Provenance 2010
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Provenance 2010 Issue 9, 2010 ISSN: 1832-2522 Index About Provenance 2 Editorial 4 Refereed articles 5 Alison Wishart The Turbulent History of Our Cookery Book 6 Kath Ensor Family and Social History in Archives and Beyond 16 Catharine Coleborne Reading Insanity’s Archive: Reflections from four archival sites 27 Kirsten Wright and Dr Antonina Lewis ‘Where Fire Risks are Great’: Tale of Arson, Bureaucracy and the Schoolyard 38 Forum articles 46 Kirstie Close The Demise of Bicycle George: A Life of Crime 47 Donna Bourke What Happened to the Camels of the Burke and Wills Expedition? 53 Christine Graunas Stucco and Shopping: Melbourne’s Nineteenth Century Commercial Terraces 62 Helen D Harris OAM Victoria Police Involvement in the Infant Life Protection Act 1893-1908 73 Dr Janet Marles Everything Changes: Piecing Together Evidence for a Story of Loss and Absence 80 1 About Provenance The journal of Public Record Office Victoria Provenance is a free journal published online by Editorial Board Public Record Office Victoria. The journal features peer- reviewed articles, as well as other written contributions, The editorial board includes representatives of: that contain research drawing on records in the state • Public Record Office Victoria access services; archives holdings. • the peak bodies of PROV’s major user and stakeholder Provenance is available online at www.prov.vic.gov.au groups; The purpose of Provenance is to foster access to PROV’s • and the archives, records and information archival holdings and broaden its relevance to the wider management professions. Victorian community. An editor is appointed to the board to co-ordinate The records held by PROV contain a wealth of production of the journal and the activities of the information regarding Victorian people, places, editorial board. All board members are appointed to communities, events, policies, institutions, the board by the PROV Director and Keeper of Public infrastructure, governance, and law. Provenance Records for a period of two years. provides a forum for scholarly publication drawing on the full diversity of these records. Assessment of submitted articles Assessment of all submitted articles is overseen by Contact the Editor the editor in consultation with the editorial board. All Please direct any queries, comments and submissions articles intended for the peer-reviewed section of the regarding Provenance to the editor, who can be journal undergo double-blind peer review by at least contacted by email at [email protected] two referees with expertise relevant to the submitted or by telephone on (03) 9348 5600, or post to: article. The editorial board also makes recommendations regarding the publication of informal articles in The Editor, Provenance the Forum Section. For guidelines and information Public Record Office Victoria for authors interested in submitting an article to PO Box 2100 Provenance, see the Author Guidelines. North Melbourne Victoria 3051 Australia Available at www.prov.vic.gov.au/explore-collection/ provenance-journal/author-guidelines Provenance journal publishes peer-reviewed articles, as well as other written contributions, that contain research drawing on records in PROV’s holdings. Open access policy Provenance is an Open Access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) definition of Open Access. 2 Archiving of journal Provenance is archived regularly in PANDORA, Australia’s Web Archive, which is a growing collection of Australian online publications, established initially by the National Library of Australia in 1996, and now built in collaboration with nine other Australian libraries and cultural collecting organisations. The name, PANDORA, is an acronym that encapsulates the web archive’s mission: Preserving and Accessing Networked Documentary Resources of Australia. Since 2015, the journal has been aggregated and indexed as full text on the Informit Humanities and Social Science database. Copyright The authors who contribute to Provenance must clear any copyright for material and images in their articles before their articles are published. It is the responsibility of the author to supply copies of images or other material that will be published in the article. Copyright in each article remains with the author of the relevant article. Authors have the right to publish their articles elsewhere subject to acknowledgment of prior publication in Provenance. Users of the Provenance website may have rights to reproduce material from this site under provisions of the Commonwealth of Australia’s Copyright Act 1968. In addition to any such rights, unless there is a statement to the contrary, the author of each article has given permission for physical or electronic copies of the text and graphics in that article to be made for classroom or research use, provided: • Copies are distributed at or below cost; • The author and Provenance are attributed on each copy; • Notice of relevant copyright ownership is attached to each copy; and • The Editor, Provenance, is notified of the use within one calendar month of use. 3 Editorial Provenance 2010 One of the notable features of the refereed articles of the questions she had been left with when she and and some of those in the Forum section in this year’s her sisters became orphans in 1941. Provenance is that many are based on substantial research into archives and collections in addition to Helen Harris explores the system introduced by the those found here at Public Record Office Victoria. Kirsten Victoria Police in 1893 to regulate ‘baby farming’, a Wright and Antonina Lewis combine research into practice used by single mothers to earn incomes while records of Victoria University in Footscray with records they paid other women to look after their infants. The created by the Department of Education. Beginning Infant Life Protection Act 1890 was the instrument for with burnt and damaged records they discovered in the this attempt to ensure better care of infants and protect Victoria University Archives, the authors researched both them from the excesses of a system geared more toward collections to weave a story about the lack of attention making money than keeping infants alive. The records paid to fire prevention in Victorian public schools in the examined in the article reveal a great deal of intimate early twentieth century. In so doing, they introduce us detail about the lives of the working-class women who to a range of social history surrounding the incidence worked as ‘nurses’ as well as those who employed them. of fire at the school in 1953, as well as the work of the In Christine Graunas’s article we are taken on an school’s founder Charles Hoadley. excursion through the wonders of Melbourne’s inner Catharine Coleborne’s article explores the administration suburban high streets with their well-preserved of insanity in four colonial psychiatric institutions in shopping terraces, dating from the mid-nineteenth Australia and New Zealand between 1860 and 1914. century onwards. The article is based on primary Her study reveals much about those in care as those research on municipal records held at Public Record who provided that care, and those who recorded the Officee Victoria, as well as newspaper advertisements treatment of the ‘insane’ at these institutions. and commissioned histories of inner-city suburbs. Melburnians and visitors alike will see this aspect of the Another article demonstrating the research possibilities urban environment as one of Melbourne’s great features. available for those interested in the study of mental health records is Kath Ensor’s article on Dolly Stainer, On the occasion of the 150th centenary of the Burke and an inmate of Kew Cottages. The article brings together Wills expedition, Donna Bourke asks the question: ‘What research into mental health records held at Public happened to the camels that survived?’ Following the Record Office Victoria, the Registry of Births, Deaths and purchase of Longerenong Homestead in the Wimmera, Marriages, and a range of other sources to demonstrate she discovered that this property had a connection with the way in which family histories can be reclaimed the expedition, having been a place where the camels through primary research. were kept for a period following their retrieval. Through her research into the records of the Royal Zoological and Alison Wishart’s research into Victorian Education Acclimatisation Society, the untold story of the camels Department records takes us into the world of renegade and their fate is finally revealed! cookery educator Flora Pell, a capable woman who ran foul of the Education Department authorities by ignoring Finally, the sad life of crime of murderer George their outdated teaching texts to produce her own highly Blunderfield (alias Arthur Oldring), who was hanged in successful book on the subject, Our cookery book. Melbourne in 1918. Based on research into records of the Western Australian and Victorian state archives, The lead article in this year’s Forum section tells the Kirstie Close’s article takes us on the downward spiral journey of a woman rediscovering the facts of her own of George’s life that saw him become the perpetrator of childhood through personal memorabilia and records horrific crimes. found in shoebox, which eventually led her to an inquest file at Public Record Office Victoria. Janet Marles tells Sebastian Gurciullo the story of her mother, Heather McDonald, who through Editor this chance discovery was able to start answering many 4 Refereed articles 5 The Turbulent History of Our Cookery Book Alison Wishart ‘The Turbulent History of Our Cookery Book’, Provenance: The Journal of Public Record Office Victoria, issue no.