Jim Sinclair is the Executive Officer for State Records NSW. He is also a foundation member of “The Razor Gang”,  our newly formed fundraising team   for the World’s Greatest Shave 2013. This is a charitable event run on behalf of the Leukaemia Foundation. Watch this space for more information! (Editorial note: Go Jim, you’re a legend, we’re all behind you!!)

I have a long-term interest in part-time soldiering in Australia, as I have myself served as a part-time soldier since 1973. I like this image because it represents a forgotten period of part-time soldiering, the late 19^th century. After the withdrawal of British troops from the Australian colonies in 1870, the States and Colonies were responsible for providing their own military forces. The image shows Non-Commissioned Officers (NCOs) of what appears to be the 2^nd Battalion, NSW Infantry, in the latter years of the 19^th century, probably attending an Easter camp. The image is interesting as it shows a group of older men, all sporting beards and the pill box hats which were typical of this period. Even today part-time soldiers are usually older than their Regular Army counterparts. The NCOs are standing in front of a marquee tent, a style which, with minor modifications, remained in use by Australian Army Reserve units until the 1970s

 Other military records in our collection

• Additional military photographs from State Records collection can be viewed on Flickr
• Information about the military, war and related collections at State Records can be found on our specialist research page War and Australia (includes the Sudan, Boer War, World War I and World War II).
• The blog  A Land Fit For Heroes which is about the  Soldier Settlement Program (1916-1939) may also be of interest.

World War I Service Personnel Records

If you are interested in records about World War I Service Personnel then I can also highly recommend Tim Sheratt’s aggregated search engine which covers:

• service records held by the National Archives of Australia,

• the Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial,

• the First World War Embarkation Roll at the Australian War Memorial,

• the Red Cross Missing and Wounded files at the Australian War Memorial,

• the Honours and Awards database at the Australian War Memorial and

• the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database .

Post from: Archives Outside@State Records NSW

Staff Pick : Soldiering in the late 19th Century

FS: I’m here today with Brian Tonkin the Archives officer at the Outback Archives Broken Hill and as part of his job Brian manages a collection that includes some State archives; mainly Police and Court records, as well as a very large community collection which incorporates mining records, local business records, community records, parish records and a large photographic collection. Today he is going to talk to you about his favourite archive, so Brian over to you..

Inspired by Photographs

BT:  Thank you very much Fiona. Yes, my favourite part of the collection is the photographs. When I first came into the archives some years ago, I was really inspired by the work of Wooler [James Wooler 1873-1944] and his photogrpahs of Broken Shire in particular and how they make a  social history of Broken Hill through photographs. He went out and just photographed every day activities, sporting events, people on the streets and buildings. He certainly left us with a really great and very personal record of 100 years ago.

So when we’re thinking back about how Broken Hill developed in the 1880’s there is probably scant photographic record, but certainly by 1892 the population was around 20,000 people, it  boomed from about 0 to 20,000 in a period of 7 years. It was pretty…

FS: A pretty busy time…

BT: ….prolific, prolific growth you know….. talk about satellite towns and that qualified definitely as a satellite town. Of course there were different groups of people that came along, we needed miners naturally enough, that was our main industry here. Probably, by the mid 1890’s there was something like 5,000 to 10,000 people employed along the line of lode.

Why this photograph?
BT: The photograph I’ve got now shows camels pulling a wagon. One of the great things about camels and cameleers is that they really did open up Far Western NSW as far as the transport of goods throughout this district. In this particular photo we have four sets of camels hitched up to an obviously very heavy wagon that fairly well laden with goods. I don’t know if they are making just home deliveries, whether they are going to a warehouse or from a warehouse to a shop. I’m not exactly sure, but you can see it is taken in town itself. You can see the power lines so we are probably looking at 1910. It’s probably about 100 years ago. We can even see down the street “Ice”…..How about that?…We can even see the “Ice” sign….. So we’re pretty civilized here, we can cool each ourselves down with a slab of ice (laughter).

So we can see this wagon is pretty heavy, we’ve got the bigger wagon wheels at the back and the smaller set of wagon wheels in the front. Two companies in town,  were Walter & Sons (?) and Wood & Sons (?) and they used their own camel teams and they probably used wagons or they used individual camels laden with goods. Usually in the outback they’d make deliveries to isolated towns and isolated homesteads

Camels (Landcruisers of the Outback)

FS: Home delivery by camel!

BT: Yes, basically that’s what it was. We also had a railhead about 60 kilometre’s north of Broken Hill and they also had camel teams up around that area. They’d collect the goods off the trains and then send them off to the outback areas, to station properties etc.

The great thing about a camel, they could go anywhere, they could put up with long spells of not having a drink and they were actually ideal for this semi arid area around Broken Hill. Considering that we only get probably….what?…. 8-9inches of rain. These days we’re having some good seasons so we’re looking at around 16-17inches so far this year (Ed note: up to June) which is really quite a boom. But the great thing about the camel, it never needed an actual road, if they were pulling the wagon of course they’ve obviously got to go on a certain track but as individuals they can just be packed with a hundred weight of goods and they were just led off.  If they wanted to go due north then they would just walk due north and that’s how they used to travel, didn’t need a great deal of water. Once they got they’ve got a belly full of water then they can then travel off.  As opposed to bullocks and horses; they needed water every day, a camel could do without water for several days at a time. So you could see they were superior, they were like the Landcruiser today with air-conditioning and everything.

FS: The outback luxury vehicle? (Laughter)

BT: Right, you’re just sitting there.. [thinking]Wow, this is good! The old horse and bullocks were like the old push bikes in a sense, that’s how great the difference was. These were a superior beast as opposed to horse and cattle.

Cameleers in Broken Hill

BT: This then created very tense moments between the white man, the white man being the people who ran the bullock teams and the horse teams, the people we call the teamsters in those days and the cameleers.  Well of course they [the cameleers] were the foreigners. They were villified, especially around 1903, 1904….they were treated as outcasts and they were looked upon as people stealing the white mans job. In the main there was that enmity because  they were different…..

So you can see straight away, even in a multicultural centre like Broken Hill….You remember we were importing our labour in from all over the world. The miners mainly came from Bendigo [Victoria] and from Moonta and Burra in South Australia, but they also had Cornish heritage. They were mining people, they were mining families and that’s why they came to Broken Hill, to develop the mining industry. You also had the Russians and Italians and you had the Scottish people. You had Germans… a big contingent of German people. So you had what you call very much a multicultural society in Broken Hill from the very beginning of its development….But for some reason because these guys kept to themselves, these men and women just went about their business and they were really quite efficient and of course their rates, their transport rates, were a lot cheaper than what the teamsters could [offer]……they couldn’t compete in a sense. So then there was this, more or less this lets get this person and villify him. So it went on that they were virtually banished from the town, so they had to set up camp on the outskirts of town. They also said that camels and horses never mixed…”so keep your camels away from us we don’t want to know about them”…. and so yes from the very beginning we see these camps. This happened all over the country…Coolgardie, Bourke….. we find that the Afghan cameleers, the camel handlers that were the experts in camelology??

FS: There must a word.

Changing Attitudes

BT: Not Geology but we’re going to call it Camelology. So they were the experts but yes unfortunately, hence a lot of the Afghan people were just living on the outskirts of town and that’s how they coined the terminology camel camp. We don’t talk about a horse camp do we? We always talk about camel camps and people remember the camel camp being down the end of Chapel street. People remember…men and women would say ..”Oh, when I was a kid I can remember the cameleers you know, with their turbans and their strings of camels going along the streets.” People have fond memories of those days. Today of course we’ve got memorials around the town to salute their [cameleers] contribution to transport in Far Western NSW. There’s a plaque in the main park of Broken Hill and we’ve even had exhibitions of pictures, memorabilia and …artifacts….that toured here in the Broken Hill Art Gallery. That was only about 2 or 3 years ago and on opening night you could not move there. It was absolutely packed out, there was hundreds of people that turned up for the opening night of that particular exhibition. How things have changed!

FS: Yes!…Are there still descendants of the original cameleers in town?

BT: Yes, there are. We do have a couple of families that are direct descendants from the cameleers and still living in Broken Hill.

Photographs tell a story

FS: You really enjoy the photographic aspect of your archival collection?

BT: Oh Absolutley, I think……I just picked this up today [Ed note: The photograph] and [thought] Wow! Have a look at this, this is really quite stunning. When you think about how the picture sort of goes on and describes itself once you start looking at it……look at this it tells a story in itself….without motorised vehicles how did they get around? How did they get their goods and transport them around the town and outside to Outback Areas? There’s our answer.  We had schools, we had to have blacksmiths, we had to have coach builders did we not? The one’s that built the carts, use of timber and steel, we also needed handlers…animal handlers….all these skills needed just to be in the transport business. I think all those people that were working, we had as I say the animal handlers, we had the blacksmiths, we had the builders working in timber…..all of these people had their own businesses and were obviously part of that era when animals like horses, camels and bullocks were the main way of transporting goods in and around the town.

FS:  Brian Tonkin thank you very much.

BT: Thank you.

Post from: Archives Outside@State Records NSW

Regional Staff Pick [Camel train photograph, Broken Hill]

Oilmen’s sundries and how to make them, 1901

Oilman: a person dealing in oil

This volume - NRS 5023 - with a rather obscure title, is a manuscript copy of a book published by Maclaren & Sons of London in 1901.  It is a beautifully handwritten collection of recipes for just about everything you could imagine needing for your home and as the full title suggests, all of a practical nature.  This volume also includes handwritten copies of the advertisements that would have appeared in the original book. Interestingly the volume came to the State archives from the Darlinghurst Reception House, NSW Health Department. The Reception House was used for the temporary detention of persons believed to be insane pending a determination of the nature of their illness. One wonders if this volume was in high demand for use in the hospital.

Oilmen’s sundries takes up about two-thirds of the volume and then the handwriting and the tone changes. The remainder of the volume has handwritten kitchen recipes for things such as essences, jellies and cordials. There is no date for these later additions.

What I like about this archive is that it is a reminder of what life was like not too long ago. It was a time when people couldn’t dash off to the supermarket or hardware store and just buy what  they needed for the home. Out of necessity these products had to be made in the home. The variety of polishes, waxes, varnishes, soaps, glues and cleaners is amazing.

Oilmen’s sundries is divided into six sections:

1. Blackings and leather dressings
2. Starches and glazes
3. Polishes and renovators
4. Inks, pastes and glues
5. Disinfectants and insecticides
6. Miscellaneous section including soaps, sealing wax, carbon paper etc.

I particularly liked recipes for things like straw hat polish, blackboard slating, fly paper, effervescing lemonade powder and a pickle for candlewicks.

Fly paper recipe

The fly paper recipe is for blotting paper to be dipped into one of three solutions: quassia chips boiled in water then strained (quassia is an astringent herb); black pepper boiled and strained; or asseniate of soda dissolved in water. The last option is the “surest but must be used with caution”. Maybe it was very toxic?

Pickles for candle wicks to prevent smouldering

This basic recipe for pickling cotton wicks was meant to ensure that the wick burned more slowly in candles. Cotton wicks were soaked in a pickling solution of either boracic acid (a common insecticide and flame retardant) or borase, potassium and ammonium chloride.

A cooking experiment: Tomato Catsup

The recipe for tomato catsup is similar to other vintage-style recipes.  I decided to make half the quantity and see what it was like.

The ingredients included

• 2 gallons of skinned tomatoes
• 8 tsp salt
• 8 tsp black pepper
• 4 tsp allspice
• 16 red pepper pods
• 16 tsp mustard seeds
• 1 quart vinegar

After some research I decided to substitute cayenne pepper for red pepper pods and use apple cider vinegar.  There was no sugar in this recipe which I thought was unusual, especially compared to other similar recipes.  For the half quantity I used:

• 2 lt canned tomatoes
• 2 tsp salt
• 4 tsp black pepper
• 2 tsp allspice
• 2 tsp cayenne pepper
• 8 tsp yellow & black mustard seeds
• 375 ml apple cider vinegar
• Added ½ c brown sugar

The process

I dry roasted the mustard seeds and then ground them with the black pepper in a mortar and pestle.  I then added the salt, allspice and cayenne.  I couldn’t help myself (too many cooking shows) so I did start the cooking process with three red onions finely sliced and six cloves of crushed garlic in the pot.  I then added everything else and brought it to a low simmer for 3 hours.  I used a whiz stick to blend and the strained the catsup.  At this point I added another teaspoon of salt. The original recipe calls for the sauce to be boiled again until it is reduced to about half of the starting volume. The sauce was quite thick already so I felt this was unnecessary.

The verdict

The end product was quite spicy and chilli hot but the vinegar was very strong.  To use it in the future I think I will need to add more tomatoes to reduce the vinegar taste and boil again.  The sauce was also quite sweet so maybe that sugar wasn’t needed after all.

Coming soon – History Week September 2011.  Watch out for a new gallery “Food Glorious Food!” highlighting some food related gems from the State archives. Watch this space…

Post from: Archives Outside@State Records NSW

Staff Pick [Food, Glorious Food! Following a tomato sauce recipe from the archives]

George Scott alias Captain Moonlight
Outlaw & Bushranger

Gaol photographs collection

The historical gaol photograph description books at State Records were created to assist gaol staff to keep track of each prisoner’s record. The records cover c.1870-1930 and contain a photograph of each prisoner along with information such: as name, place of birth, year of birth, year and ship of arrival, occupation, religion, education, physical description, where and when they committed an offence, sentence, previous convictions and when the portrait was taken.

One of the more famous photographs in the collection is that of A.G. Scott otherwise known as Captain Moonlight (or sometimes Moonlite) who committed various crimes – bank-robbery, passing false cheques, stealing gold – and led a gang of outlaws until he was eventually caught by police, tried in Sydney in 1879 and subsequently executed in Darlinghurst Gaol in 1880.

A celebrity crim

Wikipedia describes Captain Moonlight as a ‘celebrity criminal’

…[1869] accused of disguising himself and forcing bank agent, Ludwig Julius Wilhelm Bruun… to open the safe. Bruun described being robbed by a fantastic black-crepe masked figure who forced him to sign a note absolving him of any role in the crime…It was alleged that for several months, Scott lived off the money stolen from the bank, hobnobbing in Sydney’s high society and entertaining actors at after theatre parties.
Wikipedia

Speculation

…James Nesbitt, a young man whom he had met in prison…While some disagree on the grounds of speculation, he is considered by many to be Scott’s lover and there is a significant primary resource that supports this reading. Scott’s actual handwritten letters, currently held in the Archives Office of NSW, profess this love…
Wikipedia

Arrest and execution

You can see in the gaol photograph below that there are two offences on the charge sheet: false pretences (x2) and Bank robbery under Arms.

Gaol Photograph of AG Scott alias Captain Moonlight, November 1879
NRS 2138 [3/6043] No. 2170 p.132

Nesbitt was killed in a police shoot-out near Wagga Wagga where Captain Moonlight was finally captured. He was tried in Sydney and hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol on 20 January 1880. His certificate of execution is signed by Maurice O’Connor, Visiting Surgeon and was countersigned by twenty others who witnessed the execution.

Certificate of Execution –Andrew George Scott alias Captain Moonlight, 1880
pen and ink on printed paper form, NRS 13240 [X945 p.13a]

Scott went to the gallows

wearing a ring woven from a lock of Nesbitt’s hair on his finger…his final request was to be buried in the same grave as his constant companion.
Wikipedia

It was refused by the authorities,

but his remains were exhumed from Rookwood Cemetery in Sydney and reinterred at Gundagai next to Nesbitt’s grave in January 1995…
Wikipedia

and another accomplice Augustus Wernicke, one hundred and fifteen years after his death.

Letters from prison

Captain Moonlight wrote a number of rather poignant letters from within Darlinghurst Gaol in the period leading up to his execution. Fortunately from a historical records perspective they are part of the State’s archives purely because the prison authorities did not post them.

A rather sad outcome for Captain Moonlight!

Letter to Reverend Canon Rich

Darlinghust
January the 19th 1880

To the Revd# Canon Rich

Revd# and Dear Sir
I have but a few hours to live and
think it right that I should mourn the
cruel and unjust charges that have been
made against me.

Letter to mother of James Nesbitt

Darlinghurst Gaol
19th January 1880

From Prisoner Andrew G. Scott
Alias Moonlight

My dearest Mrs# Nesbitt,
To the mother of Jim no colder
address would be true, My heart to you
is the same as to my own dearest Mother
jim’s sisters are my sisters, his friends
my friends, his hopes were my hopes his
grave will be my resting place and I
trust I may be worthy to be with him
when we shall all meet to part no
more, when an all-seeing God who
can read all hearts will be the judge

be long before I am with him and in his
grave. Mrs Nesbitt Mother of my jim may
the Great God enable you to bear the great
loss you have suffered.

I send you some of his hair
and will try to send you any
thing else of his I can get
Give the love of a brother to dearest
jims Sisters and to his father

Farewell my dearest Mrs Nesbit
I am ever to you a loving son
in spirit

A.G. Scott

Post from: Archives Outside@State Records NSW

Staff Picks [Captain Moonlight]

I don’t have any favourite archives per se. There are many that make me smile or laugh, or conversely sadden or distress me. Others impress me with their beauty or their utility. Most of the archives however don’t affect my emotions, apart from that general feeling of frustration experienced by many in trawling through the records.

Finding archives about archives

In carrying out their day-to-day functions and operations New South Wales Government agencies leave trails of information about themselves and their records. Absolute pleasure comes from the discovery of those elusive facts and pieces of information that I know can be found among our records. Much of this information is in voluminous correspondence series which complicate their finding. One has to be like Sherlock Holmes, using a virtual magnifying glass to find clues and pointers to sources of desired information.

My favourite archives are those which elucidate – what records were created, how they functioned, how they changed over time, if they were transferred to another agency; what happened when in an agency, when was a branch or division created and/or abolished, how the functions of an agency or branch changed over time (contracting or expanding); and so on. Particularly appealing are lists of records at a given point in time which frequently tell us about records which have not survived.

The mystery of ‘missing’ Convict records

State Records is fortunate in having the oldest collection of official records in Australia (as the first European colony on the continent) including an extensive collection documenting the ‘careers’ of over 80,000 convicts transported between 1788 and 1842. These world heritage listed Imperial Convict records however do have many gaps; it is quite clear that many records relating to the system put in place to manage the Convicts and their movements have not survived.

Some time ago I was pleased to have the opportunity of tackling the question of what did happen to those Imperial convict records that are no longer extant – settling once and for all, if possible, the persistent myth that large quantities were dumped into Sydney Harbour or ‘at sea’. (Or were they destroyed in the Garden Palace fire instead?)

Discovering a 19th Century records disposal schedule

Rising to the challenge, after taking a number of wrong turns and suppressing rising levels of frustration, I managed to find enough information in the archives to show that the sea was not involved in any way with the destruction of Imperial Convict records. One of the fabulous and informative sources that I managed to locate is a 1880 Colonial Secretary in-letter (Colonial Secretary: Main series of letters received, NRS 905, CSIL 80/6527 in [1/2492]). CSIL 80/6527, which contains previous related correspondence, documents the recall and disposal of Convict records between 1869 and 1880, in particular the very significant destruction of Convict records (by pulping) which took place in late 1870.

The most interesting papers are those from mid to late 1870 which document the destruction. An August 1870 letter from the Inspector General of Police, John McLerie, about Convict records for disposal and preservation, includes two lists, one of those books and documents which he recommended be retained, the other of those he considered should be immediately destroyed. He noted that he did not suppose that the two lists were perfect as the records were ‘in such a complete state of confusion’ but that he would take ‘every precaution practicable to prevent the destruction of documents likely to be of any value’.

The destruction list

(This and the other list can be found as enclosures to a letter dated 11 August 1870 from the Inspector General of Police, John McLerie, to the Principal Under Secretary of the Colonial Secretary’s Office, Henry Halloran, CSIL 70/6822 with CSIL 80/6527).

This List includes a number of records which obviously would be of immense value to current day genealogists and researchers of 19th century Australia. The loss of the General Convict Muster Books, the Court Books, the Black Books, the White Book and the Assignment Registers cannot be overestimated. Nonetheless perhaps the most regrettable loss relates to the last two items on this List – the books and papers from the Country Benches of Magistrates and the various papers (‘A large Number …’) which one can surmise are the Principal Superintendent of Convicts on-going records of the day to day management of the Convicts.

The only ray of sunshine relates to the Ticket of Leave Passports. We believe that these have survived and that they are the extant Butts of ticket of leave passports, 1835–69, NRS 12204 (SRNSW: [4/4235-80]; Reels 966-981). (An index is available on State Records’ website.)

Unfortunately there was no last minute reprieve and destruction did go ahead. Oversighted by a Police Detective, the Imperial Convict records were destroyed by pulping between 13 and 20 December 1870. Excluding book backs and rubbish, the quantity pulped totalled just over 102 hundredweight or around 5.1 tons.

Report of Detective John Mansergh who supervised the pulping

(This report was sent by the Inspector General of Police in a letter to the Colonial Secretary dated 21 December 1970, CSIL 70/10127 in CSIL 80/6527)

The Paper Mill’s official certification to the destruction of the records

(The certification by a Mr Thomas of the Paper Works Liverpool that the records were destroyed, also with CSIL 70/10127 in CSIL 80/6527)

(The other side of the certification giving details of the dates and quantities of papers destroyed at the Mill)

It is a sobering thought to contemplate the destruction of so many records now seen as significant; nevertheless, as an archivist, it is also gratifying to see that the destruction was not a haphazard affair but planned, duly authorised, well documented, and in accordance with Government policy of the day.

Christine Shergold

For more information about the systematic destruction of convict records in NSW please read “NSW Convict Records  -”Lost and Saved” by Christine Shergold.

Post from: Archives Outside@State Records NSW

Staff Picks [1870 Convict records disposal schedule]