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Blog postIn March 1907, Perth’s acting Coroner, James Cowan, held an enquiry into the death of 5-month-old Ethel Booth. The baby had been in the care of Alice Mitchell in Edward Street prior to her death. The inquest took place in the coroner’s court, located in what is now referred to as the old Police Court building on Beaufort Street, Perth.
At the time, this building was quite new, having been completed in 1905. It was built with dressed stone from Donnybrook, in the state’s south west. Ma -
Blog postThe police station in Lincoln Street, Highgate Hill, was built in 1897. It consisted of a charge room and two lock-up cells. Living quarters for the officer in charge were added in Smith Street in 1906. Apparently there was enough room in the area behind the station to keep a cow.
In 1907 the officer in charge at Highgate Hill was Corporal Patrick O’Halloran. He visited Alice Mitchell’s home in Edward Street in February 1907, and was disturbed by what he found. After the death of baby -
Blog postEdward Street, Perth, is where Alice Mitchell was living at the time of her arrest in 1907. It lies just north of the railway line and the Farmer freeway, to the east of Perth’s central city area. As in 1907, the street today has a mixture of residential buildings, workshops, offices and vacant land. But unlike in 1907, it’s now fully paved and sewered. The area is no longer swampy in winter, and you can’t smell the Claisebrook ‘drain’ on summer evenings.
This wasn’t the only address -
Blog postOne of the things I enjoy about writing historical nonfiction is doing the research. Reading books and old newspaper articles, tracking down dates and biographical information, hunting for small details such as a train timetable and visiting the State Records Office to look at yellowing documents are great ways to lose all sense of time and current concerns.
Railway timetable from 1905 (found on Trove) OneNote notebooks Managing the information I collect is another matter. It’s easy t -
Blog postTwo years ago I wrote a post about Jane and Bridget Mason, the two youngest sisters of my great great grandmother, Susan Mason. I mentioned that I'd come across a child named Naomi, reportedly born in 1881 to a Jane Mason in the Adelaide Railway station. I wasn't sure if this was the same Jane Mason or not. A couple of weeks ago I was excited to receive an email from someone who is a descendant
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Blog postI've just discovered that the contact form on this blog isn't working, and may not have been working for some time. Apparently this is a problem affecting many blogs and Blogger is working on it. I don't know how many messages haven't been forwarded to me. If you've tried to contact me in the recent past and haven't received a reply, my apologies. Until the problem is fixed, please send messages
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Blog postI’d like to share with you two of the books on my coffee table which have special meaning for me.
What Colour is the Sea? The first book, What Colour is the Sea? is written and illustrated by my sister, Katie Stewart. It’s published in hardback by Fremantle Press.
What colour is the sea? Like many apparently simple questions in real life, the answer is “it all depends”. Sometimes the best way to get an answer to your question is to go and see for yourself.
As Koala dis -
Blog postJames Cowan c 1900 Edith Cowan’s name is familiar to most Australians. She has a federal electorate named after her, as well as a university. Her face appears on the $50 banknote. But her husband James Cowan is almost forgotten.
Edith’s fame is well deserved. In 1921 she became the first woman to be elected to an Australian parliament when she won the state seat of West Perth. But prior to her election she had spent a lifetime working to improve the rights and welfare of men, women a -
Blog postSt Andrews Church, Wormingford, where most of James and Sarah Whybrew's family were baptised. After discovering that records for Sarah Baldwin's family are now available online, I decided to look again at the background for James Whybrew, Sarah's husband. Previously I'd come to a brick wall with his birth in about 1801 (a very rough date provided by the 1841 UK census). I didn't know where
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Blog postAre you afraid of letting God get a grip on you? Do you stand at a distance, too scared to let him get close? Do you fear what he might do with you, or ask you to do, if you handed over your life to him? In one sense, we should all be afraid of God. We should never underestimate his power and awesomeness. It is a dreadful thing to fall, unprepared, into the hands of the living God. But it's
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Blog postThis week I've been doing some digging into the history of Sarah Baldwin, my 3x great grandmother. Sarah was the mother of David Whybrew, who married Susan Mason in Adelaide in 1869. What I've found is a still a little speculative, but I thought I'd share it, along with an unusual story about dragons. (Scroll to the end of the post for the dragon story and a summary in tree form of the people
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Blog postAs I've mentioned before, one of the toughest brick walls in my family history research is the fate of Rose Whybrew. Rose, born in Kent, England, in 1877, married George Henry Anthony in Colchester in 1897. Their first child, Harriet, lived only a few months. Rose gave birth to a son, George William, in 1907, not long before the family migrated to the United States via Canada. They settled in
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Blog postAugusta Heinbockel was born in 1855 in Melbourne, the daughter of German immigrants, Heinrich and Anna Heinbockel. Tall and always elegantly dressed, she was a woman of many talents and interests. She gained some fame, and even notoriety, in Australia at the turn of the 20th century. But like many adventurous women who died childless, she is now forgotten.
Her name appeared frequently in the social columns in Melbourne from the early 1890s. She became well known for her performances a -
Blog postFremantle Press have just listed my book in the Coming Soon section of their website. So now I can show you the cover for The Edward Street Baby Farm.
It’s not due for release until October. But you can read all about it and even read the first couple of chapters on the Fremantle Press page.
While you’re there, check out the other fascinating Coming Soon books, and my sister Katie Stewart’s recently released book for children, What Colour is the Sea? It’s beautiful.
Th -
Blog postI've recently put together some of the articles from this blog and my archives that seem relevant to the present times. They cover topics such as faith, trust, doubt, disasters and questions about God's goodness. The result is 'Faith in Crisis', a small eBook in PDF format that's free to download from my website. I hope and pray that it will be an encouragement to you. UPDATE I've now
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Blog postA friend asked recently if she could reprint some of the articles about faith from my Rumours of Hope blog. She wanted to give them to members of her church congregation to encourage them. That led me to wonder if it would be worth putting a small collection of such articles together as a book which could be downloaded.
So I’ve selected thirty articles which I think might be helpful to people in the current COVID crisis. After a lot of editing and formatting, the result is Faith in C< -
Blog postWhere do you go when life hurts? Who do you turn to when your health falters, when relationships sour, when things happen which leave you feeling sad, angry, weary or frightened? As Christians we know the answer: "Take it to the Lord in prayer." Unfortunately, despite the old song, many of us have learned that it's selfish to pray for ourselves. Ignoring the ache in our hearts, we methodically
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Blog postAs I mentioned at the end of my last post about Rose Davis, I came across a birth registration for Elizabeth Davis in New South Wales while I was looking for Rose, and wondered if she was also a child of George Davis and Catherine (nee Mason). Now that I've done a little research, I've confirmed that she was. Elizabeth's birth was registered in New South Wales in 1870. Her parents' names were
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Blog postIt's always exciting to receive a comment or a message from someone who has found a link to their own family history on my blog. This week I heard from a descendent of Susan Mason's sister Catherine, and discovered another Rose in the family that I hadn't come across before. Port Adelaide c 1870. Image from State Library of SA Catherine (sometimes spelled Katherine in records) was John and
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Blog postThere's a false understanding of the gospel which goes something like this: "Human beings are wretched, worthless creatures, quite useless and valueless to God. But because Jesus died for us, we have become precious to God." It's false because it begins the gospel in the middle of the story. Fallen human beings truly are wretched creatures. But that isn't how God created us. He made us in his
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Blog postI've mentioned before that one of my goals for this year is to bring this blog up to date. That means, amongst other things, updating the family trees (available in the top tabs) and making sure that the Index of Individuals has useful links to profiles and relevant posts. One difficulty with doing this is that often the most up-to-date information I have is stored online, on my family trees
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Blog postSometimes I wonder if God really is good. When I watch the news, or read a newspaper, I wonder how we can keep saying "God is in control". When I see the terrible pain and suffering that people inflict on each other, not just in the world, but even in the church, I sometimes begin to doubt that God is even real. Where is he? What is he doing? Are we just wasting our time in church on Sunday?
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Blog postThe Evil That Men Do, by Marcus K. Paul, (Sacristy Press, 2016) takes an unflinching look at some of the most shameful events in the history of the church, such as the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition. It also examines periods in Christian history which are commonly held up to ridicule, such as 16th and 17th century Puritanism, and Victorian religiosity and "do-goodism".The book is well
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Blog postThe experience of working with a publisher, versus self-publishing a book, is very interesting. I might even say it’s relaxing by comparison.
Last week I was reminded of how much work is involved in self-publishing, and how stressful it can be, when I spent a whole day re-formatting the manuscript for the paperback version of my first book, Susan.
I originally published the book on Amazon KDP in 2017. Last year I corrected a few typos and added a couple of sentences to the tex -
Blog postWhen I was a child, I went to church with my parents and attended Sunday school every week. By the time I turned fourteen, there were no other kids my age in the church. The Sunday school supervisor decided that, since he was short of teachers, I could take on a class. So I found myself teaching a class of ten and eleven-year-olds. It was daunting, but I enjoyed finding ways to bring the old
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Blog postOne of the main characters in my upcoming book, The Edward Street Baby Farm, was born in Limerick in 1855. Harriet Lenihan moved to Australia in the 1880s and eventually came to Perth. Her father, Maurice Lenihan, was owner and editor of the Limerick Reporter, and was Mayor of Limerick for several years. He had connections with many of the leading political figures in Ireland. Harriet was very
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Blog postWhen I was growing up, I associated the name 'Hebden Bridge' with romance. My parents had fond memories of taking long walks from Hebden Bridge to scenic Hardcastle Crags when they were courting. By the time I visited the town for the first time in the 1980s, it was an attractive and trendy tourist centre, full of craft shops, boutique food outlets and cafes. But back in the 1860s, when my
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Blog postHusbands Bosworth in Leicestershire is one of those places that I’ve never visited, though I would certainly like to see it one day. So what follows is what I can glean from the Internet. For several generations it was home to the Orton family, ancestors of my maternal grandfather, Albert Edwin Orton Farmland north west of Husbands Bosworth (1) It’s thought that the name was originally “
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Blog postBee mosaic in Manchester Town Hall Image from wikipedia. Everywhere you go in Manchester, you’ll find bees - carved into buildings, decorating bollards and fountains, printed on flags, bumper stickers and tee-shirts, even tattooed on people’s arms. Originally the worker bee symbolised the hard-working and productive labourers in the factories, those hives of activity during the industrial
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Blog postOn 2 March 1834, the Parmelia sailed through the sandstone heads of Port Jackson in New South Wales. Author Thomas Keneally describes the Parmelia's voyage and arrival in his book, The Great Shame: A Story of the Irish in the Old World and the New. Hugh Larkin, one of Keneally's wife's ancestors, was one of the 200 or so Irish prisoners on board. John Mason, my great great great grandfather, was
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Blog postWe now leave the villages and towns of Essex so familiar to my great grandfather William Beales, and travel to Adelaide, the birthplace of his wife, Eliza Whybrew. Rundle Street, Adelaide in 1845, by S. T. Gill. (Image from the State Library of Victoria.) Eliza's grandparents, John and Catherine Mason, arrived in South Australia in December 1844, when the colony was less than a decade old.
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Blog post"May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." (2 Corinthians 13:14) I once attended a church where the minister would bow his head and intone "The grace of our Lord..." when anyone walked in late, as if the service was about to end. His congregation soon learned to turn up on time! Sometimes the words do seem barely more
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Blog postThe strangely-named village of St Osyth lies about twelve miles (19 km) from Colchester, heading south-east towards the coast of Essex in southern Englad. It's named after a legendary seventh-century chieftan's daughter, Osyth or Osgyth (pictured here in an illuminated manuscript about her life). She apparently left her arranged marriage to become a nun and set up a convent in the village of
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Blog postIn this series of posts on places where my ancestors once lived, we now travel across many counties, from Lancashire in the north-west of England to Colchester, in the south-east. Colchester is one of the oldest towns in Britain. It has had a military presence since the Twentieth Victorious Valeria Legion established a garrison there in 43 AD, during the Roman conquest of Britain under Emperor
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Blog postTrust is important in any relationship. But there are two levels of trust. The first involves our expectation that the other person will do us good rather than harm and will carry out what they say they will do. Over time we learn whether or not to believe the things they promise. The second, deeper, level of trust involves our sense of safety when we are with them, and our willingness to
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Blog postJohn Ward and his family left Rastrick in Yorkshire, sometime before 1901, and returned to Lancashire. They settled in Milnrow, not far from Littleborough, where they'd been living before they went to Yorkshire. Cottage handloom weaver at work. (Image from Wikimedia.org) Milnrow, located in a valley on the River Beal, was similar to Littleborough in many ways. It had once been a quiet
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Blog postThe so-called Roman Road on Blackstone Edge near Littleborough.Photo by Humphrey Bolton Let's follow John and Mary Ward, as they leave Walton le Dale in the 1870s and move to Littleborough, close to the Lancashire border with West Yorkshire. How different they must have found this village in the hilly, sheep-grazing moorlands of the Pennines, to the flat farmland and market gardens around
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Blog postThe sun was shining, but the air had a bitterly cold bite to it, when we left the station in Preston, Lancashire, and made our way south in December last year. We were planning to walk to Walton le Dale via the London Road (the A6), over the stone arched bridge which is famous as the site where Oliver Cromwell fought a battle with the Royalists in 1648. Instead we came to a footbridge,
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Blog postHappy New Year everyone! The start of a new year seems a good time to decide on a theme for the posts on Clogs and Clippers for the next twelve months. Last year I chose to review some of the unsolved mysteries in my family history. Having just come back from visiting some of the locations in England where my ancestors lived, I've decided my theme for this year will be "places". I'll be
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Blog postBack in 2014, I described how I'd found records for a man in Australia with the same name as my Leicestershire-born great great grandfather, Thomas Brown Orton. My curiosity was piqued and I looked into this younger man's story a little. I soon realised that it was probably co-incidental that the two men were both named Thomas Brown. My great great grandfather (born 1842) was named after his
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Blog postShe was a young, childless widow, an immigrant with no property and no income. He was a respectable land owner in a small town. Their story has a touch of romance, but it's hardly the stuff of history. Why is it included in the Bible? What distinguished Ruth and Boaz from those around them, who lived and died, then rested forgotten within a couple of generations? Why does Ruth´s story appear
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Blog postThis week, 24 October, marks the 100th anniversary of the death of William Whybrew (1884-1918). He died in France as the First World War was coming to an end, only three weeks before the Armistice was signed on 11 November, and just a few days before his 34th birthday. His body was never recovered from the battlefield. He is honoured at the Vis-en-artois Memorial in Pas de Calais. His military
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Blog postThe spire, all that remains of Stowell Memorial church whereAlbert and Hannah married in 1878 I've written a little about Albert Hough and Hannah Holt before. Their daughter Alice was my mother's maternal grandmother. But there are several gaps and puzzling details in their story that I've yet to resolve. Albert Hough and Hannah Holt married in Salford, Lancashire, in August 1878. At the time
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Blog postThis post is a bit of a break from my "unsolved mysteries" series. We've just returned from a holiday visiting family in Alice Springs, which included taking a 'detour' via Adelaide. The detour was deliberate - we wanted to avoid having to get to the airport in Perth before dawn for the direct flight to Alice. And besides, we both like Adelaide. While we were enjoying a walk we decided (or
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Blog postShop Street, Galway, IrelandPhoto by Peter Gorman* After my success in discovering new information about the St Leger family, I decided to see if I could find out more about another Irish family in my mother's line, Patrick and Margaret Hardman or Hardiman (nee Jenkins.) The Hardmans apparently arrived in England between the birth of their daughter Elizabeth (my maternal grandmother's great
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Blog postImagine that a friend gives you a present, rather clumsily wrapped. You know that your friend has very different tastes to yours, in fact, if you were quite truthful, you'd say that they have poor taste. So you unwrap the parcel with some trepidation. Inside you find a plain white candle in some sort of glass candle holder. You try to look impressed, but the thing is unattractive, hideously
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Blog postHere's a paradox - the longer we've been a Christian, the more we come to realise how sinful we really are. We discover that our antagonism towards God runs very deep. Does this sound familiar? Before I turned to Christ, I sometimes felt guilty about specific things I'd done, but I didn't know what to do with the guilt. It was a joy to discover that because of Jesus' death on the cross, I'm
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Blog postPoverty, chastity and obedience are the traditional vows of those entering religious orders. Benedict, however, added a fourth vow for his order - stability. Benedictine monks and nuns are expected to remain within the same community for life. This might seem strange, even harsh to us. We expect to move house and change jobs several times over a lifetime. Our whole society is hooked on the
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Blog postA lot of the articles on my old website "One Candle" were out of date, and the site itself was difficult to maintain, so I've closed it. I'm planning to edit or rewrite the articles worth keeping and post them here. If you are looking for a particular article that used to be on that site, please contact me and I'll send you a copy.
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