I have just finished watching online a critical discussion on the practice of history held at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC.
In these times of fake news, misleading information, and conspiracy theories. Whom do you trust? What is the truth? Social media is all-encompassing.
This photograph is of a voluntary aid at the Waley Convalescent Home for Soldiers at Mowbray Park in 1920 sitting at her desk perhaps writing a letter to a loved one in her time off. This is a wonderful story of service and sacrifice and how these women did wonderful service during and after the First World War. (NAA)
This discussion on the practice of history is a dose of hope when political interest groups seek to rewrite the past on their terms.
Maybe this discussion was not a complete cure, but it certainly seems like a ray of sunshine into the swamp of the abyss.
So what did I see?
I watched a panel of learned historians and museum directors discussing launching the Reframing History report by the American Association for State and Local History (AASLH).
The promotional email I received boasted:
This new initiative provides the field with a set of evidence-backed recommendations to communicate history more convincingly and to build a wider understanding of what inclusive history looks like and why it is important for all of us.
The discussion lived up to the hype.
I highly recommend this lively and challenging discussion to anyone involved in the practice of history. I do not think it matters whether you are from the academy, practise public history, or just like popular history. This discussion should interest you if you are concerned about the long term health of history as a discipline.
Panel Discussion Details
John Dichtl, president and CEO of AASLH, started the conversation by providing an overview of the project.
That was followed by a discussion by Anthea Hartig, Elizabeth MacMillan, Director of the National Museum of American History.
Panellists included:
Martha S. Jones, author and professor of history at Johns Hopkins University
Clint Smith, staff writer at The Atlantic and author of How the Word is Passed: A Reckoning with Slavery Across America
Jorge Zamanillo, director of HistoryMiami and incoming founding director of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino
The panellists expand on the Reframing History Report and Toolkit by talking about their personal experiences of communicating about history and sharing their recommendations for how history organizations can create environments for positive and productive conversations.
‘Flappers of the 1920s were young women known for their energetic freedom, embracing a lifestyle viewed by many at the time as outrageous, immoral or downright dangerous’, says the History.com website.
If you read the pages of the Camden News you might have agreed.
In 1920 the Camden News reported ‘flappers’ were ‘running wild’ on the streets of Sydney, or so it seemed to the casual reader. The press report stated:
A straggling procession of boisterous, well dressed young fellows, with pipe or cigarette in hand, and headed by a number of bold looking females of the ‘flapper’ type, paraded George and Pitt streets on Thursday (last week). (Camden News, 25 November 1920)
The same event was reported in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and other Sydney newspapers with less colourful language. Apparently there had been a lunchtime marchof office workers along George Street numbering around 3000, with ‘200 ladies’, supporting the basic wage case in Melbourne.
The news story that appeared in the Camden News had originally been run in the Crookwell Gazette. (Crookwell Gazette, 17 November 1920) and then re-published by the News the following week. The News and the Gazette were the only New South Wales newspapers that that ran this particular account of the Sydney march, where female office workers were called ‘flappers’.
The modern family of Dr Francis West following the christening of Lydia West’s daughter in 1915. This photograph was taken in the backyard of Macaria where Dr West had his surgery and where the West family called home. (Camden Images Past and Present)
The correspondent for the Gazette and News was offended by the effrontery young female office workers being part of an industrial campaign march. In the years before 1920 there had been a number of controversial industrial campaigns taken across New South Wales taken by workers. The Camden News had opposed these actions.
The editorial position of the Camden News was that these young women should fit the conservative stereotype of women represented by the Mothers’ Union. Here women were socialised in Victorian notions of service, ideals of dependence, and the ideology of motherhood where mothering was seen as a national imperative. (Willis, Ministering Angels:20-21)
The modern girl
The Sydney ‘flappers’ were modern girls who participated in paid-work, dressed in the latest fashions, cut their hair short, watched the latest movies, bought the latest magazines and used the latest cosmetics.
Australian women were considered modern because they had the vote and they were represented in literature as a young and athletic stereotype as opposed the colourless and uninspiring English girl.
The flapper
The ‘flapper’ is one representation of young women from the 1920s that appeared all over the world, and Camden was not remote from these international forces.
American author F. Scott Fitzgerald is acknowledged as the creator of the flapper and published his Flappers and Philosophers in 1920. (History.com) Other female equivalents were Japan’s moga, Germany’s neue Frauen, France’s garçonnes, or China’s modeng xiaojie (摩登⼩姐).
The term flapper linked Camden to international trends concerned with fashion, consumerism, cosmetics, cinema – primarily visual media.
The modern girl in Camden
The ‘modern girl’ in Camden appeared in the early 1920s and was shaped by fashion, movies, cosmetics and magazines.
These two photographs illustrate that young women in Camden were modern.
Young Camden women in Macarthur Park in 1919 in a ‘Welcome Home’ party for returning servicemen (Camden Images)
The young women in this 1919 pic have short hair sitting next local returned men from the war.
Another group of the young modern women appeared in Camden in 1920s. Trainee teachers shown in the photograph taken by local Camden photographer Roy Dowle. The group of 49 young single women from Sydney stayed at the Camden showground hall in 1921 along with 15 men. In following years hundreds of young female teachers stayed at the Camden showground and did their practical training at local schools.
The group photograph of the trainee teachers from Sydney Teachers College at Onslow Park adjacent to the Show Hall in 1924. These modern young women and men from Sydney started coming to Camden in 1921. (Camden Images Past and Present) This image was originally photographed by Roy Dowle of Camden on a glass plate negative. The Dowle collection of glass plate negatives is held by The Oaks Historical Society (Roy Dowle Collection, TOHS)
The flapper at the movies
The most common place to the find the ‘flapper’ in Camden was at the movies – the weekly picture show at the Forrester’s Hall in Camden main street. The world on the big screen.
The movies were a visual medium, just like fashion, cosmetics, advertising, and magazines, that allowed Camden women to embrace the commodity culture on the Interwar period.
The Camden News used the language of latest fashions and styles when it reported these events or ran advertisements for the local picture show.
One example was the advertisement for the ‘Selznick Masterpiece’ the ‘One Week of Love’ in 1923. The was first time that the term ‘flapper’ appeared in a Camden movie promotion and it was announced it to the world this way:
‘Every man, woman, flapper, bride-to-be and eligible youth in Australia is crazy-to-see its stupendous wreck scene, thrilling aeroplane crash, strong dramatic appeal, lifting humour, intoxicating love scenes, bewildering beauty, lavishness, gripping suspense, heart-toughing pathos, which all combing to make it the biggest picture of the year’. (Camden News, 9 August 1923)
According to country press reports the movie was the ‘passion play of 1923’ and showed at PJ Fox’s Star Pictures located in the Foresters’ Hall, which had opened in 1914. Starring silent film beauty Elaine Hammerstein and female heart-throb Conway Tearle the movie had enjoyed ‘a sensational long-run season’ at Sydney’s Piccadilly Theatre. (Kiama Reporter and Illawarra Journal, 7 March 1923)
Foreign movies blew all sorts of ideas, trends and fashions into the Camden district including notions about flappers.
Young Camden women were influenced by images and trends generated by modernism at the pictures, in magazines, in advertising, in cosmetics, and in fashion.
While Camden could be a small closed community it was not isolated from the rest of the world.
The image attracted a host of likes and shares and comments like Phil Hall ‘What a delightful photo’ and Christine Mcmanus ‘It’s very charming’.
What is the appeal of the picture?
The picture has an aesthetic quality partly produced from the soft sepia tones of the image, and partly from the subject, which together gives the photograph a dreamy quality.
The ethereal presence of the image is hard to describe in words and the camera is kind to the subjects, who are well-positioned in a nicely balanced frame.
A couple relaxing on the Mount Pleasant Colliery railway at Stuart Park, North Wollongong in the early 1900s (Lost Wollongong Facebook page, 3 July 2016) The Royal Australian Historical Society caption says: ‘Photographer Aileen Ryan Lynch taking a photograph of M. Carey at Stuart Park Wollongong, March 1919’ (J Scott/RAHS)
The viewer of the picture is a time traveler into another world based on the New South Wales South Coast and is given a snapshot of a moment frozen in time. The observer has a glimpse of a world after the First World World in the present. For the viewer it as a form of nostalgia, where they create a romanticised version of the past accompanied by feelings that the present is not quite as good as an earlier period.
The world in the picture, a mixture of pleasure and for others despair, apparently moved at a slower pace, yet in its own way no less complex than the present. The picture speaks to those who choose to listen and tells a nuanced, multi-layered story about another time and place. It was 1919 in the coastal mining town of Wollongong.
The viewer is told a story about a setting that is full of meaning and emotional symbolism wrapped up in the post-First World Years. The picture grabs the viewers who pressed a Like on their Facebook pages. These social media participants found familiarity and comfort in the past that is an escape from the complicated present.
In response to today’s COVID-19 crisis, we are turning to old movies, letter writing and vintage fashion trends more than ever. Nostalgia is a defence mechanism against upheaval.
Escaping the Spanish flu pandemic?
The image is full of contrasts and unanswered questions. Why are the young couple in Wollongong? Why did they decide on Stuart Park for a photo-shoot? Are they escaping the outbreak of Spanish influenza at Randwick in January 1919? Does the NSW South Coast provide the safety of remoteness away from the evils of the pandemic in Sydney?
The female photographer is a city-girl and her male companion is a worldly reader of international news. They contrast with the semi-rural location in a coal mining area with its workman’s cottages and their dirt floors, and the hard-scrabble dairying represented by the post-and-rail fence in the distance.
The railway is a metaphor for the rest of a world outside Wollongong. The colliery railway is a link to the global transnational industrial complex of the British Empire at Wollongong Harbour where railway trucks disgorge their raw material. On the other hand, the female photographer’s stylish outfit provides an entry into a global fashion world of women’s magazines, movies and newspapers.
The elegantly dressed couple in their on-trend fashion contrast with the poverty of the working class mining villages of the Illawarra coast. Photographer Aileen is described by local historian Leone Flay as ‘dressed for town’, contrasts with the post-and-rail fence on the railway boundary projects the hard-graft of its construction in a landscape of marginal dairy farming.
The remnants of the Illawarra Rainforest that border the railway point to the environmental destruction brought by British imperial policy and its industrial machinery. This contrasts with a past where the Dharawal Indigenous people managed the lush coastal forests that once covered the area along the banks of the nearby Fairy Creek.
Peeling back the layers of past within the picture reveals several parts to the story: the photographer Aileen Ryan; the coastal location of Stuart Park; and the commercial world of the Mount Pleasant Colliery Railway, and ecology of the Illawarra Rainforest.
Aileen Ryan, photographer
The young female photographer in the picture is Aileen Ryan, a 21-year old city-girl, who spent time in and around the Wollongong area in February and March 1919. Aileen was born in Waverley, Sydney, and was educated at St Clare’s Convent.
At 19 years of age, Aileen gained paid work when most women were restricted to domestic duties. She joined the New South Wales Public Service in 1917 as a typist and shorthand writer. As an independent young working woman, she was worldly-wise and expressed herself through her ability to fund her relatively-expensive hobby of photography. The young Aileen’s hand-held bellows camera hints her grasp of the latest technology.
In 1927 she marries FW Lynch at Clovelly and in 1942 during the Second World War she was seconded to the Directorate of Manpower. She was appointed superintendent of the New South Wales division of the Australian Women’s Land Army, which was disbanded in 1945. She died childless at Waverton in 1983.
Stuart Park, the location
The site of the photo-shoot was located on the colliery railway which skirted the southern boundary of Stuart Park. The park, which was declared in 1885 under the Public Parks Act 1884 (NSW), lies between the railway, Fairy Creek to the north and North Wollongong Beach to the east. The area was originally purchased from James Anderson and is an area of 22.27 hectares.
The park was named after colonial politician and Scotsman Sir Alexander Stuart who was the Member for Illawarra in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly at the time. The park was run by a trust until 1920 when control passed to the Municipality of Wollongong.
The popularity of Stuart Park, including many families from Camden, owed much to the presence near North Wollongong Beach, which was popular for swimming and surfing from the 1920s. The caravan park was unfortunately closed in 1964, but re-opened in 1966, due to public pressure. It eventually closed permanently in 1970. The park now has a sports oval, had a kiosk dating from the 1940s and was popular with day-trippers.
Illawarra Rainforest, the ecology
The site location of the photograph next to the railway was once completely covered by Illawarra Rainforest, remnants of which can be seen along the railway line.
The rainforest type is a rich ecological community characterised by bloodwoods, stinging trees, figs, flame trees, beech, cedar, and other species. The more complex rainforest communities were located along the creek boundaries and on the southern face of escarpment gorges protected the from the prevailing north-easterly winds.
the most complex (species rich) forest type in the Illawarra. A broad definition of this forest is a “Dense community of moisture loving trees, mainly evergreen, broadleaved species, usually with the trees arranged in several layers, and containing vines, epiphytes, buttressed stems, stranglers, and other Iifeforms” (Saur, 1973, p.l.).
Illawarra Rainforest on the Sublime Point Walking Track below Bulli Tops lookout 2000 (N Cubbin)
The Illawarra Rainforest extended along the coastal and up into the escarpment from the northern parts of the Illawarra south to Kiama, the Shoalhaven River and west to Kangaroo Valley.
The primary threats to the rainforest ecology have been clearing for farming, mining, urban development, and related activities.
Mount Pleasant Colliery Railway, a transnational conduit to the globe
The Mount Pleasant Colliery was opened by Patrick Lahiff in 1861 and was very successful. Two years later the company built a horse tramway with two inclines down the escarpment from the mine to Wollongong Harbour. They eventually upgraded the tramway to steel railway in the 1880s and to convert to standard gauge.
The Mount Pleasant Colliery Inclines were similar to the adjacent Mount Kiera Mine Incline of 1880 shown in this image (WCL & IHS) The picture shows the remnant rainforest that was part of the ecology of the Illawarra escarpment.
The construction of the tramway raised the hackles of the locals and was only built after the state parliament passed the Mount Pleasant Tramroad Act 1862 (NSW). The mining company went bankrupt in 1934 and the mine was taken over by Broken Hill Pty Ltd in 1937 and renamed the Kiera Pleasant Tunnels.
The locomotive shed at Mt Pleasant Colliery, 1904. Note the engine on the right, built-in Sydney that year. (Courtesy of JLN Southern Collection & Illawarra Heritage Trail)
The coal mine eventually closed in 1955.
Mount Pleasant Colliery Railway near Brighton Beach approaching Belmore Basin in Wollongong NSW 1900s (WCL & IHS) Mount Kiera is shown in the background behind the mining town of Wollongong.
A mural illustrating the history of the Blue Mile Tramway walk showing the village of Wollongong, coal handling port facilities at Belmore Basin and Brighton Beach adjacent to it with Wollongong Lighthouse on the harbour breakwater. The Mount Pleasant Tramway is clearly seen going off to the north along the coastline. (I Willis 2020)
The Blue Mile Pathway and other attractions of the Wollongong coast have proved popular with Camden families. They have been going to Wollongong and the South Coast for beach holidays for generations.
Updated 11 May 2021, 17 April 2020, originally posted on 1 April 2020.
During the First World War, there was a considerable fuss over socks. Not just any ordinary socks but hand-knitted socks. Camden women hand-knitted hundreds of pairs of socks. So what was going on?
As it turns out there was a good reason for all the fuss.
Soldiers on the Western Front suffered in terrible conditions in the trenches. They were constantly wet and cold. In winter there were freezing temperatures.
Fungal feet
Under these conditions, there was a constant danger of the soldiers getting trench foot. Jenny Raynor at Sydney Living Museum writes that this was
a potentially debilitating fungal infection that thrived in the wet, cold and squalid conditions, and could lead to gangrene and amputation if left untreated.
Soldiers wore stiff leather boots that were poorly insulated with two pairs of socks in freezing winter conditions to keep out the cold and wet.
Authorities recommended that troops change their socks twice a day to avoid trench feet. Reports from New Zealand maintained in 1915 that
a pair of socks lasted no more than two weeks when on active service.
So it was unsurprising that there was a constant shortage of socks.
Shortages from the start
Sock shortages commenced from the outbreak of war and illustrated how the progress of the war completely overwhelmed military authorities with their unrealistic expectations.
At the Liverpool Infantry Camp in November 1914 military authorities were advising that three pairs of woollen socks would be adequate for the duration of the campaign, while new recruits were advised by bring ‘strong boots’ and ‘knitted socks’ because the army could not supply them.
Military supply authorities never really got to grips with the problem of shortages throughout the war. Even the vast US military machine could not supply sufficient numbers of socks to their troops when the US government entered the war in 1917. The U.S. government Committee on Public Information sponsored the ‘‘Knit Your Bit’’ campaign conducted by the American Red Cross.
Keep knitting
Knitting for the troops was not restricted to the American Red Cross.
Knitting was part of the homefront response to the outbreak of war across all British Empire countries including Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
Across the globe, millions of knitted items found their way to the trenches on the Western Front.
Socks were only one of a large list of items that women made for the war effort. Other knitted items included cholera belts, scarves, gloves and balaclavas, and this was supplemented by a considerable effort sewing hospital supplies.
Women volunteer to supply socks
Australian women volunteered to supply knitted from the start of the war. Unlike women in the United Kingdom, Australian women did not replace men in their civilian roles during the war.
In Australia, the push for knitted-socks, and other items, was co-ordinated by the Red Cross, the Australian Comforts Fund and other groups including the Soldiers’ Sock Fund.
In Queensland, the Governor’s wife, Lady Goold-Adams, established the Queensland Soldiers’ Sock Fund.
Knitted socks were part of the soldier’s bag that Red Cross volunteers signed up to supply on the foundation of branches throughout New South Wales in August 1914. Red Cross knitters in Camden and across Australia supplied thousands of pairs of knitted socks to soldiers.
In Camden, the new Red Cross branch supplied ‘a large number of socks’ in the first weeks of the war’ including supplies to the Australian Light Horse regiment and the 4th Battalion of Infantry. By September 1915 Camden Red Cross workers had supplied 456 pairs of knitted socks to Red Cross headquarters in Sydney amongst a host of other hand-made items.
Annette, Lady Liverpool, the wife of New Zealand Governor Lord Liverpool,
Lady Liverpool instigated ‘Sock Day’, when the women of New Zealand were encouraged to knit enough socks to provide every soldier with two new pairs (around 30,000 pairs in total).
The First World War was not the first time that women volunteers had supplied knitted socks to Australian troops in wartime. In 1900 Camden women supplied 120 pairs of knitted socks to Camden troops in South Africa in the New South Wales Mounted Rifles. These were similar to the activities of British women.
Millions of socks
It has been estimated that Australian women knitted over 1.3 million pairs of socks for the Red Cross and Australian Comforts Fund for the war effort.
Often with a small personal note inside the sock informing the digger who had knitted the garment along with a brief message. (The Conversation 11 August 2014)
Knitting patterns were distributed and cheap wool was made available to knitters.
The cover of the sock knitting pattern book ‘Directions for Standard Socks for Our Men on Active Service’. It was issued by the Australian Comforts Fund in 1918 (ARC)
In 2012 volunteer knitter Janet Burningham from Wrap with Love found that it took about a day to knit each sock. She used a rare grey sock pattern and Paton’s 8-ply grey wool and needles. Socks were knitted in the round on double-pointed needles leaving no seams.
The iconic sock knitter
The solo woman sock knitter was one of the everlasting iconic images of the war at home in Australia.
The iconic image of The Sock Knitter is a 1915 painting by Grace Cossington Smith found at the Art Gallery of NSW. The gallery states
The subject of the painting is Madge, the artist’s sister, knitting socks for soldiers serving on the frontline in World War I. Distinctly modern in its outlook, ‘The sock knitter’ counterpoints the usual narratives of masculine heroism in wartime by focusing instead on the quiet steady efforts of the woman at home.
‘The Sock Knitter’ painted by Grace Cossington Smith in 1915 (AGNSW)
Knitting mediating grief
The action of Camden women and others who became wartime sock knitters was an act of patriotism. They were supporting their boys using one of their traditional domestic arts.
Knitting, sewing, and other domestic arts were unpaid war work and a form of patriotism when women in Australia did not replace men at home in the First World War, unlike the United Kingdom. Historian Bruce Scates has written that women invested a large amount of ‘emotional energy’ in their knitting and sewing.
Women were the mediators of wartime grief and bereavement and knitting and sewing groups were women-only spaces where they could comfort each other and ease the loneliness.
Sock solution
Suzanne Fischer writes that the sock problem and trench foot still existed in the Second World War for American troops stationed in Alaska. She states:
Characteristically, Americans finally reduced their trench foot casualties by throwing more technology at the problem. Thee Shoepac system, introduced in 1944, combined a rubber foot and an impermeable outer leather layer with a felt liner to keep feet dry. These boots were also stylish, which increased their use.
Updated 17 April 2020; original posted 10 March 2020.
This little black dress dating from the 1920s is an attractive item from the Camden Museum dress collection.
Mrs Wilson’s black dress from the mid-1920s on exhibition at the Camden Museum (IWillis 2019)
The 1920s was a period of cultural change after the First World War destroyed the old European orders and women discovered a new sense of freedom.
The 1920s were part of the age of modernity with jazz, the bob, and the flapper. It was a time of modern industrial design, movies and consumerism. Being ‘chic’ was made popular in Anita Loos book Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925).
Modernity expressed itself in Camden with the wireless, telephone, telegraph, motor car, newspapers, railway, refrigeration, electricity, electric light, gas, sewerage, reticulated water. All these developments came down the Great South Road (in 1923, the Hume Highway) on the way to Melbourne.
Everyone went to the movies and watch the world presented to them on the screen. Hollywood and fashion marketing gained attention and The Clamour Daze blogger says that
The rise of consumerism promoted the ideals of fulfillment and freedom.
Mrs Wilson’s black dress showing the hand-sewn beading on the shoulder. The dress dates from the mid-1920s and is on exhibition at the Camden Museum (I Willis 2019)
The provenance of the little black dress
The little black dress illustrates the fashion style of the time and was owned by Mrs Mary Wilson, the maternal grandmother of the donor, Mrs Winifred Stuckey. Mrs Stuckey was the daughter of the Camden Methodist minister, and married into the Stuckey family of bakers. The Stuckey brothers ran a bakery in Argyle Street Camden for many years. Their story has been told in Frank Stuckey’s Our daily bread: the story of Stuckey Bros, bakers and pastrycooks of Camden, NSW, 1912-1960. (1968)
The little black dress is a cocktail outfit and dates from the mid-to-late 1920s and drew its inspiration from the styles of the period including the chemis and flapper designs.
The Clamour Daze blogger says of the chemise dress style:
1920’s fashion – Evolution of the 1920’s Chemise Dress
First appearing as an outerwear item in 1916 from designers such as Jeanne Lanvin , Callot Seours and Coco Chanel. By 1920, the chemise or shift dress, was to become the dominant line for day and evening wear. The dress hung from shoulder to just below the knee. Waists dropped to the hips. Back in the 1910’s, loose belts had often been worn over middy blouses and chemise dresses. It is quite possible the drop waist evolved from that style.
Mrs Wilson’s little black dress is black georgette with black glass or jet hand-beading on the front and back.
Georgette (from crêpe Georgette) is a sheer, lightweight, dull-finished crêpe fabric named after the early 20th century French dressmaker Georgette de la Plante. Originally made from silk, Georgette is made with highly twisted yarns. (Wikipedia)
Published in Vogue on October 1st 1926 and immediately dubbed the ‘Ford Dress’ by Vogues editor – a suggestion that it would become as popular as the Ford car. Its flattering silhouette suited just about any shape of a woman and it heralded a new Parisian ‘economy style’ or ‘poverty de luxe‘ as Chanel herself described it; an expensive interpretation of a simple design made of modest materials.
Mrs Wilson’s dress has a rosette on the left hip and a sash from the lower hip on one side. There are hand-made tucks with machine stitching and the dress is cut on the bias.
The 1926 Camden District Hospital Ball
The Camden Museum’s little black dress was the type of fashion Camden women wore to the biggest social event of the year in 1926 – the Camden District Hospital Ball attended by 750 people and held at the Camden AH&I Hall. It is fortunate for today’s budding fashion historians that the local press described the dress worn by every woman at the ball.
Camden AH&I Hall in 1997 Photographer JKooyman (Camden Images)
Popular dresses at the ball included those made of georgette, velvet, satin, crepe-de-chene, moracain and mousseline. Colours varied from peach, to white, apricot and black with many featuring beading.
Those listed that were similar to the Camden Museum’s little black dress included one worn by Mrs RC Stuckey described as beaded morocain. Mrs S Rae wore a black crepe-de-chene dress with silver trimmings, while Miss D Holz wore a black morocain dress that was heavily beaded. Miss L Hemmens wore a dress of black chemille georgette while Miss Gladys Rae wore a black georgette dress with bead trimming and Miss Willmington wore a black georgette outfit.
So was the Camden Museum’s little black dress worn at the 1926 Camden District Hospital Ball? No-one will really know but it exciting to speculate about it.
Check out the Camden Museum’s little black dress upstairs in the entertainment display section or on Instagram in the outfit of the day https://www.instagram.com/p/ByMGiF3BYfk/.
Things to note about Mrs Wilson’s little black dress
There is a tear on one cape sleeve. The dress may have been lengthened as the hem has been added. The dress was donated to the Camden Museum in 2003 donated by Mrs Winifred Stuckey.
A historian rarely gets a window into the past in real-time through the lens of a camera. I did this in Camden, New South Wales, recently at a photo shoot for the History Magazine for the Royal Australian Historical Society.
A photo shoot in Camden, NSW, for the Royal Australian Historical Society History Magazine. Model Laura Jane, photographer Jeff McGill. Location Argyle Street Camden 2018 (IWillis)
Photographer Jeff McGill and author Laura Jane were the participants in this activity. We all walked along Camden’s historic main thoroughfare, Argyle Street, which still echoes the Victorian period. Our little group made quite a splash and drew the attention of local women who swooned over the ‘gorgeous’ vintage dress Laura Jane wore.
Sydney’s David Jones Market Street store was one of the city’s most elegant shopping precincts. The city had several department stores that attracted women from rural New South Wales. This image was taken by noted Sydney photographer Sam Hood in 1938. (SLNSW)
Mid-20th century enthusiast Laura Janes lived the lifestyle in dress, makeup and hairstyle. They made the perfect foil for her History article on Sydney fashion, the David Jones store and their links to Dior’s fashion house. Laura Jane modelled her 1950s Dior style vintage dress in front of Camden’s storefronts that were reminiscent of the period. With a matching handbag, gloves, hat, hairstyle, stiletto heels, and makeup, she made a picture to behold captured by Campbelltown photographer Jeff.
A photo shoot for the History Magazine of the Royal Australian Historical Society in Argyle Street Camden. The location is Looking Class retail outlet in a building from the Interwar period. The entry tiles are reminiscent of the mid-20th century that are representative of the period for model Laura Jane’s Dior-style gown. (I Willis)
Laura Jane encompasses the experience of the country woman going to town when Camden women would dress up in their Sunday best to shop in Camden or catch the train to the city.
The ‘Pansy’ Camden train crossed Hume Highway at Narellan in the mid-20th century. This was a light rail service which used a tanker locomotive and ran as a mixed freight and passenger service. The service ran several times a day between Camden and Campbelltown railway stations. The train has just left Narellan Railway Station on its way to the next stop at Currans Hill. (L Manny/Camden Images)
A city shopping expedition would entail catching the Pansy train at Camden Railway Station, changing steam trains at Campbelltown Railway Station, and another change at Liverpool Railway Station from steam train to the electric suburban service for Central Railway Station in Sydney. The suburban electric trains did not arrive at Campbelltown until 1968.
This image shows country women from the Burragorang Valley coming to town in 1923. They are done up in hats, gloves and stockings and travel in the valley service car run by Claude Jenkins. He ran a daily service between Camden and the Valley using this Light Buick Six Tourer. Here they are stopped at The Bluff lookout above the Burragorang Valley. (Camden Images)
City outings for country women often happened around the Royal Easter Show when the whole family would go to the city. The family would bring their prized horses and cattle to compete with other rural producers for the honour and glory of winning a sash. While the menfolk were busy with rural matters, their women folk would be off to town to shop for the latest fashions for church and show balls or to fit out the family for the upcoming year.
The Sydney Royal Easter Show was a regular outing for the whole family. The men would show their prized animals in the various sections hoping for a sash, while the women went shopping in town. This image by noted Sydney photographer Sam Hood shows the cattle parade for Herefords at the 1938 Royal Easter Show. (SLNSW)
Country women from further away might stay at swish city hotels like the up-market elegant Hotel Australia near Martin Place. These infrequent city outings were a treat and a break from the drudgery of domesticity, and women would take the opportunity to combine a shopping trip with a visit to see a play or the Tivoli theatre.
The Sydney street photographers captured the intrinsic nature of the city outings for country women. They operated around the Martin Place, Circular Quay, Macquarie and Elizabeth Street precincts and are depicted in an current photographic exhibition at the Museum of Sydney.
Sydney’s Hotel Australia was the city’s most elegant hotel on Martin Place and Castlereagh Street, opened in 1891. The country family would stay here for a special treat when the Royal Easter Show was on at the Moore Park Showground site. This image is from 1932. (Wikimedia)
The images of the Sydney street photographer captured moments in time, and their most prolific period was during the 1930s to the 1950s. The country woman would be captured on film as she and a friend wandered along a city street. They would be given a token, and they could purchase a memento of their city visit in a postcard image that they could purchase at a processing booth in a city arcade. The Sydney street photographer captured living history and has not completely disappeared from Sydney street.
Sydney street photographers were a standard part of the city streetscape between the 1930s and the 1960s. They captured Sydney street life in a way that was unique and, along with it provided the viewer with an insight into Sydney’s cultural life. These images are from the photographic exhibition on at the Museum of Sydney. (I Willis, 2019)
Laura Jane, whose lifestyle encompasses the mid-20th century, expresses the living history movement in motion. The living history movement is a popular platform for experiencing the past. It incorporates those who want to live the past in the present, aka Laura Jane, or relive it occasionally as re-enactors who relive the past for a moment. There are many examples of the latter at historic sites in Australia, the USA, and the UK.
The Camden photo shoot was an example of how a moment in time can truly be part of living history, where the photographer captures a glimpse of the past in the present. An example of how the present never really escapes the past.
In late August 1928, two Camden colonial families celebrated the marriage of Keith Whiteman to Alice Margaret (Marge) McIntosh. This wedding was a social event between two local families of some importance and social status. The McIntoshes conducted a very successful dairy operation on the family property of Denbigh at Cobbitty, while the Whiteman family were successful Camden retailers.
In her bridal gown, Marge McIntosh was photographed in the garden of her home at Denbigh Cobbitty for her wedding on 25 August 1928. The style is strongly influenced by the modern from London and Paris (Camden Images Past and Present)
Both families had colonial origins. Members of the Whiteman family had immigrated to New South Wales in 1839 from Sussex to work on Camden Park Estate. While the McIntoshes had immigrated to New South Wales from the Inverness region of the Scottish Highlands in the 1860s.
Wedding ceremony
The ceremony was a relatively small country wedding of 60 guests, given both families’ social profiles and economic positions. The wedding ceremony was held in the historic setting of St Pauls’s Anglican Church at Cobbitty.
St Pauls was the centre of the village of Cobbitty and an expression of its Englishness, typical of several villages across the Camden District. The church was originally built under the direction of Galloping Parson Thomas Hassall in 1842 and adjacent to his 1828 Heber Chapel.
Cobbity’s St Paul’s Anglican Church 1910 (Camden Images)
According to the press reports, the church was decorated with a simple floral arrangement of white flowers and asparagus ferns (Camden News, 20 September 1928). The white flowers for the August wedding were likely to have been, according to Angela Wannet, Butterflies Florist in Camden, local calla lilies, oriental lilies, and carnations with trailing ivy.
While not elaborate, the floral displays in the church indicated that the families did not spare any expense on this critical family celebration.
Bride and groom
Cobbitty-born 33-year-old bride Marge McIntosh was the fourth child of Andrew and Ada McIntosh of the colonial property of Denbigh at Cobbitty. Denbigh is one of the oldest gentry properties on the Cowpastures and is listed on the state heritage register. It was initially an 1812 land grant to Charles Hook, then by the Galloping Parson Thomas Hassall (1826-1886), followed by the McIntosh family.
The family first leased the property in 1868 and then purchased it from the Hassall family in 1886. The State Heritage Inventory States that the house and property ‘retains a curtilage and setting of exceptional historic and aesthetic significance’.
Melrose at 69 John Street Camden was a substantial Edwardian home of the Whiteman family. Demolished in the late 1970s. (Camden Images Past and Present)
Camden-born 28-year-old bridegroom Keith Whiteman was the second child of Fred and Edith Whiteman of Melrose at 69 John Street, Camden. Melrose was a significant Edwardian brick cottage on John Street Camden. The Whiteman family had significant business interests in Argyle Street Camden, including a general store and newsagency.
Keith and his brother Charles gained control of the general store 12 months after Keith’s wedding on the death of his father, Fred. The original Whiteman’s general store opened on Oxley Street in 1877 and moved to Argyle Street. According to The Land Magazine, it was ‘reminiscent of the traditional country department store’. (28 February 1991) and at the time of the report on Australia’s oldest family-owned department stores.
The fashionable bride
We are lucky to have a wonderful photograph of the bride Marge McIntosh in her wedding gown at Denbigh. It provides many clues to the importance of the wedding to both families and their no-nonsense approach to life. While not an extravagant wedding, the bride’s outfit reflects that no expense was spared on the gown and floral decorations for the bouquet and the church decorations.
The design of the outfits, as described in the press reports and in the photograph, reflects the influence of modernism and the fashions from Paris and London. This was a modern wedding in the country between two individuals of some social status.
According to the press reports of the day, the fashions worn by the wedding party were the height of modernism. The bride wore a classic 1920s design described as a ‘simple frock of ivory Mariette over crepe-de-chen’ of lightweight silk crepe as a backing, which was quite expensive.
According to one source, the made-to-order gown was fitted and likely hand-made by a Sydney-based dressmaker. The Mariette wedding gown style is still popular in England for brides-to-be if wedding blogs indicate trends. The bride’s gown was fashionable for 1928, with the hemline just below the knee.
The bride’s veil was white tulle, with a pink and white carnations bouquet. One local source in the shoe industry describes the bride’s shoes as a hand-made white leather shoes with a strap and a three-inch heel. They would have likely been hand-made by one of the four or five Sydney shoe firms of the day, some located around Marrickville.
Interior of St Paul’s Anglican Church at Cobbitty with floral decorations for the wedding of Marge McIntosh and Keith Whiteman on 25 August 1928 (Camden Images Past and Present)
Marge McIntosh wore a headdress of a ‘clothe’ veil style, which was popular then. The veil was ‘white tulle mounted over pink, formed the train and held in place with a coronet of orange blossom and silver’. According to press reports, the elaborate floral bouquet was made up of white and pink carnations and, according to Angela Wannet who viewed the bride’s wedding photo, was complemented by lilies and ferns.
The history of wedding robes as a part of celebrating wedding festivities dates back to the ancient Chinese and Roman civilizations. The first recorded mention of the white wedding dress in Europe was in 1406 when the English Princess Philippa married Scandinavian King Eric.
In the British Empire, the Industrial Revolution and the marriage of Queen Victoria to her first cousin Prince Albert in 1840 changed all that. The fitted wedding dress with a voluminous full skirt became the rage after their wedding. The British population romanticized their relationship, and young women rushed to copy their Queen. The bride’s beauty was enhanced with the rise of wedding photography and did much to popularise the white-wedding dress trend.
Bridal party
Our modern bride at Cobbitty was attended by her sister Etta (Tottie) McIntosh in a frock of apricot georgette and the bridegroom’s sister Muriel Whiteman who wore a blue georgette, with hats and bouquets toned with their frocks. Georgette is a sheer fabric with a good sheen that is difficult to work and requires a good dressmaker. The fabric is difficult to cut out and sew and, according to one source, is easy to snag. The dressmaker exhibited her skill and experience with handcrafted sewing if the wedding photo of the bride, Marge McIntosh, is anything to go by.
The groom had his brother Charles Whiteman act as best man and an old school friend from Albury, Mr T Hewish as groomsman. (Camden News, 20 September 1928)
The reception
The wedding guests retired to a reception at the McIntosh’s historic colonial property of Denbigh, where the bride and groom were honoured with the ‘usual toasts’ and many congratulatory telegrams. A master of ceremony would have stuck to a traditional wedding reception with an introduction of the bride and groom, then toasts, with a response speech from the bride’s father, more toasts, responses by the groom’s father, followed by the reading of telegrams. The McIntosh family household would have likely provided the catering for the wedding.
Denbigh homestead has extensive gardens and is still owned by the McIntosh family at Cobbitty (Open Day 2015 I Willis)
Wedding gifts
Amongst the wedding gifts were a rose bowl from the Camden Tennis Club and a silver entre dish from FC Whiteman & Sons staff. These gifts reflect the interests and importance of the bride and groom in these organisations. Tennis was a popular pastime in the Camden area in the 1920s, and some Camden tennis players did well at a state level in competitions. The entire dish would have been a plain design reflecting the influence of 1920s modern styling rather than the ornate design typical of Victorian silverware. (Camden News, 20 September 1928)
Honeymoon
The bride’s going away outfit was ‘a smart model dress of navy blue and a small green hat’. This would likely have been a fitted design typical of the style of the period and the influence of modernism in fashions in London and Paris. (Camden News, 20 September 1928)
The bride and groom left for a motoring honeymoon spent touring after the wedding festivities. In the 1920s, motor touring gained popularity as cars became more common and roads improved. Coastal locations and mountain retreats, with their crisp cool air in August, were popular touring destinations in the 1920s.
FC Whiteman & Sons General Store, 60-100 Argyle Street Camden, around the 1900s, was one of the oldest continuously family-owned department stores in Australia (Camden Images Past and Present)
Historical images
The wedding photograph of Marge McIntosh in her bridal gown, like historical photographs in general, is a snapshot in time. The image provides a level of meaning that contemporary written reports in the Camden press do not contain. The photograph provides subtle detail that can fill out the story for the inquisitive researcher.
While the wedding reports did not make the social pages of the Sydney press, it does not understate the importance of this union at a local level in the Camden community. It would be interesting to speculate if there were similar weddings between other Camden families.
The visual and written reports of the wedding give a new insight into life in Camden in the 1920s and how the community was subject to external transnational influences from all corners of the globe. Many claim that country towns like Camden were closed communities, which is true in many respects. These two Camden families were subject to the forces of international fashion and maintaining their community’s social sensibilities.
Camden History Notes 
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