Table of contents for Edition 14, 2021 in Traces

Hello, fellow history lovers! I hope you are all ready for some truly insightful new articles, because the 14th edition of Traces has so much to offer. On page 8, Philippa Moore shares the story of a scandalous Hobart Town love triangle that proved that one of the colony’s most successful women was never allowed to forget her covict past. On page 13, you will find Dr Peter Hobbins’s latest offering, a fascinating account of a 19th-century typhoid epidemic that left rich historical information in its wake. In our Genealogy section, on page 39, Brad Argent from Ancestry explores military records and gives helpful advice on uncovering records from international forces. In celebration of International Women’s Day on 8 March, we take a look at some of history’s inspiring female…

Answer: a symphonion, circa 1889 Pictured is a symphonion, also known as a polyphon or a great German music box. This clockwork mechanical music box, circa 1889, played 641-millimetre-diameter perforated metal discs and was made in Germany. Mechanical music boxes such as this were very popular in Europe and North America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This symphonion was once found in the music department of Cole’s Book Arcade on Melbourne’s Little Collins Street, and would play when a penny was dropped into the slot. The metal disk inside had small projections on its surface, which would pluck metal prongs as it turned, sounding different musical notes. The symphonion was acquired after the closure of Cole’s Book Arcade in 1929, and is still in operational condition. If…

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history in this country is steeped in grief, racial inequality and violence. Since settlers first landed in 1788, the traditional owners of this land have been displaced, families separated and children torn from their parents. Indigenous peoples have survived and pushed back against these oppressive policies, surviving and protecting their culture. The following Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women have been key in resisting ongoing colonisation, advocating for Aboriginal rights, and educating future generations. Truganini Best known for surviving the European invasion and attempted genocide of Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples in the 1820s, Truganini was one of the last members of the Nuenonne clan. She grew up versed in her people’s traditional culture, but this was disrupted by European invasion. Through this, she lost many of…

Edition 13 really blew me away, especially reading about the Great Fire of Melbourne. I have ancestors that would have experienced it firsthand, and this article compelled me to look into their history further to discover whether and how they were affected. Heather Smyth Thank you for giving us such a broad range of topics in your magazines – there are so many areas of our rich history for us to reflect on and imagine how life was in those days. There’s something to interest everyone! Annette Hearn I really enjoyed the inclusion of the Women in History section in the last edition of Traces. As an architect, it was really interesting to read about Marion Mahony Griffin and her work in the field. George Baker Please, please, please don’t…

Investigations of disease outbreaks offer rich and often untapped insights into local history. The account detailed in this article was based on Dr Ashburton Thompson’s 24-page report to the Board of Health. It details the living conditions of many of the people – and cattle – featured in the story. This document also includes two unique maps of the suburb at an early phase of its development, including one marked with dots for every case of typhoid. Using these markers helps trace out the milk route for the Helsarmel Dairy – records that are rare for small 19th-century businesses, especially those run by women. A valuable inclusion is a labelled landscape photograph of Leichhardt, likely seen only a handful of times since 1886. Many similarly detailed documents, some stretching to…

A Certificate of Exemption effectively meant that its owner had renounced their culture and heritage. It allowed Aboriginal people to move freely around their town, drink at public bars and were not restricted in the way that most Indigenous peoples were at the time. The operations of exemption, and its traumatic and complex legacies are largely unknown. This lack of knowledge should not be surprising, given that the mechanisms for gaining exemption differed between Australia’s states and territories, and were largely hidden from the public gaze. Individual applicants underwent invasive and judgmental assessment by welfare staff and police officers, and character reports were sought from their employers and their neighbours. Aboriginal author Albert Holt gained exemption in Queensland in 1956. He described the interview questions asked by the Director of…

I don’t know how old I was when I first heard the name ‘Squizzy Taylor’. I think it was when I was 10 and something about Al Capone came on TV; my dad mentioned that Australia had a similar gangster somewhere in its dusty past. He also commented that it was a shame that our stories were never told. The name had such a ring to it that I couldn’t forget it after hearing it just once: Squizzy Taylor. The name ‘Squizzy’ sounded fictional but menacing, elegant and almost playful, and also dark and mysterious. Later in life, I would discover small bits and pieces about him, and I would become even more fascinated by the imagery that accompanied him and his life. His Australian story is set against an…

When it comes to searching for a specific military connection, we tend to be a little parochial, searching only those records relating to our ancestor’s country of birth. This is a very reasonable approach – and often pays off – but what happens if you draw a blank? Many of us may simply assume our ancestor played no active part in the military and move on to other areas of research; however, some of our ancestors liked to get about, and when the wars broke out, they signed up wherever they were. I spent a few hours browsing the vast military collections on Ancestry to see if I could find any Australians popping up in unexpected places. The following is just a tiny sample of what I found. My first…

Maria Riseley came to Hobart Town in 1805 under interesting circumstances. She had arrived in Sydney the year before on the ship The Experiment after being sentenced to seven years’ transportation for stealing almost a year’s salary’s worth of goods from her employer’s house. After working briefly as an assigned domestic servant, Maria ended up pregnant and back in the Parramatta Gaol, destined to lose her baby to an orphanage and resign herself to a life of hard labour and limited, if any, freedom. Her fortunes, however, soon changed, and in unexpected ways. Shortly after Maria gave birth to her daughter, Caroline, Edward Lord, an officer in the marines and rising star in the government of Van Diemen’s Land, turned up at the gaol in search of a ‘companion’. He…

Fear of what we might discover about the ‘convict stain’ meant that for decades we avoided looking closely at the penal colonies that formed the early communities. It was not until the late 20th century that we finally began to consider the details of the people who lived there and the conditions that existed. A striking topic that confronted researchers was the dire reputation of the women. Whichever way you turned, they were condemned. A chorus of outrage had created a bad reputation for all female convicts that lasted unchallenged for nearly 200 years. In the 20th century, historians at first accepted their reputation as fact, one infamously declaring that ‘they were not the kind of women to attract men into marriage’. A vigorous feminist defence was mounted in the…

Murder! Oh, oh!’ The cry was heard by neighbours and owners of French’s jewellery workshop in Clerkenwell, London, on the night of 23 November 1864 at approximately 10 pm. One neighbour went to his window to see what the commotion was about and saw a young man in the workshop forecourt with a broomstick in hand. The young man jumped up onto the mortar fence dividing the alleyway between the two properties and dropped the broomstick before scampering into the night. The owners of the workshop went to investigate and found one of their workmen, Francis Ploughman Roberts, in great distress. They took him to the hospital, where he died from a fractured skull. Four men were working in the workshop that night – two left just before 10 pm.…