GROWING UP IN THE CITY
Extracts from an essay by Annie Hider,
student in the Department of History, University of Melbourne
Let's explore Little Lon through the eyes of Marie Hayes, who lived in
Cumberland Place, one of the small lanes north of Little Latrobe Street, from
her birth in 1920 until her marriage in 1940. Marie lived with her mother
Bridget (known as Tess) and her Auntie Poll in a small timber house at 42
Cumberland Place which had first been owned in the 1850s by her grandfather.
Tess's Memories, 1890-1955
Tess and Poll remained living in the house until the 1950s. Shortly before
her death, Tess reminisced about living in the area:
- 'This area used to have a bad name. Some of these streets were not
pleasant, but everyone has always been kind to us. No one has ever
molested us, or even made us afraid. When you have lived so long in the
heart of the city, you want to stay here always.'
Photograph of Tess.
Photograph of Tess and Poll outside Cumberland Place in October 1948.
The house at 42 Cumberland Place
Little Lon was an area of quite startling diversity and endeavour. The
block, with its cramped housing and multi-cultural poor community, was a focus
of reformers' attention and missionary activity.
Brothels, pubs and factories were there; however, it was also home to dozens
of families during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
When Marie was born in 1920, many of the earliest small houses, 'clusters
of dilapidated huts with one closet common to all, perfectly destitute of
backyards or conveniences of any kind' (Argus, 11 February 1857)
had been demolished and replaced by small factories. Chinese men made cheap
furniture, Southern European and Lebanese immigrants ran small businesses,
and the Bracchi's Ice Cream Factory and Ice Works was down the street in
Cumberland Place.
Marie Hayes describes her house at 42 Cumberland Place:
- 'It was weatherboard. It had green shutters, green wooden shutters
on each side. You walked right into to the front room and there was a Miner's
couch and a big table with a chenille cloth with bobbles around the edge.
Over on one side was a sideboard with a mirror and the boy with the
cherries. And two china figurines of women playing musical instruments
on either side. There was lino on the floor, that heavy lino and a carpet
square which Poll bought. In the bedrooms there was lino and mats next to the
beds. The gramophone was in the corner and there was a big open fire,
white-washed, with a mantelpiece, mirror and ornaments on it. And poppies and
gumtips from the market; you never had poppies without gumtips. Off that
room was the big room with a big brass bed in it, and a single bed and a
big chest of drawers with 'Barleycorn' twists, huge. Aunty Poll in the bed
under the window and I slept with my mother. Later I moved into the back room.
You went out of this room into the kitchen. It had a gully trap and a table
and a cupboard. No sink, we had to use dishes. Up the yard, cobbled
bluestones, on the right hand side, was the toilet. It had a long seat
of some sort of shiny concrete.
On the other side was the kitchen which was a Colonial oven, you lit the
fire on the ground. There were big iron pots and the wood was kept underneath
with the firelighters. I used to think it was lovely when I was a kid,
I used to make toffees and lots of things there.'
Plan of Cumberland Place.
(Insert photograph of Cumberland Place, taken in 1947.)
Washing, Cooking and Shopping
Washing
Only two of the houses around Cumberland Place had bathrooms. However, in
the words of Marie's cousin Len Dearsley, 'a shower freshens you up but you
can keep just as clean with a dish of water and a cloth'.
Every Saturday night, Marie and her mother would go down to the City
Baths for a 'slipper bath.'
Cooking
Marie remembers:
- 'In Exhibition Street...there was a special place where you could go on a
Sunday and take your roast leg of lamb or beef, and your potatoes, and
they'd cook it for you. You cooked your own vegetables [at home].
Imagine it now, you dropped it off on the way to Church and picked it up
on your way home. I remember that Tess always used to say that if she went
in, the man would give her an extra potato from someone else's dinner.'
Shopping
The Hayes' household had no ice chest, so shopping for perishables was
done each day. Once a week Marie and her mother would take a big pram to the
Victoria Market for fruit and vegetables.
There were butchers in Spring Street, Italian grocers across the
Exhibition Gardens in Carlton, a curry shop run by Indians,
Batrouneys, in Little Lonsdale Street, and a fish shop, Chanticlair, in Bourke
Street, for fish and chips. Marie's family did not patronise the Chinese
restaurants and grocers in the area.
The Neighbourhood
Marie's cousin remembers:
- 'The door was never closed. The only thing you had to watch 'down home' was
that you stepped down when you went in the door because the house had
dropped. The only way we locked the door was to put a chair under it. There
was never any worry about anybody, people would just drop in...'
The people of Cumberland Place often helped each other. They socialised
together regularly. When Marie was growing up in the 1920s, she 'only
knew Syrians and Chinese'. The Syrians in the neighbourhood had a reputation
for being especially generous, 'always inviting you in to share food,
like the olives they kept on the front table.' There is a photograph of
a birthday party in 1914 for Marie's half-brother, John Gye, held in the yard
of a house in the area. Read the list of names of those present to gain a
sense of the different ethnic groups represented in the area at the time.
Those present included: Billy Argenzio, Bertie Dearsley, Phillip Torbey,
Brightie Lagruta, Mamie Bracchi, Nata Palermo, Marza Amed, Emily Sedewei,
Katie McDonald, Winnie Lee, Minnie Haddad and John Gye.
Working
People were employed in unskilled jobs, in factories, as cleaners, as
street vendors and hawkers. Indians living around the area sold
'Turkey Lollie', a type of coarse fairy floss spun onto a stick at the
Victoria Market. Crisp Melos, a Jugoslav who lived at Cumberland Place in
the early 1930s, had a handcart from which he sold roast chestnuts during the
winter and Bracchi's ice cream in the summer.
The Haddads lived above their fruit shop in Lonsdale Street. Joe and Sadie
Malouf and their eight children lived above their bootmaking business.
Mrs Lew ran a brothel on the corner of Little Lonsdale Street and Burton
Street, and her husband worked as a waiter in the Golden Dragon restaurant
in Bourke Street. Old Mrs Honor Madras sold lollies from a table in her
front room. George Fares, a watchmaker and jeweller in Cumberland Place,
kept a small display of watches in his front window. Mr Joseph, from Syria,
owned a taxi, and the Kwongs were Chinese cabinet makers, manufacturing
cheap furniture.
Childhood
Marie went to school at St Josephs, a Roman Catholic school at the end of
her street. Two teaching sisters and the parish priest, Father Brosnan,
kept a tight rein on their charges. Boys and girls were separated in the
playground, and each morning the children had to wash their hands in warm water
with scented soap. Heads were inspected regularly for lice, and every Friday
afternoon the children had to swallow a dose of salts before going home.
Class of 1926
Class of 1929
Marie and her friends played with tops in the streets, and made whistles from
apricot stones. Sometimes they blocked up the gutters and sailed boats in
them. They played games in the Exhibition Gardens, went to movies and the
Library and Museum, and explored the stalls of the Eastern Market.
They learned to dance in the front room to the strains of the gramophone,
and swam at South Melbourne beach on weekend afternoons.
Challenging the Myths
'Little Lon' was the name covering the streets running through the
'notorious' north-east corner of Melbourne during the 1860s. Gradually the
area began to be seen as a 'world apart', known for its
'crime and debauchery.' In reality, the area was a patchwork of different
communities and activities.
The cultures of "the underworld" and "the respectable" sometimes overlapped,
but they more often remained separate and distinct.
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