CLAY SMOKING PIPE
Here’s how it compares in shape to a catalogue of DAVISON brand pipes1.
These types of pipes with a shorter stem were common with tradespeople because it meant you could keep your pipe between your teeth while working with both hands as opposed to the longer stemmed pipes. Even so you could always break off part of a longer stemmed one being clay to make it easier to smoke on the job. These pipes are popular imports to Australia in the 1860s I think.
This pipe is a ‘Garibaldi’ model and below a Garibaldi model or brand on an undated pipe stem2 not found at Cassledon Place in Little Lonsdale:
‘T. Douglas’ manufacturer – from what I’ve researched this is a pipe maker lost to history but probably an Irish manufacturer.
Garibaldi: The man himself
-a revolutionary fighter who supported the unification of Italy and fought in the Americas.
-as far as I can work out he had a cult popularity with the Protestants of Ireland as well as the English because he was anti Pope in his Italian campaigning. England thought he was great and that antagonised the Irish because here is England supporting unification of Italy but not Ireland3.
-I feel like this is a really complicated moment in culture wars but I think there was a lot of Australian support within the Protestant Irish community if not more broadly within the Irish community, and it’s clear that branding things Garibaldi was a canny marketing move as lots of things carried Garibaldi signalling. It would also have been an opportunity to make a political statement in day to day life.
DOLL PARTS
I have some kind of beheaded gentlewoman and unknown doll body part.
She is very small but not (in my opinion) a frozen charlotte, which are little miniature baby figurines. She’s clearly an adult Gentlewoman.
and thats the trawl so far
coming back into the loungeroom where there’s a small red gum stump along an old foundation line, there were two that I came across.
1874
BRIDGET DIES leaving the family assets to surviving children, now adults in their 30s in central west victoria, Thomas Bready Jnr, daughters Ellen and Mary Jane.
The house and land at Webb St has effectively supported Bridget as a solid rental income. Now Thomas Bready Jnr is looking at the house and land – which has only increased in value over the last 19 years – with new eyes.
Thomas Jnr does not want be a one third owner with his sisters, he wants to be a 100% owner.
So he casts aspersions on the legitimacy of his father’s will, and it makes it’s way to the supreme court.
If you were standing on the rooftop of the supreme court in this decade looking east, this would be the view:4
The court case is messy.
-There’s no death certificate for one of the sons Henry, who died in infancy, which slows everything down because he needs to be demonstrably dead.
-Ellen dies in this same year still just in her 30s, meaning Mary Jane is left to fight her brother in court alone.
-Thomas Jnr’s inheritance is wholly undermined by the court costs and he is not provided any entitlement to the estate when the will is upheld.
-The final estate is left solely to youngest daughter, Mary Jane the following year in 1875
Here’s the case announced in papers5
18 March 1875
Grant of Administration granted to Mrs Ellen Cooke
Freehold land — (?) in Webb Street Fitzroy with a frontage of 70 feet [21.33m] to Webb St £400
Liabilities
A mortgage to Mr Thomas Rowe of Fitzroy to secure a sum of £90 and interest
Personal Estate
Furniture £5
Total assetts £405
Liabilities £90 pounds
Balance £315 pounds
SOURCE Grant of Administration VPRS 28/P0002, 12/868
In this year same year, William Barrack marches a delegation of men from Corranderk over 60km on foot to Melbourne to talk to the Chief Secretary face to face about keeping Coranderrk for first nations.
When the house and land is awarded to Mary Jane Simons, she organises for it to be subdivided and sold on to two separate parties: Joshua Greenwood and William James Bartlett.
So from here in 1853
The land is halved in 1877 while first nations in Coranderrk lobby for autonomy and possession of the reserve land in the same year.
With Joshua Greenwood owning the new halved plot of land.
From here, the land is then further subdivided by Joshua and sold on to Samuel Davis three years later in 1878
Here’s the 1878 certificate of title for new land owner Samuel Davis from 112 Gore St who buys the newly subdivided land with the house. This was kindly given to me by Marion and her family.
The reverse, showing all the names of people who have owned the house up until the 70s. All these people have had the resources and the social status and the freedom to own property in their own name.
and here’s a document ten years later from 1886
it’s not on velum
there’s no stamps or crests
This is a letter to the Chief Secretary from those in the Coranderrk reserve6. On this more fragile piece of paper they write.
“We wish to pass this to ask for our wishes, that is, could we get our freedom to go away shearing and harvesting and to come home when we wish.”
they also write they wish for freedom in their lifetime.
names blurred for cultural respect.
Here’s a look at a treaty that I hope will be signed between the Victorian Government and our first nations people some time in the future.
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click on 6 for last page:
FOOTNOTES
- from ‘The Potential for the Archaeological Study of Clay Tobacco Pipes from Australian Sites’ by DENIS GOJAK and IAIN STUART AUSTRALASIAN HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY. I7. I999 p.41 ↩︎
- Item LL 60713 Smoking Pipe view online here https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/items/1678941 ↩︎
- ‘That dangerous serpent: Garibaldi and Ireland 1860 – 1870’ O’Connor, Anne, Taylor & Francis (Routledge) an online version available here https://researchrepository.universityofgalway.ie/server/api/core/bitstreams/e65de2f4-0003-493c-8900-35ff2c6b9c41/content ↩︎
- Caire, N. J. (1870) Views of Melbourne taken from the Supreme Court looking East. view online here: https://find.slv.vic.gov.au/permalink/61SLV_INST/1sev8ar/alma9939649628107636 ↩︎
- its late, i dont have the footnote on me, i will find it. i have it. ↩︎
- held in state archives, image taken from https://www.oldtreasurybuilding.org.au/protest/aboriginal-rights/ ↩︎
burrows & co 