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One of Sydney’s most interesting and important reformers was Maybanke Anderson, also known as Mrs Wolstenholme, and born Maybanke Selfe in England in 1845. She was to become one of the best known women in Sydney, giving ‘freely her time, strength, and sympathy, to every movement to ameliorate conditions for women and children‘, and above all, for women’s rights.
Maybanke in the early 1890s, on the brink of changing Sydney. From the collection of the State Library of NSW, SPF P1/A Mitchell Library
She knew the hardships of being without rights from personal experience. Her first marriage, to Edmund Wolstenholme in 1867, was not a success — four of their children died as babies of TB, and Edmund took to drink. Maybanke kept a boarding hourse and later a girls’ school, to support the family, but Edmund’s desertion and alcoholism made this doubly difficult — as a married woman she had no rights to her earnings or her children, and the only ground of divorce was adultery, which was difficult (and shameful) to prove. An absent, drunken husband could turn up periodically and demand all the household money as his own under the law. It was not until Sir Alfred Stephen‘s long deferred Divorce Extension and Amendment Act finally passed in 1892 that women could initiate divorce on grounds of desertion, habitual drunkenness, imprisonment for at least seven years or assault. Maybanke immediately instituted proceedings.
From the early 1890s she had become interested in and active in the suffrage question, working with Louisa Lawson, Rose Scott, Dora Montefiore and many others in the Womanhood Suffrage League, and training herself as a public speaker. In 1893 she founded The Woman’s Voice, a newspaper that advocated feminist causes, and helped found the Kindergarten Union of NSW, designed to help the youngest of the poor.
She came from a remarkable family — her brother was Norman Selfe, visionary engineer and inventor, whose energetic advocacy of technical education in Sydney, led to the foundation of the Sydney Technical College, among other things.
Some years after her divorce, she married Francis Anderson, professor of Logic and Philosophy at the University of Sydney and a reformer in his own right. They worked together on educational issues, and Maybanke became a prolific writer, producing reports, pamphlets, local histories, childcare manuals, and even songs.
The author of our article on Maybanke Anderson is Jan Roberts, author of a full biography of Maybanke and an expert on her life and times. She is speaking about Maybanke’s remarkable career at the Sydney Mechanics’ School of Arts on Tuesday 17 May at 12.30. Find out more here, and come along!
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School room on the NSS Sobraon c1895, State Records of New South Wales 4481_a026_000005
In the school holidays, working in the city gains a pleasurable dimension from the presence of kids, freed from school attendance for a short time, and able to roam their town, whether with their parents or alone (if they are older).
The Dictionary’s article on Children surveys the history of childhood in Sydney, and the changes that have taken place over the years, in attitudes, as well as in physical surroundings.
The Aboriginal children of the Sydney region learnt through story and song, and by hunting, fishing and making with their elders, while travelling and learning their country. Some, like Nanbarry, survived the horrific epidemic that followed first contact, and went on to learn European ways as well.
For the first European children of the settlement, almost 50 of whom arrived on the First Fleet with their parents, the unfamiliar surroundings must have been both exhilarating and dangerous, and the hunger and disease of the early years were particularly hard on children. There were many orphans and abandoned children, whose plight inspired the founding of the Female and Male Orphan Schools, the Native Institution, and other organisations, often with very mixed results. Maria Lock, an Aboriginal girl who topped the examinations in 1819, aged 11, was perhaps the Institition’s most resounding academic success.
By the 1860s an influx of new settlers brought by the gold rushes had increased the proportion of children, and half of Sydney’s population was under 12. Schooling became an urgent political issue, and politicians such as Sir Henry Parkes based their careers on the question of education, and the provision of public schooling. The issues raised in those early days continue to resonate in Sydney’s educational history as outlined in the Dictionary’s article on Education. Public schools dotted Sydney’s new suburbs from the 1880s, as communities united to petition the colonial government for education for their children, and school education became compulsory under the Public Instruction Act of 1880.
Boys skipping in Kepos Street, Redfern 1952, City of Sydney Archives (SRC19002)
Being a kid is more than just school, and Sydney’s children were much freer in past decades to roam the streets. Sometimes derided as ‘street ruffians’ or urchins, children also had important economic roles to play in helping to support their families through hawking, chores and other part-time work. A less densely developed city also provided space to play, well into the twentieth century. Garry Wotherspoon recalls growing up in Maroubra in the 1940s, and describes a sort of informal adventure playground complete with aircraft wreckage and quicksand. Many of these spaces were later lost to suburban development and council-administered parks, providing safer, but less exciting, recreation.
Today, Sydney’s children make up only 20 per cent of the population and lead a more supervised and safer life than their earlier counterparts, in a society that is arguably more child-focussed than ever before.
Enjoy Term 2!
Art class at Malek F'ahd Islamic school 2004, photo by John Immig, National Library of Australia nla.pic-vn3256004
With Anzac Day falling on the same weekend as Easter this year, there are lots of entries in the Dictionary which explore some of the many Sydney traditions which will be marked over the next few days.
Ladies at the Show with their showbags, 1930s by Sam Hood, State Library of New South Wales, PXE 789 (v.34), 16 / a359006
The Royal Easter Show at Homebush is the nation’s largest annual event, attended by over 900,000 people. The relocation of the Show from Moore Park to Homebush in 1998 wasn’t the first time the venue had changed. The Agricultural Society of New South Wales held its first show at Parramatta in 1823, with prizes for rams, cheeses and beer as well as high performing servants (probably no showbags though). By 1869 the four day event known as the Metropolitan Inter-Colonial Exhibition was being held in Prince Alfred Park, before moving to Moore Park in 1882.
Apart from their annual pilgrimage to Homebush, many Sydneysiders will also be attending church to celebrate the Christian festival of Easter. The buildings in which they worship can say a lot about the history and traditions of their faith, which you can read about in the Christian Church Architecture entry.
On Monday, Anzac Day will be observed across Australian and New Zealand. The parade in Sydney will begin at Martin Place after the dawn service at the Cenotaph. The Cenotaph is only one of the landmarks in Sydney that commemorates the Anzacs. The Anzac War Memorial in Hyde Park, Sydney’s official monument to the war dead, was opened in 1934, and the Anzac Bridge was opened in 1995, while other monuments in suburbs across the city mark their communities’ losses.
ANZAC Commemorative Service at Balmain War Memorial, Loyalty Square, Balmain 5 April 2009 by KT Bell
Apart from the games of two-up, another Anzac Day tradition, the rugby league Test match between Australia and New Zealand, will also take place, this year on the Gold Coast. Players from either side of the Tasman have been competing since the code was developed, when an All-Maori team toured Sydney in 1908 & 1909 to promote the game, though this didn’t end well for the Maori players.
Why not hop around the Dictionary this long weekend and see what else you can find?
Decorated Easter Eggs 2007 © Danny Huynh
The Dictionary is the sum of contributions by authors (over 150 of them so far), artists (photographers and painters mostly, so far), institutions (many of them national treasures), and companies such as Airview who have kindly allowed us to use their wonderful aerial photos.
Being such a generous and talented bunch, our contributors usually have other irons in the fire. Here’s a shout out to some of them.
Cover image for 52 suburbs by Louise Hawson
Louise Hawson, whose work illustrates several Dictionary articles, has a book out from University of New South Wales Press in May and an exhibition at the Museum of Sydney from May 14. Both are based on her quest to photograph a suburb a week for a year, and she certainly found beauty in some surprising places. You can see her work at her blog, 52 suburbs, and pre-order the book here.
Cover image for Circus: The Australian story by Mark St Leon
Mark St Leon, author of Circus, has a new book on Australian circus out from Melbourne Books in May, which you can pre-order here. Mark’s work has featured on the blog before, and you should check out some of the film he provided for his Dictionary article, including Con Colleano on the tightwire in 1939, and his own family, the Five Riding St Leons. More film and many wonderful still images from Mark’s collection appear in the Circus article.
Bolivia in Fairfield, an image from Pride and Passion, by Danny Huynh at Fairfield City Gallery
Danny Huynh, whose vivid and fascinating photographs enrich a number of Dictionary articles about Sydney’s varied cultural communities, has an exhibition, titled Pride and Passion: Photographic Portraits of Fairfield, on now at the Fairfield City Museum and Gallery until May 15.
Last but not least, our colleague, Laila Ellmoos, historian with the City of Sydney History program, received two highly commended awards in the 2011 National Trust Heritage Awards, for three publications she wrote and edited while she was at the Government Architect’s Office. Along with another prolific author, Mark Dunn, Laila writes the blog Scratching Sydney’s Surface, and both of them appear regularly on Fbi Radio, live at 8.15 on Fridays, and streamed on the net.
The Dictionary is very lucky to have so many wonderful contributors. Wishing them every success is the least we can do!
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