What do these images have to do with Coburg?

You can find out how these 9 photos are connected to Coburg on my Moreland Past blog.

Mrs Sarah Powell, President of the Sailors, Soldiers and Airmen’s Mothers Association

Sarah Powell in the Australian Women's Weekly, 24 July 1943, 

just after she'd received the OBE.

Sarah Powell's maiden name was Skewes. She came from a large family of teachers, a number of whom were well known in the Coburg area, although they originally came from Warrenheip near Ballarat.

Her son Thomas Henry Norman Powell, a member of the Australian Flying Corps, died during WW1. Her nephew Stanley Ray, an old boy of Coburg State School, also died, as did her brother Harold Skewes, a teacher with the Victorian Education Department.

Sarah Powell was a tireless worker for the Sailors and Soldiers Mothers Association from the early 1920s. She was its President and also the President of the Coburg branch of the Australian Women's League. She was on the War Memorial Committee, later known as the Shrine of Rememberance. In 1937 she received the Coronation Medal in recognition of her work.

By July 1943 when the Women's Weekly published a feature on her, she’d just received an OBE and was the Life President of the Sailors, Soldiers and Airmen’s Mothers Association, Victoria, having been in the position for 21 years. She was also on the executive of the women's branch of the War Service Fund, Victoria.

Argus, 2 June 1943

When Sarah and her husband Samuel moved to the outer eastern suburbs in the 1930s, she founded the Croydon branch of the Sailors, Soldiers and Airmen’s Mothers Association and attended the branch's annual meeting just five days before she died aged 92 in 1955.

You can read a fuller account of Sarah Powell's public service in the Australian Women's Register.

7th Batallion reunion, 1920s

AWM image P09772.007. Place and date unknown, but probably Melbourne during the 1920s. Group reunion of the 7th Battalion AIF. The men all wear returned service badges on their lapels. The 7th Battalion, was raised by Lieutenant Colonel Harold 'Pompey' Elliott, and along with the 5th, 6th and 8th Battalions formed the 2nd Brigade. The men of the 2nd Brigade all enlisted in Victoria. The 7th Battalion participated in the second wave of the Anzac landings, and whilst the unit was in Turkey four of its members received Victoria Crosses: Corporal (Cpl) l A S Burton, Acting Cpl W Dunstan, Lieutenant (Lt) W Symons and Lt F H Tubb. The Battalion moved to France in 1916 where it participated in many major actions between then and the end of the war including: Pozieres, Ypres Salient, Menin Road, Broodseinde, Bullecourt and Amiens. By 1918 the 7th Battalion was so depleted in strength that it was merged with the 6th Battalion to form a composite battalion.

Only one of the men mentioned in the description of this photograph had a connection to our local area and that was Lt William Symons VC. Symonds was born and educated at Eaglehawk but moved to Brunswick with his family in 1906. After the war and his marriage to an Englishwoman, he moved to England where he died in 1948.

Lieutenant Colonel Harold 'Pompey' Elliott, the Commander of the 7th Battalion, was well known in the area having commanded the 58^th Infantry Regiment (Essendon Rifles). 

There were 70 Coburg and Brunswick men in ‘Pompey’ Elliott’s 7^th Infantry Battalion on board the HMAT A20 Hororata when it sailed out of Melbourne on 19 October 1914.

They include:

514 Pte Archibald Alexander, KIA 26 April 1915.

207 Pte CharlesEdward Bromley.

208 Pte Albert Edward Bunting.

184 Pte Philip Everend Cook MM.

187 Pte Nassan William James Davis (aka 484 Pte William James Davis).

219 Pte Archibald Ernest Feddersen.

234 Pte Donald William Johnston, KIA 8 May 1915, Krithia, Cape Helles.

112 Pte Frank Kiely, KIA 25 April 1915, Gallipoli.

Lieutenant Herbert Thomas Christoph Layh DSO.

742 Pte William John McFarland.

418 LanceCorporal Arthur Mueller (Joe) Pearce. He was a member of the Coburg Cricket Club.

252 PteHarold Nicholls.

182 Lance Sergeant Ernest James Orr, died 14 November 1915 of wounds received at Anzac Cove on 25 April 1915.

58 Colour Sergeant John Edward Porteus.

7601 Pte Frank Raymond Richards.

196 Driver John Ross, DOW 10 August 1918.

154 Lance Corporal Alfred Bernard Scott.

189 PteFelix Wentworth (Wen) Shore.

177 SgtErnest Albert Smith. KIA 25 April 1915.

289 PteStanley Hewitt Wood.

Other Brunswick and Coburg men who served with the 7^th Infantry Battalion include:

1122 Pte Claude Cary.

5375 Pte Edwin William Dunstan (17^th Reinforcements), KIA 19 July 1916, Fleurbaix (Fromelles).

267 Pte Leslie William Hart, DOW 4 May 1915.

230 Pte Alfred Howard, KIA 8 May 1915, Krithia.

4006 Pte Cyril Allen Jolly (12^th Reinforcements), KIA 21 September 1917, Polygon Wood, Belgium.

2849 Pte Albert Harrison Lee.

2864 Pte Thomas Oscar Meredith (9^th Reinforcements), KIA 19 August 1916, France.

2184 Pte Harold Frederick Robinson, KIA 9 August 1915.

5439 Pte Rupert Clement Robinson.

It is likely that at least some of those local men who survived the war attended the reunion pictured here.

You can read more about the experiences of those Coburg soldiers who attended Coburg State School in my book The old boys of Coburg State School go to war, published by Coburg Historical Society in 2017. 

It is available for purchase from the Historical Society. You can find the details here.

Charles Kedge, teacher - remembered at Coburg Lake's Memorial Avenue of Trees

1917 Studio portrait of 38512 Gunner Charles Alfred Kedge, 14th Field Artillery Brigade of Coburg, Victoria. A school teacher prior to enlisting, he embarked from Melbourne aboard SS Indarra on 26 November 1917. On 16 September 1918, he was killed in action during operations near Fricourt, Somme, France, aged 23. He is buried in the Cerisy-Gailly French National Cemetery, France. Image courtesy AWM. Image P05248.070.

Charles Kedge was not really a Coburg man. He was born and educated in Bendigo and began his working life there as a junior teacher at the Violet Street School. He was sixteen and showed promise, so four years later, in February 1915, he came down to Melbourne to train at the Teachers’ College.

It was at about this time that his brother Frederick, aged 18, joined the Navy. Frederick was a career naval man and served in both world wars before retiring in 1943 at the rank of Commander. He married in New South Wales in 1925 and died there in 1972, so he wasn’t a Coburg man either.

Their parents – Charles Elliott Kedge, an ironmoulder and Adelaide Catherine (nee Simpson) – moved to Coburg in 1915 with their youngest son Reginald. They lived in Linda Street, Moreland until 1919, just on the southern edge of the suburb, then moved a few streets further south to Canberra Street, Brunswick, where they remained for the rest of their lives.

What motivated the Kedge parents to move to Coburg is unclear, but perhaps the fact that their son Charles was at the Teachers’ College and Reginald had just won a scholarship to attend secondary school were factors in their decision. For Reginald it was a move for life. He died in Coburg in 1969.

Apart from visits to the family at Linda Street, Charles Alfred had little to do with Coburg. It appears he lived close to the Teachers College and not long after he successfully completed his first year in December 1916 he went into camp at Seymour. He embarked on November 1917, was in camp in Egypt for some weeks before going to Officers’ School in Woolwich, England. He arrived in France in July 1918 and was alloted to the 114 Howitzer Battery Field Artillery and was killed not long after, on 16 September 1918.

From Charles Kedge's Teacher Career Record, Victorian Education Department teacher number 17123. (Digital copies of these records are available via Ancestry, but you need the teacher number to locate them. The numbers can be found in the online collection of the Public Record Office of Victoria.)

The circumstances of his death are outlined in the Red Cross Missing and Wounded Files, available online through the Australian War Memorial. An eye witness said Charles and three others died about 8.30 on the night of the 16^th. They were sleeping in a shell hole at Brusle near Peronne (in Picardy, France) and were killed by an aeroplane bomb.

(Mapcarta, https://mapcarta.com/N3772039634, accessed 29 September 2019)

Roll of Honour Circular details, available for download from the Australian War Memorial website. 

Charles Alfred Kedge is remembered on the Bendigo Roll of Honour and the Coburg Lake Memorial Avenue of Trees (tree 64).

Coburg Lake, Memorial Avenue of Trees, February 2005. Image courtesy Bruce Garrett.

The Ashton brothers of Shaftsbury Street, Coburg

The Ashton brothers, Harry and Oriel, both served in World War One and are remembered on the Coburg Town Hall Honour Board. Harry is also listed on the 2837 Moreland State School (2837) Roll of Honour.

Harry Ashton enlisted in the 7^th Infantry Battalion on 7 December 1914. He sailed in February 1915 but was returned to Australia in May as medically unfit, without seeing action. Two years later, in Mary 1917, he re-enlisted and this time served with the Base Records Corps here in Australia until the end of January 1920. He was on sick leave for long periods in late 1918 into 1919, with influenza, according to a letter he wrote to the authorities. You can read about his war service here.

Like so many returned servicemen Harry Ashton had a difficult life after the war was over. He was engaged in 1921, but the marriage did not eventuate. During the 1930s he moved up into New South Wales in the search for work. He died at Yass District Hospital, NSW on 16 August 1934 after contracting a bad cold that developed into double pneumonia while doing relief work on the Taemas Bridge across the Murrumbidgee, near Yass. He was ‘entirely without means’ and the Yass Soldiers’ Club paid for his burial. He was only 39 years old.

I’ve written about Oriel Joseph Ashton before (not to be confused with his son Oriel Irvine Ashton, also a naval man). You can read about his wartime experiences here and here. Oriel joined the navy in July 1911 and by the time his younger brother Harry enlisted, he had already served in German New Guinea in September 1914 while a crew member of HMAS Australia.

After the war, Oriel remained in the Navy and went on to serve in World War 2. He and his wife Rose lived at Yanderra, NSW when he died on 17 November 1944 aged 50.  He was a member of the Totally and Permanently Incapacitated (TPI) Disabled Soldiers Association at the time of his death and was buried at Rookwood Cemetery in Sydney.

Taken at Brindisi, Italy in June 1918. Informal portrait of three seamen on board HMAS Huon. Identified left to right: 5449 Stoker Thomas Purcell, born in Kiama, NSW, holding a pet monkey; an unidentified Italian seaman; 1146 Stoker Petty Officer Oriel Joseph Ashton, born in North Melbourne, Vic. Image courtesy AWM. Image EN0421.

Teresa Baxter and her six soldier sons

Herald, 16 December 1916

This photo of Brunswick woman Teresa Baxter (nee Hannabury) was taken at a time when five of her sons were fighting at the Front and another was yet to join up. 

The newspaper article tells us that she mothered 20 children, 17 boys and 3 girls and that there were 18 surviving children in December 1916. We are also told that she raised 8 of her late sister-in-law's children. (Her sister-in-law, Elizabeth Tomlinson, was her husband Robert's sister.)

The official records show that there were 16 children in the Baxter family - 10 boys and 6 girls - and that 6 were dead by 1916 when the article was written, so there were 10 alive, not 18 as reported in the paper. My guess is that the Tomlinson offspring were counted in that total.

In any case, the Baxter household must have been very crowded, and Teresa's life must have been very, very busy. Her last 5 children were born in the 1900s when she was in her 40s, so when WW1 broke out, she had young children to raise at the same time as her older sons were off at the war.

The Baxters had lived in the area for a long time. Teresa's father-in-law Robert Baxter, who died in 1890, was an early resident of Coburg, where there is a street (running off Sydney Road) named for him. 

The Baxters were also Roman Catholics (Probably no surprise when the mother's full name was Teresa Bridget Hannabury), and in some ways it is surprising to see so many sons from a Catholic family serving in the AIF, although most of them enlisted well before the conscription debates of late 1916 and 1917. You can read about the debates here and here and here.  The timing of the Herald's article is interesting, though, given that the first conscription referendum took place on 28 October 1916.

The five sons featured in the article are:

Robert Arthur, 9th child and 3rd surviving son, born Brunswick 1894, died Heidelberg 1962. 633 Sgt Robert Baxter served with 5th then 45th Btns. He enlisted on 21 August 1914 as a 20 year old ironworker (he worked for Messrs Kemp and Sheehan, brassfounders of Little Collins Street). He was also something of a sportsman and a member of the Coburg Cycling Club. He was at the Landing on 25 April 1915, wounded and hospitalised in Malta. After his return he developed pleurisy, but recovered. In France he suffered mild shell shock in August 1916. In 1918 he had VD treatment (he claimed to have contracted it for the first time in Australia in 1906, and if this was true, he was only 12 at the time), was courmartialled for being AWL for nearly 3 months and was sentenced to 180 days (it boiled down to 90 days forfeiture of pay in the end), then returned to Australia in late October 1918 with 'fibrosis of the lung'.  Immediately after the war, he was living in Sargood Street, Coburg.

Thomas William, 2nd child but 1st surviving child, born Coburg 1883, died Belgium 20 September 1917. 1658 Pte Thomas William Baxter, 7^th Btn, 3^rd reinforcements was single and nearly 34 when he enlisted on 28 October 1914. A veteran of the Boer War, he claims to have served in Thorneycroft's Mounted Rifles for six months, although I could find no official record of this. He worked at Hoffman Brickworks in Dawson Street, Brunswick before enlistment. He received a shrapnel wound in the shoulder at Lone Pine, Gallipoli on 25 August 1915 and was hospitalised in Malta. He was admitted to hospital in Cairo with neurasthenia in February 1916 after striking an officer and causing a disturbance in the camp and returned to France at the end of July 1916. He spent several months in hospital in England in 1917 suffering from nephritis. He was later arrested for drunkenness and being AWL and rejoined his unit on 18 August 1917. A month later he was killed in action in Belgium. 

Leonard Gordon, 14th child, born Brunswick 1902, died Coburg, 1983. 6611 Pte Leonard Gordon, 6^th Btn, enlisted claiming to be 18 years old on 16 March 1916. However, the birth records indicate that he was born in 1902 and was actually only 14 years old. At the time of enlistment he worked as a potter and burner at Hoffman's Brickworks. He arrived in France in February 1917 (aged 15) and received a gun shot wound to his right arm in early October 1917. He did not see any action then until May 1918. He was gassed on 25 August 1918 and wounded in the thigh on 5 September 1918. This ended his war and he returned to Australia on 9 December 1918, aged only 16 (or maybe 17 by then). After the war, he returned to his former employment at Hoffmans and remained in the area until his death in 1983.

George Arthur, 8^th child & 2^nd surviving son, born Brunswick 1893, died Merlynston, 1974. 828 Pte George Arthur Baxter, 39^th Btn, enlisted in early 1916 aged 22 and left Australia on 27 May 1916. He had married Jean Hackett just before he went into camp. He'd been employed at Mr Sweet's Pottery in Barkly Street, East Brunswick for 11 years (making him only 10 or 11 when he started work), but had recently been employed at Hoffman's as a potter - where his brothers Thomas and Leonard also worked. He landed in France in November 1916 and was evacuated wounded on 4 October 1917. He returned to the Front and was promoted to Sergeant in January 1918. After his return to Australia in April 1919, he went back to work at Hoffman's, where his brother Leonard was also working.

Percy Roy, 10^th child & 4^th surviving son, born Brunswick 1896, died South Melbourne  1960. 3013 Pte Percy Baxter, 57^th Btn then 60^th Btn then 25 Howitzer Bde then 5^th DAC. When he enlisted on 13 July 1915 he was claimed to be 21 year old glassblower working for Messrs Angliss and Co., Northcote and that he'd worked there for 11 years. This would mean that he was only 10 when he began work - probably correct, but very young, all the same. I'm a little sceptical about his length of service at Angliss and Co., because he was born in 1896, so at best was 20 when he enlisted, meaning he would have started work aged 9 - seems unlikely, but possible, I suppose.) Anyway, he arrived in France in Feburary 1916, survived the war, returned to Australia in February 1919 and settled in Brunswick immediately after the war.

Another son - Stanley - 11^th child & 5^th surviving son, was not mentioned in the Herald article, but also served. He was born at Brunswick in 1898 and died at Heidelberg in 1964. 7204 Pte Stanley Baxter, 24 Reinfs, 5^th Btn. He enlisted on 14 December 1916 (around the time the newspaper article was published) at which time he claimed to be 21, although he was actually only 18. His parents signed the consent form on 15 December 1916 (the day before the Herald article appeared), stating that he turned 21 on 5 November. He embarked the following February, served in France until he received a flesh wound to his left leg in August 1918 and was hospitalised in England. He returned to Australia in January 1919. He had served 1195 days, 732 overseas and received a pension on his return.

The Baxter parents had married in 1888. Teresa Baxter, their mother, had signed the Women's Suffrage Petition (the Women's Suffrage 'Monster' Petition) in 1891 when the family was living in Glenlyon Road, Brunswick. After her husband's death in 1920, she lived at various locations around the northern suburbs - Brunswick, Fitzroy, North Carlton. She died at the grand age of 96 in 1952.

This piece was written as an International Women's Day tribute to all the women who struggled (and still struggle) to raise their families with very few resources. Many, like Teresa Baxter, took in other children in need, rather than see them go into care. Amazingly, Teresa survived to live a long life. I hope she felt it was a worthwhile life.

H. Reginald, blacksmith of Coburg, and former member of the AIF.

I have a mystery I'm trying to solve and maybe someone out there can help.

The photo below clearly shows the  name H. Reginald, late AIF, Shoeing and General Blacksmith. 

I've been told that the photo was taken in about 1923 and that the business was at the rear of McKay's Dairy in Sutherland Street, Coburg and that it was later converted into a motor mechanic's workshop.

The first problem is the possible date. Sands and McDougalls gives the first entry for John McKay at 21 Sutherland Street, Coburg in 1929 and he's there until at least 1942. I can find no reference to H. Reginald, however.

The second problem comes with researching the name H. Reginald. Almost every database I've searched leads to a dead end. If I search for Reginald as a surname, they want to search it as a given name. If I search for Harry Reginald, the same thing happens. Same with H. Reginald.

The exception is that I've found a Harry Reginald, blacksmith, at 527 Sydney Road, Coburg from 1923 to 1925, then the numbering changed and it was 723 to 725 Sydney Road to 1935. (Same address, different numbering. It's just along from the old Fire Station, near Gaffney Street.) This is definitely the man in the photograph. In 1938 the blacksmith's name changed to W.A. Poole then in the 1940s it became a dentist's surgery.

If you look closely at the photograph you'll see the business was at number 527, so this is clearly the right location. Given that the numbering changed in 1926, the photo must have been taken between 1923 and 1925, as my information suggested.

So now I have a name - Harry Reginald - and a place - 527 (and later 723) Sydney Road, Coburg - and some dates - 1923 to 1935, with the photo dating from pre-1926.

I know vaguely what he looks like - I'm assuming that's him on the left in this photograph - and perhaps John McKay is the man on the right, although that's just a guess.

But that's where the trail ends. I can't find any Harry Reginald listed in AIF records. I can't find him on electoral rolls. The Victorian BDM indexes list only one person with the surname Reginald. Newspapers on TROVE do what everything else does - leads me to me who had the given name Reginald. I just don't seem to make any headway on this one.

Any suggestions anyone? I'm at a loss to know where to go next.