Table of contents for Edition 13, 2020 in Traces

I am sure I’m not the only one who is looking forward to the imminent end of 2020, with feelings of relief and accomplishment for simply having endured. With the printing of this 13th edition of Traces, we bid farewell (and good riddance) to an extraordinary year that will go down in the history books for future students and historians to study. Returning to current research, we have a wonderful collection of articles for you to discover in this edition’s pages. Our Insight articles include a new story on page 10 by regular writer Roy Maloy, who shares with us an often forgotten part of Victorian history – the great fire of Melbourne in 1897, in which much of the CBD was destroyed. In Crime and Punishment (page 16), Amanda…

bum-trap a sheriff’s officer or follower – individuals who were hugely unpopular with convicts, and were also known as bulldogs, hawks, lurchers and shoulder clappers (because of the way they escorted debtors). bush’d poor, without money. chiv a knife; to chiv a person is to stab or cut them with a knife. flesh-bag a shirt. fly vigilant, cunning, not easily duped. hopper-dockers shoes – nicknamed this because barefoot people hop to ‘dock’ their feet, or ‘clod-hoppers’ after the way people hop over earthen clods. knuckler a pickpocket. lushy cove a drunken man. morning sneak an act of thievery executed in the early morning, by slipping in through the door while the servant or shopman is cleaning the premises. mollisher a woman. resurrection cove someone who steals bodies from graves. spoony…

Like that of many women architects and innovators – particularly those working in what we now refer to as STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) – her role was relegated to the shadows. In recent years, a number of historians, scholars, architects and curators have re-examined the part that Mahony played in the Griffin story, and it is now accepted that she was an extraordinarily gifted and skilled architect in her own right, a creative equal to her husband, and a leading force within the Griffin vision. Mahony was only the second woman to graduate in architecture from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1894). She was also the first registered female architect in the US state of Illinois and is thought to have been the first female registered architect in…

It is always so interesting to read Australian historical stories. Coming from the United Kingdom, I initially dismissed Australian history, thinking there just wasn’t that much of it. But since arriving here and reading about the family history of my wife, Belinda, I’ve realised just how much depth and breadth there is to the history this country has. I’m always keen to read more! Richard Harrison It is surprising how much Australian history remains hidden, lost and forgotten. Stories like the one presented in ‘The Convict Valley’ by Mark Dunn where we hear about the connections between the Indigenous people and runaway convicts. So many of us have convicts in our ancestry, but are unaware of this. We need to uncover these stories. Thanks Traces for leading the way. Jenny…

Captain Hector Waller, Commander of the HMAS Perth, loved animals. He was most pleased to be given a young cat when, in 1941, he took control of an experienced battleship, which had already seen action in the Mediterranean. The cat had a domesticated Thai mother and a wild Bengal father, and distinctive features, including an extra claw on each front paw. Almost all of the nearly 700 sailors on board took to the new addition to the crew immediately. She had an engaging, warm character. Yet, there was another side to her nature that drew every sailor’s respect. She was an exceptional ‘ratter’ – a killer of rodents, which were the scourge of all battleships. Soon after she joined the Captain on the boat in Sydney, she knocked over a…

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I first fell in love with Charlotte as a child. My maternal grandparents, Nonnie and Papa, would tell us enthralling stories about our great-great-great-great-grandmother Charlotte de Waring Atkinson and her family. In my memory, Charlotte always shines as being clever, beautiful, rebellious and fiercely independent – like a Jane Austen heroine. Even her name was romantic – de Waring, a reminder of her French aristocratic forebears. It was only later that we discovered that the ‘de’ in de Waring hadn’t actually been used in centuries, but family stories are like that: romanticised, exaggerated and embellished. We grew up in a family of storytellers and book lovers. Both my parents would tell fascinating, colourful anecdotes about their lives, their adventures and the people they met. My grandparents also told tantalising tales…

Historic Trailside Museum destroyed by fire The Trailside Museum, located near Cradle Mountain in Tasmania, was destroyed by a fire in November, shortly after undergoing building restorations. Parks and Wildlife and Tasmania Fire Services crews arrived at the scene as soon as possible, but the museum building was found virtually collapsed. Built approximately 90 years ago, the building was nestled among beautiful King Billy pines and Tasmanian fagus trees. Friends and frequent visitors of the museum said it was devastating to hear the news, but were thankful that the exhibits that were normally on site were not on the premises at the time. The Trailside Museum used to house a wealth of Cradle Mountain memorabilia and is a key piece of Cradle Mountain National Park’s history. It was located on…

In the 18th and 19th centuries, more than 160,000 people were uprooted from the British Isles and shipped to a new colonial outpost in Australia. The Industrial Revolution had led to an uptick in petty crime, which the government dealt with by forcibly relocating perpetrators to the colonies. Convicts brought a lot of things with them to Australian shores, such as their own slang language, known as ‘flash’. In 1831, the Sydney Gazette described flash as the ‘language of the thieves, or the low Londoners…’ It was also known as Thieves’ Cant or Peddler’s French, with multiple variations. This slang existed in many forms across Europe and thrived during a population boom in the 16th century, according to Maurizio Gotti’s book The Language of Thieves and Vagabonds. Flash is a…

I have to admit that this discovery is only a partial solution, but partial solutions are better than none, clarifying an issue that has long been the subject of wild speculation. Colonel Gibbes emigrated to Australia in 1834 after serving as an army officer in the United Kingdom. Details about his adult life and career can be readily found online, and there is no need to repeat them here. Suffice to say that the information is lacking in one important area; his parents’ names have never been established beyond all reasonable doubt, and his origins and genealogy have been the subject of many fanciful suggestions. Wikipedia describes him as someone ‘about whom much has been invented’. Family trees posted online at Ancestry, for example, allege that he was the son…

Yet the books themselves sit forlornly on shelves in local museums. They look impressively historical, too valuable to discard. Except when they find their way into second-hand bookstores or antique shops, where customers cherry-pick the most appealing volumes as antiquarian ornaments. I own several myself. But pharmacy registers are more than mere decorations. Dating back into the 19th century, they are full of hidden details to enrich local and family history research. The trick is not to be overwhelmed by their seemingly indecipherable scribbles. Let’s focus instead on what can be revealed to bring their stories to life. Prescription books were maintained by chemists, druggists and pharmacists to keep a record of the medicines they were dispensing to customers. They are tall and narrow, usually with a large letter inked…