Bulletin of The University of Melbourne Archives
UMA
No. 15, JULY 2004
S
ince 1977 the University of Melbourne Archives has held a partial copy of several docu- ments relating to the Victoria Gold Escort Company. Consequently, we were pleased when the opportunity arose earli- er in the year to acquire the original doc- uments. These comprise the Deed of Settlement (10 folio pages) dated 18 October 1852 with the signatures of the subscribers to the company and the num- ber of shares allocated, and a Deed of Release and Indemnity with attached instructions for the payment of divi- dends, and receipts for monies paid.The first escort, Dight’s Light Cavalry, as it was called, left Melbourne on 14 June 1852 for Forest Creek (now Chewton) with a superintendent, assis- tant superintendent and ten guards. ‘Of the escort of twelve’, said The Argus,
‘eight of the guards are gentlemen by birth and education’, one of whom was said to be Richard Hengist Horne. The Forest Creek run left Melbourne each Monday, arriving on Wednesday, leaving Thursday and getting to Melbourne on the
Saturday. The fee was sixpence an ounce while the government escort charged one shilling.
In fact the idea of Dight’s Light Cavalry had sent a tremor through the Government and the Legislative Council spent most of one afternoon debating and finally voting down a motion that armed and disciplined men in private service were unconstitu-
tional. There was certainly some cause for alarm as many in Melbourne mistook the blue uniformed escort for police.
That the business was successful is shown by a prospectus for a public float in the following September. The prospec- tus stated that through the numerous applications for shares, the public benefit was likely to accrue, through access to greater capital.
The joint-stock company was formed to carry gold under escort from the gold- fields (Forest Creek and Bendigo) to Melbourne and ‘money and small parcels’ from Melbourne back to the goldfields. Its nominal capital was 500 shares of £25 each with no person per- mitted to hold more than eight shares.
The Argusreported that ‘the proprietary was never intended to be a very numer- ous one, it being of more importance that it should be composed of active, stirring, and respectable men, who could pull well together …’. One hundred and two sub- scribers signed the Deed of Settlement and included James Henty, Frederick Sargood and Hugh Glass.
C.H. Dight MLC was foundation chairman but was replaced by John Orr. Only recently arrived in Melbourne from Scotland, Orr was soon off to the Ovens, then Chiltern and Rutherglen before coming back to Melbourne as an MLA. He continued his association with northern Victoria as a commission agent for the Ovens and Murray Forwarding Company
Victorian Gold Escort Company
continued page 2 1853 Gold Escort Company adver-
tisement in P.W. Pierce, Melbourne Commercial Directory,James Shanley Bookseller, Melbourne.
and the Upper Murray Steam Navigation Company, and died in Hawthorn in 1880. William LeSouef was managing director. The Deed of Settlement demanded that each director have a minimum of four shares to hold office and that minutes and accounts be kept: these other records have not sur- vived.
So successful was the business that on 23 June 1853 the shareholders gave a dinner at Noble’s Circus in honour of the directors and offered a gratuity of £500, ‘which, with their char- acteristic generosity they declined’. In returning thanks, chair- man Orr pointed out ‘that the object of the company was not to make money, but to promote the public welfare’, a statement received with cheers from the shareholders. Much health was drunk on the night – to Her Majesty, Prince Albert and the all the royal family, Colonel Valiant of the 40th Regiment, the press, the gold diggers, the officers of the company and its chairman and vice-chairman. But, had they heard the speeches properly? Orr had stated that they had carried 1,182,405 ounces of gold for an income return of £50,000 on capital of £5,000. Although the cur- rent manager Mr Birnie was credited with efficient services (and had been presented in May 1852 with a silver plate as reward for his services) yet, ‘Had it not been for the expenses they were at, instead of a returned capital of £5,000, and surplus of £3,000, they might have had, with good management, £20,000’.
That the company could be successful is ironic as the Melbourne and Mount Alexander Escort Company, founded at the same time, quietly faded away when it heard from Lieutenant Governor La Trobe that the government would soon reduce fees on the government escort. However, by 1853, it was decided to wind up the company and meetings were held on 9 March and 9 April to move the appropriate resolution. A number of dividends were paid during the liquidation but it was not until 1860 that the assets had been fully realised and liabilities settled, and the final disbursement of monies made to the shareholders.
Trevor Hart Rio Tinto Business Archivist
from page 1
UMA Bulletin
Editor: Jason Benjamin Layout: Susan Reidy
Produced by: Communications and Publications Section, Information Division, University of Melbourne ISSN 1320 5838
The University of Melbourne Archives University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia
Opening Hours: Mon, Tue, Thu, 9.30 am–5.30 pm; Wed 9.30 am–7.30 pm Phone: (03) 8344 6848
Fax: (03) 9347 8627
E-mail: archives@archives.unimelb.edu.au
Website: http://www.lib.unimelb.edu.au/collections/archives/archgen.html
Preserving Legal History:
University of Melbourne Law Archives
Caitlin Stone Special Projects Officer, Legal Resource Centre
A
joint presentation by the UMA and the Legal Resource Centre recently saw the University Archivist, Michael Piggott, address an audience of 100 legal practitioners (including judges of the Supreme and High Courts), archivists, librarians and University staff and stu- dents.The event was part of a larger project to promote and encourage further use of law-related materials held by the UMA. The aim of the evening was to ‘celebrate important addi- tions to the collections, reintroduce existing collections and announce new projects to develop access and preservation’.
Among the recent additions to the UMA announced on the evening is a collection of documents relating to the life and work of William Foster Stawell, who became Victoria’s second Chief Justice following the resignation of William a’Beckett in 1857. These items were donated by the Stawell family.
Other records in the UMA’s existing legal collections relate to the law as it was practised in Victoria. A number of law firms
— including Blake and Riggall (now Blake Dawson Waldron), Corr and Corr (now Corrs Chambers Westgarth) and Slater and Gordon are well represented, with the earliest records dating from the 1830s. These consist mainly of client files and were collected as examples of businesses but, as Michael Piggott pointed out, they also have a more general historical signifi- cance and are a potential treasure trove for researchers.
Other records relate to the early history of legal education in Victoria. The beginnings of teaching law at the University of Melbourne can be traced through the University Calendar (which includes the ‘Regulations for Law Students’ as devised by Sir Redmond Barry) and Law Faculty minute books. There is also correspondence relating to the appointment of the first law lecturers, including William Edward Hearn who in 1873 became the University’s first Dean of Law. Other records, including stu- dent record cards and student publications such as the Summons and Res Judicatate, provide insights into student life.
Michael Piggott concluded by remarking that despite its potential value to researchers, the collection of law-related materials is not as well known or used as it could be. A new pro- ject, which aims to develop an online ‘gateway’ to legal history resoures, should help to improve access to both the UMA’s legal collections and related items in the Legal Resource Centre’s Rare Book Collection. Michael asked the audience to consider the law collections for writing and research, noting that,
‘libraries and archives are the laboratories of the humanities and social sciences’.
For information on the Legal Resource Centre’s Rare Book Collection, go to the website:
<http://www.law.unimelb.edu.au/lrc/rarebooks/>.
L
aw Archives Online is a new project, funded by a grant from the Victoria Law Foundation, aimed at improving access to legal history resources. To be undertaken jointly by the UMA and the University Of Melbourne’s Legal Resource Centre (LRC), the project aims to produce an online gateway to law-related materials in the UMA and the LRC, and to point to the correspondences between these important collec- tions. The UMA’s holdings of items relating to the history of the Law School; to a number of Melbourne and regional Victorian law firms and to professional organisations such as the Law Institute of Victoria are well complemented by items in the LRC’s Rare Book Collection, Finemore Collection (papers relat- ing to the Australian Constitutional Conventions of 1973 to 1985) and George Paton Collection. Law Archives Online will be the first step in bringing together these disparate but related collections.For further information, contact Caitlin Stone, ph. (03) 8344 8500, email c.stone@unimelb.edu.au.
Left: University Archivist Michael Piggott and Legal Resource Centre Head Nicki McLaurin Smith at the recent joint pre- sentation on preserving legal history. Photograph by Robyn Campbell. Right: Early Melbourne lawyer Henry Moor’s 1842-1843 letter book will be one of the UMA’s law-related treasures made more accessible by the Law Archives Online project. (Law Institute of Victoria Collection, Acc. No. 60/8);
Law Archives Online
Caitlin Stone
Special Projects Officer,
Legal Resource Centre
Melbourne University Sports Union Archives
by Sarah Brown Archivist, Trade Unions and Special Projects
membership registers from the early 20th century and annual reports and yearbooks from 1905. The yearbooks are a detailed source of the activities of the Union and its affiliated clubs, including records of ‘Blues’ awarded. The collection also includes early minutes from the Advisory Board for the Award of Blues and Half Blues, and Blues nomination forms.
Records documenting various University sporting clubs can be found throughout the collection, especially within record series created during the 27 year period that W.K. (Bill) Tickner was Honorary Secretary. Bill Tickner created files recording the Sports Union’s dealings with each club and required clubs to report annually to the Sports Union. Earlier records of some sporting clubs can also be found in separate collections at the UMA, to which the Sports Union collection list refers.
Tickner’s files from the 1950s and 1960s also record details of the efforts involved to ensure expansion of the University sporting facilities, culminating in the building of the Beaurepaire Centre, initiatives such as the Franz Stampfl coaching clinics, and the Sports Union’s relationship with other university sport- ing organisations such as the Australian Universities’ Sports Association.
T
he UMA received its first transfer of archives from the Melbourne University Sports Union in 1979. The collection grew with further transfers over the fol- lowing years, and in December 2003 the UMA received the Sports Union’s archives used by Dr June Senyard in the research and writing of her recently published history, The Ties That Bind: a history of sport at the University of Melbourne.The collection now comprises approximately 19 linear metres of records, and encompasses a range of formats, including a large collection of photographs and some artefacts.
Thanks to funding support from the Sports Union, a project to re-box and list its collection has been substantially complet- ed. In the next stage of the project we plan to digitise selected photographs for preservation and publishing on the UMA’s online image catalogue, UMAIC (University of Melbourne Archives Image Catalogue).
Key series in the Sports Union’s collection include minutes
of the Sports Union Council from its establishment in 1904, A selection of newly transferred Sports Union pho- tographs: Above: Melbourne University Women’s Hockey Team Champions, 1921; Below left: Charles Henry, Curator of Grounds, 1913; Far right: Melbourne University Lacrosse Team, c1904.
The Ties That Bind
a History of Sport at the University of Melbourne
Jason Benjamin Coordinator, General Reference and Outreach
In addition to organisa- tional records dating from its establishment in 1904, the col- lection includes photographs and items of ephemera donat- ed by members over many years, some reaching back into the 19th century. For example, the collection includes scrolls recording the names of ‘Inter University Eight Oared Boat Race Crews from 1888-1914’
and copies of The Victorian Oarsman and Rowing Register from 1857, donated in 1918 by
John Lang, a distinguished ex-student.
(As well as his interest in rowing, Lang also became Chairman of the Victorian Amateur Athletics Association). Alf
A
gathering at the University of Melbourne recently wit- nessed the launch of Dr June Senyard’s new book, The Ties That Bind: a history of sport at the Universityof Melbourne. Spanning almost 150 years, this history is the first book to trace and document organised sport at an Australian university.
The Ties That Bind is a colourful and thoroughly researched history that details the role sport has played in shaping life on campus and the role the University has played in the development of organ- ised sport in the wider community since the 1850s. From the early days of Australian Rules football and rowing on the Yarra to the Sydney Olympic Games and beyond, students and staff from the University of Melbourne have played an active role in Australia’s sporting scene, all of which June brings to life brilliantly in this work.
Although a history of sport at the University of Melbourne, this work can also be read as a general history of sport, through June’s exploration of the many social trends and world events
which have shaped the development of sport in Australia. The ideals of empire, the impact of war, post-war social changes and the development of profes- sional sport are a few of the themes that are encompassed within these pages.
A lecturer in Australian history at the University’s Department of History, June has spent a number of years thoroughly researching the book and has been seen often in the UMA’s reading room. UMA collections used by June have included the Sports Union archives, John Grice diaries, W.K. Tickner papers and official University records. The Ties That Bindis also richly illustrated with 200 images sourced from a variety of locations, including the collections of the UMA.
The Ties That Bindis available from the Sports Union and the Melbourne University Bookshop.
Lazer, a Captain of the Melbourne University Athletic Club, donated many photographs from the 1940s and 1950s and an Athletic Club scrapbook contains
clippings about Club mem- bers from the 1920s to 1930s. Cloth pennants and silver cups record the suc- cesses of University teams and individuals. An oilcloth records ‘The University of Melbourne Recreation Reserve Rules November 1940’ – ‘gambling not allowed’.
The Melbourne
University Sports Union col- lection offers access to the history of a University organisation, and is also a source through which to investigate sport in society and the passion sportspeople hold for their particular sporting pursuits.
People and Projects
Suzanne Fairbanks Deputy University Archivist
T
he UMA is fortunate to have a solid core of professional staff working both behind the scenes at the Dawson Street repository, and on reference duty in the Baillieu Library reading room. Nevertheless we could not function and achieve as much as we do in any year without the splendid efforts of temporary casual staff and project offi- cers, volunteers and professional place- ment students. This is their story.In 2002 we lost the services of our much cherished front-of-house adminis- trator, Liz Agostino, who was seconded to the Australian Centre. During her second- ment year, Jason Benjamin, previously the Archives Repository Officer, acted in her position, with Tony Miller joining the team to act as ARO at Dawson Street.
Since Liz formally resigned her posi- tion late in 2003 to join the Australian Centre permanently we have undertaken the usual revision of positions, and adver- tised and interviewed for them. As a result, we have appointed both Jason and Tony permanently. To quote Michael Piggott, University Archivist, ‘There could not be two positions more critical to the smooth running of the UMA, and I am greatly relieved to now have two excellent people in them.’
Jason, newly titled the Co-ordinator, General Reference and Outreach, is based in the Baillieu Library reading room and has responsibility for administration and co-ordinating reference systems. He has developed expertise in our photograph collections, supervising the digitisation of images and their placement onto the UMA’s image catalogue, UMAIC; liais- ing with the National Library’s PictureAustralia project; and processing most of the research requests for photo- graphic reproduction. His other strengths
are in copyright law and exhibitions.
Jason supervises Cathie Dimitrin, our Administrative Assistant, who is current- ly working on a project to ensure that complete sets of archival finding aids are held in both the reading room and the repository.
Tony is now similarly styled the Co- ordinator, Repository and Collection Systems to recognise that both his and Jason’s positions are a core pair in the routine functioning of the UMA. Tony formerly worked in the ANZ Bank Archive, and in the time that he has worked for the UMA his experience has contributed much to the improvement of the repository. He is responsible for the daily retrieval and return of archival
One of the Bright Family treasures recently conserved by Louise Wilson – a plan by William Farquhar, of two pens in the Parish of Saint
Catherine belonging to Henry Bright of Great Britain Esq., 1766.
material to the reading room for researchers, a task in which he supervis- es two casual assistants, Richard Burt and Shallini Sundar. His major contribu- tion in the last year has been to monitor a detailed audit of the whole collection by senior staff, and to reconstruct the loca- tion guide from the results. Tony also assists our Senior Business Archivist, Trevor Hart, with our volunteers, Don Fairweather, John Reynolds, John Dew and Alan Schurmann who are each work- ing to improve our arrangement or description of a specific collection.
In recent years we have also been fortunate to have Sarah Brown working with us as Labour Archivist. Sarah is the former Librarian, Records Manager and
Archivist at the Victorian Trades Hall Council, and commenced working with the UMA several years ago on secondment from the Trades Hall one day per week. When this arrangement was no longer feasible, she joined us as a project archivist and is cur- rently writing our Trade Union Collection Development policy, assisting with our audit, and processing collections as funds become available. So far this year she has completed the arrangement and description of the Melbourne University Sports Union records, the Melbourne City Mission records and is about to commence the Australian Psychological Society records. She also supervises our volunteers on peace and labour movement collections, John Ellis and Les Dalton.
Bruce Smith, who has had many roles at the UMA in the past few years from Project Officer for the creation of the Australian Trade Union Archives website to Acting Deputy University Archivist, is still doing project work with us. He is processing the papers of Lord Clive Latham Baillieu, and modifying the online exhibition Keys to the Past, established in 2003 as a his- tory of the University in its 150th anniversary year.
Lindsay Howe has been working at the UMA since 2003 on a project to describe and digitise some of the major photograph collections. Initially employed to describe 10,000 photographs which were compiled by the University’s Media and Publications Services Office, he also digitised 150 images to add to UMAIC. Lindsay’s employment was extended in late 2003 with the help of a grant from the University’s Miegunyah Fund Committee. Within this project, Lindsay has digitised a total of 525 images from the archival collection of the benefactors of the Miegunyah Fund, Sir Russell and Lady Mabel Grimwade. Seven hundred images of Broken Hill mine works from the Broken Hill South collection have also been digitised, and the next collec- tions prioritised for digitisation include the Jack Lockyer O’Brien collection of images of Melbourne architecture and some from the Armytage Family collection.
Another project which has brought new faces to Dawson Street is the Information Division Collection Conservation Program. Since 2003, Louise Wilson, conservator from the University’s Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation, has been available to the UMA and other collections within the Information Division to conserve materials of high significance.
The UMA nominated the Bright Family papers for treatment as it is one of our most significant collections for its evidence of merchant activity and the slave trade out of Bristol and Jamaica from the 17th century on.
With the assistance of Louise a work program has been put in place in which she systematically conserves individual fragile items, and supervises the complete repackaging of the collection by two conservation technicians, Eve Sainsbury and Charlotte Smith. Eve and Charlotte are based at Dawson Street three days per week and are already confidently advancing the repackaging, much to our relief as we have long felt such a precious collection needed this attention.
Finally, we are often called upon to provide professional placements to information management students. In January this year we supervised Muriel Yeung from Monash University’s School of Information Management and Systems, who had an interest in social welfare records. We matched her to the Australian Association of Social Workers and Hospital Almoners Association collection which she arranged and described, creat- ing a new finding aid. We are currently supervising Niki Ebacioni, a librarianship student from RMIT who has an interest in archives. She also has a degree in music from the University of Melbourne, making her perfect to process the collection on Mathew Lennard. Lennard was an amateur musician who trav- elled overseas to study and work, eventually leaving his papers to the University and establishing a small scholarship in his name. His papers have finally found a home at the UMA.
I would like to thank all of these people for making 2004 an exciting and productive year.
Left: UMA’s Casual Assistant, Shallini Sundar; Right: the UMA’s new Co-ordinator, Repository and Collection Systems, Tony Miller. Photographs by Lindsay Howe.
The Sir Russell Grimwade Photograph Collection
Jason Benjamin Coordinator, General Reference and Outreach
T
he Sir Russell Grimwade photographic collection, consisting of 30 albums, 200 prints and a large number of glass and celluloid negative formats, is a fascinating collec- tion of images that can only be described as being of national significance. Dating between the mid- 1890s and the late 1930s this valuable collection records many important aspects of life in Australia during this period. The development of the motor car as a form of transport, the changing landscape of Melbourne, sport events, scientific expeditions, the military and the Australian tourist abroad, all form a part of the rich narrative that these images tell.A graduate in science from the University of Melbourne, Sir Russell led an active life with a number of diverse interests. As well as being actively involved in many of his family’s business concerns, he also conducted important scientific research into the properties and uses of the euca- lyptus species and, as a founding member of the RACV, was a keen motorist who helped pioneer the car in Victoria. Later in life Sir Russell was to play a prominent role in the affairs of the
University of Melbourne as Deputy Chancellor, and is best remembered for his generous bequest to the University in the form of the Miegunyah Fund. These images form a unique record of this once prominent Melburnian’s life and interests as seen through his own camera lens.
As an amateur photographer who developed a keen interest in this medium as a teenager, Sir Russell’s collection of images is also an important historical resource for research into the his- tory of popular photography. Surpassing the average amateur photographer with the level of technical expertise he achieved, Sir Russell’s experimentation with this medium records the advancement of photography as a technology. Images capturing the moment a bottle is shattered by a bullet or of people in mid- air as they jump over a park bench attest to the photographer’s fascination with the evolving technical capabilities of the cam- era. In later years, as Sir Russell matured, his fascination with the capabilities of the camera was turned more towards the development of the photograph as a work of art.
In 2003 the UMA received a generous grant from the
In 1905 Sir Russell Grimwade, with his companion, G.P. Smith, made the first motor car trip between Adelaide and Melbourne. One of the many treasures in the Grimwade photograph collection is a small album that records this trip. The last image shows the mud-spattered arrival of the duo in Melbourne.
Miegunyah Fund for the purpose of further enhancing the UMA’s online image catalogue, UMAIC (University of Melbourne Archives Image Catalogue). Because of the rich nature of the Grimwade collection and the obvious connection with the Miegunyah Fund, Sir Russell’s images were the first selected to benefit from this grant and be made publicly avail- able online.
Six hundred images from this collection have now been selected and digitised; cataloguing and loading on to UMAIC is also progressing with over 500 images now available to the pub- lic. Due to Sir Russell’s methodical identification and dating of his images, it has been possible to contextualise many of these images with historical descriptions written from a diverse range of sources. It is hoped that as further resources become avail- able, the historical descriptions attached to images will be fur- ther enhanced.
The Grimwade images can be viewed on UMAIC at
<http://buffy.lib.unimelb.edu.au/cgi-bin/mua-search>.
