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Employment and Unemployment

Transcript: Mr William Kennedy recalls collecting the dole at Liverpool Town Hall during the Depression

Mr William Kennedy was born in 1910 and was interviewed in 1986 for the 'Looking Back at Liverpool: An Oral History of the Liverpool Region 1900 to 1960.' He remembers crowds of men gathering to collect the dole at Liverpool Town Hall during the Great Depression

Transcript: Mrs Evelyn Chapple remembers surviving well during the Great Depression

Mrs Evelyn Chapple, who was born in 1896, was interviewed in 1986 for the 'Looking Back at Liverpool: An Oral History of the Liverpool Region 1900 to 1960' project. She remembers surviving well during the Great Depression of the 1930s because of income from real estate and her husband's employment at the Challenge Woollen Mills in Liverpool.

Prevention and Relief of Unemployment Act 1930

Legislation that established the Council for Prevention and Relief of Unemployment which had wide powers to establish schemes for unemployed workers during the Depression.

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Howard, Robert Rice

Robert 'Nosey Bob' Howard was the New South Wales public hangman from 1876 until his retirement in 1904. He acted as assistant executioner several times prior to his official permanent appointment. Howard had been a successful hansom cab driver who was apparenlty popular with his wealthy Darling Point clientele (it was rumoured that he had been the preferred cab driver for Prince Alfred during his visit to Sydney in 1868), but after being kicked in the head by one of his horses and losing his nose, his disfigured appearance deterred his former patrons and his business failed. He moved from Paddington with his family to Bondi Beach in 1888 and lived there until his death in 1906.

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Eviction at Happy Valley, 24 March 1939

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From the collections of the

State Library of New South Wales

[ON 388/Box 035/Item 192]

Staff working in one of the Reserve Bank of Australia’s computer rooms, May 1968

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Contributed By

Reserve Bank of Australia

[Reserve Bank of Australia Archives PN-004678]

Staff working in one of the computer rooms at the Reserve Bank of Australia c1970

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Contributed By

Reserve Bank of Australia

[Reserve Bank of Australia Archives PN-004678]

Staff working in one of the computer rooms at the Reserve Bank of Australia, May 1972

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Contributed By

Reserve Bank of Australia

[Reserve Bank of Australia Archives PN-007717]

The Unemployed at the Field of Mars 1887

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From the collections of the

State Library of New South Wales

[TN 115]

(Illustrated Sydney News, 16 May 1887, p17)

Unemployed match-seller's sign, Sydney c1935

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By

Sam Hood

From the collections of the

State Library of New South Wales

[hood_33000 / Home and Away 33000]

Mr Jack Healy recalls training horses for the army in Liverpool in 1928, interviewed in 1986

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Mr Jack Healy was born in 1908. He was interviewed in 1986 for the 'Looking Back at Liverpool: An Oral History of the Liverpool Region 1900 to 1960.' He recalls joining the remount unit [responsible for training horses for the Australian army] at Liverpool in 1928.
Transcript

INTERVIEWER: When did you join the army?

JACK: 1928.

INTERVIEWER: And what made you decide to join the army?

JACK: Well, I was out of work and a couple of chaps that I knew, as a matter of fact I knew the Commanding Officer too. Then a vacancy came up, chap left, I went down to present myself and went for the medicals and got the job.

INTERVIEWER: Did you view it as a job?

JACK: Oh sure. Money. Yes, money. I think everybody did that.

INTERVIEWER: Was it hard work?

JACK: Oh, yes and no; young horses, handling young horses, driving, riding, all that sort of thing, yes.

INTERVIEWER: You were in the remounts were you?

JACK: That's right. Handling horses, breaking horses, training them for army manoeuvers, military purposes as it may be, staff horses, and ordinary artillery horses.

INTERVIEWER: Whereabouts did they get the horses from?

JACK: Hired them in the country, they were called Murray Walers. And they also bought them for the Indian army. Their horses came from here too. They were a kind of what you'd call a buggy horse really, bigger than a pony, about 16-hand type of thing.

INTERVIEWER: How did they get the horses to Liverpool?

JACK: Train. There used to be a train line went out from here to Holsworthy in those days, used to be the German camp.

INTERVIEWER: Did you know much about horses before you started?

JACK: Well, we always had horses when I was a kid. They were Tuxedo breed, American. We had the fastest horse on Hoxton Park Road.

Contributed By

Liverpool City Library

[BRN: 57030]

(Excerpt from interview with Mr Jack Healy from the 'Looking back at Liverpool : an oral history of the Liverpool region 1900-1960' conducted in 1986 by Liverpool City Council, editor and project co-ordinator Catherine Johnson ; researchers Angela Imbrosciano, Verica Miiosavijevic, Kathleen Smith.)

Mr William Kennedy recalls collecting the dole at Liverpool Town Hall during the Depression, interviewed in 1986

full record »

Mr William Kennedy was born in 1910 and was interviewed in 1986 for the 'Looking Back at Liverpool: An Oral History of the Liverpool Region 1900 to 1960.' He remembers crowds of men gathering to collect the dole at Liverpool Town Hall during the Great Depression.
Transcript

WILLIAM: The point of issue for the dole was the old police station. It was taken over then by the Department of Labour and Industry, they administered it. Then there was that many coming on to the dole that they had to move then to Liverpool Town Hall. And the crowds kept increasing. More and more were coming on the dole. You were issued with a dole ticket, not money. You had to wait until your name was called and you'd walk up through the crowd of people, get your dole ticket which was worth five shillings, later it increased to seven [shillings] and sixpence. Then you could only get the items that were listed on that ticket: bread, meat and so forth. Then on the other side of the ticket was a list of alternate items if the others weren't available. Men would be sitting around the Town Hall in the hundreds and they'd be addressed at different times by agitators. There were always these people coming along. And the names of some of the leading Communists that came along at that time were [Tom] Payne, [Jack] Sylvester, and Bella Weiner, she was a woman, a Jewess. Men were more receptive to listening because of their position, they listened very attentively to these fellows and a lot of them thought that was where their hopes lay.

Contributed By

Liverpool City Library

[BRN: 57053]

(Excerpt from interview with Mr William Kennedy, from the 'Looking back at Liverpool : an oral history of the Liverpool region 1900-1960' conducted in 1986 by Liverpool City Council, editor and project co-ordinator Catherine Johnson ; researchers Angela Imbrosciano, Verica Miiosavijevic, Kathleen Smith)

Mrs Evelyn Chapple remembers surviving well during the Great Depression, interviewed in 1986

full record »

Mrs Evelyn Chapple, who was born in 1896, was interviewed in 1986 for the 'Looking Back at Liverpool: An Oral History of the Liverpool Region 1900 to 1960' project. She remembers surviving well during the Great Depression of the 1930s because of income from real estate and her husband's employment at the Challenge Woollen Mills in Liverpool.
Transcript

EVELYN: I was married in 1917, it's a long way back.

INTERVIEWER: So you had a family when the Depression came?

EVELYN: Yes, we had family and we obtained houses around and were letting property. Don't I know it. They [tenants] went out and left us owing money. One family owed us two years' money. My husband was soft, he'd say 'poor devils, you can't be hard on them, we've got money coming in and we've got a living and they've got nothing' and he'd let them go.

INTERVIEWER: Your husband's job wasn't affected at all?

EVELYN: They [other employees] went on three days a week, but my husband never ever went on any short time because he was making blankets and flannel for the military.

INTERVIEWER: So you wouldn't have noticed too much of a difference financially?

EVELYN: No, not at all. We had the same income coming all the time. The only thing is my husband wouldn't get any overtime once the Depression was on.

INTERVIEWER: What about the general feeling in Liverpool?

EVELYN: Well I never ever noticed it, because it didn't affect me at all.

Contributed By

Liverpool City Library

[BRN: 25453]

(Excerpt from interview with Mrs Evelyn Chapple in 'Looking back at Liverpool : an oral history of the Liverpool region 1900-1960' conducted in 1986 by Liverpool City Council, editor and project co-ordinator Catherine Johnson ; researchers Angela Imbrosciano, Verica Miiosavijevic, Kathleen Smith.)

Mrs Florence Starr recalls making garden stakes in the 1920s for Chinese market gardeners in Austral, interviewed in 1986

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Mrs Florence Starr was interviewed in 1986 for the 'Looking Back at Liverpool: An Oral History of the Liverpool Region 1900 to 1960.' She came to live in the suburb of Austral in 1925 when she was first married, at the age of seventeen. She recalls making garden stakes for Chinese market gardeners in the area.

Transcript

INTERVIEWER: What did you and your husband do when you first came to Austral?

FLORENCE: Well, we used to cut 'chow sticks' and sell bundles of chow sticks, they used to call them. They are about three foot long and there was a Chinese [market] garden in Liverpool, on Hoxton Park Road, it was just below Pearce Street, there was a Chinese garden, and they used to buy the chow sticks from us and we used to get three shillings a bundle and it used to take all day to cut a bundle of chow sticks, they were so big and then we had to take them in there. And that substituted [subsidised?] a bit for the small amount we got from the government, you know, the dole. As I say I had three children in two years and eleven months, I had three, and it was hard for me, but I still had to go and cut chow sticks.

INTERVIEWER: Who would look after the children?

FLORENCE: I would, I'd have them in a home made billy cart.

Contributed By

Liverpool City Library

[BRN: 57868]

(Excerpt from interview with Mrs Florence Hilda Starr, from the 'Looking back at Liverpool : an oral history of the Liverpool region 1900-1960' conducted in 1986 by Liverpool City Council, editor and project co-ordinator Catherine Johnson ; researchers Angela Imbrosciano, Verica Miiosavijevic, Kathleen Smith.)