Time Travellers in Essendon, Flemington and the Keilor Plains
Poverty, Plague, Pestilence
By Marilyn Kenny
The Larsen Family c 1901 posted by Ian Smyth on Ancestry Kenny Kith and Kin site
L to R Daisy, Albert, Elizabeth, May, Robert, Eric, Michael, Lucy, Francis, Alice
Lil Larsen sits steadfastly in the centre of the photograph flanked by husband, sons, daughters, babe in arms. The family appears well dressed, vigorous and unified, the picture of Victorian respectability. However just a year before their names, address, occupations, state of health and other personal details were so well known as to be notorious. They are the plague family of 10 Mulgrave St, Kensington, the centre of concern, activity, outrage and controversy.
By May 1900 plague was established on Australian shores. There had been 100 deaths in Sydney and over 1000 suspects isolated there. Victoria was ready with a supply of serum for inoculations, new quarantine facilities and environmental cleansing programmes. Several medical men, members of the central Public Board of Health had enlarged their expertise by travelling to Sydney to become familiar with the disease, its symptoms and treatment.
In early May eight year old Daisy Larsen became ill. Her Mother believed it was a type of cold or bronchitis that had afflicted the child since they had been back in Melbourne and treated her for this. Daisy continued to attend Kensington State School over the railway line, on the ridge above the Larsen’s low- lying street. After a few days she became too ill to attend but her sisters Lucy, 5 and Alice, 9 continued at school. Daisy was soon on the mend. Then Bertie 14, Lucy and the youngest Eric, 22 months became unwell. Michael Larsen was away working on a railway relief project, building the narrow gauge railway between Ferntree Gully and Gembrook. The oldest boyswere working, Robert, 18, in a produce store in Flinders St, Frank, 16, at a hairdresser’s and Bertie on the Dudley St railway bridge. There was some spare money and the situation serious enough to warrant spending it on a doctor’s visit. Dr. Robert Neville Woodside, (1873-1909) a young locum in the area attended, and then returned with the district’s Medical Officer of Health Dr Flanagan. He thought the most likely problem was mumps or quinsy which would account for the fever and specific areas of tenderness. The family was kept under close observation.
A Kensington flood scene typical of anytime from first settlement to the 21st century. Residents survey
the flood damage on the corner of Smith Street and Stubbs Road, Kensington.
Weekly Times 15 March, 1919
The year 1900 had exceptionally heavy rainfall and on the night of Thursday18 May a deluge began which was to dump 2.5 inches (6.3 cms) on Melbourne in 48 hours. Low lying Kensington flooded on the Friday, despite the work being done earlier in the year to channel and embank the creek. Twenty five acres became a basin of water. The Moonee Ponds Creek was a raging 200 feet wide, Stubbs St a perfect river. Fifty households evacuated, many seeking shelter with neighbours in higher adjacent streets. The cold unsettled weather and gales of rain continued into the weekend.
Just before noon on Saturday news arrived that Mafeking in South Africa, after a seven month siege, had been relieved. As news spread jubilations broke out, both in the city and suburbs. Crowds assembled, flags were waved, and bells rang out from Town Halls, clock towers, schools and churches. Factory and locomotive steam whistles and sirens blew. People draped themselves in bunting, formed impromptu processions, blew whistles, rang handbells, banged buckets, kerosene tins and saucepans and sang patriotic songs. Bands came out onto the street to play. The carnival atmosphere continued into the night with police looking the other way, even if the behavior verged on the riotous. In Mulgrave St the children’s condition was serious enough for Lil to get a message sent to Michael at Ferntree Gully asking him to return home. On Sunday morning as he arrived all the Churches were holding Mafeking Thanksgiving services and ringing their bells in celebration.
A magnificent outburst in Melbourne. Crowds outside the Argus office. The Argus 21 May 1900
Monday saw no abatement of the revels. Shops were decorated, schools held special assemblies, school bands marched and played and bells rung. A Public Holiday had been declared for the Wednesday to join onto the Queen’s Birthday holiday which fell on the Thursday. However many people gave themselves a day off and thronged the streets. In Kensington many were celebrating at the hotels before moving onto the patriotic concert held in the New Hall in Racecourse Road. In Mulgrave St the ominous symptoms had increased in prominence. At 8-30 pm three medical men from the Public Board of Health arrived. These were Drs Gresswell, McLean and Elkington
Officers of the Victorian Public Board of Health, some of whom visited the Larsen home. No 7 Dr Gresswell centre, Dr McLean No 12. Dr T Gray is No 8 and No 9 Dr J Couper Johnson was in Charge of the Quarantine Station. Weekly Times Sat 19 May 1900
The local Health Inspector and the Councillor who chaired the Flemington-Kensington Board of Health hovered outside. Newspaper journalists arrived. There were few street gaslights in Kensington so presumably events took place by lantern light. The unusual activity attracted the notice of neighbours and those still abroad celebrating. Police came to guard the house and erect barricades to prevent street entry and exit. Dr Gresswell found the 16 foot frontage, four room weatherboard terrace stuffy and dirty with no ventilation. It was unsewered but a main sewer pipe ran down Mulgrave St and the vents in the road emitted foul odors The medical men examined the Larsens and took serum samples. They questioned them all separately about their health and daily routines, but found the family had no mind for details. It did not take long for the crowds outside determine that this bustle was connected with a subject that had dominated the news in the last months. The medical pronouncement was plague. The news immediately dampened all local festivities. The family was told that they would all have to be removed to the quarantine station at Portsea for treatment and isolation. Lil regretted having first called in a doctor attributing the trouble she now had to endure to her mistaken anxiety.
The Albert following her transfer to the Victorian Department of Works in 1897.
Image: Royal Australian Navy https://www. navy. gov. au/hmas-albert-hmvs
At 5-30 am the street was awakened by a dozen workmen spreading lime over Mulgrave Street and all the surrounding footpaths and laneways. At 9 am Lil, Bertie, Lucy, Daisy and Eric boarded an ambulance wagon while the contacts Michael, Robert, Frank and Alice were taken up by a cab. They were conveyed to the Victoria Dock where they boarded the steam tug and ex war boat Albert. Dr Gresswell admitted that the journey would be a hazardous operation for the ill children but the new quarantine station at Coode Island was not yet ready. To avoid contaminating the crew and vessel a bench bed and awning had been erected in the former gun turret space in the rear of the ship. The family had been going to travel unescorted, but Bertie was so ill that Dr Elkington from the Central Board accompanied them. Fortunately the weather was now fine as the vessel was low lying and shipped water on bows and sides. The sluggish and unwieldly craft took eight hours to reach Portsea. There the contacts were accommodated in the newly renovated station building whilst the others went into plague tents.
John Simeon Colebrook Elkington (1871–1955)
Once the house was vacant the Central Board’s Sanitary Inspector moved in workmen to fumigate and spray the house with disinfectant and soak all soft furnishings in a corrosive sulfide. Other property was destroyed by fire. The cab returned to be fumigated. Dr Thomas Gray (1853-1900) was early at work examining all children in the streets surrounding, these were not allowed to attend their schools until cleared. He then moved onto to checking all the 1,000 Kensington school pupils who had contact with the Larsen girls.
Journalists roamed the area seeking material for their investigative articles. They described the area as One vast tip dotted with houses. Local officials defended the issue and said there had been no contagious disease in the street recently nor any rats collected from there. Rubbish was collected every fortnight. The street had been mismade and had a dip in the middle and the drains, which were of irregular construction, did accumulate waste. However both were flushed routinely. The municipal opinion was that Mulgrave St was better kept than others.
The Larsen home they said at least had no rubbish accumulated in the back yard and the family was described as sober and respectable persons of the better type of working class. Many larger families than the Larsens occupied three room houses. A Central Board Medical officer conducted a sanitary inspection of the neighborhood. This revealed that the houses (Boom time builds) were all below street level. There was water under the Larsen house and the weatherboards were rotting. This was not however as bad as neigbouring properties where a foot of standing water and decomposing animal bodies were found. The multiple vacant blocks and laneways were used as private tips and the disused skating rink adjoining the property was alive with rats.
1897 Plan Mulgrave St runs east –west draining between Eastwood St and Rankins Road towards the Moonee Ponds Creek. The skating rink was used for animal and poultry shows. It was demolished at the end of 1900. Plan courtesy of the SLV Metropolitan Board of Works detail plan, 859, Borough of Flemington & Kensington.
This wider view shows all the vacant land and right of ways used by the populace and others as private tips
Newspapers were full of the details and hundreds from Kensington travelled to the Board’s city offices for inoculation. The street was guarded and barricaded for a week and attracted many onlookers. Officials were stressed and puzzled as to how the family had been infected and the doctor at the Quarantine Station was required to again interrogate them all. Workplaces were investigated. It was concluded that perhaps Robert, who worked in the Fish Market buildings close to Little Dock, (now the Melbourne Convention Centre site) had brought infected matter back to the home. Plague rats had been found at Little Dock and a previous plague victim worked there. Daisy however might have handled the rats on the banks of the Moonee Ponds Creek. Memoirs from this time do record children as waxing wealthy on the bounty paid for rodent scalps. This bounty ranged from 3d to 6d a tail. However an investigation of the rats collected from this area found none infected with plague.
Rat catching at the viaduct buildings in Flinders Street. Rat Catchers prepared phosphorus baits, smoked out the rats, sent down ferrets and dug out nests. The Board of Health was spending £1000 a month dealing with the vermin on the waterfront. Here Central Board officials supervise Digging Out. The Australasian Sat 12 May 1900.
The Larsen family found the doctors reticent on the subject of the illness. It was felt that Daisy might have had a mild form of the plague. A guinea pig was injected with Lucy’s serum to check. Regular bulletins were issued on the family’s health, Bertie at one stage being described as seriously ill.
Quarantine Station, Portsea c 1900 Oil painting held by SLV Accession no: H30822.
Dr Gresswell, anticipating the epidemic, had caused improvements at Portsea Station, unlike other Colonies who let their facilities run down in anticipation of Federal takeover of quarantine.
Michael Larsen later said they were well treated at Portsea with plenty of well-cooked fare. He, for one, spent his time collecting sea shells and playing at quoits with the station guards. On 12 June he and Robert returned to Kensington. They found the house well provided for with a fire burning in every room. Some bed clothes had been replaced, other bedding and curtains destroyed but new ones promised. The Larsen’s later received the £30 they claimed as the value of destroyed household effects even though these were not very elaborate. The rest of the family eventually returned to Kensington though this did not attract newspaper comment. Certainly Lil was back by August 1900 as she gave birth to her last child May in April 1901.
It might have been this pregnancy or the publicity the family had received that caused Michael Larsen to seek naturalization in late 1900. It was granted, he taking the oath on 28 December. Michael had been in Victoria since 1881, having been born in Sweden in 1855. The family was not reported to have suffered any social ostracism as a result of their quarantine.
The Flemington –Kensington Council acted defensively upon being identified as a plague source. Emergency meetings were held, newspaper reports rebutted. The Council contributed an extra £8 to the rat bounty fund but denied responsibility for the Kensington filth spots - the private tips on which everything from old furniture to human wastes were deposited. Newspapers scoffed at the Council assuming expertise by declaring that the cases were not plague. The issue of public health seemed then to have largely dropped from the Council’s agenda. By June they were preoccupied with the threat of annexation by the City of Melbourne. The push back took the form of taking out a £6000 loan and commencing to build the Kensington Town Hall.
Laying the foundation stone of the Kensington Town Hall 14 March 1901. Leader, Sat 23 Mar 1901.
For Lil this plague menace must have seemed just one of many of life’s vicissitudes that she had been called on to bear. She had been born Richmond in 1862. Her parents Elizabeth and James (1820-1896) had married in Melbourne in 1848 and had at least nine children. Lil was named Elizabeth Lee Hunter and was the second of that name, the first having died some 5 years before. Mrs Hunter died in 1867 and shortly after James Harry Hunter left the family, the four children being passed into the care of a married brother. When her brother was unable to maintain them, Lil was moved to the home of acquaintances.
At the end of 1872 she was taken into the Belltrees household to work for her keep as a servant. After a short time systematic and severe physical abuse commenced, which was described in newspapers as uttermost brutality and inhumanity. After four months neighbours reported the case to police. Lil was taken to hospital where the doctor described her injuries saying he had never seen a child who had been so shockingly ill-treated, being bruised from head to foot. The assailant, a mother of two, was charged with violent assault. Lil lodged with the local police for the month before the case was heard. She gave evidence and was cross examined. The case attracted a great deal of publicity and the woman was gaoled for a month for her gross and unwomanly conduct. One report described Lil’s manner a strange old-fashioned composedness and want of childish vivacity; but at the same time she appeared quite artless, and destitute of any intention to make her case appear worse than it was.
Bullarto 2000 ft above sea level.
In 1881 Lil gave birth to her first son Robert. By 1885 she, now known as Eliza, was in a relationship with Frank Riley. She had three sons with him, Frank and Bertie surviving. By 1890 she and Michael Larsen were together, producing Alice and Daisy.
Michael worked as a labourer and like 25% of the Colony’s workforce became unemployed with the coming of the Great Depression of the 1890s. The Government’s response was to set up the Village Settlement Movement. About 1% of Melbourne’s population, ten thousand souls, moved out of the city to be placed on small allotments in rural areas, and hence become self-sufficient yeomen. In 1893 the Larsens took up a 16 acre selection at Bullarto, 60 miles (80k) from Melbourne. The locality was particularly cold and bleak, was snowed in during winter and heavily wooded. Some parts of the district yielded good potato crops but much of the land was unproductive. There were several settlements in the area on which were settled about 125 families, some 600 individuals. Families had to live on the land and improve and cultivate the block. In return they received 10/- a week and an opportunity to obtain leasehold and eventually purchase freehold ownership.
From the beginning of the scheme there were multiple issues and it was never a success. The family would have lived under canvas whilst Michael and Robert cut timber and constructed a dwelling place. Perhaps they, like other settlers, appealed to city dwellers to send old newspapers and rags to line the hut against the severe cold. Lucy and Eric were born at the settlement in 1895 and 1898.
A Village Settler family at Kooweerup Settlement showing a
canvas dwelling, 1894. Photo State Library of Victoria
Contemporary illustration showing the transmission of Salmonella bacteria though the water supply.
It was while they were at Bullarto that the Larsens had their first contact with the Central Board of Health. In January 1894 the first cases of typhoid were noted at the Bullarto settlements. Over the next five months the disease spread increasing in numbers and intensity. There were several deaths and up to 100 settlers were affected. The school closed. The local Shire Council protested at having to pay for the settlers’ treatment at the nearest hospital. The settlers were blamed for their insanitary habits; mocking ditties appeared in metropolitan papers. The Central Board of Health intervened and officers visited several times taking water and soil samples. Dr Gray did a house to house inspection. It was found that the settlements had been established without much regard to sanitary principles. The wells had been dug too close to outhouses and were contaminated with seepage from these and open cesspits. The sanitary closets at the now overcrowded small school had been built to void into one of the watercourses. No one noted that the 26 page 1893 Handbook for Village Settlers had not mentioned the issue of sanitation. It had only noted in passing that it was extremely objectionable for dams to receive the drainage from a homestead and to take care to obtain good water for animals.
The Board ordered remedies including more detailed inspection locally and only occasional cases therefore occurred. However the Ode to Bullarto had widespread circulation giving the settlement lasting notoriety.
Go and take the Typhoid at Bullarto.
They display a fine unconsciousness to nose destroying smells
Do the cheerful population of Bullarto.
And prefer their drinking water from contaminated wells.
They support the local flavour in Bullarto.
And regard the name of sewage with a supercilious sneer.
And a filter makes them shudder, and carbolic makes them queer
And the local undertaker makes three thousand pounds a year.
Despite increasing the size of the allotment the family failed to prosper and increased their Lands Department debt to more than £35. They stayed at Bullarto until 1898, longer than most, but the Larsens had returned to Melbourne by 1899 when Lil and Michael married there. All the children were known by the name of Larsen.
The family survived the 1900 illness, the quarantine, the publicity and continued in the Kensington and Newmarket area. Grandchildren arrived, there were weddings and more encounters with the Court and Hospital systems. In 1911 the family were again afflicted when Lucy, waiting for a train at Flinders St, was seriously injured. An improperly closed carriage door flew open and knocked down four women waiting for the train. They were dragged along the platform until the train was stopped. Lucy spent time in the Melbourne Hospital and later sued the railways for negligence. A jury granted her £50 damages but a Judge later set the verdict aside.
War brought additional worry to Lil with the enlistment both of her son Bertie and son in law William Tyrrell. Both returned from the war, Bertie with a gallantry award. However in 1919 she lost Eric six months before his 21st birthday. He died at Heidelberg, most likely of tuberculosis. Michael Larsen lived to the age of 82 yrs however Lil after such an eventful life died in 1922 aged 59 yrs.
It was never clearly established whether plague had visited the family. However, the guinea pig died.
©M Kenny June 2020
References
Due to the 2020 Pandemic most primary sources were not available to be consulted.
PROV Wills and Probate
NAA B2455 Service files
Sands and MacDougall Directories, MMBW plans
Victorian BDM, Cemetery Records
Newspapers Multiple including Essendon Gazette, The Australasian, The Advertiser North Melbourne, The Advocate, Age, Argus, Weekly Times, Government Gazette, Parliamentary Papers Data base
Australian Dictionary of Biography
Chalmers R Annals of Essendon, Essendon Historical Society 1998
O'Dowd, R ‘O'Dowd Paterfamilias’, Overland, 39, (Spring, August 1968), pp. 17-23.
Hints for the guidance of village settlers: prepared at the request of the Hon. J. McIntyre, Minister of Lands, by the Sec. for Agriculture. Melbourne : (Govt. of) Victoria, 1893 (Melbourne : Robt. S. Bain)
Web sites:
https://nepeanhistoricalsociety. asn. au/history/quarantine-station/
http://empirecall.pbworks.com/
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