Sunday 30 December 2018

Peter Paul Labertouche (c. 1827- 1907)

Peter Paul Labertouche is the namesake for the town of Labertouche, just over the Cardinia Shire border and north of Longwarry North. As Labertouche is such a grand name I thought it would be interesting to find out about him. For more reading I have created a list of newspaper articles about the Labertouche family on Trove, click here to access the list. 



Sketch of Peter Paul Labertouche
The Herald July 18, 1892  http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article242860130

Here is a precis of Mr Labertouche's career in the Victorian Public Service. In April 1853, he was appointed as a Clerk in the Commissariat Department; in April 1858, Secretary for Roads and Bridges.  In July 1866, he was appointed as a Collector of Imposts and in December 1871 he had the role of certifying all accounts in the Roads and Bridges branch of the Department of Railways and Roads. In September 1876, he was appointed Acting Secretary for the Department of Railways and April 16, 1878 Mr Labertouche  reached the pinnacle of his career and was appointed Secretary for the Department of Victorian Railways. He retired from the position in 1892 after 39 years in the Victorian Public Service,  at the age of 65.

At a presentation to Mr Labertouche (reported in The Argus of November 9, 1892 read it here) it was said about him while  Mr Labertouche was secretary of the railways any person in the department could go to him in any difficulty and be certain of receiving his assistance and sympathy, if he were deserving of it. As a comrade, too, Mr Labertouche was always ready to join with his fellow officers in their social enjoyments and also to act in any other capacity m which he could assist the employees of the department

An article in the Ovens and Murray Advertiser  (read it here) said that he had been on an annual salary of 1,100 pounds which gave him a pension of 650 pounds per annum, which was round four to five times the average annual wage at the time.

I am not going to go into the minutiae of his working life with the railways, but instead tell you about his family and their glittering social life. Peter married Eleanor Annie Scales on February 22, 1859.  Peter died in March 1907, according to his obituary and by coincidence, his wife Eleanor also died in March 1907 - the 25th of  March, according to her Probate papers. They both died in London.

Peter and Eleanor's marriage notice in The Argus of February 23, 1859

They had the following children Pauline Hart Eleanor (Mrs Arthur Everett Leslie 1860 - 1939), un-named male (born & died 1861), Ethel Adelaide (Mrs Augustus Loftus 1862-1939),  Zoe (1864 - 1866), Raymond Sumner (1866 - 1867), Guy Neal Landale (1871 -1915). Ethel made a 'fashionable' marriage in November 1885 when she was married Captain Augustus Pelham Brooks Loftus. Loftus was the second son of the Governor of New South Wales, the Right Honorable Lord Augustus Loftus. The wedding was conducted by the Reverend C.P.M Bardin at Christ Church in Brunswick, the same minister and the same church where her parents were married. Bardin was a cousin of her fathers. You can read a report of the wedding in TableTalk, here.

Ethel and Captain Loftus' marriage notice in Table Talk June 26, 1885

Pauline married Arthur Everett Leslie, of South Kensington in London on June 19,  1889. You can read about this wedding, which took place in London,  here. I don't know much about Arthur, however apart from the fact that his divorce was  finalised in June 1885 from Maynard Eleanor Gordon. The two sisters,  Ethel and Pauline,  died in 1939, they were both living in England when they died - Ethel died November 28 and Pauline's death was registered in the first quarter of 1939, so January, February or March.



Guy Labertouche (1871 - 1915)

Guy married Muriel Stewart in 1908. He had been in the British Army and then in 1896 he transferred to the Indian Army, he was also in China during the Boxer Rebellion, so truly was  a 'son' of the British Empire. In 1895 he was appointed as aide-de-camp to the Acting-Governor of Victoria, Sir John Madden. Guy was killed in the First World War on April 14, 1915 at Shaiba, Mesopotamia (Iraq). There is a photo (above)  and information about him on the Scotch College, Melbourne, website here. Guy was the first old boy of Scotch College to die in the First World War.

Guy's engagement notice to Muriel Stewart in Punch August 6 1908

Back to Peter and Eleanor Labertouche - after Peter retired in 1892  he went to live in London, but it seems that Eleanor and the children were already living there. It is likely that they went to England with Ethel and  her husband in 1885, when Captain Loftus was appointed private Secretary to Sir Patrick Jennings England in his capacity of Commissioner to the Indian and Colonial Exhibition.  'Gussy' Loftus, as he was known, was very well connected. At one stage, the papers reported that Gussy's father, had succeeded to the title of the Marquisate of Ely, almost making the Labertouche family one step closer to the Aristocracy (read about it, here)  In 1886, his daughter, Ethel Loftus was presented to Her Majesty on May 5 (read full account, here) In the same year, Guy was accepted into Westminister School, London, which dates back to the 12th century.


A report of Ethel Loftus' presentation at Court in the Sydney Mail June 19, 1886

In April 1888 Mrs Eleanor Labertouche, Miss Pauline 'Nina' Labertouche and Mrs Ethel Loftus  opened an upmarket dressmaking firm called Madame La Grange et Cie.  They already operated a business called Victoire et Compagnie and came to an  arrangement with Lousie Baldossi, an experienced dress maker, who had a business called Madame Louise,  to manage the business for four years. Miss Baldossi was to receive 250 pounds per annum and 5% of the business profits. The relationship soon broke down and Miss Baldossi was sacked. She sued them for unfair dismissal and won her case and was awarded 100 pounds compensation. You can read more about this case here, It was well reported in the papers with some of them using the very 'punny' headline - a 'Dressmaking suit'. In 1889, Pauline was married in London to Arthur Leslie. It seems that the women continued in business as in September 1889 Princess Mary of Teck and her daughters visited their new business Victoire et Cie in Bond Street. Read the full report, here. One of Princess Mary's daughters, became  Queen Mary (the wife of George V) - so no wonder the Labertouche women were happy to let everyone know of their illustrious clients.

Of course, it wasn't all a glittering life for the Labertouche because in 1891, Peter's brother George was as charged with embezzling 10,000 pounds from the Imperial Pensions Department in Sydney. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years in jail.

We will finish off this post with this tribute to Mr Labertouche All those who were associated with the late Mr Labertouche at the Railway Department speak of him terms of great affection. He was popular with all classes and possessed an extremely amiable disposition. (The Argus, March 18 1907, see full report, here.)

For more reading I have created a list of newspaper articles about the Labertouche family on Trove, click here to access the list. 

Tuesday 18 December 2018

An Acrostic Seasonal history of the Casey Cardinia region - Holidays!

In this post we take an eclectic and acrostic look at some themes from our history and the first letter of letter of each theme spells Holidays! Last year we did Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

H is for Hunting. The most obvious example of hunting in the region is the Melbourne Hunt Club. The Club dates back to the 1840s and moved from Oakleigh to Cranbourne in 1929, to the corner of Thompsons and Narre Warren-Cranbourne Roads. Fox hunting needs both space and obliging land owners and Cranbourne provided both. The club moved to Pakenham in the 1990s and was replaced by a housing estate of the same name. The fox is an introduced species to Australia and they were imported to Australia by members of the Acclimatisation Society  - William Lyall (1821 - 1888) of Harewood in Tooradin was a member and he introduced deer, pheasants, partridges, hares onto his property for hunting purposes.


This is the Acclimatisation Society's medal - which shows some of the animals introduced to Victoria - deer, ostrich, pheasant, swan, rabbit and  hare.
State Library of Victoria Image IAN20/06/68/8   

O is for Oil and petrol used in cars and sold at Garages. In the 1910s cars were beginning to appear in towns. Lawson Poole opened the first garage in Cranbourne in 1919 and by the early 1920s garages that sold, leased and serviced motorcars were common in many towns - Koo Wee Rup had at least two garages in the town in that decade.

Advertisement for Glasheen Brothers garage of Tooradin,
Koo Wee Rup Sun August 14, 1924

L is for Land sales.  Land in this area was first leased to squatters from the 1830s and 1840s. During the 1850s townships, such as Cranbourne and Berwick were surveyed and the first land sales took place. For other towns  it was  a bit later - township lots in Garfield, for instance, were sold in 1887, Hampton Park allotments in 1920. Elaborate posters were developed to promote these land sales, you can see some of them here. Land sales were spurred on by the development of the railways, this advertisement for the Emerald Station blocks from 1905, were made possible by the establishment of the 'Puffing Billy' line which opened December 1900.


Emerald Station blocks land sales, March 25, 1905
State Library of Victoria http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/169578

I is for Immigrants. Harkaway is a town settled by German Lutheran immigrants, who were connected not only by their faith but by intermarriage. You can read about these early German families, here. Another  area in the region predominately settled by migrants from the same country is Skye. Skye changed its name to Lyndhurst South in 1903 (although some sources list the date as 1894) after a murder brought unwelcome attention to the area. It changed back to Skye in 1964. Many of the early settlers had come from the Isle of Skye, an island off the north-west coast of Scotland. There was, of course, a large influx of migrants to this region after the Second World War, many from Italy and The Netherlands. A report of a Naturalisation ceremony held by the Shire of Cranbourne in 1960, gives some idea of the makeup of 'new Australians' in the region, read it here.



The Lutheran Church and bell tower at Harkaway.
Image:  Early Days of Berwick, 3rd revised edition, 1979.

D is for Dredges. The Koo Wee Rup Swamp was essentially drained between 1889 and 1893. This work was done by hand and it was't until 1913 that dredges were used on the Swamp. This was the year the Lubecker Steam dredge arrived from Germany.  It started work on the Lang Lang River - which was described as a wandering creek - and it turned that 'wandering creek' into a 'proper drain' to prevent flooding of the area. It moved to the Koo Wee Rup Swamp in 1916. Other photos of dredges used by the State River and Water Supply Commission can be seen here


Lubecker Steam Dredge
State Rivers & Water Supply Commission photographer, State Library of Victoria Image rwg/u873

A is for Airfields. The Casey Airfield at Berwick (now the site of Federation University and Nossal High School) was established by Colonel Rupert Ryan, who owned the Edrington property with his sister, Lady Casey. Ryan's brother-in law, Lord Casey owned a Perceval Gull monoplane and flew to and from Canberra, where he was a member of the House of Representatives. As Berwick developed it was considered unsafe to have planes landing and taking off over houses and it closed in 1994. There is another airfield in the region, at Tooradin, which is still used. This has the distinction of having a ship on the property. This is the Edwina May, owned by William Curtain and his son, Ray.  It was moored at Tooradin, so they could work on the boat, but sadly Ray was in a boat Darwin when Cyclone Tracy hit in December 1974 and the boat sank and he died. After that, Mr Curtain did not have the heart to finish off Edwina May, and she remains there today. The information about the Edwina May comes from the Australian National Shipwreck database.


The Edwina May at Tooradin airfield.

Y is for Yellow cheese and milk and other dairy industry products. The Dairy industry has been, until recently, a large part of the Casey Cardinia economy. Many small towns had milk or cheese factories - the one at Cora Lynn is still standing, the one at Bayles, built in 1966 replacing an earlier one, is also still standing, but now used for vegetable processing. Read about them here. The most prominent one in the area is the Old Cheese factory at Berwick - established in 1875, read about it here. Apart from the factories we also had George Hope's Model dairy at Cranbourne which supplied pure, unadulterated milk to the Lady Talbot Milk Institute, which in turn supplied  the pure milk to babies in Melbourne to help reduce infant deaths due to contaminated milk.


The c. 1875 Old Cheese Factory at Berwick  - built at a time when factories were built to be both useful and aesthetically pleasing.

S is for Settlements - Religious.  Maryknoll which  was established in 1949 by Father Wilfred Pooley (1912-1969)  as a Catholic community based on the principals of faith, family life and co-operative enterprise. 


HOLIDAYS!

Friday 2 November 2018

Cranbourne Park Estate land sale November 9, 1888

On November 9, 1888 the blocks at Cranbourne Park Estate at Cranbourne were auctioned off. The land was sold on very easy terms with a two pound deposit. The auctioneers, Carney & Kelly, in conjunction with John Collins provided the prospective buyers with a 'special train leaving Princes Bridge Station at 11.15am' and  also provided a 'free luncheon in a spacious marquee'


Map of the Cranbourne Park Estate
State Library of Victoria  - click here to view or download a larger version http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/135527




Part of the advertisement for Cranbourne Park Estate in The Age November 8, 1888
see the full advertisement here http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article193401330

Here is a list of the Streets in the Cranbourne Park Estate and the derivation of their name

Barkley Street
Sir Henry Barkly (1815 - 1898) was Governor of Victoria from 1856 to 1863. Barkly Street had already been used in Cranbourne in the original 1850s sub-division, read about this here. The western end of the original Barkly Street is now called Brunt Street and the eastern end is Lecky Street. 

Berwick Road
It was called Berwick Road as it lead to Berwick (actually it leads to Narre Warren, but perhaps they thought that Berwick was more well known than Narre Warren)  Now known as Cameron Street, after early land owner, Alexander Cameron, who took up land in Cranbourne in 1851.

Bowen Street
Sir George Ferguson Bowen  (1821 - 1899) was the Governor of Queensland from 1859 - 1868, Governor of New Zealand 1868 - 1873,  Governor of Victoria 1873- 1878, Governor of Mauritius 1879 - 1882 and then Governor of Hong Kong 1882 - 1886 - so clearly moved around the British Empire serving Queen Victoria wherever he was sent. 

Camms Road
Charles Camm (1837 - 1924) is listed on the Cranbourne Parish Plan as owning Lot 69, 100 acres, this land was at the end of Patterson's Road, near Pound Road. According to the Cranbourne Shire Rate books, by 1884, as well as this 100 acres, Robert Camm (1811 - 1890) was listed for 87 acres Lot 7 and 316 acres Lot 35, which was originally owned by Alexander Cameron. There is some discrepancy with the spelling of the name - the Parish Plan lists it as Cam,  the Rate books call it Camm and Niel Gunson in his book The Good Country: Cranbourne Shire spells it as Cam.

Canterbury Road
John Henry Thomas Manners-Sutton (1814 - 1877) was the Governor of Victoria 1866 - 1873. In 1869, on the death of his brother, he became the third Viscount Canterbury.

Hotham Street
Sir Charles Hotham (1806 - 1855) was appointed Lieutenant Governor of Victoria in December 1853 and full Governor  in February 1855, a post he held until he died in December 1855. The Eureka Rebellion took place during his appointment.

La Trobe Street
Charles Joseph La Trobe (1801 - 1875)  was the Superintendent of the Port Phillip District from 1839 - 1851, then Lieutenant Governor of Victoria 1851 - 1854. 

Loch Street
Henry Brougham Loch (1827 - 1900) was the Governor of Victoria 1884 - 1889, he was then appointed High Commissioner for South Africa and Governor of the Cape Colony.

Melbourne Road
Obviously the road to Melbourne (if heading north), but now called High Street, part of  the South Gippsland Highway and also called, in the past, Western Port Road or the Bass Road or Grantville Road as that was where the road went to when heading south. Melbourne was named for William Lamb, second Viscount Melbourne (1779 - 1848), a British Prime Minister.

Normanby Street
George Augustine Consantine Phipps, second Marquis of Normanby was the Governor of Queensland 1871 - 1874, Governor of New Zealand 1874 - 1878 and then Governor of Victoria 1879 - 1884. 

Tuesday 9 October 2018

Who was Pakenham named after?

I have seen four possible suggestions for the source of the name Pakenham.

In the Wake of the Pack Tracks suggests Pakenham is named after Major General Sir Edward Michael Pakenham (1778 - 1815) who served with the Duke of Wellington in the Peninsula War and was killed in 1815 at the Battle of New Orleans.


Major General Sir Edward Michael Pakenham (1778-1815)
Image: National Parks Service https://www.nps.gov/people/edward-pakenham.htm


Les Blake, in his book, Place names of Victoria (Rigby 1977) suggests that Pakenham was named for “General Pakenham who served in the Crimean War”. This is Lieutenant-Colonel Edward William Pakenham (1819 -1854) who was killed at Inkermann during the Crimean War. The Lieutenant Colonel was the son of Sir Hercules Pakenham who was the brother of Major General Sir Edward Michael Pakenham.



Lieutenant-Colonel Edward William Pakenham (1819-1854)
Image: Hampshire Country Council

The third suggestion is from Place Names of Australia by A.W. Reed (Reed 1973) Mr Reed suggests that the town was named for Catherine Pakenham, who was the wife of the Duke of Wellington. Catherine (1773 - 1831) married the Duke of Wellington in 1806. They had two sons, Arthur born in 1807 and Charles in 1808.


Catherine Pakenham, the Duchess of Wellington (1773-1831)
Catherine ('Kitty') Pakenham, Duchess of Wellington by Sir Thomas Lawrence 1814 
Wellington Collection, Stratfield Saye House 

From Bullock Tracks to Bitumen: a brief history of the Shire of Berwick (Historical Society of Berwick, 1962) has this to say about the origin of the name – when Captain Clark was surveying the area, his cousin, a Naval officer named Pakenham, visited him. The two men agreed that the place should be named Pakenham, after their grandfather, Rev. Pakenham a Dublin minister. This is the Very Reverend Henry Pakenham (1787 - 1863)  who was Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin from 1843-1863.

Very Reverend Henry Pakenham (1878-1863)
Henry Pakenham's image on St Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin.



Henry Pakenham's obituary in the Sydney paper The Empire March 16, 1864

The Duchess of Wellington  and the Very Reverend Henry Pakenham were siblings of Major General Sir Edward Pakenham and Sir Hercules Pakenham. Their father was the second Baron Longford and their nephew was Lieutenant-Colonel Edward William Pakenham.  Blake also suggests that the area was once called Longford. Pakenham was originally based around the Princes Highway and Toomuc Creek and the town that developed around the Railway Station from 1877 was known as Pakenham East. It was still referred to as Pakenham East until the early 1970s.

Here's a partial family tree to help explain the relationships
Edward Michael Pakenham - 2nd Baron Longford, suceeded to the Title in 1776, a Peerage of Ireland. He had the following children, that are of interest to us 
  • Catherine, Duchess of Wellington (1773-1831)
  • Major General Sir Edward Michael (1778-1815)
  • Sir Hercules (1781-1850) - the father of Lieutenant Colonel Edward William (1819-1854)
  • Very Reverend Henry (1787-1863)
I believe (and some people disagree with me) the most likely candidate is Lieutenant-Colonel Edward William Pakenham who was killed during the Crimean War as Victoria and Melbourne have other place names with a Crimean connection including the towns of St Arnaud and Sebastapol and the suburb of Balaclava. St Kilda has streets with a Crimean War connection - Inkerman Road, Crimea Street, Redan Street, Alma Road and Odessa Street. Clarendon Street, Codrington Street and Lyons Street in Cranbourne are also connected to Crimean War personalities.  See my blog post on Cranbourne Street names, here.

Thursday 27 September 2018

Cranbourne Pound and Pound Road

Pound Road zig zags its way across the old Shire of Cranbourne from Ballarto Road at Cardinia to the South Gippsland Highway at Hampton Park. There is a reason that it ends up in Hampton Park and that is because where Hampton Park is now located used to be a Pound.  We will let Niel Gunson author of The Good Country: Cranbourne Shire tell us  - Hampton Park - the area had originally enclosed the Dandenong Pound (later known as the Cranbourne Pound).  The ‘pound’ Paddock was later owned by the Garner (1) family of Diamond Hill, well known in Dandenong as undertakers and coach builders. When W. Garner was gored by a bull the paddock was purchased by E.V Jones of Somerville Road, Footscray (2).  It was Jones that created the Hampton Park subdivision in 1916, read more about this here.


Part of the Eumemmerring / Lyndhurst Parish Plan that shows the Dandenong Pound at the top right. The plan is dated January 14, 1859. You can see a better copy at the State Library of Victoria http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/150137
To give you some perspective - the land under the Pound was owned by Isaac Edey (lot 34). Edeys Run in modern day Hampton Park is around where the Edey homestead was located.  


The Dandenong Pound was officially established November 20, 1849 and the name was changed to the Cranbourne Pound in July 1868. This pound was closed in January 1887 and relocated.  



Establishment of the Pound
November 28, 1849



Change of name to Cranbourne Shire Pound


Relocation of the Pound from the original location
Victoria Government Gazette  January 28, 1887

Pounds played a larger role in the life of people in the early days than they do now - the Victorian Government Gazette has pages and pages of notices of impoundings of animals - stock was valuable and fences were poor. In some areas, as we have seen hawthorn hedges were used as fences or post and rail fences or wire fences. These fences were not as effective in holding cattle in as barbed wire fences, but it wasn't until November 1874 that Joseph Glidden took out the first patent for barbed wire in the USA. So it was more likely that livestock would go wandering and be impounded by the Pound Keeper, who could charge a fine for allowing the animals to stray and a daily 'sustenance' fee for feeding the animal. As  a matter of interest the Kansas Barbed Wire Museum has a history of barbed wire on their website, you can read it here.  The first advertisements in Australian newspapers for 'American barbed fencing wire' (that I could find) were in 1879.


The earliest barbed wire advertisements I can find  are from 1879.
The Australasian March 15, 1879


It appears that Pound Road takes the most direct line across the old Cranbourne Shire to the pound from the eastern side of the Shire. The  kinks in the road maybe due to influential  landowners who refused to allow a road through their property. If you look at this map at the State Library of Victoria (below or click here) then you can see that starts at Tooradin Station Road/Ballarto Road and then is almost a direct line to Hampton Park, apart from the diversion around The Springs property, owned by Sir William Clarke, who would be as influential a land owner as you could find anywhere

East of Tooradin where Koo Wee Rup, Monomeith, Yannathan etc are was part of the Koo Wee Rup Swamp and until major drainage works commenced in 1889 was fairly uninhabited. There were early settlements down around Lang Lang but before the Swamp was drained and the roads improved it would have been common to travel by boat to Tooradin and then by road and then head to the Pound and Dandenong by either what became the South Gippsland Highway or north from Tooradin to Pound Road.


Click on the map to enlarge or look at it on the State Library website, here. You can see where it starts and finishes (the red stars) and the kink around The Springs property (circled in red)
Map:  Cranbourne  prepared by Australian Section, Imperial General Staff.
Great Britain. War Office. General Staff. Australian Section, 1924.

Footnotes
(1) The surname is actually Garnar - I have written about them in my Diamond Hill post, here.
(2) Gunson, Niel The Good Country: Cranbourne Shire (Cheshire, 1968) p. 212. 

Friday 14 September 2018

High Street Cranbourne, 1984.

These photographs are from the National Archives of Australia - they show High Street in Cranbourne, corner of Sladen Street,  and were taken in 1984, presumably in April 1984 by the record number. I don't know what the occasion was but there are 7,352 photos in the series, taken all around Australia, so there must have been some purpose behind them. Look at the price of Super at the Shell Service Station - 47.9 cents per litre!.


High Street, Cranbourne 1984. Shell service station on the left, with Skewes SSW supermarket, next to it. 
National Archives of Australia B583, 4/1984 31147686


High Street, Cranbourne 1984. Kelly's Hotel is just right of centre.
National Archives of Australia B583, 4/1984 31147687



High Street, Cranbourne 1984. Not often you see  a tractor in High Street today.
National Archives of Australia B583, 4/1984 31147688


High Street, Cranbourne 1984
National Archives of Australia B583, 4/1984 31147689


High Street, Cranbourne 1984
National Archives of Australia B583, 4/1984 31147690

Thursday 13 September 2018

Construction of the Pakenham Library - November 1990 to April 1991

Here are some photographs of the construction of old Pakenham Library. Construction started in November 1990 and finished in April 1991. The library was officially opened by Pakenham Shire President, Cr Pam Wyley on Sunday May 19, 1991. The building was designed by Alan Robertson and Associates and it was constructed by Becon Constructions at a cost of $553,000. It was demolished around 2009 and the existing Library opened in July 2011. The Library site  is now occupied by the Palkenham Marketplace shopping centre which opened in December 2011.


The start of the project.
Click on the photos to enlarge them.






Concreting the slab foundations.


Horse riding prohibited!


The walls taking shape.




The bricks have arrived.




You can just see the sign on the right - Dr Bruce Cox Gardens. You can read more about Dr Cox and the gardens, here.






Just after completition


Information about the building.