There were two beloved 'Lil's' in my maternal grandfather John Edward Devitt's life, his wife, my ballerina grandmother 'Lil Hooper', and his older sister, 'Lil Devitt'. Born in Adelaide in 1881, Lily Elizabeth Devitt was the eldest living daughter of my great grandparents, stonemason John Edward Devitt Senior and Elizabeth Miller. The family moved to Melbourne after a depression in South Australia the mid 1880's. There were two younger sisters, Victoria, 'good with her hands' who became a milliner, and Adelaide. Adelaide became a bookkeeper in Flinders Lane but was 'good at art' and would have liked to go to art school. Patching together pieces of her life, I think primary school teacher Aunt Lil may have been regarded as the 'blue stocking' of the family. Aunt Lil reading in a hammock outside family home, 18 Balston Street, Balaclava Aunt Lil taught at Caulfield Central School in Balaclava Road near Caulfield Park for many years, including when my mother was a student there. Mum wrote in notes on her life, "Dad’s sister, Aunt Lil, taught sixth grade at Caulfield Central School, but I was in Mr Gollop’s sixth.... On Monday morning we’d have assembly – I can still hear Aunt Lil singing ‘the Grand Old Duke of York’. I don’t know why, perhaps it was to march into class". I thought of Aunt Lil a lot in 1969 when I completed a teaching round at Caulfield North Central School in the old two-story building in which she would have taught during the 1920’s, possibly in decades before and after, sat in the staff room, organized her lessons, prepared the chalk board for each day's lessons, and more. I've long intended to visit the Public Records Office of Victoria to retrieve records of her teaching career from the Education Department archives. I'd like to know more about her teacher training, other schools at which she taught. I wonder at her teaching at a State School, as her family were staunchly Catholic. Perhaps at that time being a nun was required, lay teachers were not accepted in Catholic schools? I have memories of meeting Aunt Lil when she was in a nursing home, remember her having a loving smile and a capacity to engage me as a young child. Perhaps this resulted from decades teaching children, as she never had children of her own. I remember her husband, Irishman 'Jack O'Donehue', standing at her side, watching carefully over her. In her eighties, her body was riddled with arthritis, fingers permanently curled. For most of her life, Aunt Lil would have been considered a 'spinster school teacher', but in 1931 when she was 50, she married widower Jack. Mum told me they had known one another in young adulthood before he married someone else. They seemed to have a happy married life together for over 30 years and clearly cared about one another. I always had a strong sense that my grandfather unconditionally loved and respected Aunt Lil. His renouncing Catholicism by marrying my Protestant grandmother didn't seen to have been a problem for Aunt Lil, who loved and was loved by my grandmother and her children. My mother writes in her notes that 'My sister Joyce was born at Wilgah Street– another home birth. I remember being taken for a walk by Dad’s sister, Aunt Lil, and when we arrived back I had a little sister.' This photo may well have been taken on that day... Aunt Lil’s support would have been important when her older brother Vincent’s wife was hospitalized following a with mental health breakdown in 1914 when their children were only 4, 3 and 1 year old. Aunt Gladys was a patient at the Kew Psychiatric Hospital from 1914 to 1969; Uncle Vin had moved to Perth in 1929 with the children and died in 1942. I wonder if Aunt Lil maintained some contact with, perhaps was the power of attorney for Gladys at some stage?
In conclusion, in connecting my story to this month’s International Women's Day theme, I would like to celebrate the role my great aunt, Lily Elizabeth Devitt, played in the education of children in the Victorian suburb of Caulfield and surrounds, laying a foundation in the minds and behaviour of so many young people over first four decades of the 1900's. I'd like to also celebrate her role in our family, as a loving sister to my grandfather, a warm and accepting sister to my grandmother, and a clearly loving aunt to my mother and great aunt to me. Beverley Lee March 2023 Time Travellling! Questions I’d like to ask Aunt Lil – Where and how did she train to be a teacher? Was she a suffragette? What was her opinion of conscription during World War I? What position did members of the Catholic Devitt family take? Why didn’t she teach in a Catholic school? Did she in fact, have contact with Gladys at the Kew Psychiatric Hospital? How did she find her during her visits, when and if they were possible? Was she ‘power of attorney’? And more…. Comments are closed.
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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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