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The Whittaker Family |
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CHAPTER EIGHT - THE WHITTAKER FAMILY The Back Creek Push Of all the grandparents' branches of the family I know least about the Whittaker ancestry. John James Whittaker - my grandfather, Jack, Pop Whit - was a colourful enough old character but not a man I could claim I was fond of, or even knew well. He kept to himself as far as I was concerned and was eccentric in some ways - I once told him he was on fire, the conflagration having started in his pocket, the result, he explained, of friction between a box of matches and a piece of copper wire; but maybe it had been lingering there for some time from his old pipe, the reluctant smouldering of which never seemed to take fire, except perhaps this once. The only time I can recall him bestirring himself was to wallop me for calling my sister something ungallant like "you bloody bitch". That has often amused me as I think of him with the teams of horses he so dearly loved and whom he worked with from the age of twelve: he could not have been so polite with them. He was old when I first became aware of him in the mid-'Forties, and he was in his late sixties. He once encouraged me to eat a raw onion he had dug up in the garden at 41 Boundary Street on an occasion when we were visiting from Stanmore or Kensington. Needless to say I suffered a very bad night. Later on our family moved to 41 Boundary Street, Darlinghurst: he stayed on in the front room which was an old man's delight as only an old bushman could make it (though there was undoubtedly real quality in his family, obvious in the pictures of himself and especially his sisters - they were very fine looking young people, and he was very handsome as a young man). Eventually he moved to 43 Boundary Street where his wife, Gladys, had moved some time before; and the front room was redecorated as a lounge room - but I was away from home by then. Pop Whit, or Grampy as we sometimes called him, never seemed to have an ordinary job. I knew him as a man who carried a vacuum cleaner about on his back and did cleaning jobs in various places around Paddington; he was an odd job man, and I do recall it being said that even at his age he could still charm the women of Paddington who seemed to have lavished bread and butter and tea and affection on him - a teeny touch of malice in the telling! He had a garage further up Boundary Street years earlier, but it was burnt down, some say under peculiar circumstances, but I know nothing of that. Otherwise he spent his early years with a team of horses carting timber and wool. On his death certificate he is described as a carrier. There are pictures of Pop with his team in Condobolin; I recall hearing talk of the old days out at Bogan Gate and Parkes, incidents where horses would not cross haunted bridges after dark and having to go home the long way round, how held been sent out on the teams at the age of twelve. I suspect that life was tough for John James as a youngster, though the three photographs I have of him up to his marriage show a fine looking man always smartly, not to say elegantly, dressed. His father, John, seems to have been a handsome man: the picture of him on his memorial card is of a good-looking man, rather like Ned Kelly, with piercing eyes and a strong black beard. His wife, Elizabeth Stephens, looks to be a strong woman, tough, not much truck with sentimentality but I suspect with more than touch of wit. My mother recalls her with affection and a "Scottish burr", and Mum’s brother, Doug, said that she always made them welcome. Where the "Scottish burr" came from I don't know: there was no Scottish in her immediate ancestry. John Whittaker senior was born, according to his baptismal certificate, in Gosford N.S.W., 4 October 1848. His baptism was registered in the parish of St. Andrew's in the county of Cumberland - St. Andrew's Church of England Cathedral in Sydney. His father's name was given as Peter Whittaker and his mother's name as Margaret - maiden name not recorded. Apart from their "abode", Druitt Street, and his profession, sawyer, I know nothing about them, at this stage not being able to find anything in microfiche or shipping records. I can only assume that Peter Whittaker worked at Gosford ordinarily, in the timber business, and for some reason came to Sydney where the youngster was christened. They are the only ancestors for I cannot find anything about their countries of origin. We move from John's birth to his marriage, knowing nothing at this stage of his family, whether he had brothers or sisters or not. In 1878 John Whittaker married Elizabeth Stephens: they were wedded in St. John's Anglican Church, Young, 14 March, in the presence of F.D. Peter and Barbara Peter. She signed with her mark. His normal place of residence was given as Back Creek, Cowra, and his occupation as sawyer. I presume he was a bachelor, but the word "Young" appears by mistake on the conjugal status column. She was described as spinster, living at Cowra. Elizabeth Stephens was born at Back Creek (Bendigo) Amherst, Victoria, 13 September 1859. Her father's name is given as Henry James Stephens, his occupation miner, his age 22, his birthplace London. Her mother's name is given as Grace Peter, she was 19, and was born in Sydney, N.S.W. There was one other child, unnamed. Their marriage took place in the Presbyterian Manse, Sandhurst (Bendigo) 8 October 1858. Henery (as he signs himself) James Stephen (there is no "s") was 21 years of age, which makes his birth year 1837; he was born in Stepney, London, and his parents were Henry James Stephen, a sailor, and Euphemia Miller. He was a sawyer. His wife, Grace Peter, a spinster, was born in Sydney in 1839. Her parents were Finlay Peter, a blacksmith, and Elizabeth Bruce, for whom I have no other information. The celebrant was James Nish and the witnesses were Fred(eric) John Fleming and Elizabeth Peter, probably Grace's sister. "Henery" is a gentle, benign, nice-looking man, with a good head of hair parted in the middle, and a rich beard; Grace, on the other hand, looks rigid, puritanical, tight mouthed and stern about the eyes. I have photos of them which I took at Easter in 1972 from portraits in the possession of Ted and Doll Oppy (Doll is our John Whittaker’s sister). The marriage between John Whittaker and Elizabeth Stephens was indeed a fruitful one. There were eight children of whom John James, my grandfather, was the eldest. He was born 14 July 1878 at Back Creek near Cowra, his father then being twenty-five and a farmer, his mother nineteen. John James, for all that he was on the teams at twelve, was an attractive looking lad: a picture at fifteen or sixteen shows a full front face, more than pleasant, his hat perched jauntily on the back of his head, one hand on his hip, the other over bale of straw, and one leg casually crossed. In his twenties there is another picture taken with his sister Phoebe and some friends: he is a very handsome man, smartly dressed, with a fine trim moustache. Phoebe is a beautiful, composed woman. By the time John came to marry in 1910 at the age of thirty-one, the looks had matured and there is a touch of the know-it-all cocked eyebrow about him: still smartly dressed (did Gladys make his waistcoat? I know she did do such things; her needlework was beautiful) with the smartly dressed small woman standing as he sits, both looking straight at the camera. I wonder whether they ever looked into each other's eyes after their courtship: when I knew them they were both going their own ways and never really seemed to communicate - two strangers in one house. The wedding photograph is hand painted, pasted onto glass and set against a painted background. The whole was beautifully framed in an oval frame. It is a rare example of such work, and was broken in being unnecessarily reframed. It has been reproduced. Albert) was the second child, born 9 May 1880 and married to Margaret Murray, born 25 December 1883. Their children were Val (born 5 February 1905), Ellen (20 October 1908), Leonard (26 January 1912), Ivy (19 June 1917), Ronald (13 October 1919) and Pearl (25 February 1925). I knew Albert - whom we called Uncle Ab - when we were in Darlinghurst in the late Forties and early Fifties. I enjoyed his visits. He must have lived in Sydney while his wife still lived in Condobolin. He loved dancing and would talk all night about the dances he went to at Burwood. He and Pop Whit must have been close because they talked for hours about the old days and old friends - Mrs. McNulty and Mrs. Oppy and Mrs. Gus Brown - and such stories have gone from my memory now (except the haunted bridge - to hear them talk you'd think they were on first name terms with Fisher's Ghost!) but I recall sitting totally absorbed in them, both the old days and the dancing parties with women whose names danced over my head. Uncle Ab died 24 August 1958, and Aunty Mag 7 June 1982. In my same 1972 Easter visit to Condobolin with Mum and Gladys, á la récherche du temps perdu, we visited Aunty Mag and her still single daughter, Pearl, who worked at the Condobolin Hospital. They gave me much of this material. We also visited the pisé (rammed earth) house which, I think, Granny Smith (Elizabeth Stephens, who married Billy Smith after her husband John Whittaker died) used to live - I believe the then occupants were Whittaker relatives, but we did not know them. We also visited the cemetery, to see Granny Smith's grave. Ted Oppy, a dear gentleman, drove us around. Then there was William, born 1882. He married Anne Haddon (b.1892). All I can say about Bill is that he looked like a barbarian with terrible eyes, a big moustache and a full lower lip. My attitude to him is not improved by knowing that his fragile and beautiful wife, Anne, ended her days in Callan Park Asylum, 1 June 1926, driven there, according to Gladys, by her husband. They had one child, Ernest, who died at the age of twenty-five. In fairness to Bill I must say that an extant postcard from him to Anne is expressed in very beautiful terms, and also that the whole story is simply not known, and Bill has no one to defend him. The first daughter, Phoebe (Tot), was born in 1887 and died on 24 August 1966. From her photographs she appears as a lovely, self contained woman who grew into a mature wife and mother, devoted - if the photograph gives any truth away - to her husband Edward Langford, to whom she bore five children: Myrtle, Boyd, Margery, Edna and Michael. Ernest George was born in 1890 and died at the age of two. Frederick Herbert was born 8 June 1895, and died unmarried 7 September 1953; a shy lad, from his picture, but he could only have been about fourteen, and who wasn't shy then? He had the makings of his brother John's good looks, and was already as tall as Bill. Ellen Margaret, (Nell), was born in October 1900, and died in 1937. She married George Wheatley. Attractive and bright in her teens, she seems to have grown plain later on. I do not know that there were any children. Aunty Doll rejoiced at her birth in the noble names Grace Bertha Anthea, but probably never used them afterwards. She was born 2 January 1902, and was a powerful beauty when she married the equally handsome Edmund Oppy, 13 January 1922. They had five children: Terrence (born. 11 July 1920), Ronald (26 November 1922), Mavis (17 November 1926), William (16 February 1928). According to Betty Lovejoy - November 1990 - William was living in the pisé house in Condobolin when we visited in 1972. He died in 1989. The last child was Betty (born 3 June 1930) whom I sometimes hear from. Ted died soon after our Easter visit - the same year as the Duke of Windsor, I remember, for my mother was fond of both of them and was in England when Ted died. These are the children, then, of John Whittaker and Elizabeth Stephens. They were a remarkably attractive lot of people, the men handsome, the women beautiful - they certainly were not to be dismissed as "bush people". There was a distinct quality about them, but where it came from I don't know. My mother often spoke very warmly about Granny Smith having a certain genteel quality. What more is there to be said? John died in Callan Park Asylum for the Insane, 9 July 1910, at the age of 61. The carrier was finally himself carried off by phthisis pulmonalis, a progressive wasting disease of the lungs, probably tuberculosis. But why Callan Park? Who were his parents? So little is known about these impressive people with such beautiful children. At least John James was present at the Church of England cemetery three days later to witness the burial. It was after more than a decent interval that Elizabeth (Stephens) Whittaker remarried in 1919. She married a very dapper man, remembered by Doug as wearing leggings - "you could see him coming from the end of the street" - William (Billy) Smith, and so became for my mother and Doug "Granny Smith"; they recalled her with great affection as a "real lady". She lived on in Condobolin till she died of senility, 20 June 1946, at the grand old age of 87. I wonder whether I met her as a very young child, because I do have the merest hint of a memory of being in Condobolin in the early Forties, of being caught in a dust-storm, in fact: I am sure to have been presented to the old lady. She was buried in the Church of England Cemetery, Condobolin. William Smith outlived her.
When and where John James Whittaker met Lillian Gladys Cant I do not know, but it was a case of the handsome man meeting the comely young woman - I don't think we would call Gladys beautiful, but she was lovely - he was thirty-one, she twenty. I wonder what attracted this man - a bushman in some sense, obviously intelligent, able to estimate the number of superfeet of timber in a tree at a glance - to the young lady schoolteacher, undoubtedly displaying then the impeccable care she always showed in whatever she did. I have an exercise book which she wrote her lessons in during 1908 and 1909, inscribed "Gladys Cant, Subsidised School, Rosemead, Sth. Yalgogrin, via Narranderah". The writing is exquisite and stylish: it changed little over the years, simply becoming mature and no less legible. They were certainly very different people, differing in upbringing and different in temperament. Ultimately she proved to be the stronger of the two, though later in his life he once set upon her, only to be confronted by my sister: he promptly fell to the ground calling on Gladys to witness the mayhem visited upon him by "girlie", "split the wind", as he sometimes called her. He in his turn grew into a jealous man, but that never seemed to stop Gladys doing what she had to for the family. It was at St. Augustine's Catholic Church, Yass, that they were married, 16 February 1910, she just three months pregnant. John James, the farmer, of Condobolin, a bachelor, born Cowra, aged thirty-one; and Lilian Gladys Cant, residing with her parents - though her mother Anne had been dead fifteen years, and it was Sarah Grieves who took the mother's place, not very happily according to Gladys in later years - at Yass Junction, a spinster, born Goulburn, aged twenty. They must have moved to Condobolin at once because their daughter, Honor Delores, my mother, was born there 16 July 1910. Douglas John, their only son, was born a few years later, 8 March 1912, "at the foot of Billygoat Hill”, Cowra, according to Doug. I wonder why only two children, in that age of prolific families. Life for the children must have been enjoyable - both Honor and Doug remember it as a happy time. The family lived in a tent for a while, several miles out of town; work must have been hard, conditions unpredictable - a runaway horse doing much damage, bleeding and bandages, and Gladys coping in her memorable way. (She undoubtedly displayed more patience than I did back in Condobolin sixty years later when she, being her independent self, fell in the motel room, cracking her head - more bleeding and bandages). There were stories of a camel with a ferocious bite, learning to load the dray with the help of the horses - the much loved "Prince" among them. There were picnics: a lovely picture of the boy Doug and the charming school teacher Miss McNamara with her parasol, sitting on a log near the water hole - it might have been Illyria rather than a boggy creek near Condobolin; and rock salt and molasses parties that so delighted my mother's memories. Jack Whittaker continued working on the teams, as family photographs indicate, with help from Mr. Vandertack; and Gladys - everyone always called her Gladys, although my mother sometimes called her "Lilly Pilly" - opened a boarding house, Myra Cottage (was it in Denison Street?) which gather, was a cause of some jealousy on Jack's part. Gladys was a good business woman and I'd be surprised if she stood for much nonsense from anybody - she had a strong moral streak as well, so Jack need not have feared. Condobolin was no place for young people to find a career, so in 1926 Gladys bundled up Honor and Douglas and travelled to Sydney leaving Jack to follow. Mum says that much of the good stuff - china, glassware, linen - acquired and packed away for transportation to Sydney never arrived: she hinted that Jack may have disposed of it otherwise. Honor went to Business College where she did very well, and Doug went to school at the Christian Brothers' school at Sacred Heart, Darlinghurst. They lived at 26 Gosbell Street Paddington, and Honor found employment soon after at Bray and Holliday's as a switchboard operator, a job she kept apart from a ten year or so break, till 1960. Gladys, the business woman, bought and managed properties and went to work. She was mainly employed as a cleaner, but she also worked at the Pickwick Club in Pitt Street where she made hors d'oeuvres, working late, late into the night. Her employers, including such names as Pankhurst and McGillvray and the A.N.Z. Bank in Bathurst Street, treated her with the utmost respect: in some ways she was their moral superior though she worked for them, and they treated her accordingly. They got more than a fair day's work for their day's pay out of her. What Jack did during these years I do not know. There was, as I have said, a garage which failed. Then I think it was odd jobs for the next twenty five years. When the family moved from Boundary Street, Darlinghurst to Cooleena Road, Elanora Heights, in 1956, old John James was on his last legs which he needed to keep wrapped in sugar bags and carpet pieces to ward off draughts. When that failed he barricaded his bedroom against the breezes, which eventually won the battle as they always do, and he died - having thrown away his much puffed and never-alight pipe some years previously - after a short spell of a few weeks in the Sacred Heart Hospice, Darlinghurst, 6 November 1964. According to his death certificate he died of congestive cardiac failure, atherosclerosis, and a recurrent urinary infection. He was buried from the Sacred Heart Church - though I never knew him to go to any church, let alone a Catholic one - by Father Brian Charlton, in the Catholic Cemetery, Botany. |