Mrs Harding's Premier Tea Rooms, Mt Alexander Rd, Essendon

This shop was a little hard to identify, but with what appeared to be a saddle in the window of the shop to the right, and the beginning of a word 'SAD' at the bottom of the next door window, I went looking for a saddler's shop next door to a confectionery shop. On the left side of the confectionery shop is a shop advertising Medicated Soap, Weights (possibly scales), and cigarettes. This combination of shops appeared in Mt Alexander Rd, in the 1925 Sands & McDougall Directory:

In the window of the confectionery shop is an indistinct painted sign, saying "The Premier Tea Rooms". The store stocked Wrigley's Spearmint Chewing Sweet, Pascall Sweets, Fry's Chocolate and Cadbury's Chocolate. It must have been a great relief to Wrigleys when someone came up with the idea of replacing "Chewing Sweet" with "Gum". You can learn more about Mrs Harding and her Tea Rooms at the Time Travellers website.

Miss Stife's Pharmacy, Rose Street, Essendon, circa 1930

Miss Sylvia Margaret Stife's pharmacy in Rose St, Essendon. She seems to have been at this address from 1925, when she was first registered as a chemist, until at least 1931 when she appeared there in a Sands and McDougall Directory. Learn a little more about Miss Stife at the Time Travellers website.

Quarantine, vaccine, contact tracing, isolation, lockdown ... we've been there before

 

Guard, Isolation Camp, Ascot Vale, 29 September 1916.  Well-armed against any meningitis outbreak. Courtesy of drakegoodman on Flickr.

Lest you think contact tracing is something new ....... nope.  The men confined to the Isolation Camp in Ascot Vale were contacts of men in the Broadmeadows Army Camp diagnosed with diseases like cerebro-spinal meningitis, measles, whooping cough, and so on.

The race to find a vaccine for a life threatening virus?  All done before.

Compulsory quarantine for travellers?  Yup. 

Special hospital wards for diseased patients?  Again, yup.

The only thing we don't seem to have is the Cheerup Brigade delivering cakes for those in Isolation. 

"For the hospital wards - jelly, 2 slices cream sandwich, 1 rainbow, 1 Swiss roll, 1 diamond sponge (special diet). 

This is clearly something which requires re-visiting.

In the meantime, gathered in one place for your reading pleasure, links to articles about all of those things by Marilyn Kenny and Lenore Frost on two local history websites, Time Travellers in Essendon and Flemington and The Empire Called and I Answered: the Volunteers of Essendon and Flemington.

Isolation Camp, Ascot Vale  

Cheerup Brigade, Ascot Vale  

Troopship Boonah and the 1919 Influenza Epidemic 

HMT Boonah Quarantined at Torrens Island  

Race for a Vaccine

Death or Disfigurement 

Poverty, Plague and Pestilence

Patrick James Flanagan, Medical Health Officer

Essendon Emergency Hospital  

Heritage walks in Flemington and Kensington

 

Woodland Street, Essendon, from the Cummings and Stringer Album, State Library of Victoria Collection. 

It is probably a little late in the Lockdown Era, but it occurred to me to offer some heritage walks I prepared in days gone by as a variation of your walks around the district.  

I had already loaded up two, but today have added several more.   You will find them on the Time Travellers website.   They are offered in 'as is' condition (a bit like chipped china cups at the op shop!)  The walks are anything up to 20 years old, and some things are now out of date or gone altogether.  They were mostly in paper format, so my efforts have gone into scanning and creating pdf documents and loading them onto the web rather than attempting to correct them.    I have noted some of the more egregious problems on the website.  

Some are presented as 'Leader's Notes' to a guided walk, so without your Dear Leader, you will have to scout around a bit at times to discover the subject under discussion. All part of the fun! 

Heritage Walk, Kensington

 

Number 10 Rankins Road, Kensington on the right. Courtesy of Google Street View, 2019.

Kensington Heritage Walk 2015. Part 1  This is a part of a much longer walk. This is the Leader's Notes for a guided walk with no brochure.   It covers the men from Rankins Road who left for the Great War.  Commence at Rankins Road near Racecourse Road.  Download from the link above.

Heritage Walks - Essendon

Salvation Army Citadel, Essendon, courtesy of the Salvation Army Moonee Valley Facebook page. 

I have added a page for Heritage Walks to the website Time Travellers in Essendon, Flemington and the Keilor Plains, to which I will add some old heritage walks I created years ago, many of them for the Essendon Historical Society.   

The first one starts at the Salvation Army Citadel in Mt Alexander Road, Essendon, formerly the South Essendon Methodist Church. You can download it from the Heritage Walks webpage.   

Many Moonee Ponds Medicos

 

Dr Arnold Finks was one of the many General Practitioners who operated from the residence Ardconnell  in Mt Alexander Road.  In Dr Finks' time excitement was provided by football matches rather than rioting crowds seeking smallpox vaccinations.   In this third part of her story Marilyn Kenny rounds of the picture of a suburban practice.  See Many Moonee Ponds Medicos for the last part of the saga. 

Death or Disfigurement

The Ruby Princess was not the first vessel to arrive in Sydney and allow infectious passengers to 'walk the city'.  In 1913 a steam ship arrived with smallpox on board, and a failure in the quarantine system in Sydney caused citizens of Melbourne to become anxious about outbreaks in their city - and the available lymph for vaccination was being soaked up by New South Wales. A sudden panic caused Melbourne doctors' surgeries to be overrun by people anxious to be vaccinated. The mortality rate for smallpox was at least 70%, and it was rightly feared.

Marilyn Kenny continues the story of vaccination in Melbourne and Essendon in Death or Disfigurement.

The Race for a Vaccine

Ardconnell, the scene of a riot in 1913 involving crowds seeking a small-pox vaccine.

With her usual eye for a good story, Marilyn Kenny begins her account of the various doctors who lived and practised medicine at Ardconnell in Mt Alexander Rd, Moonee Ponds with  riot among crowds outside the house seeking a vaccine.  

The pracise of medicine, and the implementation of public health measures over a period of decades, from this house, is a surprisingly rivetting story, and you can read the first part of this epic at the Time Travellers website, with more to follow.  The details of the riot itself will appear in Part 2 of the story, yet to be posted.  If you want to be sure you see the second part, subscribe to this Blog.   

Under The Rainbow: The Life And Times Of E.W. Cole

  

A new book lately added to the Bibliography of Local and Family History Resources for Essendon, Flemington and Keilor is the above biography of E W Cole, by Richard Broinowski.  Published by Melbourne University Press, the book is to be launched on 4 September 2020.   The Age carried an article about Cole today, "The Man Who Rewrote Retail", pages 4-5 of The Spectrum 29 August 2020.

Other than his fame as the founder of Cole's Picture Book Arcade, Cole was best know locally for residing at the former Coiler McCracken house in Leslie Road, Earlesbrae Hall, which by chance featured in yesterday's blog post about the Essendon Golf Club

An album of photographs of Cole's Book Arcade features a photo of the boss about to travel in style to his place of business.  Compiled by Henry Williams in 1923, the album is now in the collection of the State Library of Victoria: Papers of Edward William Cole, MS 10111.

Check out the stylishly dressed coachman!

Essendon Golf Club

In 1896 a group of the social and financial elite of Essendon got together and built a golf course on land just south of the railway line near Essendon Station.  They also acquired or built a club house on Buckley St, just south of St Columba's Convent School.  The suburb, however, was developing quickly, necessitating a number of moves, until the club amalgamated with the Moreland Golf Club, and a golf course and club known as the Northern Golf Club was firmly established in Glenroy.

Further details are available on the Time Travellers website.

Kensington Skating Rink

Fancy dress competitions were popular events at Skating Rinks.   Courtesy SLV

At the height of a craze  for skating, in 1888, the Kensington Skating Rink was quickly erected in a flush of enthusiasm, but by 1900 the skating rink rage seems to have, on the whole, departed never to return.  In this story of the skating rink, we look at just how long the craze lasted in Kensington, and to what other purposes a skating rink could be turned before it meets an inglorious end.  Disappointed Time Travellers can go here to hand in their skates.

Poverty, Plague, Pestilence

The Larsen Family c 1901 posted by Ian Smyth on Ancestry Kenny Kith and Kin site

This respectable-looking family from Kensington were the centre of attention in a Bubonic Plague outbreak in 1900.  Marilyn Kenny turns her quizzical eye on the case, examining the actions of the Council, the Department of Health, and the quarantine station at Portsea. Also a guinea pig is mentioned.  For the full story, visit Poverty, Plague, Pestilence.

Dr Flanagan, Medical Health Officer - a career

Dr Flanagan is in this group of Moonee Valley Racing Club officials, fifth from the right in a light coloured hat. 

 While Patrick Flanagan's family mainly worked in the hotel industry, Patrick's interests took a different turn, and he studied Medicine at the University of Melbourne.  He was also a very active sportsman, and managed to combine those interests by not only managing a private practice and becoming Essendon's Medical Health Officer, but also by becoming Honorary Surgeon for a number of horse racing clubs, and was a keen and active rider in the Oaklands Hunt Club.

Marilyn Kenny has put together a detailed account of his life and interests which has many unexpected turns.  Have you heard of the Russian flu epidemic of 1890?  If not, you had better read on....

Mr Solomon's Maribyrnong

I have just purchased the new book Keilor to Footscray: Mr Solomon's Maribyrnong by Rick Keam, and have added it to my Bibliography of  Local and Family History Resources for Essendon, Flemington and Keilor.

Rick Keam is someone who has walked and fished the Maribyrnong for many years, and in this excellent small study examines just where Solomon's Ford was, and likewise, who Mr Solomon was.  He has carefully footnoted his sources, and introduced some rarely seen map extracts and images to illustrate the whole. Some of the photographs he took himself.

It is a very nicely produced small book, published by Australian Scholarly Publishing in conjunction with the Footscray Historical Society, and edited by well-known historian John Lack.

I am very much enjoying reading the book.  The only thing I complain about is that there is no index!

Edenhope Receptions

Dorothy May Crowther, nee Sparks, taken at Edenhope Receptions by Central Movie Snaps. Courtesy of Lynette Lainson, nee Crowther.

Mrs Anne Edwards of the Cafe Royal in Puckle Street Moonee Ponds established Edenhope Receptions as a reception house in 1927.  It hosted weddings, meetings, private celebrations and dances until about 2007, but is again a private home.   See more about Edenhope Receptions on the Time Travellers website.

Essendon Emergency Hospital, 1919

In 1919 the major metropolitan hospitals were overrun with patients requiring treatment, so suburban councils were asked to assist by establishing emergency hospitals in their area.  Aided by the Red Cross (and boy scouts), Essendon Council established an emergency hospital at the Essendon High School.  Learn more about the hospital and the course of the epidemic here. 

The Woodmen

I'll bet you thought you know everything you need to know about woodyards.  Well, Marilyn Kenny has proved all of us wrong, so the first Time Travellers excursion for 2020 will be a visit to local woodyards, starting at Essendon Station.  Don't trip on the steps.

Marilyn will tell us everything we ever wanted to know about "The Woodmen" - who they were, what they did, and how good they were at football.

The Swamp Vanishes

I've been missing in action for a while now, but if you want to know what I have been doing, call in at the Royal Historical Society of Victoria where I have been curating an  exhibition called "The Swamp Vanishes".

The view in the poster above was taken from Flagstaff Hill, which is just across the road from the RHSV headquarters.  Right up until comparatively recently you would have seen a great pool of water known as West Melbourne Swamp, in earlier times called Batman's Swamp.  This swamp, or wetland, was the end point of the water flowing through the Moonee Ponds Creek in a wet year, but also received floodwaters from the Yarra River.  It was only some years later when concerted efforts were made to drain the swamp that the Moonee Ponds Creek was diverted elsewhere.

The exhibition opens next Thursday and can be seen 9 am to 5 pm on weekdays, at our headquarters at 239 A'Beckett St, Melbourne.  (A short walk from Flagstaff Station, opposite Flagstaff Gardens in William St.)