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| Roland Ransome in the car on the right, 1918. Courtesy of Bronwyn Reid. |
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Welcome Home digger!
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The Wilsons of Moonee Ponds
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| Emily, Daisy and John Wilson, Leighton Studios, circa 1917. Courtesy of Nereda Shute. |
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The Woman Haters' Club go to war
The Honour Roll for the club had 32 names on it, reproduced in their history, Woman Haters' Club, Essendon - Dromana. One Hundred Years, 1902-2002.
Photos of members can be and the Roll of Honour can be seen on the Empire Called website, and also on the Time Travellers blog.
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The Irish Rising: 'A terrible beauty is born'
The State Library of Victoria has a free exhibition about the uprising which occurred in Dublin during Easter 1916. See their website for associated events.
You can explore Stories from 1916 which is a Living History Project from Ireland.
Local boy Charlie Wright ended up in Dublin after being wounded in France in 1916, and wrote a postcard to his mother from the hospital. He wasn't there during the uprising, but there must have been plenty of signs of it a few months afterwards.
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A Sportsmen's Thousand recruit
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Artist Will Dyson: 22nd Battalion men awaiting relief, near Ville sur Ancre, 1918. (AWM ART 19603) |
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British Red Cross Volunteers
Over 90,000 people volunteered for the British Red Cross in Britain and overseas during the war. Search for your family’s personnel records, and discover what Red Cross volunteers were doing in your local area 100 years ago.
Red Cross volunteers did a wide range of jobs, from the Voluntary Aid Detachments, pictured above, to nursing, cooking, cleaning, searchers trying to discover the fate of missing men and so on, so the database includes men as well as women.
I find that if you pop 'Australia' into the location search box, it will bring up volunteers who gave an Australian bank as their address, or sometimes Australia in their address. You can try other local names. For instance, I found the following British Red Cross volunteer by putting 'Moonee Ponds' in the location:
Mrs Ivy Wilson Jenkins, nee Graham, is in the database, giving 2 Normanby St, Moonee Ponds, Australia as her address. Ivy served from 01/09/1916 to 01/06/1918 as a VAD, engaged in Ward work, medical Surgical work, for twenty pounds per annum. She served at the following locations: Exeter War Hospitals Sept 1- 1916 - Aug 30; 1917 1st Southern General Hs Nov.5.1917 - June 7. 1918 Birmingham.
There are no Jenkins' at the Normanby St address in the Empire Called database, but further research may reveal more about Ivy Jenkins at a later date.
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A Sapper at work
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Soldier vows to change his name
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| John Mitchell Stuart, a well-known member of the Essendon Harriers, is pictured above in the centre row, second from the right, with the Victorian Amateur Athletics Association team selected to compete in Tasmania in 1909. Courtesy of the State Library of Victoria Collection, H31349. |
"The secretary of the Melbourne club, A. M. Gordon, together with H. S. Stiles and J. M. Stuart, of the Essendon club, left for Egypt last week. The latter, before leaving, affirmed his intention of changing his name to Abercrombie or a'Beckett, the reason being that when about to leave with the rest of his company on a previous transport the alphabetical position of his name had, when the steamer proved to be overcrowded at the last moment, been the cause of him waving a farewell to the transport instead of from it.
A valuable tropical outfit was contained in his luggage, well stowed away in the hold, and though ordinarily a pronounced optimist, Stuart, when recounting the experience, most emphatically insisted on materially altering that favorite memoriam consolation of 'Not lost but gone before'."
ATHLETICISMS. (1916, January 5). Winner (Melbourne, Vic. : 1914 - 1917), p. 9. Retrieved September 14, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article154556184
The Melbourne sporting newspaper, The Winner, kept a close eye on Stuart and other harriers from suburban clubs throughout the war. Stuart, from Moonee Ponds, served in the 31 Inf Bn. Further stories are included on his webpage.
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Wedding of a munitions worker, 1918
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| Photo courtesy of Trevor Wilson. |
The wedding was that of George Stanley Smail (standing, right) and Olive Ella Davey (seated right) which took place in London on 15 December 1918. The soldier on the left is George's brother Ernest Smail. George had been discharged as 'not fit for general service' from the AIF in London in 1917 to take up work in the Munitions industry. The workforce had been greatly depleted after the Battle of the Somme in 1916 and British Munitions workers had been moved to fill the ranks of the army. The date of the wedding might have been brought forward to allow George and Olive to take advantage of a free passage home to Australia. You can read more of George's story by clicking here.
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Beloved by all who knew him
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| Ceramic leaving Port Melbourne, 23 November 1915 (AWM PB0284A) |
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Darge tent at Seymour camp, c 1915
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Probably A Company, 37th Battalion, 1915
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| Photo courtesy of Yvonne Macvean. |
This photo is thought to include Private Albert Edmond Hickson who had grown up and gone to school in Essendon. Albert joined the AIF in July 1915 and embarked on the Wandilla in November 1915. He was one of the 'Fair Dinkums' who enlisted in full knowledge of the disaster at Gallipoli, and went to help their mates. The two officers in the centre are probably 2 Lt William Sharp to the left with a swagger stick, and Captain Charles Mills on the right. This company were involved in the disaster at Fromelles in 1916. Sharp received a gunshot wound to the hip, and Mills, also wounded, was taken prisoner of war. If you can identify any of the soldiers, please get in touch. See a larger copy of the photo on Albert Hickson's webpage.
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'A sharp attack was made by the enemy....'
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| A lighthorseman with his mount. |
The Bloomfields gave their eldest and youngest sons to the cause of the Empire within a few short months.
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Mont Park Military Hospital photo collection
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| Patients playing cards, 16th Australian General Hospital, Mont Park ca 1918 (Alice E. Broadhurst Collection, Yarra Plenty Regional Library) |
The Yarra Plenty Regional Library has announced the acquisition of a unique set of photographs taken by Red Cross Nurse Alice Elizabeth Broadhurst from 1918 to 1920, probably while working with the Voluntary Aid Detachment at Mont Park Hospital, McLeod.
The photos have been digitised and can be accessed at Yarra Plenty Local History Flickr and via Trove Pictures.
The Yarra Plenty Local History Flickr also includes other albums with WW1 photos and postcards, and well worth a visit.
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South Australian Red Cross Information Bureau, 1916-1919
While browsing through the B2455 file of Harry Nightingale Kersey of Moonee Ponds, I noticed a note written at Broadmeadows to the effect that Kersey had married the day before, and another Attestation had been made up showing his new next of kin. I noticed that the day of the marriage, 16 July 1915, was the day before Harry embarked on the Orsova with the AAMC Hospital Transport service on 17 July 1915.
I idly wondered whether the last minute marriage had lasted the distance, and went to Ancestry for a quick result. Of course there is never a quick result. All of the available trees listed a different, presumably second wife, not the Eva Evelyn mentioned in the B2455. I went to the online index of BDM for Victoria and found that Harry Nightingale Kersey had married Eva Evelyn Swindells in 1915. By the same means I discovered Eva had died in 1931. Turning to Trove with the intention of seeing whether there had been children of the marriage, I found that the death notices and 'In Memoriam's' indicated there had been no children. But I did find that Harry had been a devoted husband.
KERSEY. — In loving memory of my dear wife,
Eva Evelyn, who passed away on 30th November, 1931. Sadly missed.
— Inserted by her loving husband, H. N.
Kearsey.
auntle, who passed away on the 30th No
vember, 1931. Peacefully sleeping.
—Inserted by her loving niece, Florrie.
Eva E., dear Auntie Birdie to Jean and
Gwenda, who passed away after long suf
fering on 30th November, 1931.
Sadly missed.
With love to-day and through the long to
morrow
We will remember you.
— Inserted by Mrs. Williams and family, 22
Orlando-street, Hampton.
Family Notices (1932, November 30). The Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 - 1954), p. 1. Retrieved August 26, 2016, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article204304496
Harry put an In Memoriam in the paper in the next two years. In 1936, five years after Eva's death, he remarried.
Thinking I would like a photo of him, I did a general Google on his name, and to my surprise up popped the website at the top of this post, the South Australian Red Cross Information Bureau, 1916-1919.
This came up because Harry had made a witness statement about a South Australian comrade in the 5th Field Ambulance unit who had been killed by shellfire. The witness statement was contained in the usual Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiries Bureau Correspondence available through the Australian War Memorial website. The South Australian Information Bureau has a different set of documentation held at the State Library of South Australia, and the volunteers who prepared and digitised the records also indexed the other names, particularly witness statements. Otherwise I would never have found Harry's witness statement.
So while the records pertain particularly to South Australian soldiers, there is the chance that a soldier from another state was a witness for an enquiry made on behalf of South Australians, and would be worth a look. Witness statements are a useful eye-witness account of the conditions at the time, and may be the only contemporary information you will find.
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Private Langham and the South Australian Red Cross
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| Private Langham taken at Broadmeadows in 1915, from the Australian War Memorial Collection. |
Having another look at the South Australian Red Cross Information Bureau files, I decided to do a search based on military units, so tried the 7th Infantry Battalion as a unit closely associated with the local area. Doing this I came upon a file mentioning Joseph Oswill Langham, a horse-trainer who gave his Next of Kin as his sister in Grafton New South Wales, and no particular address for himself. However, his presence on the Essendon Town Hall Roll of Honour and various other local references made it clear that he was resident in the local area prior to the war.
Some small items of correspondence in the files for a Sergeant Pyke Evans of Adelaide gave some shape to Langham's pre-war activities. He and Evans, a jockey, had enlisted in the 7th Infantry Battalion together, having previously known each other at Scobie's Stables in Ascot Vale Rd, Flemington. They went into camp together at Seymour. Evans had originally come from Adelaide, and Langham was attempting to discover Evans' mother's address as he wanted to write to her. This caused a file to be raised in the South Australian branch of the Australian Red Cross.
We also learn from the letters that Langham was a 'cot case' on returning to Australia, that in June 1917 he was in the Caulfield Hospital, and that his mail address was care of G Jobson, Charles St, Ascot Vale. George Jobson of Doncaster St, Ascot Vale was a horsetrainer. No Jobson had a street address of Charles St in the Electoral Rolls during the war, but to throw another address into the confusion, a George Jobson was listed in the 1917 Sands & Mcdougall Directories in Morphett St, Ascot Vale and another at Charles St, Footscray.
Langham's informant of Evans' death was Mrs Power of 4 Newtown Pde, Moonee Ponds. In the 1915 Electoral Roll Jeanie Power lived at 4 Newtown Parade. The another resident at the address was Charles Power, jockey.
The Red Cross files from South Australia together with the Electoral Rolls, Victorian marriage index and the Sands & McDougall directories have enabled me to give a broader picture of Langham's life before and after the war, though there is no doubt plenty more to learn.
Another couple of men associate with the racing industry in Flemington also mentioned James Scobie in their records. These can be found by clicking on the tags in Langham's pbworks file.
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The Fair Dinkums, by Glenn McFarlane
In this recently published book, The Fair Dinkums, Glenn McFarlane examines a cohort of men from the 8th Reinforcements of the 7th Battalion, who embarked on the Anchises in August 1915. They were called the Fair Dinkums because they knew about the disaster at Gallipoli, and enlisted anyway, knowing the risks. Among this group was McFarlane's great-uncle Alf Layfield.
Also among the group was a name well-known to the folk of Moonee Valley - the renowned William Scurry whose invention of the drip-system of firing a rifle to aid in the evacuation of Gallipoli won him the Distinguished Conduct Medal and promotion to Commissioned rank.
McFarlane draws heavily on the letters Scurry wrote home to his mother at 70 Middle St, Ascot Vale, and mentions other local men, both with the 8th Reinforcements and other units.
The one big hole in McFarlane's work is the lack of an index, so I have indexed references to our local men, and have put the page numbers on their web-pages in The Empire Called website.
McFarlane follows the service and fate of the above men, and others from the 8th Reinforcements of the 7th Battalion, including those who were transferred to other Battalions. Endnotes provide sources, though there is no bibliography. McFarlane has provided a number of previously unpublished photos and portraits of the men.
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Can a recruit change his eye colour?
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| 22 Battalion, newly arrived from Egypt, going into line at the southern part of Lone Pine, 6 September 1915 AWM A00847 |
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Scotch College - The School at War
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Bert McDonald and a sprig of Wattle
If a relative is mentioned on the Honour Roll of the Church, he may be pictured in the McDonald photos.
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