SARAH DAWES AND THE COAL LUMPERS: ABSENCE AND PRESENCE ON THE SYDNEY WATERFRONT 1900-1917 A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY from THE UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG by MARGO BEASLEY BA, MA (Applied History) DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY AND POLITICS 2004 CERTIFICATION I, Margo Beasley, declare that this thesis, submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy, in the Department of History and Politics, University of Wollongong, is wholly my own work unless otherwise referenced or acknowledged. The document has not been submitted for qualifications at any other academic institution. Margo Beasley 20 October 2004 CONTENTS page Tables i Abbreviations ii Abstract iii Acknowledgements v Conversions vii INTRODUCTION 1 Historiography and theory 12 Sources and methodology 26 Chapter Summary 29 SECTION I: ABSENCE AND PRESENCE 32 CHAPTER 1: DEMOGRAPHIC CAMOUFLAGE 33 CHAPTER 2: THE MISSING WATERFRONT MEN 51 SECTION II: INSIDE THE HOUSEHOLD 69 CHAPTER 3: FAMILY FINANCES 70 Expenditure 72 Income 86 CHAPTER 4: WATERFRONT HOUSING 107 CHAPTER 5: BABIES 135 SECTION III: WORK AND THE HOUSEHOLD 166 CHAPTER 6: WOMEN’S WORK: BOARDERS AND WHITE APRONS 167 CHAPTER 7: CHILDREN’S WORK: BILLY CARTS 196 CHAPTER 8: MEN’S WORK: FINDING THE FEMININITY 213 CONCLUSION 239 Bibliography 247 TABLES Page Table 1.1: Masculinity Rates for the Commonwealth Subdivision of Gipps and Neighbouring Subdivisions: 1908 39 Table 1.2: Women Occupied with Home Duties in the Commonwealth Subdivision of Gipps and Neighbouring Subdivisions: 1908 45 Table 3.1: Average weekly costs for waterfront households: 1905 73 Table 3.2: Weekly Costs for Married Coal Lumpers 75 Table 3.3: Sydney Food and Grocery Prices 77 Table 3.4: Variations in Sydney Retail Price Levels 77 Table 3.5: NSW and National Unemployment 1901-1918 93 Table 3.6: Vessels and tonnage in Sydney harbour 1906-1916 95 Table 3.7: Average weekly earnings for early 1905 97 Table 5.1: Infantile Mortality rates per 1,000 births; City of Sydney 161 Table 5.2: Records of nursing mothers visited in the City of Sydney 162 ABBREVIATIONS GKOHC: Grace Karskens Oral History Collection ML: Mitchell Library NBA: Noel Butlin Archives NSWBCOHC: New South Wales Bicentennial Oral History Collection NSWLA V&P: New South Wales Legislative Assembly, Votes and Proceedings PC: Proceedings of Council SCC: Sydney City Council SCLU: Sydney Coal Lumpers’ Union SHT: Sydney Harbour Trust SMH: Sydney Morning Herald SPOHC: Susannah Place Oral History Collection SRO: State Records Office SWLU: Sydney Wharf Labourers’ Union WWF: Waterside Workers’ Federation of Australia ABSTRACT This thesis is, primarily, a feminist account of meaning and significance in working class households on the early twentieth century Sydney waterfront. Initially, the raison d’etre of the thesis was to redress the patent absence of women and their domestic labour in my earlier work on the history of the Waterside Workers’ Federation of Australia (WWF). However, in response to feminist epistemological arguments - about forces that determine historical absence and presence, and the symbolic nature of concepts of masculinity and femininity - the concerns of the thesis broadened. It now encompasses all members of waterfront households - men and children as well as women - and it also examines, to a lesser degree, hitherto neglected aspects of the history of men’s waterfront work. A central proposition of the thesis is that history that awards significance from the perspective of public life (as histories of trade unions do) necessarily privileges masculine relationships (actual or symbolic). Such history generates presence and absence along lines that are often gendered. By contrast, history that seeks meaning and significance from the perspective of the household can scrutinise women, children and men with relative equality. Through this route the interactive and entwined experiences of gender, class and generations can be made more visible, and alternative accounts of meaning and significance can emerge. The thesis utilises a range of documentary and oral sources to support this proposition, but it also employs inference and deduction to argue its case. Through this method it draws attention to the contrast between the kinds of meaning and significance that emerge from a study of day-to-day life, and the meaning and significance that external constructs award. The subject matter of the thesis is organised into three areas: historical absence and presence; practical aspects of the day-to-day life of the household; and work of all kinds. The thesis demonstrates that processes affecting historical absence and presence occur for contemporary as well as historic reasons, and apply to men as well as to women. Biases in socially constructed records, which are blind to many women’s activities and disregard their domination of particular categories, allow the early twentieth century Sydney waterfront to be characterised as a masculine place. However, the same records reveal the widespread existence of categories of male waterfront work that challenge the wharf labourers’ contemporary hold on waterfront labour history. Household finances, housing and fertility highlight differences between lived life on the Sydney waterfront and ideological, and gendered, constructs that purport to account for women and men’s behaviour. The breadwinner/dependent spouse dichotomy is demonstrably false for early twentieth century waterfront households; gendered use of waterfront housing did not accord with the ideology of its architecture; and atypically high fertility amongst waterfront women of the period contradicts both feminist and economistic arguments about the meaning of fertility limitation. Work of all kinds provides a lens for viewing the spousal, parental and filial relationships of the waterfront household. The economic purpose of some women’s home-based work is demonstrably similar to men’s waged work, and aspects of their domestic work challenges notions of male power within the working class household. However, the meaning and significance of unpaid domestic work for the women who did it remains relatively obscure. Waterfront children’s paid and unpaid work was prompted by filial obligations to the household that entailed a lengthening of childhood, which contrasts with economistic constructions that perceive childhood in terms of the school/work divide. When the spectrum of men’s paid and unpaid work and work-based activity is analysed it bears a marked similarity to the pattern of waterfront women’s work. Because waterfront men can be argued to have put the private relationships of the home ahead of their relationships with other men the meaning of their work is arguably similar to the meaning of women’s work. The thesis concludes that when the private life of household is scrutinised an alternative account emerges that challenges the meaning and significance implied by historical accounts of public life. Women and men can be understood less as symbolic constructions than as real people for whom meaning and significance were similar. In this the thesis offers a feminist alternative to the masculinist and economistic approaches of institutional history. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many people to thank for their assistance in preparing this thesis. The staff of the Mitchell Library, the State Records Office of NSW, the Noel Butlin Archives at the Australian National University and the NSW Historic Houses Trust were unfailingly helpful. John Coombs and Paddy Crumlin gave me permission to access records belonging to the Maritime Union of Australia. Rae Francis initially alerted me to the existence of the NSW Court of Arbitration transcripts from 1905 that have been used extensively as a source in this thesis, and both she and Bruce Scates gave generously of their ideas and experience in the very early stages of the project. A debt of gratitude is also owed to Grace Karskens for her general discussion about waterfront life and her generous offer to provide me with a copy of some of her interviews with waterfront people. Those interviewees have also kindly given permission for me to use this material. Two friends, Judy Nancarrow and Barbara Page, were particularly kind and generous with their time and support. They listened patiently and asked many questions well beyond the requirements of friendship. Special thanks are owed to my supervisors from the University of Wollongong: co- supervisor, Dr Maree Murray (formerly of the Department of Management), and senior supervisor, Dr Ben Maddison (Department of History and Politics). This thesis would not have been completed without their intellectual guidance, general support, friendship and ongoing availability, over several years. In the final stages Ben Maddison spent countless hours reading and rereading penultimate and ultimate drafts, always compelling me to lift my game, improve my standards and to say what I actually thought, even when he didn’t agree with me. The thesis could not have been completed without him. The much loved men of my nuclear family, Ward, Tom and Conal O’Neill, are to be thanked for teaching me, over decades, that men are not so very different from women, and for showing me why families, in their many forms, continue to endure. In particular, the support of my husband Ward O’Neill deserves special mention. Not only was his gentle encouragement constant and unwavering, but as the main breadwinner for our family his ungrudging dedication to the task allowed me to continue work on the thesis long after the scholarship had petered out. This thesis is dedicated to him, and to our loyal friend, the late Tas Bull, former general secretary of the Waterside Workers’ Federation of Australia. A NOTE ON CONVERSIONS Since their measurement doesn’t alter, weights and distances in this thesis have been converted to metric for ease of comprehension. Since the purchasing power of currency is in a constant state of change, it has been retained in its early twentieth century imperial form because conversion to decimal currency is meaningless.