide acclaim and one that made a major contribution to the economy of Queenslanders, not only during her lifetime but through that of three further generations.

Who was she? Who were her forebears? What shaped her into the woman she became? So began an amazing journey of discovery and I hope that all who read this account of her life will find it as fascinating as I have.

I would like to thank Peter and Ray and the Business Leaders Hall of Fame for being the catalysts in this journey. Without them this story would possibly have remained untold.

I would like to give a very warm thank you to Bill Scott, the son of Sadie (Sarah’s daughter) and his wife Leona who welcomed Ken and I into their home and provided me with many of their memories and also a box containing a treasure trove of memorabilia passed to Bill from his Mother. I was like a kid in a candy shop!

I must also thank Warren Bray, the grandson of Sarah’s eldest son Harold. Warren shared with me information passed to him from his mother, Joy, and we shared many discussions over cups of tea at his Tamborine Mountain home.

The Maitland Genealogical Society were very generous in the time spent helping research some of the earlier history of Sarah’s forebears. I am most thankful for their help.

Finally Thank You to my husband Ken for his continued encouragement to carry this work to a conclusion.

FOREWORD

This timely work, written in documentary style by Pat Jenyns, traces the familial history of Sarah Jenyns and her remarkable, yet turbulent business career, as the visionary founder of Jenyns Patent Corset Company, later the House of Jenyns. From the outset, readers are drawn deeply into a bygone era, Australia in the 19th century characterised by British immigrants arriving in large numbers, some as transported convicts, such as Sarah’s maternal grandfather, then producing large families and helping to build the nation’s cities and regions. Such was the experience of the Thompson family making their way in the Largs area of the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales where Sarah became the fourth of ten children.

These were hard living, economically challenging times, but times which offered rich rewards for resilient and visionary entrepreneurs. Herbert Thompson, Sarah’s youngest brother, lured to North Queensland’s gold fields, established himself as a successful grazier and publican most notably, in the latter case, at the famous Cooktown Hotel. Brother John, was also another North Queensland grazing success. Sarah’s stellar career, slower and more fraught in its evolution, was to well and truly eclipse her brothers’ achievements. Each, we can infer, were significantly shaped by the pioneering environment of their upbringing.

Having trained as a seamstress, nurse and surgical instrument maker in Sydney, Sarah was well-equipped for her later business career in surgical corset design and manufacturing. She also had a mutual professional interest with Ebenezer (Dolph) Jenyns, a Brisbane-trained surgical instrument maker whom she met and soon after married.

Pat then gives us a rare insight into the gruelling life of an itinerant preacher in the late 19th century when Dolph, Sarah and their five children under ten set off, virtually penniless, on a faith-based journey with missionary zeal. Their horse-drawn wagon was no match for the boggy roads of the New South Wales coal fields but rescue was always at hand as recounted in Dolph’s extensive testimony which is quoted in full. It might well have been entitled God Provided as it chronicles how, time after time, others of faith or charity sustained the Jenyns family. The loss of a young child to drowning on the journey was a tragedy which seems not to have shaken Sarah’s deep Christian faith as readers, similarly, will later discover when near to the end of her life, daughter Edith tragically dies while travelling with her mother in China.

For students of business history, Pat provides an informative overview of the move to Brisbane and the establishment by Sarah and Dolph of a surgical corset manufacturing enterprise on Elizabeth Street in 1907. There we see a business propelled by immediate success which soon demanded larger premises, a pattern that was to be repeated for the next six decades. Readers quickly realise that Sarah was the driving force from the outset with her latent entrepreneurship being fully revealed within a few years of the business commencing. When it became necessary to assert full control over the business as it soon did, Sarah acted resolutely and successfully defended this position over subsequent decades. We are left to surmise why Dolph was unable to make the contribution of a full partner in the business especially in those early years.

Having received Australian patents for her design in 1910 and world-wide patents in 1912, Sarah showed her audacity by travelling to and confronting the international markets of the UK, Europe, the USA, and Canada. Here, she expanded the business by licensing the manufacture of her products, while receiving widespread acclaim. Leading international hospitals proclaimed her corset products to be the finest the world had seen.

At home, she was creating a substantial business and a major employer for those times. This was when, in the first half of the 20th century, there were strengths in local manufacturing, when so many of our consumables were easily identifiable as proudly made in Queensland. Today’s small, medium and family enterprises were then often public companies or iconic brands. Such was Jenyns’ Patent Corset Company and later the House of Jenyns.

As is often the case with large family companies, alignment of interests can be challenging if not irreconcilable. And so it was with Sarah’s company as Pat recalls the occasions on which family members sought either more control, a greater economic interest or greater control of her estate. Notably, we see Sarah having right on her side, winning each case as plaintiff or defendant with the final triumph being a decision in her favour in the High Court soon after her death. Throughout, she apparently never wavered, always pursuing what, in her view, was best for the company.

Eventually, with Sarah’s guidance, control of the business passed to her son Herbert and later to her grandchildren. We then witness how, when demand for corsets plateaued, Herbert diversified the business into surgical production and bra manufacturing laying the basis for further intergenerational success. Grandson Ken and his wife, Pat, subsequently acquired the surgical production business while grandson Ron obtained control of the bra manufacturing operations which, in an eventual partnership with Triumph International, became Australia’s largest bra manufacturer, employing around 1100 staff at its peak.

The early hardships so well depicted in this work explain how Sarah forged an independent spirit with a-can-do attitude making her one of the few significant business women of the early 20th century. She created a major manufacturing business involving four generations that lasted nearly a hundred years and a product that continues to be produced in Brisbane today in accordance with her original patent.

Pat Jenyns, inspired by her close family ties and long involvement in the business, is to be congratulated for providing us with a deeper understanding of Sarah’s life and pioneering entrepreneurship. Readers will have a much deeper appreciation of Sarah’s roots, her unstinting faith, her business excellence and her legacy for Queensland business, especially for aspiring business women. For the latter, the lessons to be drawn are of the utmost relevance to today’s entrepreneurial business environment in which Queensland business women are playing an increasingly important role. Sarah, as the book so clearly demonstrates, is a powerful role model.

Emeritus Professor Peter