Flinders Lane is one of the 'places' which features in Devitt Family stories across the first half of the 20th Century. I've always pricked up my ears when Flinders Lane is spoken about it and love wondering along it and the now cafe filled lanes which seem to emanate from it. I keep an eye out for photographs of Flinders Lane taken at the time when my grandfather, Jack Devitt; two Devitt grand aunts -Victoria and Adelaide and their husbands, mother Paula Devitt, aunt Joyce Devitt family members worked in and around Flinders Lane, part of the 'Rag Trade'. I'm looking forward to writing about Flinders Lane and to set the scene, have included a photo perhaps in the 1920's/30's... Flinders Lane - Image acknowledgement - 'State Library of Victoria'
I'm currently looking out writing relating to family history which I've posted elsewhere since I began my family history quest in 2010. This process is likely to result in an even more eclectic blog! The following post features something I wrote in 2013 or thereabouts for my 'Armchair Economics' blog ( I still post to it, but very intermittently)... While doing family history over recent years, and with a background in economics, I've found myself reflecting on my family's role in the economy over time - dancers; milliners; coal trimmers; riveters; printers; soldiers; bookkeepers; farmers; bookkeepers and accountants; secretaries; sales representatives/commercial travellers; stonemasons; coal trimmers; teachers and more. I've found myself thinking about the entrepreneurs and the workers; the wealthy and the impoverished, and more. I've also come across evidence of the impact of economic instability in their lives. In a small photograph album created by my grandmother, Lily Hooper, I found this photograph taken during her time as a ballet dancer with J C Williamson in the early years of the 20th Century. The picture is of young dancers working with the J. C Williamson company in the early 1900's--I think perhaps Lily's in the back row - second from your RHS - as I see a resemblance to photos of my uncle at about the same age. My grandmother's family were associated with the theatre 'industry', with at least five Hooper sisters becoming dancers - Edie, Minnie, Violet, Ruby and Lily - and Minnie and Ruby moving on to become ballet mistresses, choreographers and owners of their own dance schools in Sydney. Both went on to become quite wealthy women in Sydney, with large share portfolios and significant estates. There are rich narratives in my family about their stories and they feature heavily on 'Trove' (National Library of Australia's online archive).
I started to wonder whether there is in fact, a field of economics known as 'cultural economics', and it seems there is. Looking into the area of 'cultural economics' seems worthwhile, and timely given Cate Blanchett's eulogy at Gough Whitlam's funeral service, which spoke tellingly of the role of arts and culture in the socio-economic life of Australia. Cate Blanchett referred to the production of culture as an end in itself. The production and consumption of 'widgets' is very different from the way in which cultural goods are produced and consumed as an end product during a performance by hard working, fit, skilful ballerinas at a theatre such as Her Majesty's in Melbourne. My grandmother was one of those dancers. Of seven Hooper daughters, at least five were dancers. While Lily's older sisters, Minnie and Ruby, become highly regarded ballet mistresses for J C Williamson, my grandmother did not encourage her daughters to become dancers, describing it to them as a very hard life. These young dancers worked very hard and may have been exploited. My grandmother's world in the paid work force was competitive, her career had a very limited life, there was an intensity about her life which became the substance of dreams - her trips to New Zealand; the ephemera in her treasured trunk; and now for me, the articles about her world I find in Trove. In terms of family narratives .... forward 50-65 years from the photograph, and I remember my grandmother, with my grandfather (her stage door Johnny)... living on their pension in Caulfield North, Melbourne. They owned their own home, had interesting furniture which they kept well polished and preserved, ate well because they knew how to cook nutritious meals out of 'the basics' and Poppa's well cared for vegetable garden. They didn't have extensive bank deposits, perhaps because my grandfather had been attracted to the 'sport of kings', but also because he had been a commercial traveller, then in older years a men's clothing salesman at London Stores. I always saw them as producers - of nutritious meals, which I loved seeing made and then eating together; of vegetables and lemons from their always to be remembered lemon tree, in front of which their are countless photographs of relatives standing as family photographs were produced. Poppa was always the family 'shoe shine' and repair man; and of course the gardener. They saved their pension to travel to visit their son Lex, an unmarried farmer on a bush block in the North East. While there they would work hard to support him; providing nutritious meals; mending his clothes; cleaning; painting; chopping and piling up the wood heap, and more - often going back to Melbourne for 'a rest'! They would provide child care and food and board to grandchildren, from toddler hood to late adolescence, who always loved visiting them, and provide some respite for their older daughter, my mother - who sometimes needed a bit of extra support. They provided produce to others; my grandmother was always knitting for someone - keeping Poppa and Lex supplied each year with a new cowl neck woollen jumper. They had regular routines and a well balanced life which enabled them to productively contribute to their own and other people's welfare and standard of living. Now I'm out of the paid workforce myself, living on an only very slightly topped up pension, in my own home, and producing more in terms of a 'household economy' ... making instead of buying cakes and Christmas gifts; contributing to my friend's and family members quality of life via family history projects; making my home operate more efficiently in a greenhouse sense; maintaining and updating my own computer system; discarding paper to recyclers, old clothes to opportunity shops for redistributing, and more; until recently providing love and support and assistance with evening meal and monitoring service to my beloved 100 year old mother in a nursing home. While I did most of these things while working - they were less frequently done... I continue to pay someone $25 a fortnight for mowing and tidying my garden, with other expenses paid on an as needs basis eg. pruning; removal of branches and sometimes gum trees... I'm also involved with U3A and have been spending some time testing the website and contributing to its updating and further development. Sometimes I think of the imputed value of what I'm contributing to GDP. The imputed value of the services provided by members in the provision of U3A courses would be considerable - barely reflected at all in the financial accounts of U3A... Armchair theorizing about the role of the Household Economy has begun to preoccupy me more since my retirement , reminding me of the work of the wonderful then Melbourne University economist Duncan Ironmonger who inspired me to think about it during the late 1980's. My memories of my grandparents, Jack and Lily Devitt, provide a rich vein for thinking about this. (Armchair theorizing about: Paid and unpaid work; Gross Domestic Product and the Household Economy; Imputed values; Measuring the Quality of Life; Safety Nets;Traditional and non-traditional gendered roles in work - and more!) It is always a thrill when 'oral history' family stories passed down generations are confirmed during family history research, when they suddenly make more sense. Like my sister, I've found that remembered stories, stories passed on by our mother, are usually 'right' and can often provide wonderful 'leads'. Oral histories suggested that my grandmother, Rose Lee (McCann) had worked 'in the canteens' in England during World War I. My grandfather James Lee's war records show that he had been stationed at Perham Downs on the Salisbury Plains in Sussex during the war - coming across a photo of the Perham Downs canteen gave me goosebumps, as this could have been the canteen in which she worked. Other stories suggested that she may have run a boarding house and even a hotel at some time. Now while I don't have evidence of this, a cousin posted this picture on Facebook some time ago, with the caption 'having breakfast using my grandmother's cutlery'. Rose's cutlery is rather beautiful, isn't it. A copy of 'The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam' treasured by her mother, my 'Aunty Bunty', was equally treasured by this cousin. Intrigued, I took the photo below. The publication date, 1896 suggests that it could have been given my my grandfather to my grandmother, or perhaps by a family member to them both, as a wedding present in 1904. It made me feel quite strange looking at it, as my parents had a copy of 'The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam' in our bookshelves when I grew up. None of my friend's families seemed to have a copy in their bookshelves. Did my father's parents give this to my mother and father as a present at their war time wedding in Sydney 1942? If not, did my my father give it to my mother, remembering that his parents had a copy? What of an Irish connection? My mother passed on her understanding that my grandfather's Devitt forebears had left Ireland for Liverpool, moving on from there to Newcastle Upon Tyne in Northern England where they settled. This all appears to have been true, though there was an intervening period in which my Irish born bricklayer/stone mason great great grandfather Edward Patrick Devitt and his wife Anne (possibly Rourke or O'Rourke) lived in Manchester where my great grandfather was born in 1858 (1871 UK Census).
Sometimes oral history is a bit sketchy and there are 'holes' even 'black holes', often resulting from family secrets! My Scottish born father died when I was fifteen, limiting my accress to Lee stories to those told during my childhood. I knew my father was born in Edinburgh, remember him talking about Leith and 'The Firth of Forth', I thought I was a Scot through and through on my father's side. However reading through Scottish census data during the 1800's I realised I was much more Irish than I thought. My great grandfathers, Anthony Lee and Bernard McCann were both born in Ireland, as was Rose Anne McCann (Kelly), my great grandmother. While my other great grandmother, Barbara Lee (Sullivan) had been born in Scotland, her father had been born in Ireland. All my paternal great great grandparents had been born in Ireland, appearing to have migrated to Scotland in the Irish Famine decades or after political unrest or economic decline in Ireland. This has led me to reflect on the depth of the Irish connection, to think about whether it has influenced me, to look for remnants of my Irish history in my life. I've come up with one or two - the first is that above our kitchen table when I was young was an illustrated poem which I loved to look at. The illustration featured a road up to a house on a hill. It has taken me some time to fully remember, but now I realise, and my brother has thought back to confirm, that it was 'The Irish Blessing'..."May the road rise to meet you, May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, The rains fall soft upon your fields. And until we meet again, May God hold you in the palm of his hand". I wonder why it was there, who chose it, and why? No one else had an 'Irish Blessing' at their house and my father seemed to be quite fond of it. On St Patrick's Day at 'the Northo' in Benalla just a few weeks ago, my sister and I were singing along with the Scottish fiddle band 'Nessie' playing as part of St Patrick's Day celebrations. We were singing along with 'Cockles and Mussels'... you know, 'In Dublin's fair city, where the girls are so pretty'... Suddenly we looked at one another, knowingly, recognizing that when we were little we sat around the kitchen table after meals, singing this song with our father, who had taught it to us. I was telling this to my father's also Scottish born cousin, 90 year old Bill Tully, son of my paternal grandfather's sister Elizabeth, who now lives in a nursing home setting in Vancouver. Bill laughed and said, that is strange, as it is a song which he has chosen to sing recently with his carer. His grandfather, my great grandfather, was born in Ireland, first appearing in the Scottish census in 1871 after the family had migrated from County Roscommon in Ireland. So, sometimes it is the family story, the somewhat 'out of place' treasured family object or paperwork, or the rather odd family tradition, which has a place in the search for meaning during the family history journey. 'Alive, alive oh... Alive, alive oh, singing cockels and mussels... ' Bev Lee April 9 2018 |
The Journey ...An 'occasional blog' recording elements of my renewed family history journey. This is the second wave in my 'family history' journey. The first lasted from 2010 to 2014. with intermittent bursts since then. It's time to revisit, to share more stories, to edit, to tackle uncertainties... Categories
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