8 March 2013: IWD and Glebe’s timber war

What’s the link between International Women’s Day and a strike of timber workers in Glebe in 1929?

The first Australian rally organised for International Women’s Day was held at The Domain in Sydney in March 1928. It was organised by the Militant’s Women’s Group, an auxiliary of the Communist Party of Australia, who were campaigning for equal wages, paid leave and unemployment relief.

Just under a year later, in January 1929, Judge Lionel Lukin’s unpopular arbitration judgement for timber workers came into effect.

There were numerous timber yards and mills in Sydney in the 1920s and 30s, many of them clustered around the foreshores of Glebe and Pyrmont. They were large-scale employers of local labour in these areas.

Hudson’s Timber Yards at Blackwattle Bay, Glebe 1923 (State Records of NSW, 9856_2017_2017000223.jpg)

Workers at the yards stored and processed the timber – much of it hardwood – for the building trade. For these skilled workers, Lukin’s award meant more hours – he reintroduced the 48 week – and less pay. His judgement came on the eve of the economic Depression of the 1930s, and was a harbinger of what was to come for working people in Sydney.

Workers at Hudson’s timber yards in Glebe took strike action in protest to Lukin’s award by not working on Saturday mornings throughout January 1929. On 2 February, the workers were locked out. Hudson’s began to ship in strike breakers, or scabs, to replace the strikers. The strikers – which included timber workers and their wives and families – picketed outside the front gate.

“One in, all in. Timberworkers’ strike, 1929-30″ – timberworkers outside Darlinghurst Court House (ANU, Noel Butlin Archives, http://hdl.handle.net/1885/9414)

On 8 March 1929, the Militant’s Women’s Group organised a second International Women’s Day rally at Belmore Park to support the wives and children of the striking timber workers. They also stormed the offices of the Timber Merchants Association, leaving its Secretary, Mr F H Corke ‘pale and trembling’.

Throughout the timber workers strike, Hudson’s timber yards was the scene for violent clashes between police, scabs, strikers and picketers. In July, hundreds of police arrived with their ‘basher gang’ to disperse up to 400 picketers. The following day, there were thousands of picketers outside the mill, and clashes ensued.

Women played an important role in the strike. Just weeks after the lock out, the Militant’s Women’s Group organised relief depots throughout inner Sydney to supply timber workers and their families with food.  According to Mary Wright, one of the members of this group, they went house to house with the timber workers wives to collect food and to explain the position of timber workers to the mostly female householders. Donations were collected for over a year.

The involvement and support of local women and the timber workers’ wives ensured that the strike ran for over eight months. Apart from the work of the Militant Women’s Group in organising relief depots and public rallies to support the timber workers and their families, women fund-raised with dances, euchre parties and fancy dress balls.

Women were also vocal and active members of the picket line. In August 1929, local Glebe women Sarah Peninton and Doris Flanagan were arrested for abusing the police.

The 1929  timber workers strike was ultimately unsuccessful – there was a federal election looming and the Labor party, hoping for a victory, forced the timber workers’ union to back down and to accept Lukin’s award. But the strike had long-lasting impact on the local Glebe community. Many of the men never returned to work at Hudson’s timber yards. But many of the women became politicised by their experiences on the front line of timber of the timber war.

16 November 2012: On the wing

The feral pigeon (or rock dove) is one of the most annoying features of cities around the world including Sydney.

Pigeons were introduced to Australia in the late 19th century. The first to arrive were probably domesticated homing or racing pigeons, also known as carrier or courier pigeons.

Champion racing pigeon, 1930s (Sam Hood, DG ON4/3455, State Library of NSW)

Pigeons have an innate (but mysterious) ability to navigate their way home over vast distances – sometimes of up to 1000 kilometres! This ability is known as the ‘homing’ instinct. Pigeons also have a very strong roosting habit and are very hard to move once they find a place to nest. While this is useful for training homing pigeons, it is not so hot for maintaining public buildings in the city – pigeons have a habit of defacing with their droppings as they nest.

A number of homing pigeon societies were formed in Sydney in the late 19th century. These included the Sydney Homing Pigeon Society in 1880 and the Petersham and Leichhardt Fancy and Homing Pigeon Society by 1890. The first society was Columbarian Club started in c1870. Founding members included John Wright, Samuel Hordern and William Allerton. This later became the NSW Poultry, Pigeon and Canary Society, but the owners of racing pigeons decided to go it alone, and the Sydney Homing Pigeon Society was born.

Short and long distance flying matches were held monthly. When racing matches started, pigeons were sent to destinations in separate baskets and released at intervals of ten minutes apart. The rules were changed because some birds had unfair advantages with the weather, and instead the birds were ‘liberated’ at the same time so that they could compete under equal weather conditions.

The aim of these pigeon fancier societies was to improve the breeding quality of racing and homing pigeons, which played an important role in communications, especially in war times.

When the Sydney Homing Pigeon Society began in 1880, breeding homing pigeons was an elite hobby. This was largely due to the cost – the most sought after pigeons were Antwerp Carriers. Pigeon fanciers had to import the best parent stock from Belgium.

The club’s headquarters were at Cunningham Street in Haymarket on the same block as Hordern’s Palace Emporium. Department store magnate Samuel Horden was an enthusiastic breeder of pedigreed homing pigeons. He corresponded with Northrop Barker, the Belgium-based world-renowned pigeon fancier, and regularly imported special breeds from him.

Jack Farmer of Leichhardt training pigeons in PNG during World War 2 (Australian War Memorial)

But pigeons soon became a problem. For example, the first reports of ‘pigeon trouble’ at Sydney Town Hall were reported in 1903. Attempts to prevent pigeons from nesting on the town hall’s facade were many and varied. These included preventative measures such as wiring up parts of the stone work, painting the ledges with a slippery varnish and filling in crevices with concrete to stop their roosting habits. Other methods included baiting and trapping, soaking wheat with whiskey to make the pigeons drunk, spraying the pigeons with a harmless irritant, placing stuffed owls and effigies of hawks in strategic positions on the ledges, or electrified wires. At the Australian Museum, roosting pigeons were shot dead!

In the 1950s, female feral pigeons of a doubtful breed nesting at Sydney Town Hall were accused of luring pedigreed racing pigeons off their racing courses!

But despite the bad reputation of pigeons generally, their pedigreed counterparts did play an important role in providing covert communications during World War 1 and 2.

Today, breeding and training racing and homing pigeons is a dying art. No longer an elite pursuit, it is regarded as the ‘poor man’s greyhound’.

 

12 October 2012: fruit and nuts

Hawkers and roadside stalls selling food items – including fruit, vegetables, seafood, pies and peanuts - were a part of the fabric of Sydney’s streetscape from its earliest days.

By the 1920s, the locations where fixed barrows could set up in the city, and the hours that they could operate, were regulated by the City Council. But there was ongoing ambivalence to the existence of these types of fixed stalls from the outset.

But despite complaints about ‘racketeering, rudeness and traffic obstruction’, fruit and nut stalls remained extremely popular through to the 1950s.

Today, fruit and nut stalls in the city are few and far between - and are no longer as popular as they once were. With tighter regulations, they’ve got a uniform look, and with competition from large grocery stores, they no longer offer the cheapest options…

Here are some pretty picturs from days gone by:

Woman in fur coat buying fruit from stand on Lawson Street in Redfern, 1954 (City of Sydney Archives NSCA CRS 47/236)

Fruit and nut stall on George Street (City of Sydney Archives NSCA CRS 51/1636)

Fruit and vegetable barrow out the front of Customs House, 1932 (Photograph courtesy Irene Inley, City of Sydney Archives SRC17784)

Fruit stall and Springfield House mansion behind, 1933 (City of Sydney Archives NSCA CRS 51/1588)

14 September 2012: Window dressing

Window at Snow’s Department store, 1941 (State Library of NSW, hood_10452)

Window displays were one of the most important selling spaces within the ‘big stores’.

Modern lighting for modern windows (The Home, April 1932)

The most celebrated window dresser working for Sydney’s department stores was Henry Bindoff. He was feted as ‘Sydney’s Window Wizard’.

From the early to mid-20th century, Sydney’s modern department stores used the vast, gleaming expanses of plate glass windows at street level to display their wares as a way to lure customers inside.

Women’s winter fashions at Snows, 1947 (State Library of NSW, Hood_11454)

Bindoff was the display manager at David Jones from the 1920s through to the 1950s.

It was said that he elevated window dressing to an art form.

Behind the scenes window designing, 1956 (Australian Women’s Weekly, 8 August 1956, nla.gov.au/nla.news-page4808092)

Like other window dressers working in Sydney’s department stores, he was backed by a trained and experienced staff that included artists, electricians and carpenters.

Step by step: how to design a window display (Australian Women’s Weekly, 24 August 1946, nla.gov.au/nla.news-article47505564)

Window dressers were reliant on tools such as fluorescent lighting, non-reflective plate glass and the latest fashion mannequins. They used ‘successful secrets from the stage’ including spot lighting and coloured light.

Department store windows could take between three months and a year to plan and put together.

Although the importance of window displays has waned as the fortunes of many of Sydney’s large stores have also waned, the David Jones special windows for Christmas and Spring continue to entice passersby.

29 August 2012: Bohemian nights

Artists’ Balls were held in Sydney from the late 19th century, including one held at the Garden Palace in 1881, and others held at the Paddington Town Hall in the 1890s.

The concept and tradition of Artists’ Balls was imported from Paris and London. The balls tended to be fund-raisers, and attracted Bohemians as well as the middle classes and the elites. For example, the Artists’ Balls held at the Paddington Town Hall in the 1890s raised money for the Art Union.

Strange medley of costumes at the 1938 Artists’ Ball at the Trocadero (Sydney Morning Herald, 9 April 1938)

It was the Artists’ Balls held after World War 1 that signalled the dawning of the new modern and permissive ’Jazz’ age. The joie de vivre of this party and others that followed throughout the 1920s was a ‘carnivalesque’ response to the tragedy of war.

The first post-war Artists’ Ball was held at Sydney Town Hall on 21 August 1922. It raised money for a pottery workshop at Redfern for soldiers maimed in the war.

Revellers at the Artists’ Ball at the Trocadero in 1953 (Australian Women’s Weekly, 18 November 1953)

It provoked controversy because of the alleged ’unseemly conduct’ of those who attended. A cheeky scamp added whisky to the table wine, which was ‘partaken of by many ladies with the result that unseemly and improper conduct followed, continuing until daybreak. A lively discussion took place [by the Sydney Council] regarding the unseemliness of some of the costumes worn, also in regard to the disorderly conduct.’ There was a near riot at the 1924 ball which resulted in 11 casualties and a raid by the police.  Criticisms of the debaucherous and wanton behaviour, particularly of the women, some who were too drunk to move, led to a ban on alcohol although some of the naughtier guests continued to smuggle it in on the sly.

Throughout the 1920s, the Artists’ Balls at the Sydney Town Hall attracted an eclectic crowd of up to 2000 people, including artists, writers, muses, models, cartoonists, and later, radio personalities. The balls usually had vice-regal patronage: the 1928 Artists’ Ball, for example, was attended by the Governor of NSW.  The Centennial Hall was richly decorated with streamers, flowers and artworks, everyone who attended wore elaborate themed fancy dress costumes.

In the late 1930s, the Artists’ Balls moved to the Trocadero. They became an annual fixture, and a highlight of Sydney’s society calendar. Crowds thronged outside to watch the guests arriving in their fancy costumes. The balls continued through to the 1980s, having moved to a new venue: the Cell Block Theatre at the National Art School. Although they have recently been revived, they probably won’t match the spectacle of the 1922 Artists’ Ball!

17 August 2012: Skip to the loo

The provision of public toilets in Sydney in the early 20th century was a response to the public health concerns following the outbreak of the Bubonic Plague in January 1900.

Men’s urinal on Drivers Avenue, Moore Park, c1934 (City of Sydney Archives, NSCA CRS 538/037)

But public urinals had been provided from the late 19th century to maintain and set standards of respectability, particularly of men.

Men’s attended convenience, Macquarie Place, 1934 (City of Sydney Archives, NSCA CRS 538/009)

A number of urinals (or pissoirs) were installed in busy spots around the centre of Sydney in the 1880s, as way of discouraging men from weeing in the street.

Sydney’s first underground loo was built on Moore Street (today’s Martin Place) in 1901. Another nine underground loos would be built underneath Sydney roads and pavements from 1901 through to 1912. Similarly to the urinals, the underground toilets were for men only.

Women’s attended convenience, Hyde Park, 1934 (City of Sydney Archives, NSCA CRS 538/016)

The first women’s toilets were built in 1910 in Hyde Park. These toilets were not underground but rather were put inside a domestic cottage-style building and obscured with foliage. Other public lavatories for women began to be built, most of them following the same style.

Many of the original underground public toilets didn’t survive the 20th century. In the mid 1990s, four of the remaining toilets were put out of use. Of these, one was demolished and two were filled with sand to street level. The public toilet on Taylor Square is a survivor – although no longer in use, it’s still there and was recently part of an art installation.

 

 

27 July 2012: Florence Broadhurst

In terms of Sydney mysteries, the death and life of Florence Broadhurst would be up there with the best of them.

Today, Florence is remembered as a flamboyant Sydney designer and socialite, creator of beautiful wallpaper designs that defined style in 1960s and 1970s Sydney.  Sadly she is also remembered for her untimely and brutal death-murdered in her studio in Paddington in 1977.

What is maybe not so well known are the many guises she took on over her life, changing styles, names and countries as she pursued her goals.

Florence was actually born in south-east Queensland on a cattle station, growing up in the small cottage allocated her father who was manager.  Learning to sew, play tennis and sing, Florence took her first steps into public life in 1918 as a 19 year old singer at a fundraiser for soldiers in Bundaberg.

In 1922 she left Australia with the musical group the Globe Trotters, touring Asia under the name Bobby Broadhurst, a nickname the troupe had given her.  The tour through colonial Asia lasted 15 months, visiting Singapore, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Calcutta, Delhi, Karachi, Shanghai, Tientsin and Peking.  The tour let Florence leave south east Queensland far behind.  The beautiful young dancer, with short bobbed hair and flapper style was rumoured to have been romantic with an Anglo-Indian raj, amongst other things.

Florence stayed in Asia until 1927, first playing in Shanghai’s hottest clubs and later opening a dance and music school, teaching the rich party scene all the new dances coming out of Europe and America.  She was particularly known for her Charleston lessons. But by early 1927, the Shanghai scene was on the way down, and after a brief return to Australia, she headed to London.

Florence in her Shanghai dance studio

In London Broadhurst, after marrying and working in upper class fashion houses, set herself up as a French couturier, Madame Pellier designing and selling the latest in European fashions.  Claiming to be dressmakers to the royal court, Broadhurst built a strong business dressing London’s theatre and musical scene.  She stayed in London through the war, returning to Australia with her husband and young son in 1949, moving to Manly where she established herself as a landscape artist.  She had taken a 3 month painting trip, heading back to her father’s Queensland property (he had moved up in the grazier world) for inspiration.

Broadhurst painted and exhibited in Sydney, at the same time filling in her European backstory claiming to be English and a former concert singer in London and Paris.  Her artistic career didn’t last, she wasn’t that good.  Instead she moved on to public speaking and being a socialite.  Meeting the Queen Mother in 1958, Broadhurst allowed the story of her English background to grow and claimed to have met the Queen Mother on a number of occasions.

In the late 1950s, in a complete change of direction, Broadhurst and her now ex-husband went into business together running a trucking company.  Starting with eight lorries, they built up a large transport venture.  With the money from the business, Florence established a wallpaper factory in 1959, called Australian (Hand Printed) Wallpapers.

It was the wallpaper that made her name in Sydney more than anything else.  Initially the business was run out of a shed at the rear of her trucking business, a business that did not fit easily with her socialite personality.  She started it with John Lang, a 18 year old artist who rented the shed, and hit the market just as wallpaper was becoming the next big thing.  Thousands of new houses needed covering, and cheap, bright designs caught the imagination.  Broadhurst poured her imagination and world experience into her designs.  Her years in Asia shone through.

In 1969 she opened a new factory and studio in Paddington, operating as Florence Broadhurst Wallpapers.  By now her designs were highly prized and her flaming red hair and wild personal style set her apart in the otherwise conservative Sydney scene.  Her papers donned the walls of the State Theatre, Grace Brothers, David Jones and later the Centrepoint Tower. Her business had also gone international, with wallpaper in the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, as well as selling in London, New York and the Middle East.  By 1972 she claimed to have over 800 designs.  Although, as her eyesight was failing it is not absolutely certain she designed everything she claimed.

Florence sits in her Paddington studio in front of one of her 800 designs

It was all going so well.

Then in October 1977, on a Saturday, someone came into the factory after the workers had left.  Florence was eating a snack upstairs in her studio, where she was later found brutally murdered by person unknown.  Two of her diamond rings were stolen, but not much else.

Her death broke the business and her designs faded from memory until almost 20 years later. A retro revival saw her prints resurrected through a new company, Signature Prints.  Once again Florence’s designs went international and jumped off the wall into fabrics, clothes, linen, carpets and even furniture.

And so she lives on.

PS: It is her birthday tomorrow, 28 July.  Happy Birthday Florence.

20 July 2012: Miss Donnithorne

Eliza Emily Donnithorne has achieved posthumous renown as Newtown’s most famous 19^th century resident – a strange turn of events for someone reputed to be a recluse!

It’s been said that Eliza Donnithorne inspired the character of Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. Like Miss Havisham, Miss Donnithorne was a rumoured to be a jilted bride who always wore her wedding gown, left her wedding feast uneaten on the table and the front door ajar (but chained) – all just in case her intended groom should return.

Dickens based a number of characters in his novels on Colonial characters – which points to the connections between England and Australia in the 19^th century, and indeed Dickens’ own connection to Australia: two of his sons settled in NSW.

Eliza Donnithorne (1821-86) was born in the Cape of Good Hope, the youngest of two brothers and two sisters born to James and Sarah (nee Bampton). She lived in India with her family but moved to England when her mother and two sisters died during a cholera outbreak in 1832. When she was in her mid-20s, Eliza moved to Australia. She lived with her father James at Camperdown Lodge, later renamed Cambridge Hall. When James Donnithorne died in 1852, she continued to live there until the end of her days.

During her lifetime, Eliza Donnithorne remained largely invisible and has left few traces. But three years after her death, the story about her supposed abandonment at the altar appeared in the Illustrated Sydney News on 27 June 1889:

Of being jilted, the paper claimed that ‘it appears to have completely prostrated her, and, it is to be feared, to some extent affected her reason. Her habits became decidedly eccentric after that wedding day on which there was no wedding, at all events, for she never again left the house. She appears to have lost all interest in life, and the world forgetting, if not by the world forgot, she became almost as much a recluse as if she had entered a nunnery. For more than thirty years–and long after her father and all her relatives had left the world–did the unfortunate lady reside at Cambridge Hall, her only solace being books. She became an insatiable reader, and when she died, less than two years ago, she left an extensive and valuable library behind her.’

Was she a jilted bride, and indeed a recluse? The jury is still out – there is little evidence to support or deny either claim. She left behind few traces – a few financial records and letters to her advisers, but no photographs or paintings. Clearly she didn’t get out much but in death she has become a blank canvas – her mysterious ways have provoked intrigue and generated stories. Indeed, Miss Donnithorne has become a character in her own right, inspiring novels, plays and dances.

15 June 2012: Crossing the mountains

Westward ho! This week on Scratching Sydney’s Surface, we’ve headed out of Sydney to cross the Blue Mountains, with a special look at the convict built Victoria Pass – 180 years old this year (2012) and still carrying traffic over the mountains.

Victoria Pass, 1923 (Blue Mountains Library, 00404404)

1 June 2012: Sydney illuminated

Sydney’s Vivid Festival is four years old this year – a festival of ‘light, music & ideas’, one if its big attractions are the light displays, or illuminations, on the buildings that line Circular Quay. But the history of illuminating the buildings and streets of Sydney stretches back almost 150 years - to the mid 19th century – with the introduction of artificial electrical lighting.

Coronation decorations, Mark Foys Department Store, Sydney, 1937 (Home and Away – 14752, State Library of NSW)

In the 19th and 20th centuries, illumination displays tended to be reserved for celebrations – for example, visits by royalty, Anniversary Day (the precursor to today’s Australia Day), coronations of royalty, New Years Eve, the end of the first and second world wars, the Centenary of Australia’s ‘foundation’ in 1888, the Sesqui-Centenary in 1938, and more recently the 1988 Bicentenary.

Illuminations in honour of the visit of Prince Alfred in 1868 (Illustrated Sydney News, Saturday 22 February 1868)

Illuminations for these sorts of celebrations, which were usually centred on Circular Quay and Sydney Harbour, were an egalitarian form of entertainment, bringing people from all walks of life into the heart of the city, in a similar way that firework displays are a draw card both then and today.

Illumination of Sydney Town Hall for the visit of the Prince of Wales in 1920 (CRS 51/4041, City of Sydney Archives)

Illuminations in the 19th and early 20th centuries showcased the evolving technologies of artificial electrical lighting, and as such, were a signifier of the advances of the modern age. The use of illuminations paved the way for the nightlife that we enjoy in Sydney today.

But on a deeper level, perhaps light and fireworks displays reveal our unconscious fear of the night and are a way of keeping the darkness at bay – after all,  the fall of dusk signifies an ending and the night itself, with its dreams and nightmares, represent disorder, chaos and the unknown. The break of dawn, in contrast, represents a kind of rebirth with a new day.

Whatever. Bring on the night, bring on the light!