Bowden's Corner, Hunter and Castlereagh streets Sydney, c1907, City of Sydney Archives (094145). Notice the tree growing through the building! The large Norfolk Pine grew through the middle of it, which was used as a coat rack for the hotel patrons. The building and tree were demolished in 1909.

An exhibition highlighting one of the City of Sydney's most important photographic collections explores the physical changes the City went through at the turn of the 20th century and the way people lived during this time, as well as the importance for future historians of documentation and record keeping! Listen to Lisa and Jess on 2SER here The city's built environment was dramatically altered during the first two decades of the 20th century. Sydney Municipal Council had been struggling to condemn old or shonky buildings since the 1870s. In the twentieth century, the City Building Surveyor and City Architect Robert Brodrick decided to enlist modern technology to help him in his cause. He started using photography to document buildings upon which he had served a condemnation notice. Owners and landlords served with these notices had to either fix up their building and make repairs, or the building would be condemned and demolished. Photographs would be taken of the buildings, prints developed and the photos pasted into albums for reference. Brodrick also anticipated that these images could be used in cases of legal disputation.

Cover of Volume 1 of the City Surveyor's Demolition Books, City of Sydney Archives (NSCA CRS 51/1)

The City Building Surveyor’s Department used photography to document the city’s profound transformation in the first two decades of the 20th century. The photos were taken for one purpose - to document buildings. However, these photographs inadvertently capture the largely working class neighbourhoods and people being displaced by commercial and government redevelopment. For historians they are a goldmine!!!! Fifty albums survive. The first 15 volumes of photograph albums cover condemnation and demolition in the inner city. But the value of photography as a documentary medium soon meant that council staff began applying photography to other parts of their work. So in the series of 50 albums, we also find groups of photos documenting resumption and slum clearance, plague prevention, regulation (everything from smoke nuisances to enclosed balconies to fruit and nut stores), building construction, decorations and illuminations. The City Building Surveyor’s Condemnation and Demolition Books is a key photographic collection held in the City Archives comprising almost 5000 photographs and associated glass plate negatives. A lot of work has been done to digitise the collection, and my fellow historian and Dictionary of Sydney author Laila Ellmoos has curated a beautiful new exhibition showcasing these extraordinary images, called Developing Sydney: Capturing Change 1900–1920.

A young girl and a kangaroo in the backyard of a small timber semi at 140 Campbell Street, Surry Hills 1901, City of Sydney Archives (NSCA CRS 51/104)

In this Covid world, you can access all the material digitally. You can experience the exhibition as a virtual online experience here: https://www.sydneycustomshouse.com.au/visit/exhibitions-events, and access all the photographs in the City of Sydney Archives catalogue in beautiful high-resolution, to zoom in on them and download them for your own use here https://archives.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/nodes/view/1894649?  You can browse some of the original albums too: https://archives.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/nodes/view/1877261?  You can even join Laila for a curator led tour of the virtual exhibition! Laila is hosting tours over the next four weeks, you can find details here : https://whatson.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/events/curators-tour-developing-sydney-exhibition

Children in front of a ramshackle timber outbuilding on the corner of Sutton and Bourke lanes, at the rear of 170–172 Palmer Street, Darlinghurst, City of Sydney Archives (NSCA CRS 51/689)

To whet your appetite, we've included three of my favourite images here - click on them to go through to the larger versions on the City's catalogue record too and have a look at all the interesting details you can find in each one. Happy browsing!     Dr Lisa Murray is the Historian of the City of Sydney and former chair of the Dictionary of Sydney Trust. She is a Visiting Scholar at the State Library of New South Wales and the author of several books, including Sydney Cemeteries: a field guide. She appears on 2SER on behalf of the Dictionary of Sydney in a voluntary capacity. Thanks Lisa, for ten years of unstinting support of the Dictionary!  You can follow her on Twitter here: @sydneyclio Listen to Lisa & Jess here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast on 107.3 every Wednesday morning at 8:15-8:20 am to hear more from the Dictionary of Sydney.   

This week organisations across the state are celebrating History Week 2020, the festival organised by the History Council of NSW. Listen to Mark and Alex on 2SER here The History Council of NSW was established in 1995 as an umbrella organisation to represent everyone who worked in the state's history sector, whether they were academics, local history groups, libraries or museums,and to advocate for the importance of history in the broader community. The first History Week festival took place in 1997 to celebrate all of these different associations and individuals, with the added bonus of being able to combine resources to promote festival events being put on by small and/or regional organisations across the state as well as those of large urban institutions. This year's festival has, obviously, been a bit different to previous years. Most events in History Week have typically been talks, tours and exhibitions which required your attendance in person, and juggling the calendar could get very tricky with so much to get to. This year of course, most of the events have moved online. There are still some physical exhibitions and talks to go to, but the sector has moved online adeptly, with the added bonus of finding larger audiences from unexpected locations as well as making events more accessible to people who might have had trouble getting to an exhibition or talk before. The interest in history in the community has also grown as our current situation has led many to question how we got here, what happened in the past and where do our experiences fit into history. There's a huge range of activities that you can find out about on the History Council of NSW website here. Some of the events that have already passed may be made available online, for example the Annual History Lecture that was presented last night by Stan Grant who asked if we were condemned to ignore the lessons of history, is available on the History Council's YouTube channel. Head to their website here for more information and links.. You can watch the announcement of the winners of the Premier's History Awards, and find all the projects shortlisted, on the State Library of NSW website here. There are lots of Dictionary of Sydney presenters past and present also presenting events. Minna Muhlen-Schulte will be joining a panel of GML historians on how to communicate the value of History on Thursday night at 5. Register here.

Join Lisa Murray online via Zoom on 11 September  at 11am to hear about the Great Depression through oral histories in the City of Sydney collections. Pic: Moore Park children's playground 1936, City of Sydney Archives (035850)

On Friday September 11 at 11, Lisa Murray will be talking about the Great Depression through the oral histories in the collections of the City of Sydney at 11am on Friday. This is a Zoom talk, so you'll need to register here. On Friday September 11 at 5, Peter Hobbins, in a panel of six historians, will be looking at the History of Now in a panel presented by the University of NSW & the University of Cambridge, as they discuss how people are recording their experience of the current COVID crisis, how that will be a resource in the future, and how earlier events like the pandemic in 1919, were recorded. This is a Zoom talk, so you'll need to register here. Nicole Cama's online self guided walking tour: Ashfield - People and Places will be launched by the Inner West Council on Friday morning. Details here. The State Library of NSW has a new exhibition Pandemic! that you can visit in person on Macquarie Street, and a great new related podcast The Gatherings Order, from the same team who brought you The Burial Files. Details on the State Library website here. Keep an eye on your local library and history organisation as well for events they may have planned, and searching social media with the tag #HistoryWeek2020 will also get you a wealth of information about the great options available. The dilemma, as it is every year in History Week, is what to go to!   Dr Mark Dunn is the author of 'The Convict Valley: the bloody struggle on Australia's early frontier' (2020), the former Chair of the NSW Professional Historians Association and former Deputy Chair of the Heritage Council of NSW. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the State Library of NSW. You can read more of his work on the Dictionary of Sydney here and follow him on Twitter @markdhistory here. Mark appears on 2SER on behalf of the Dictionary of Sydney in a voluntary capacity. Thanks Mark!

People have been asking me a lot lately about how the economic recession we are experiencing now compares to earlier times of economic instability. Unlike the situation we're all in at the moment, which has come about largely because of the pandemic, the global recession in the 1930s (popularly referred to as the Great Depression) was triggered by a sudden stock market crash in America in October 1929. This crash led to a massive decline in global trade. Few nations escaped the impact of the economic depression, and Australia was no exception. 

Scenes in inner city Sydney during the Depression, PIX 9 July 1938 p 4-5 via Trove

Listen to Lisa and Alex on 2SER here Australian primary exports halved between 1929 and 1933, and the level of unemployment rose dramatically. But it’s fair to say that many people in Australia were already struggling through the 1920s; our economy had been faltering since 1926. In September 1929 (just before the stock market crash) 12.1 percent of the Australian workforce was already unemployed. That figure kept rising until 1932 when it peaked at just over 30 percent. When we look back at the impacts of the Great Depression on Sydney, we see that it was many of the inner city areas that were hardest hit, with unemployment rates much higher than the national average. Alexandria, Erskineville, Redfern, Darlington and Glebe all had unemployment rates above 35 percent. These were working class areas, where poverty was already the reality through much of the 1920s, and just increased throughout the 1930s. I’ve been delving into  the City of Sydney's collections of oral history interviews with people who lived through the Great Depression, and noticed quite a few differences to today. Most obviously, in the 1930s there was no universal medicare or welfare. Charities are still important today, but in the 1930s they were the only real form of welfare, and the Depression put a massive strain on their resources. When the dole was first offered in the 1920s in New South Wales it consisted of coupons or food stamps that could only be used to get certain products. Only later was a payment offered and then it was tiny - a single man with no work at all received 5 shillings a week. Local councils created relief, or sustenance, work. This was mainly construction work, aimed at male labourers, who might get one or two days work a week, then off for a week, then back on again. Many of the relief works were beautification projects, or brought about things we take for granted today, like ocean pools, or reclaimed wetlands that were turned into parks. Roads and drainage systems were also constructed. Housing for the unemployed was precarious. With no legislation in place to protect them, evictions became common, as did the 'midnight flit', when people would leave their homes in the middle of the night to avoid the bailiffs who would turn them out and sell everything in the house to reclaim money the house owner had lost in rent.

William Roberts, an original Anzac, and his family evicted from their Redfern home during the Depression 28 September 1934, Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (Home and Away 870)

While it can be bleak listening to the interviews, there were some lovely insights into how people came together to support each other as well. I noticed how much people relied on each other, and their own resourcefulness, and felt part of their community. Community, including family, neighbourhoods, churches, associations and clubs and political organisations, was essential to survival. I'm giving a talk called 'Sugar Bags and Specked Fruit'  online next Friday morning (11 September) during for History Week to talk more about this, and to share the oral histories I've been listening to (you can book online here), but in the meantime, you can listen to this great excerpt on the Dictionary here (or via the 2SER audio of course) in which interviewee Jane Lanyon talks about how she and her family would scrounge for fruit and vegetables on Saturday afternoons at Paddy's Markets during the Depression, a little bit like the practice we call bin-diving today. The City's Sydney Oral Histories website is also available here. Check the History Council of NSW website here for the full History Week calendar to look for events either near you or that you can attend online too!         Dr Lisa Murray is the Historian of the City of Sydney and former chair of the Dictionary of Sydney Trust. She is a Visiting Scholar at the State Library of New South Wales and the author of several books, including Sydney Cemeteries: a field guide. She appears on 2SER on behalf of the Dictionary of Sydney in a voluntary capacity. Thanks Lisa, for ten years of unstinting support of the Dictionary!  You can follow her on Twitter here: @sydneyclio Listen to Lisa & Alex here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast on 107.3 every Wednesday morning at 8:15-8:20 am to hear more from the Dictionary of Sydney.   

Sydney Monorail 6 September 2009 via Flickr (pbutke (CC BY 2.O))

I remember the childhood joy of riding the old Sydney monorail – a single-loop that connected Darling Harbour, Chinatown and the Sydney central business and shopping districts. You had to board with a little gold token and were whizzed through what seemed like futuristic tubes wrapping each station. While it captured my young imagination, in reality it was one of the most critiqued and controversial pieces of transport infrastructure in Sydney’s recent history.

Listen to Minna and Alex on 2SER here

The monorail was a gift to Sydney for the Australian Bicentenary in 198 from transport mogul and the head of TNT, Sir Peter Abeles, with the approval of the NSW Minister for Public Works, Laurie Brereton. Brought under the authority set up to plan and oversee the construction of the Darling Harbour Project, the installation of the Monorail overrode thirteen existing laws, including those on environment and planning, heritage, traffic and fire safety, as well as the authority of the Sydney City Council.

Passengers queue to get a ticket for the Sydney Monorail on a hot day in January 2 January 2009 via Flickr (Rose Holley (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0))

Apart from being considered a general eyesore and an intrusion on heritage and architectural values of the CBD streetscape, the Monorail was impractical because it didn’t actually connect with any of the major transport hubs in the city. Nor did the investment make economic sense, critics pointed out the construction of Light rail would have been $20 million cheaper to build, service more passengers per hour and cost 40% less for a ticket. It quickly attracted some barbed commentary from Sydney’s cultural elite including Patrick White who described it as 'one of many autocratic farces perpetuated by the powerful on our citizens' * , and Clive James who noted it would probably only break even as an investment 'on the day hell freezes over… after ….it runs from the middle of  downtown Sydney…. to the middle of downtown Sydney…after circumnavigating the middle of downtown Sydney'.* Originally intended to run until 2038, as time went on the ill-fated rail became harder to justify economically. It was also dangerous, with accidents putting passengers at risk. These events culminated in 2010 when the failure of an underground cable led to the system shutting down, leaving nearly 100 passengers stranded above the city for several hours until they were rescued by the NSW Fire and Rescue Service.

The monorail running over Pyrmont Bridge in 2003, courtesy of Ian Bowie

Decommissioned in 2013, the Monorail has been revived in surprising ways. Outlandish proposals have included the conversion of the Liverpool Street station into a giant fish tank.*  And while some of the carriages have gone to the Powerhouse Museum, others were souvenired and made availble to the public in 2015 via an online Gumtree advertisement. Complete with an accompanying inspiring video, the advertisement encouraged potential buyers of one (or more) of the 22 large carriages that were available for $3,000 each, to contemplate possibilities like 'making a cubbyhouse, a caravan or even a monorail coffee shop.'*  Google purchased two carriages for meeting rooms in Pyrmont, and most recently the Sydney Metro Northwest project used 60 steel monorail beams, many of them removed from Pitt Street in 2013. Even though we thought we got rid of it, these vestiges mean the Monorail still lurks within the veins of our city. Take a seat on the monorail's last journey and watch the world go by, care of City of Sydney Council photographer Paul Patterson on the Dictionary here: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/media/4633 and read Garry Wotherspoon's Dictionary entry on the history of the monorail here: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/sydneys_monorail   Minna Muhlen-Schulte is a professional historian and Senior Heritage Consultant at GML Heritage. She was the recipient of the Berry Family Fellowship at the State Library of Victoria and has worked on a range of history projects for community organisations, local and state government including the Third Quarantine Cemetery, Woodford Academy and Middle and Georges Head . In 2014, Minna developed a program on the life and work of Clarice Beckett for ABC Radio National’s Hindsight Program and in 2017 produced Crossing Enemy Lines for ABC Radio National’s Earshot Program. You can hear her most recent production, Carving Up the Country, on ABC Radio National's The History Listen here. She’s appearing for the Dictionary today in a voluntary capacity. Thanks Minna! For more Dictionary of Sydney, listen to the podcast with Minna & Alex here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast with Alex James on 107.3 every Wednesday morning to hear more stories from the Dictionary of Sydney.      Notes * 'Monorail Should Be a Lesson to All Transport Ministers';, National Times, 24 June 2013,http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/opinion/editorial/monorail-should-be-a-lesson-to-all-transport-ministers-20130623- 2oqjq.html, viewed 3 July 2013 * Clive James ‘A Postcard from Sydney’, https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000d29l/clive-james-2-postcard-from-sydney, accessed on 26 August 2020. * Saulwick, J 2013 Plans for Sydney's abandoned monorail stations include a giant fish tank https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/plans-for-sydneys-abandoned-monorail-stations-include-a-giant-fish-tank-20131108- 2x730.html, accessed on 26 August 2020. * https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/for-sale-on-gumtree-sydneys-monorail-20150203-134rhe.html  

Croquet and archery in the grounds of Enmore House, Newtown c1865-70, Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (SPF/389)

Today I'm going to give you an insight into how my mind works and the connections I follow when I'm exploring the Dictionary of Sydney. Listen to Lisa and Alex on 2SER here As we spend more time around our local areas, for those of us with an inclination towards historical matters, we naturally start thinking about the history of our neighbourhoods. I live in the Inner West, and I was curious about the origins of some of the suburb names. Many inner city suburbs get their names from large villas or estates, which in turn reflect family connections and occupations. The suburb of Enmore for example gets its name from a large house called Enmore House that was demolished in the 1880s. The house was designed by the architect John Verge and built in 1835 for Captain Sylvester Brown. Brown was a master mariner with the East India Company and he named the house after a sugar plantation in Barbados, in the West Indies, that was owned by his business associate James Cavan, a merchant and slave owner. Cavan's estate in the Carribean was, in turn, named after Enmore in Somerset, England. Brown sold the house in 1841. There is an amazing photo of the grounds and gardens of Enmore House in the late 1860s that shows a posse of women playing croquet and archery. This extraordinary image caught my fancy. It turns out the photo shows Joshua Josephson's nine daughters entertaining themselves. Nine daughters! Josephson also had four sons. He brought up his family at Enmore House after inheriting the estate from his father in 1845. I hadn't really heard of him, and he must have had a lot of money - so I thought I'd check him out.

Detail of plan of Enmore: the property of I Simmons Esq 1841, National Library of Australia (NLA MAP F 599)

I soon found another connection of interest to me. Joshua Josephson was an early alderman at Sydney City Council, where I work, and was the Mayor of Sydney in 1848. He went on to serve as a NSW Parliamentarian, and was later appointed as a district court judge. So he was a mover and shaker. Josephson was also an accomplished musician. He played piano and flute, and as a younger man he performed in concerts at the Theatre Royal. My interest was further picqued when I learned that he was the first organist down at St Peters Church at Tempe - there's a good cemetery down at St Peter's Anglican Church and I love a good cemetery. In 1847 Josephson was a founder of the Society for the Promotion of Fine Arts which presented Sydney's first public art exhibition at the Australian Library. Later on, he was involved in Australia's representation at the Paris International Exhibition of 1867. Josephson lived at Enmore House from 1845 until 1883 when he built himself and his second wife a new house over in Bellevue Hill called St Killian's (that is now part of Scots College). During the time Josephson lived at Enmore House he saw the area transform from an isolated hamlet to a burgeoning shopping strip with a stream tram running up Enmore Road. Due to his prominent house and business connections Josephson apparently became known as the squire of Newtown, or the squire of Enmore House. Enmore was so isolated in the 1840s that bushrangers - absconding convicts - would prey on the unwary. Enmore was sparsely settled and still heavily timbered, providing good cover for marauders. Robert Wardell  had been murdered by convicts on his property nearby in 1834. Josephson is said to have been the victim of an attack one evening, leaving him rather paranoid. After this unnerving experience he apparently devised an impenetrable barricade protecting those within Enmore House. His servants would shut and barricade every door and window of Enmore House at sunset. Anyone wishing to enter or depart had to do so by means of a ladder to an upstairs window. The ladder was withdrawn precisely at 10 pm. The house remained in a state of siege until morning, often with reluctant guests. Now if that seems a bit extreme, it was not the only house in Enmore that had an elaborate safety system. Businesswoman Mary Reibey also moved to Enmore into a large house fronting Enmore Road in the 1840s, around the same time as Josephson. Reiby House was a grand, two-storey Georgian villa with tight security against bushranger incursion. Shutters fitted with heavy iron bolts ran the length of the house, both inside and out. Secret bells were installed in some of the shutters so when the window was opened the alarm was given in another part of the house. Presumably Mary's servants were ready to repel any invader. But back to Joshua Josephson. I suppose Josephson had a right to be paranoid. He was a solicitor and later a judge by trade, and owned property around Newtown, Lewisham, in the city, and around regional NSW. He was also accumulating great wealth, and was pursuing his interest in the arts, acquiring statues and artwork from leading artists in Britain and Europe. When Joshua Josephson died in 1892, he had an estate worth almost £170,000 (or more than $25 million today, depending on how you calculate it).  In his will he left property to his wife and all his children, and his daughters had full control of their estate - it was not to be controlled by their husbands. (Very enlightened!)

Joshua Frey Josephson 1851 by Charles Rodius, Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (P2/9)

Significantly, Josephson bequeathed five statues to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, including 'Hunter and the dog', by John Gibson, which is still on display.  Another significant proportion of his collection were offered to the gallery for acquisition at a bargain basement price. Amongst these is another sculpture by Gibson - Narcissus - which is regarded as one of the gallery's collection highlights. And that's how I became captivated by the story of Joshua Frey Josephson. I started at Enmore, went to the Caribbean, back to St Peters, off to Paris and Bellevue Hill and I ended up at the Art Gallery of NSW. I love poking around the Dictionary of Sydney - you never know what you might find. Why not follow your own curiosity trail in the Dictionary? There's so much to discover. Head to the Dictionary to have a look at Joshua Frey Josephson for yourself (start here), and follow the links to see where you end up!   Dr Lisa Murray is the Historian of the City of Sydney and former chair of the Dictionary of Sydney Trust. She is a Visiting Scholar at the State Library of New South Wales and the author of several books, including Sydney Cemeteries: a field guide. She appears on 2SER on behalf of the Dictionary of Sydney in a voluntary capacity. Thanks Lisa, for ten years of unstinting support of the Dictionary!  You can follow her on Twitter here: @sydneyclio Listen to Lisa & Alex here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast on 107.3 every Wednesday morning at 8:15-8:20 am to hear more from the Dictionary of Sydney.   

Assistant astronomer Ernest Adderley at the Sydney Observatory looking through 6 inch telescope 18 February 1941 by Stan Grimes, Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (ON 388/Box 028/Item 125)

This month in Sydney is a good time to look to the stars - not only are we all in Covid inspired isolation, with associated clearer and darker skies, but the planets Jupiter and Saturn are in prime viewing positions. Looking at the stars might seem like a thing few people do anymore, but In Sydney it has had a long, long history.  Listen to Mark and Alex on 2SER here Aboriginal people have looked to the heavens for millennia, developing a deep understanding of the night sky, its seasonal changes and the limitless possibility for myth and storytelling it provides. When the First Fleet arrived in 1788, they too looked to the night sky. William Dawes, an officer in the Marines had been appointed as the representative of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich to undertake observations of the southern skies in the ongoing study of longitude and navigation. He came with instruments and established a small observatory on land at the far end of the western arm of Sydney Cove. Known as Tara by the Gadigal people, Dawes renamed it Point Maskelyne after the Astronomer Royal, but like so many other spots in colonial Sydney, it took on the name of its best known resident and became known as Dawes Point. In 1791 Dawes was sent back to England and his observatory was dismantled.

Observatory and the signalling station, Observatory Hill, Sydney 1870-75, by American & Australasian Photographic Company, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales (ON 4 Box 60 No 336)

Our second observatory was established at Parramatta in 1821. This was, initially, the private observatory of Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane. The work here was undertaken by a German mathematician Carl Rümker. Brisbane’s observatory and its instruments were purchased by the colonial government in 1825 after Brisbane had returned to England and Rümker appointed the first Government Astronomer in 1827. By 1847 however this observatory was in a poor state and closed down. In the late 1840s, Sydney was beginning to undergo a scientific awakening. The convict system had just ended and a growing interest in the colonial future included better education and scientific endeavour. A new observatory was proposed almost as soon as the old one closed, but this time it was to once again be located in the city centre. The site for this new observatory was chosen for its position. Previously known as Windmill or Flagstaff Hill, at 40m above sea level it was the highest point in the city, giving it a commanding view of the sky, and allowed others to see it. This was important because the purpose of the observatory was not only to see the stars. but to take the time.

Cover of 'Observations of the transit of Venus, 9 December 1874: made at stations in New South Wales ... under the direction of H.C. Russell, Government Astronomer' 1892, National LIbrary of Australia (Nq 523.96 RUS)

A tower with time ball on top was erected by 1858, with an accompanying transit telescope that watched the sun in the day and stars at night. By doing this, an accurate time could be measured and with this reading, the time ball could be dropped at an exact moment. This in turn allowed ships' captains around the harbour to set their chronometers on-board ship, vital for accurate navigation. This also became essential information later for train timetables. In a small oversight, when the tower was built, it was higher than agreed, thus blocking the view to the eastern horizon where the stars would rise. A second dome was built in the 1870s, two decades later, to house a new telescope to overcome this.

HC Russell's first Australian aweather map, published in the Sydney Morning Herald, 5 February 1879, p6 via Trove

Henry Chamberlain Russell, the Government Astronomer from 1870 until 1905, was particularly interested in meteorology as well as the stars, and he recruited and trained people across New South Wales and beyond to take accurate weather recordings. In 1877 he was able, for the first time in Australia, to publish a weather map in the Sydney Morning Herald. Head to the Dictionary to read Laila Ellmoos's entry on the Observatory here.   The Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences Sydney Observatory site here has their August 2020 Southern Sky Guide so you can do a litte stargazing of your own. And the Australian Indigenous Astronomy site here has lots to explore too.   Dr Mark Dunn is the author of 'The Convict Valley: the bloody struggle on Australia's early frontier' (2020), the former Chair of the NSW Professional Historians Association and former Deputy Chair of the Heritage Council of NSW. He is currently a Visiting Scholar at the State Library of NSW. You can read more of his work on the Dictionary of Sydney here and follow him on Twitter @markdhistory here. Mark appears on 2SER on behalf of the Dictionary of Sydney in a voluntary capacity. Thanks Mark!

Plate VI, Cambridge, O.P., ‘On Some New Genera and Species of Araneidea’, Annals and Magazine of Natural History, XIX (Fourth Series) (1877)

Today Sydney-siders take for granted that our local spiders, in particular the Sydney funnel-web, are dangerous and to be treated with caution, but, surprisingly, surprisingly, this caution only came about in the 1920s. Listen to Peter and Sean on 2SER here In 1927 an inquest at Hornsby local court found that the death of a little boy had arisen due to the bite of a spider. This was an unusual finding as it was the first time a death had been formally attributed to what we know today as the Sydney funnel-web (Atrax robustus). The little boy was Clyde Thompson, just under two years old. His family lived on Clifford Avenue in Thornleigh, and he was sitting on the laundry steps, with his parents close by, when he let out a scream. A bleeding bite on his little finger suggested that he had been holding the spider, which his father found, half crushed, near by. Although his distraught parents attempted to treat him and called in the doctor, Clyde died that night. Throughout the 19th century Australian colonists had been little concerned by spiders, least of all Sydney’s own endemic arachnid. While scattered reports of serious bites from spiders in Australia and New Zealand had appeared, neither Aboriginal people nor a century’s worth of settlers had recorded enough encounters that either the redback (Latrodectus hasselti) or the Sydney funnel-web (Atrax robustus) were thought to be particularly harmful. While the settlers had soon realised their homes would be shared with local huntsman spiders, what was most despised about them was their ‘guilty’ scuttling away from humans. Despite branding them 'voconias', ‘triantelopes’ or ‘tarantulas’ after reputedly venomous varieties in both the old and new worlds, colonists rarely feared their bite. Little research had even been done into spiders, which were often classed with insects. When first describing Atrax robustus in 1877, British arachnologist Octavius Pickard Cambridge referred to this 'primitive' spider’s 'large, massive and very prominent' fangs. But he passed little further comment when categorising it alongside similarly hairy specimens from across the globe. It has since been established that Atrax robustus only lives within a circle approximately 160 km from the centre of Sydney. These spiders are found as far north as the Hunter Valley, in Lithgow to the west, and the Shoalhaven to the south of the capital. The inquest into Clyde’s death in 1927 caused a rapid reassessment of ‘the consensus of medical opinion’, and it  was ‘strongly against the spider’. Indeed, with no firm records of spider bite deaths either in the medical literature or appearing in the NSW Department of Public Health’s statistics, Neville Davis, the doctor who had attended young Clyde, submitted during the inquest that ‘I realise that death from a spider bite is an extremely rare occurrence’. Based upon his testimony however, and the dramatic presentation by the investigating constable of ‘the spider – a big black one’, the Coroner, H Richardson Clark, ‘found that the child had died from the effects of the spider bite’

Poisonous Spiders: How to Identify Them and Treat Their Bites, Australian Woman's Mirror, 30 April 1935, p19 via Trove

The Sydney funnel-web’s near relative, Atrax formidablis, found in other parts of NSW was also identified as dangerous in 1926, and a decade later entomologist Keith McKeown from the Australian Museum observed that the funnel-web ‘has become a creature to be feared, and its name known throughout the country on account of its deadliness to man’. He added that ‘The question is often asked: 'Why were no cases of bite by Funnel-web Spiders known before 1927, since these spiders must have been equally, if not more, prevalent prior to that date?'  McKeown’s own explanation was twofold: in the first instance, misidentification of this ‘sinister and repulsive’ spider which had hitherto escaped popular notice, and secondly, the potential for spider bites to be treated as snake bites on account of the substantial puncture wounds made by the funnel-web’s prodigious fangs. He enthused rather morbidly, ‘Few creatures are armed with such terrible weapons, and there are very few snakes which have fangs that can compare with them for size and efficiency’. The confluence of these events provoked a flurry of correspondence both in the Medical Journal of Australia and to Australian natural history museums, as well as a sudden upsurge in fatal case reports. Hitherto, spider specimens were rarely if ever forwarded for identification, but from 1927 there was a notable if not dramatic increase in members of the public seeking reassurance from the Australian Museum that a spider located in their environs was ‘quite harmless’ or ‘non-poisonous’

Cover of popular book Cover of 'Spider Wonders of Australia' by Keith C McKeown, 1936, described in The Bulletin as 'a readable book on Australian spiders' that 'has been needed for some time'. Dixson Library, State Library of NSW (DL 93/552)

Another Museum entomologist, Anthony Musgrave, reported that ‘The recent death of a baby boy at Thornleigh, near Sydney, following on the bite [of an Atrax robustus] has caused great public interest in spiders and many have been sent to the Australian Museum for determination’. The NSW Government Statistician likewise began compiling data, such that by the time Walter Froggatt and Keith McKeown published the first popular books on Australian spiders in the mid-1930s, the infamy of the funnel-web was assured and the redback was finally acknowledged as being potentially fatal. Amid development of commercial antivenenes for black widow spider bite in America in the mid-1930s, McKeown called for a similar program in Australia. He noted that there remained ‘a very wide field for research’ awaiting those interested in the venoms of the redback and funnel-web spider. An antivenom for redback spider bites was introduced in Australia in 1956. Between 1927 and 1981, 13 deaths from the Sydney funnel-web's bite occurred. In 1980 an anti-venom was produced at the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories in Melbourne, led by Struan Sutherland. Since its release in 1981, no further deaths have been attributed to the spider.   About the author Dr Peter Hobbins is Principal Historian at Artefact Heritage Services, an Honorary Affiliate in the Department of History at the University of Sydney and a Royal Australian Historical Society Councillor. His published work has included histories of Australian medical research, venomous creatures in Australasia, quarantine and aviation medicine. Dr Hobbins is the author of two books, 'Venomous Encounters: Snakes, Vivisection and Scientific Medicine in Colonial Australia' (2017) and, with Dr Ursula K Frederick and Associate Professor Anne Clarke, 'Stories from the Sandstone: Quarantine Inscriptions from Australia's Immigrant Past' (2016). He appears on 2SER for the Dictionary in a voluntary capacity. Thanks Peter!   Listen to the podcast with Peter & Sean here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast with Alex James on 107.3 every Wednesday morning to hear more stories from the Dictionary of Sydney.    

Sign for Dawson's Foundry at Circular Quay c1854, detail of painting by Frederick Garling, Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (ML 88)

Richard ‘Dicky’ Dawson was an entrepreneur whose early iron foundry located down at Circular Quay was a landmark business that transformed Sydney. Listen to Lisa and Alex on 2SER here The foundry operated from 1833 to 1872 - a critical period in Sydney’s history that saw the town emerge as an antipodean metropolis. At its peak, the foundry employed about 50 men and boys and it was Sydney’s most important foundry. Dawson had a variety of business partners over the years, and the foundry was variously known as Castle and Dawson, Australian Iron and Brass Foundry, the Australian Foundry, Dawson & Co and Dawson's Foundry. Shipping, engineering and steam engines were the mainstay of the business. Dawson’s foundry did repairs for ships and also repaired imported machinery, an important support for economic and business development of the town. Dawson was a canny businessman and was always on the lookout for new opportunities and business improvements. In the early years he ran his own coal ships up to Newcastle to ensure a ready supply of coal for his furnaces. As well as repairing ships, Dawson became a shipping agent. His maritime connections saw his business and home become a regular stop for ships' captains. Hospitality and gossip fostered ongoing business relationships. Dawson endured the depression of the 1840s and rode the waves of the gold rushes through the 1850s. The foundry provisioned larger mine operations, manufacturing quartz crushing machines and stampers. Indeed over a period of nearly 40 years the foundry ended up manufacturing everything from architectural columns and ornamental railings, to windlasses, deck and mast winches, to tallow pots (used not only for whaling and sealing, but also for boiling down bones to make soap). Next time you’re in the city, why not pop into the Pitt Street Uniting Church to admire the fluted cast iron columns that were cast at Dawson’s foundry in 1845. The factory also made seamarks that included iron buoys and lighting apparatus, such as the floating light at the Sow and Pigs Shoal near the entrance to Sydney Harbour. This floating light was installed after the wreck of the Edward Lombe, which Mark talked about a couple of weeks ago.

Casting found during excavations in George Street that is now held in the Powerhouse Museum, Building magazine, 12 April 1913, p68

The Australian Foundry was not just a business – it was a landmark in early Sydney. Located between George and Pitt streets, right down near Sydney Cove, the foundry's furnaces and steam engine emitted heat, smoke and noise. The foundry often worked through the night, with the glow of the furnaces lighting the streets. On more than one occasion the fire brigade was called to the scene, on a mistaken alarm that a fire was spreading through the town. Appropriately, a cast iron gothic-style altar tomb marks the grave of Richard Dawson in Camperdown Cemetery. The unusual vault was erected by Dawson to his second wife Rhoda Dainton Dodd (d.1849), and Dawson himself was buried there in 1865. An urn and the inscription plaque have since disappeared from the tomb, leaving the dramatic ironwork as an anonymous testament to Dawson’s ingenuity and accomplishments.   You can find out more about the entrepreneurial ‘Dicky’ Dawson in Emeritus Professor Harry Irwin’s evocative article 'Richard Dawson and the Australian Foundry' on the Dictionary of Sydney here: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/richard_dawsons_australian_foundry         Dr Lisa Murray is the Historian of the City of Sydney and former chair of the Dictionary of Sydney Trust. She is a Visiting Scholar at the State Library of New South Wales and the author of several books, including Sydney Cemeteries: a field guide. She appears on 2SER on behalf of the Dictionary of Sydney in a voluntary capacity. Thanks Lisa, for ten years of unstinting support of the Dictionary!  You can follow her on Twitter here: @sydneyclio Listen to Lisa & Alex here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast on 107.3 every Wednesday morning at 8:15-8:20 am to hear more from the Dictionary of Sydney.   

Kathryn Harkup, Death by Shakespeare: Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts

Bloomsbury, July 2020, 340 pp. (plus an appendix, bibliography, acknowledgements  and index), ISBN: 9781472958211, p/bk, AUS$29.99

The great Bard is well known for his plays and his poetry. He is also a bloke well known for knocking off quite a few people as he told numerous stories of comedy, history and tragedy. In Death by Shakespeare: Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts, Kathryn Harkup – chemist and science writer – has taken a close look at the numerous ways in which William Shakespeare dealt with those characters who had served their purpose. An equal opportunity writer, Shakespeare had no qualms in killing off the young, the old, the rich, the poor, men, women, the good, the not quite so good and the absolutely terrible. Harkup utilises her expertise as a scientist to explore how these eliminations fit with Shakespeare’s ideas of entertainment and within the broader context of everyday life in the Elizabethan era. Harkup starts off with an excellent overview of what we do, and do not, know about Shakespeare before she gets down to business. Scenes of death and dying were more open in Shakespeare’s day than they are now, and while Shakespeare 'may have understood little about the science of the process of death […] he knew what it looked, sounded and smelled like' (p. 10). So, how accurate are the methods of dispatch across the writer’s works? How does his knowledge of poisons, for example, stack up? Spoiler Alert: if you have not read or seen an adaptation of Hamlet, the 'ear is a particularly poor choice for application' of a poison (p. 263). Similarly, a broken heart or a lack of sleep might make us feel terrible but, comorbidities aside, these ailments are unlikely to kill us. Some deaths, of course, are quite straightforward. For example, executions were common at the time that these plays were first performed, so beheadings, hangings and the odd drawing and quartering would have all seemed rather normal. Almost routine. War, too, was a shadow that lingered across Elizabethan England and so deaths on a wide range of battlefields, across place and time, would have not been unexpected by theatre patrons. Oh, and murder. So many murders. Animals, then and now, can be dangerous. Adonis is gored by a boar in Venus and Adonis, Cleopatra and her loyal servant Charmain both fall to the bite of an asp, while Antigonus is the victim of the most famous stage direction of all time, 'exit, pursued by a bear', in The Winter’s Tale. I must admit that – as I continue to work from home as the COVID-19 pandemic rages around the world – I found Harkup’s discussions on plague a tad confronting. A response that I feel is justified by Shakespeare himself who was 'liberal with using plague as a general curse' but made minimal references to the Black Death. Indeed, no playwright of the age 'depicted plague in any realistic way or detailed its awful effects. It is almost as if though the topic were too terrifying to mention or show onstage' (p. 210). But, in this and in every other type of death presented within this text Harkup’s knowledge of science is obvious and her skills as a science communicator are strong. She, in a rather strange twist, brings death to life. In a world where forensic science articles, podcasts and television shows have firmly established themselves in the landscape of popular culture, Harkup’s contributions to the teaching of non-scientists about the science behind our lives and deaths are both elegant and engaging. Critically, Harkup is not trying to distract from our enjoyment of the literature she is exploring, she is trying to enrich our understanding of what we read. Interdisciplinarity has never been so much fun. For those more interested in the hard facts, rather than all of the gory details, Harkup has also produced a quick guide to the deaths in Shakespeare’s works. An excellent appendix offers a table that lists Shakespeare’s plays and poems with characters who met untimely ends. Readers can quickly scroll through beheadings, drownings, smotherings, stabbings and more. There is also a very useful bibliography and an index. Death by Shakespeare is a macabre but fascinating (and strangely delightful) lens through which to view Shakespeare’s creative outputs. If you enjoyed Harkup’s earlier efforts to look at literature through science – A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie (2015) or Making the Monster: The Science Behind Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (2018) – then this new book is an excellent choice. This volume is also for anyone interested in William Shakespeare and the world he lived in, from those studying Shakespeare for the first time through to those who know Bill well. It is also a timely reminder to stay away from bears. Reviewed by Dr Rachel Franks, July 2020     SPECIAL OFFER: Purchase a copy of the book from the State Library of NSW's shop during the month of August 2020 and receive a 10% discount using the code SP082020. Click here to go to The Library Shop online.        

Excavation of dugong remains at Sheas Creek 1896 , Courtesy Australian Museum Archives (AMS351/V9817)

It’s strange to think about what might be entombed in dirt beneath the pavements we walk on in Sydney. But the discoveries around 1900 of two particular creatures catapults us back into the prehistory and the Deep Time dimensions of our city.

Listen to Minna and Alex on 2SER here

For 80 million years, starting 270 million years ago, a huge amount of sediment was deposited in the Sydney Basin, burying the remains of animals and plants that had lived long ago. One such creature caught in the sediments of time was the Paracyclotosaurus davidi or a giant salamander-like amphibian. The remains of the 2.75m creature resurfaced at the St Peters Brickyards (today’s Sydney Park) in 1910. Found as a complete fossil skeleton, it dated from the Triassic period some 250-205 million years ago where it lurked in the lakes of the Sydney basin.[i] Sadly it travelled onward and now lives in the Natural History Museum in London.

Cast of full skeleton of Paracyclotosaurus davidi at the Natural History Museum 2011, Trustees of the Natural History Museum, London (CC BY 4.0)

Just down the road at Shea’s Creek in Alexandria another curious beast was unearthed during the construction of the Alexandra Canal in 1896. Workers found large bones which were identified by Government Palaeontologist William Dun as dugong bones. It was especially odd to find a warm-water tropical marine mammal so far south. The ribs had distinct cuts across them while nearby in another deposit, dating from another era, Aboriginal stone axes were found. Suddenly whole new perspectives opened up on our history. The find suggested not only that at some point the climate was warmer, sea levels higher but that Aboriginal occupation was far longer than colonists had acknowledged.

Skeleton of the Dugong found at Shea's Creek 1896, Plate XIa, 'On the occurrence of a submerged forest, with remains of the Dugong, at Shea's Creek near Sydney' by R Etheridge, Junr, Professor TW Edgeworth David, BA, FGS, and HW Grimshaw, M Inst CE, Journal and proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, Vol 30, 1896, p 158 via the Internet Archive

It also showed that Aboriginal people were using this part of Botany Bay hundreds of generations ago, benefitting from harvesting creatures like Dugong but also adapting to a rapidly changing climate.[ii] Subsequent radiocarbon dating of some of the dugong bones has demonstrated that they are around 6,000 years old. Nearby Aboriginal campsites at Wolli Creek have been dated to 10,000 years old; but the dugong bones remain the earliest recorded excavation of an Aboriginal archaeological site in Sydney We can only imagine that there may be many more creatures in that there dirt too!   Further Reading: Paul Irish, First People of the Cooks River, Dictionary of Sydney, https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/first_people_of_the_cooks_river Ron Ringer, From Sheas Creek to Alexandra Canal, Dictionary of Sydney, https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/from_sheas_creek_to_alexandra_canal Laila Ellmoos, Sydney Park: Kangaroo ground to brickpits, https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/sydney_park_kangaroo_ground_to_brickpits Common Fossils of the Sydney Basin, Australian Museum website https://australian.museum/learn/australia-over-time/fossils/sites/common-fossils-of-the-sydney-basin/  

Cross section and longitudinal section of Shea's Creek Canal shewing position of submerged forest, remains of dugong, stone tomahawks etc 1896, Plate IX, 'On the occurrence of a submerged forest, with remains of the Dugong, at Shea's Creek near Sydney' by R Etheridge, Junr, Professor TW Edgeworth David, BA, FGS, and HW Grimshaw, M Inst CE, Journal and proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, Vol 30, 1896, p 158 via the Internet Archive

  Minna Muhlen-Schulte is a professional historian and Senior Heritage Consultant at GML Heritage. She was the recipient of the Berry Family Fellowship at the State Library of Victoria and has worked on a range of history projects for community organisations, local and state government including the Third Quarantine Cemetery, Woodford Academy and Middle and Georges Head . In 2014, Minna developed a program on the life and work of Clarice Beckett for ABC Radio National’s Hindsight Program and in 2017 produced Crossing Enemy Lines for ABC Radio National’s Earshot Program. You can hear her most recent production, Carving Up the Country, on ABC Radio National's The History Listen here. She’s appearing for the Dictionary today in a voluntary capacity. Thanks Minna! For more Dictionary of Sydney, listen to the podcast with Minna & Alex here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast with Alex James on 107.3 every Wednesday morning to hear more stories from the Dictionary of Sydney.