‘The Tsar of Love and Techno’ by Anthony Marra

Posted on August 10, 2016 | 2 comments

marra

2015, 318.  (How odd- there’s hundreds of images of this front cover online, but none of the front cover that sits on the desk behind me, which shos a leopard and a cossack. I think mine’s the UK version)

I just loved this book.  It is marketed as ‘Stories’, but they are all interconnected through recurring characters and objects. This interconnection is more integrated than, say, Olive Kitteridge, where Olive has a walk-in, walk-off role in some of the stories.  Instead, this is more like a jigsaw when you realize with a satisfying ‘click’ that you’ve placed another piece in the puzzle; or like a family history search when all of a sudden a connection comes clear.

Each story is self-contained and yet cumulative.  The settings span Leningrad in 1937 , a labour camp in Kirovsk at the same time and Kirovsk sixty years later, Grozny in in 2003, in the midst of the Chechen Wars and St Petersburg in 2001, 2011 and 2013.  Of these settings, two in particular are memorable. The first is the heavily polluted northern industrial city of Kirovsk where every second person dies of lung cancer, the lake is full of mercury, the twelve smokestacks that belch out filth are dubbed ‘The Twelve Apostles’ and an artificial forest of metal trees has been created because nothing will grow there.  The second is in the Chechen Highlands, most particularly whitewashed cottage nestled against a hillside with a vegetable patch beyond.  This cottage has been captured in a painting, which is changed by later artists and curators, just as the picture of a ballerina’s hand is the only thing left after a Party censor has been charged with expunging the now-disfavoured ballerina. But people and things are not just removed from paintings, but can be inserted into them as well.  Anguished by guilt at his brother’s arrest, the Party censor inserts his brother’s face into paintings as well, as a haunting act of insubordination.

We meet the Party Censor, Roman Osipovich Martin, in 1937 and we will find him sixty years later as the subject of a retrospective exhibition.  Galina the ballerina marries the 13th richest man in the former Soviet Union before she is disgraced. Lydia marries a piano-tuner as a mail-order bride before returning to Kirovsk to live with her impoverished mother. Kolya is captured and held hostage near the whitewashed cottage beside the hill: his brother is the creator of the mix-tape.

The book is structured in three parts: Side 1, Intermission, and Side 2- an allusion to the cassette tape containing a mix-tape of techno music made by a younger brother for his older brother bound for Checyna in the Russian army. The Intermission section is the longest, and it is this story that helps put the chronology into some order.   I enjoyed each story, and soon learned not to be disappointed at the end of one story, because the next one would be just as good too.  With the exception, perhaps, of the last story which just seemed silly, although in a book using this narrative structure, there has to be some way of definitively finishing it, I suppose.

And so, a great whacking five out of five for me.  I only wish that I could have the pleasure of reading it again for the first time!

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This Month in Port Phillip: July 1841

Posted on August 7, 2016 | 2 comments

Oh dear, all my good intentions of writing a weekly report have all turned to dust! I think I’ll just do a quick skate through July 1841 and then take up again in August 1841.

So what did happen in July 1841?

THE APHRASIA ARRIVES

With our own emphasis on roads and across-land transport, we tend to overlook the steamers that plied their way across Port Phillip and Westernport Bays. In July 1841 the coal steamer Aphrasia joined three other regular steamers based in Port Phillip.

There’s a picture of the Aphrasia here.

The Aphrasia plied between Melbourne and Geelong, a 45 mile journey that took about five hours. When the service started in July 1841, it was planned to run twice a week to Geelong on Monday and Thursday mornings and return the following evening.  It was hoped that an extra service could be introduced shortly.  The Aphrasia was captained by Capt. Henry Lawler, and is commemorated in Geelong in Aphrasia Street.

Interestingly, in the last year or so, two new ferry services have commenced in Melbourne. One runs from Werribee South to Docklands, and the other which commenced last week goes from Portarlington to Docklands.

THERE WAS A DUEL

DUEL EXTRAORDINARY.  On Saturday night last, a hostile meeting took place between Mr S___ and Mr D’M_____ near the Flagstaff.  The quarrel originated after dinner, in consequence of a tumbler of whisky toddy having been thrown in the face of the latter gentleman, which not being taken in the Pickwickian scene as intended, a challenge was the immediate consequence.  Mr S. was attended by Mr B., and Mr D’M by Mr R. when by the full ‘light of the moon’ two shots each were exchanged, but happily without effect.  The parties then returned to the house where the quarrel took place, and spent the evening with much conviviality as if nothing had occurred. – It is only necessary to add, that the seconds, unknown to the principals, had adopted the necessary precuation of loading the pistols with powder only! (PPH 6 July 1841)

I assume that Mr S____ was Peter Snodgrass, who was rather fond of the odd duel here and there. Paul de Serville has D’M written as D.Mc____.

THE GLOSS FADED ON JUSTICE JOHN WALPOLE WILLIS

Judge Willis had only been in Melbourne since April, but already by July people were starting to grumble about him.  The barrister Edward Brewster and the Police Magistrate James Simpson both fell under his animadversion (what a splendid word!) and public opinion was very much on Simpsons’ side.  When Willis first arrived in Melbourne, there had been gossip about his ‘lack of dignity’ and ‘injudicious temper’ on the bench, but it was largely overlooked in the excitement of opening a Supreme Court in the district. But now, Willis’s “lamentable deficiency of that uniform temperament so desirable in all, but so absolutely important, and in fact indispensable in a Judge upon the Bench” came more clearly into view. (PPH 23/7/41)  The Port Phillip Herald wrote:

A very short period of the continuance of His Honor’s course will be sufficient to render it imperative upon our fellow-colonists, out of justice to themselves, to address His Excellency the Governor upon the subject, and although such petition may not have the direct effect of obtaining the removal of the judge, still the result will be indirectly the same, for it is not probable His Honor could feel comfortable in presiding in the court of a province after the public expression of the colonists’ dissatisfaction with his manner, and under these circumstances we may reasonably infer, that an immediate and voluntary resignation of his seat will be the necessary consequence. ( PPH 27/7/41)

As the good people of Melbourne were to discover, it wasn’t quite that simple….

STILL, THERE’S ALWAYS LAND ISN’T THERE?

Land was advertised on the corner of Lonsdale and King Streets. I hadn’t noticed advertisements for this part of town before.

Here’s a Google map street view of it today.

The situation of this valuable property is almost unequalled- being in the most beautiful, healthy and respectable part of the town, and within 150 yards of the telegraph, which is becoming a most FASHIONABLE PROMENADE. This part of Melbourne promises to become in a few years the most eligible part of the town, from the considerable reserves devoted to public buildings, the church, market and others; and this neighborhood has escaped being filled with a dense population, living in skillions, and congregated into rookeries, to the great detriment of public health. Gentlemen desirous of a site for a house in a respectable, quiet, airy and healthy situation are requested to attend this sale.  (PPH 6/7/41)

I don’t think that this was ever the most eligible part of town! However, I noted that ‘Anonymous’ in Graeme Davison’s article thought that the Flagstaff area should become a city square.  I’m interested that so early in Melbourne’s history – after only six years-  there is already being promulgated an almost Dickensian view of Melbourne as a crowded, unhealthy urban space.

AND THEN….

It’s just as well that someone was still boosting the economy because prices are falling, land auctions are faltering and wages are being reduced.  And then two more ships arrived…

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Posted in 1840s depression Port Phillip, Port Phillip history, This Week in Port Phillip District 1841

This Week in Port Phillip 1841: 24 June-30 June 1841

Posted on August 6, 2016 | 3 comments

MR DIGHT’S FLOUR MILL

You might remember that on May 1-7 the Port PHillip Herald announced that construction was to begin on a water-driven mill at what we now know as Dight’s Falls. Work had continued apace:

NEW FLOUR MILLS. Mr Dight, a gentleman lately arrived in our province from Sydney, has commenced operations for the erection of a flour mill, at the junction of the Merri Creek and Yarra Yarra.  This will be an inducement for the settlers in the neighbourhood to cultivate more extensively than hitherto, as they will now be enabled to have their wheat ground without the necessity of exporting it to V. Diemen’s Land, or any other of the neighbouring colonies, and being at the additional expense of importing flour in return.  The back or “tail” race has already been cut, and the building itself will be commenced in about six weeks; and as almost all the fittings up, and other requisites are already provided, we may expect that the mill will be in full operation before many months. The situation has been well selected, and the government have promised every encouragement which such undertaking so richly merits.  We heartily wish the spirited proprietor, who is a native of the colony, every success; and we embrace the opportunity of congratulating our fellow-colonists upon the prospect of being enabled to produce facts in refutation of the jealous misrepresentations of such productions as Murray’s Review, in which the province is said to be entirely “unfitted for agriculture”.(PPH 25/6/41)

Ceres Mills on the Yarra

Ceres Mill on the Yarra by George Alexander Gilbert, 1846-7 SLV (or possibly by one of his pupils)

http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/298652

THINGS LOOKING WORSE

The same inactivity which existed in our markets last week has still continued and no expectation of a rise can be entertained when a comparison is made between the present stock of all articles of general consumption and what it was at this present period in 1840 (PPH 25/6/41)

Wages for recently arrived emigrants were falling. Several recently arrived emigrants engaged at £25 per anuum for single farming men; their wages used to be from £35-40. However, at this stage it was perceived that

This is to be attributed solely to the pressure of the times, and not to the labour market being over stocked. (PPH 25/6/41)

Not only were wages falling, but prices were falling as well. A  4lb loaf of bread fell from 1s.6d to 1. 3d, and meat could now be purchased at 4d. a lb instead of the 5d and 6d a pound that was the going price in May. (PPH 29/6/41)

BUT YOU CAN’T GO WRONG WITH LAND, CAN YOU?

IMPORTANT LAND SALE. On Friday morning last, it was generally known in Melbourne, that Sir George Gipps had given notice of his intention to throw open for selection, on the uniform-price system of 1 pound per acres, a very large quantity of Port Phillip land.  The consequence was, that during the whole of that and subsequent day the Survey Office was thronged by parties desirous of obtaining information on the subject. We are indebted to Mr Hoddle for the following particulars, and are requested by that gentleman to state, he will feel obliged if parties will not call at the Survey Office to make enquiries relative to the sale until after tomorrow, as the clerks are all busily engaged in making out the descriptions which are very lengthy. The land will be advertised in the usual way, either at the end of this or the beginning of next week. It may be as well to remind our readers that the following are the conditions under which the land will be disposed of. Immediately after it has been advertised, parties who pay in their money first will be entitled to first choice, that is if they are in attendance at the time appointed by the Government for the selection to be made; provided always that no land order from England of previous date be presented at the same time.  The allotments vary in size from 35 to 800 acres, but the majority of them are about 150 acres each.  The sale will not take place before three months from the date of it being first advertised; at the expiration of which period there will doubtless be a considerable rush on the opening of the door of the Treasury.

Land was offered on the Werribee River, Geelong, Lake Colac and at Doutagalla parish “between the Salt Creek and the Moonee Moonie chain of ponds”. In the parish of Bulleen, 7635 acres was put up for sale:

The land in the Parish of Bulleen is for the most part thickly timbered with stringy bark, and is also very hilly. There are however several extensive patches of “good grassy hills” (as laid down in the chart at the survey office). The land for sale is immediately adjoining Mr Unwin’s special survey, near Dr McDermard’s cattle station and about seven miles distant from Melbourne, on the South bank of the Yarra.” (29/6/41)

AND THE WEATHER?

Well, it’s winter. A maximum for the week of 60 (15.5C) and a minimum of 42 (5.5C). The weather continued variable, with a gale on 26th.

 

 

 

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‘Reckoning’ by Magda Szubanski

Posted on August 3, 2016 | 7 comments

Szubanski

2015, 371 pages

I wonder if some of the very positive response to this book springs from a sense of surprise that such a familiar comedian could take us to such varied and dark places.  This is not your usual celebrity memoir. Instead it is Magda Szubanski’s story of second-generation survivor guilt and  the proclamation of her homosexuality, alongside a social history of suburban Melbourne life and the comedy scene in Australia during the last decades of the twentieth century and the first decades of the twenty-first.

Magda Szubanski, for those who may not know her – and indeed, most Australians DO know her- is a much-loved comedian who has starred as everyone’s “second-best friend” in Kath and Kim, and as Esme Hoggett in the 1995 move Babe.  Like most other female comedians in the country, she’s done her stint on ABC productions like ‘Big Girls Blouse’ and Working Dog productions for the ABC.  She’s smiling out at us at every supermarket in the country this month from the front of the Women’s Weekly. But the photograph on the front of this book is more tremulous- she looks resigned and on the verge of tears, even- and it’s not just a story of stardom.

Her opening pages mark out the theme by which she has shaped her story

If you had met my father you would never, not for an instant, have thought he was an assassin….He was born in 1924. He was a boy of fifteen when Hitler invaded his homeland and the war began, and as soon as he was able he joined the fighting.  All through our growing up he would say, ‘I was judge, jury and executioner.’  And I could never imagine- cannot imagine even now- what it feels like to have that responsibility, that guilt. ..He spent the rest of his life trying to come to terms with what he had done.  I grew up in the shadow of that reckoning.” (p.1-2)

If they are to be something more than a recitation of dates and events, memoirs need an overarching narrative shape to give some sense of tension or contingency to the story.The question of what her father had actually done as a teenager assassin the Polish Resistance  is the thread that draws the reader through this story, as well as a count-down to her coming-out to her family and the wider public. I must confess a shifting discomfort with the child exposing her parent like this.  I felt it with Biff Ward’s memoir, and with the recent documentary The Silences  that I’ve reviewed previously. Yes, I can understand that in understanding yourself, you search to understand the emotional influences on your life, most particularly through your parents.  Yes, I can understand the craving to put emotional meat on the bones of a family tree.  Yes, I do think that there can be a mixture of love and condemnation in such attempts. But then I think of the way that we all hold ourselves together with a mixture of pride, shame, self-delusion, elision and half-remembered, often-retold and rehearsed stories. There’s a shared dignity in the act of fashioning our construction of ourselves because we all do it. It discomfits me that children are given carte blanche to unpick it, (often as part of their own construction of themselves)  and then broadcast it to the world. Or is this just my own old-fashioned and idiosyncratic holding on to a privacy that we no longer seem to have?

Quite apart from this larger historical/biographical mystery, Szubanski draws a good picture of the tensions of the  father-daughter relationship, where the daughter feels that she’s not quite good enough. This is the relationship that defines where she feels she fits in her family, even though in many ways her sister and mother were the supports that held her up.  The book is a good depiction of suburbia and adolescence, of coming-of-age and coming-out, threaded through with family history explorations.

I enjoyed reading this book and happily took it up night after night.  I did feel less satisfied coming back to the last quarter or so of the book after a few days away, and I don’t know if it was me or the book.  That said, I think that it would have been wrong for it to have won the National Biography Award, for which it was shortlisted (the award was given to Brenda Niall’s Mannix).  Conflating memoir and biography as an awards category is a fraught exercise, and although there are commonalities between the two, there are important differences as well. Taken on its own terms, Reckoning is engagingly written, honest and human but somehow I think that those are just as much the qualities of the author, as much as of the work.

aww2016 Posted in the Australian Women Writers Challenge 2016.

 

 

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Posted in Australian Women Writers Challenge 2016, Book reviews

Graeme Davison on visions of the future

Posted on July 31, 2016 | 2 comments

I mentioned the History of the Future exhibition at the Melbourne Town Hall. In the little booklet that accompanied the exhibition (which I had to email for, as they had run out), there is an essay written by the  curator Clare Williamson.  In it she references, several times, an essay written by Graeme Davison called ‘Melbournes that Might Have Been: Three Dreams of the Future City’. It was published in the Victorian Historical Journal, vol 63, nos. 2 & 3, October 1992 p.168-188.   Backcopies of the Victorian Historical Journal can be accessed here.  If negotiating the SLV’s clunky Cedric document loader doesn’t make you hate your life, the article’s well worth reading.

Davison starts his article by referencing Geoffrey Blainey’s idea of a seesaw in relation to utopian and utilitarian planning visions. There were periods of dreaming in 1910 and in the 1940s (often influenced by international innovations reaching Australia), and more routine planning approaches in the 1880s and 1980s. However, the three visionaries he studies in this article do not fit into this broad arc at all.  The first  planner ‘Anonymous’ (who he suggests may have been Redmond Barry or the editor of the Australasian G. H. Wathen) wrote in 1850, just before Victoria was to be separated from New South Wales.  The second was Frank Stapley writing in 1935 and the final was Robin Boyd, writing in 1969. Davison provides good long extracts from each of them.

‘Melbourne As It Is, and As It Ought To Be’ was published in the Australasian No. 1 in 1850 (and an abridged version can be found here). Unfortunately, this abridged version leaves out all his detailed prescriptions for public squares, streets and boulevards – and you’re going to have to be a Melburnian to appreciate all this.

View of the city of Melbourne from the Observatory

View of City of Melbourne from the Observatory [c.1858-1860], Artist George Rowe, State Library of Victoria

http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/81212

‘Anonymous’ starts his suggestions on the elevated ground between the flagstaff on the top of the hill at Flagstaff Gardens (shown above). On the elevated ground between the flagstaff and the ‘government offices’ on the corner of King and Collins Street, he believed that there should be a Grand Square, a Hall of Assembly, the Vice-Regal residence and other government buildings. A 200ft wide boulevard would sweep from there to the Supreme Court on the corner of Russell and La Trobe Streets where there would another square, then onwards towards another square located near St Peter’s Anglican Church in Eastern Hill. This 200 ft boulevard would then curve down to the Yarra River where a bridge could connect it to a similar boulevard on the other side of the river.  On the brow of Flagstaff Hill (ie. facing the other direction from where George Rowe did his painting) there was – but is not, today- a splendid view of Hobson’s Bay, the Melbourne plains and mountains. ‘Anonymous’ suggested a public promenade along this slope with statues and vases with a terrace down to the North Melbourne lagoon, with avenues of ilex (holly) and shrubberies of mimosa. A road leading to Batman’s Hill (i.e. where Southern Cross Railway Station is today) could have a hall for busts of Great Men, and an avenue could be constructed to Flemington. He was particularly dismissive of the Market Square at the time (i.e. near Market Street), and said that the centre of the city should be bounded by Collins, Swanston, Bourke and Elizabeth Streets- which is pretty much where it is.

2. Frank Stapley 1935

In his treatise on Melbourne planning, Frank Stapley looked ahead fifty years (i.e. to 1985). By then, he said, Melbourne would have two million people (he underestimated) and the traffic would be at a standstill, with Swanston Street at saturation point. He was a big roads man- he wanted to build a bridge through Yarra Park to Punt Road behind the MCG (our current Brunton Avenue perhaps?),and  widen both  Bridge Rd Richmond and Sydney Road Brunswick.  In a prescription sure to gladden the hearts of Save Our Suburbs, he wrote:

Zoning should be regulated in the metropolis according to a definite plan. Areas set apart in the first instance for residential purposes should remain so.  Some areas should even be reserved exclusively for single family residences.  (Davison p. 182)

3. Robin Boyd 1969 ‘Melbourne 2001 AD’

Robin Boyd, likewise, foresaw a Melbourne choked by cars but in his scenario, people had given up using them to actually get anywhere, and instead used them as extra rooms.  The tramway system would be vastly increased, with four to six lines in some streets.  The bay would be bitumized as far as Rosebud.  Melbourne would be infested with flies. The underground railway would be at test drilling stage only, or if it did exist, it would consist of recycled rolling stock painted in psychedelic colours.  There would be bushfires every year. Men (he doesn’t mention women) would dispense with clothing altogether on weekends and holidays.  Growth would be channeled into ‘fingers’ to protect the prettier parts of the bush and riverside, and a ring road would surround Melbourne. The Flinders Street railway yards would be covered, with a huge perforated structure, similar to a stock of ceramic cheese graters, housing 50,000 people.  There would be multilevel streets, and tall buildings would be built on consolidated blocks of land.

Oh dear. Robin Boyd’s not far off the mark in many ways.  I think I prefer the vision ‘Anonymous’, his halls of Great Men notwithstanding.

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And so here we go again….Banyule Homestead

Posted on July 29, 2016 | Leave a comment

It’s Groundhog Day here in Heidelberg, with changes to Banyule Homestead in the air again.  You can read about it at https://banyulehomestead.wordpress.com/2016/07/29/and-so-here-we-go-again/

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Exhibition: A History of the Future

Posted on July 29, 2016 | Leave a comment

history-future

There’s a terrific little exhibition on at the City Gallery, off the Melbourne Town Hall at the moment. It’s called ‘A History of the Future’ and it’s on until August 12.

I’ve always been drawn to things that didn’t happen. While I tut-tut at ‘what-if’ and speculative histories, deep down I enjoy them.  This exhibition displays the plans of grand dreams that planners and architects have had for Melbourne that weren’t even built- and in most cases, I’d have to say “….and a good thing they weren’t, too”.

So there’s a giant hand-shaped building planned for what is now ACMI, between St Pauls and the Forum, with its index finger pointed skyward.  “Nothing remotely like it in all the world!” proclaims the plan. That’s for sure.  The finger nail of the index finger would contain an observation deck, while the thumb could contain a restaurant.  “The hand is particularly beautiful from its palm side, conformed thusly with three fingers clasped and one pointing heavenward, it symbolizes nothing specifically, but many things generally.” Unlike a middle figure pointing heavenward.

There’s several plans for pedestrian walk-way elevated above the footpath, with escalators running up from road level.  Or Robin Boyd’s plan for Bourke Street on five levels, the bottom consisting of public transport, then two levels of car parking, then finally cars going east and west.

For grand buildings, there could be a huge pyramid built beside the State Library (not unlike the one at the Louvre) or – most topically- a plan for the Queen Victoria Market in the 1970s that would have seen it enclosed completely, with a highrise government building erect on the Victoria/Therry Street corner.  It doesn’t sound all that much different to what is being proposed by the City of Melbourne right now.

It’s a fun little exhibition, so spend a spare half-hour looking through it the next time you’re in town.  It’s free and opening hours are Mon: 10am – 2pm ; Tue – Friday: 11am – 6pm and Sat: 10am – 4pm (closed Sunday) For a taster, here’s a slideshow:

http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/arts-and-culture/city-gallery/Pages/current-exhibition.aspx

 

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Movie: God Willing

Posted on July 28, 2016 | Leave a comment

A friend recommended this film as a feel-good, gentle comedy and that’s exactly what it is. It’s in Italian with English subtitles. A surgeon, who has rather a God-complex himself, is rattled when his son decides that he is going to become a priest.  The surgeon, who is certainly a sceptic if not an outright aetheist, decides to investigate the priest with whom his son has become friends and finds more to him than he expected.

It’s not deep or challenging in any way, but certainly worth considering if you want to while away an hour or two.

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‘The Racket’ by Gideon Haigh

Posted on July 26, 2016 | 4 comments

haigh

2008. 250 p.

I read this book several weeks ago, during the week when finally an exclusion zone was actually enforced outside the East Melbourne Fertility Control Centre. For more than 20 years, pro-life protestors had taken up their positions on the footpath outside the surgery armed with posters and brochures in a final attempt to dissuade women from entering to have abortions. It’s been going on for years, despite the fact that in Victoria abortions no longer fall under the Crimes Act (even though they still do in  New South Wales and Queensland). In reading this book, I was taken back to black-and-white images and newspaper articles that threw up for me names like Peggy Berman, Bertram Wainer, and Jack Ford: all familiar, but I couldn’t quite remember how it all fitted together.

As Haigh points out, abortions had always been available in Australia through sharp instruments, potions and purgatives. These solutions were more within the purview of midwives than doctors, who were more often called upon to conduct a D&C after the abortion had been induced at home. Some operators worked with remarkable impunity, but it was also difficult to collect evidence and women often kept silent, partly from fear of charges and also from a sense of solidarity.  Doctors became more involved after World War II and through vigorous defence in the courts remained generally untouchable, but they remained interwoven with the remaining midwives and unqualified operators, often receiving commissions for referrals.  Increasingly, they became involved with corrupt police as well, in what formed a self-sustained ‘racket’, where everyone had their hand out for their share. Central to all this money changing hands was Peggy Berman, who went to an abortionist for an abortion herself, came out employed as his secretary, had an affair with the Homicide chief Jack Ford who was on the take, and became the main collector and enforcer of bribes and payments. When she felt betrayed by Ford, she began to talk, exposing the whole tacky, crooked racket.

I found myself angered by the casual profiteering that took place over the bodies of these women and girls, and the callousness of the exposure of women, their mothers and boyfriends when the police broke down the doors and the resultant cases ended up in court.  Take, for example, the Windsor Court raid on 25 May 1965. Police staked out the back and front entrances, then fanned out through the surgery, upending everything they did not confiscate, rummaging through the patient information cards. Upstairs they found three groggy women recovering from surgery, who they questioned on the spot. The women were spirited away to the Royal Women’s Hospital for internal vaginal examination, with a police photographer hovering beside the trolley taking pictures that, hugely magnified, would be part of the prosecution brief in court.  One girl, distressed, asked them to stop but her request was rebutted. When she asked for her mother, she learned that her mother had been taken into custody. (p. 87)

Then there were the court cases themselves.

Very seldom, in fact, do the transcripts read as though the abortionists themselves are on trial.  Because the witnesses are largely younger women, and the judges, barristers, solicitors, police and jurors almost exclusively older men, they often read like moral tribunals- and while men in an adversarial systems are apt to check one another, there are moments that smack of male prurience and mental cruelty, even a certain sadism. (p. 140)

Gideon Haigh is a journalist and this is very much a journalists’ book.  You can get the flavour of it in Haigh’s essay from the Monthly in 2007.  It rattles along, and every interview, every anecdote, gives the names of protagonists and informants just as a newspaper article would do.  I found it overwhelming.  I’d often find myself thinking “Do I know this person?” and would have to resort to the (thankfully) exhaustive index at the rear, which is dominated by surnames. I wished that at times Haigh would step back from the story, and sketch out the broad contours of the story, rather than the details.

That said, writing recent history is a special challenge, even if that is not necessarily what Haigh would claim to be doing here.  It’s well researched, thorough and perceptive.  But I must confess to feeling a bit voyeuristic and grubby. I’m aware that the young girls he reports on here are now grandmothers, and I wonder how they and their children feel now, reading about this terribly-public exposure of their distress on the front page of old ‘Truth’ newspapers and now reheated in Haigh’s book. Sometimes I am surprised at the use of pseudonyms in stories that seem quite innocuous, but I found myself wishing that perhaps Haigh had used them here.  I know that  full names and photographs were splashed all over the more prurient publications, and that these young women entered the public record through the court cases they were dragged through.  But I think I’d feel more comfortable as a reader, in this case, if I knew that I wasn’t perpetuating the shame and exposure that, wrongly, was attached to women exercising their right to control their own bodies.

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This Week in Port Phillip 1841: 16-23 June 1841

Posted on July 20, 2016 | 2 comments

BAD TIMES A’COMING

On the 18th June the Port Phillip Herald carried a verbatim report of Governor Gipps’ address at the opening of the Legislative Council session in Sydney on 8th June. Among other things, he talked about the opening up of Port Phillip and its contribution to the economic life of the colony.  It was the only bright spot in what was looking to be an increasingly gloomy economic report. We know, as they didn’t at the time, that this was just the start of the 1840s Depression, which was to shake out the speculators from the Port Phillip financial scene.  He noted that the revenue of Port Phillip had more than doubled on that of the preceding year  (from £14608 in 1839 to £29799 in 1840), and the District had contributed a  large amount to the general Land Fund (£217,127):

thus affording to the older parts of the colony, the means of replacing the labour and capital, which the opening of Port Phillip had drained from them. Aided by the resources of the Older Settlement but unassisted with borrowed money; the district of Port Phillip has risen rapidly to a state of wealth and importance which cannot but be highly gratifying to the entire colony.

This was to be an ongoing source of tension between Port Phillip and the old colonies. The residents of Port Phillip felt that they were the ones drawing in all of the money, and that therefore they should be entitled to a greater share of it, especially as it was a new district with large infrastructure needs.

Gipps went on:

The pecuniary difficulties under which many interests in the colony are still suffering must naturally be expected to affect the revenue of the present year, and of probably the next succeeding one; the falling off however is as yet only sensibly felt in the branch of it which is derived from the sale of land, and in this even the deficiency may in part be ascribed to other causes.

These pecuniary difficulties may safely, I believe, be said to have arisen from excessive speculation and an undue extension of credit; they seem to be of the nature of  those which frequently, and almost periodically occur, in all places  where commercial adventure is eager, and the remedy is, I think, to be looked for in the natural course of events, rather than to be sought in any Legislative enactments.

A few of the circumstances which have contributed to bring about these embarrassments in our commercial relations, may perhaps, without much risk of error, be pointed out, though it is very necessary to bear in mind, that in seeking to discover such agencies, we are very likely to mistake effects for causes.

The scarcity of 1838 and 1839 caused a great drain from the colony for the first necessary of life and produced excessive fluctuations in the price of every description of grain.  The decline in price of our chief staple commodity, wool, lessened the value of our exports in the home market.

The excessive consignment of goods to the colony, mostly on speculation by mercantile houses in England produced a  depreciation in value of nearly every species of merchandise, circulated to affect more or less the transactions of the whole commercial body.

The  necessity of disposing of these goods contributed to the undue extension of credit;  whilst the  rapid influx of capital into the colony may have had a tendency to  encourage hazardous speculations and the employment of money in investments, not yielding any immediate return.

A more abundant supply of labour is undoubtedly the one great thing wanted in the colony, for without labour no wealth can be produced, no capital can be profitably employed.(PPH 18/6/41)

If only he knew:  there were boatloads of bounty migrants on the way, many of whom would be unemployed when they arrived at a colony by then in recession.

The following week, the Port Phillip Herald had its own commentary on financial conditions in the District.  At this stage, there was confidence that Port Phillip could ride out the financial storm, even if the other colonies could not:

“THE SISTER COLONIES AND THE PANIC. When we attentively consider the state of the surrounding Colonies, as ascertained both by public statements and private communications, we have indeed much reason to rejoice in our own condition.  It is true that we are not altogether free from the evils which press so heavily upon of neighbours, but whilst our monetary affairs are not in the most healthy state, and our mercantile transactions occasionally dull, they bear no comparison whatever with the alarming state of others.  The depressed, if not altogether ruined condition of South Australia has long been know; in Sydney we are informed, and are convinced by experience, “all things are going on as badly as may be, short of bankruptcy”; whilst in Van Diemen’s Land, the general insolvency expected in other places has for some time actually commenced.  The papers we have received by the last arrivals are absolutely filled with notices to creditors; by private communications we learn that insolvencies are the general subjects of discussion, and everyone is so suspicious of his neighbor, that nothing but absolute necessity compels him to dispose of his goods, trusting to the possibility  of payment to meet his own engagements. (PPH 22/6/41)

Ah. If they only knew what was to come.

THE TROUBLE WITH YOUNG ELIZA

One of the court cases that came before Judge Willis during this criminal sessions was that of young Eliza Jennings, sixteen years old, who had been charged with stealing from her employer, Rev. Joseph Orton.  Joseph Orton was a Wesleyan Methodist missionary, who had earlier fallen foul of the Jamaican magistracy through his strong advocacy for the slaves.  He had arrived in the Australian colonies in 1831, where he travelled between Parramatta, Sydney, Hobart, New Zealand and then Port Phillip. He was the first clergyman to preach in Port Phillip, and he was a driving force in the establishment of the Buntingdale Mission near Geelong.  Known amongst Methodists as “The John Wesley of Australia”, perhaps it was his desire to rescue lost souls that led him to employ Eliza Jennings, who was known to be “light-fingered”.

Eliza Jennings, aged 16, was indicted for stealing three sovereigns, ten half sovereigns, one  pocket-book and a child’s nightcap, the property of Rev Joseph Orton, at Melbourne, on the 11th June.

Prisoner, who came to the colony in the [?] ship Theresa about ten months since, was employed as a general servant in the family of the Rev. Joseph Orton, in whose house she had resided [?] or ten days.  At the time of entering upon this service she was known by her mistress to be light-fingered, and consequently not permitted to enter her bed-room in which Mr Orton kept a cash-box; from this box were missed, on the [?] laid in the information, three sovereigns and ten half sovereigns; the key had been left in the cash box; suspicion alighted on the prisoner and [?] her room was searched, and a pocket-book and a few articles of children’s under-clothing were found.  Upon a second search taking place, a small work box belonging to prisoner was closely  searched […] in a pin-cushion artfully concealed so as to defy detection, were found three sovereigns and ten half-sovereigns. The money had been evidently put inside the pin-cushion by one of the sides, which were of wood, being forced out, and then glued together again, so that the top, which was a piece of silk, was not disturbed.  The girl had been asking for some glue to mend her pin-cushion.

The only way in which prisoner endeavoured to account for the possession of the gold was, that it had been given to her by her father.

His Honor in summing up remarked, that in this case, there was more than mere presumption. He thought the presumption of law that the prisoner had come honestly by the sovereigns was against her, other stolen property having been found in her box for which she could not account. It had been said that the sovereigns were given to her by her father previously to leaving home. It was probable a child like her, leaving home for a distant country, that her friends might scrape together a small sum of money, and that most likely would be in gold.  It was a matter of notoriety that emigrants coming to the colony were in the habit of concealing money about their persons, and in boxes &c.; a work-box was therefore not an improbable place in which a child like her should conceal her money if she had any. The presumption of law was, however, against her in consequence of the other property being found. From the evidence of Mrs Orton, it was clear that in law she was doli capar , or capable of committing the offence, as she was known to be light-fingered before she entered her service.  They would give the case their most careful consideration, and if they could find anything in her favour, arising in the case as in the ordinary course of life, they would give her the benefit.

The Jury, after the absence of a few minutes, found the prisoner guilty, but recommended her to mercy on account of her youth, and the incautious manner in which the money had been taken care of.

Eliza had arrived on the migrant ship Theresa that landed in Port Phillip in July 1840.  As Judge Willis noted, she came out by herself and her religion was registered as Roman Catholic.  It was quite common for juries to reach their verdict within minutes: in fact, they sometimes did not even leave the courtroom.

It was up to Judge Willis to pronounce the sentence. I really don’t know quite how to read the next part.  I’m hoping that his comment that “he had found a place in which she would not be enabled to indulge her vicious propensities” was not a grim joke, but I’m not sure.

Having been called up for judgment, his Honor remarked, that the Jury had returned a very proper verdict, they could not have arrived at any other conclusion. He felt great pain that a girl of her age should be placed as she was; she was, however, old enough to know better.  The Jury had mercifully taken into consideration her age and the improvident manner in which the property was secured. He, Judge Willis, had been making inquiries, and had found a place in which she would not be enabled to indulge her vicious propensities.  A clergyman of her persuasion would visit her, by whose instruction he hoped she would benefit so as, in after life, to become a useful member of society.  The sentence of the Court was, that she be imprisoned in Her Majesty’s gaol, Melbourne, for 12 calendar months, and be kept to hard labour.  He mentioned hard labour, that she might be kept employed during her imprisonment. (18/6/41)

I’m relieved to find that, according to family historians, she might have travelled to the goldfields and ended up on Kangaroo Island by 1847, married, had several children and lived until 1880.

WESLEYAN METHODIST CHAPEL

Actually, it was a busy time for Rev. Orton.  On 24 June the new Wesleyan Methodist Chapel opened on the corner of Collins and Queen Streets.  It was 47 ft x 57 ft, and its organ, installed in 1842, is apparently still in the present Wesley Church in Lonsdale Street. You can see a picture of the Collins/Queen Street church here.  The church was opened on a Thursday (which seems an unusual choice of day to me) with Rev William Waterfield presiding over the 11.00 a.m. service, and Joseph Orton preaching at the 6.30 service. On the following Sunday 27th Rev Tuckfield preached in the morning; Rev James Forbes in the evening.  This is all rather ecumenical: Rev Waterfield was a Congregationalist;  Rev James Forbes was Presbyterian and  Orton and  Tuckfield were both Wesleyan Methodists.

Actually, in these early days at Port Phillip there was much more cooperation between the denominations than was apparent some five years later (with the exception, perhaps of the Roman Catholics). At this stage, the Protestant ministers contributed to each other’s building funds; marched together in public occasions and, as we see here, gave sermons at each other’s churches.

AN ADVERTISEMENT

You might remember Mr Liardet, who drew the pictures at the top of this blog.  We also encountered him in April, when his daughter was the victim of a sexual abuse crime.  He had the Pier Hotel in Sandridge (later Port Melbourne) (image here) which he rather confusingly called Brighton on the Beach. From the hotel he ran a carriage service into Melbourne.

Pier Hotel, Brighton on the Beach and ferry House. BY W.F. EVELYN LIARDET. Superior accommodation for families and gentlemen Carriage conveyance to and from Melbourne; carts and drays; conveyance for luggage. Saddle horses and good stabling. Boats to be had at all hours, on application at the bar; fishing parties attended with lines and nets. An ordinary on Sundays at half-past two o’clock. N.B. The Pier Hotel is the right hand house on approaching the shore from the shipping. A stockyard for cattle and every requisite accommodation.

AND THE WEATHER….

Top temperature for the week 60F (15.5) and a low of 38F (3.3). Wind generally fresh and strong. Rain on 17th, 18th and 20th and fresh breezes on 22nd and 23rd.

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Posted in This Week in Port Phillip District 1841