SUCH SWEET SORROW
FAMILY TRAGEDY
There were several dynasties of confectioners in the north west of Victoria across the centuries, and they were not immune from tragedy with loss, accident and devastation central to the story of several of them…
The Resilient Mary Rees
Mary Jeffreys had arrived in Victoria in 1856 with her family from Neath in South Wales. Her father, Thomas, was a successful baker in their home country, and the family were affluent enough to keep several servants. On arriving in Australia, Thomas set up a confectioner’s store on the Chewton goldfields while Mary’s brother opened a grocer’s in the same locale. Nearly a decade after emigration, Mary met David Rees, a Glamorgan native, and the pair married in the summer of 1865 in Chewton. The following year, Mary’s mother died at the age of 55. By this time, David & Mary had already welcomed the first of their eleven children, and while childhood mortality was high in the 19th century, this was one type of tragedy the Rees family were directly spared, with all of them surviving to adulthood.
While lucky with their own children, Mary’s brother was not so blessed. Steven Jeffreys, Mary’s six-year-old nephew, went to bathe in a water hole belonging to a neighbour on new year’s day of 1877 but did not return. The boy was found drowned some hours later by his mother, aided by neighbour, Mr Williamson who dragged the small dam with a stick.
David and his father-in-law came into their own trouble when in 1880, Thomas was proceeded against in the Kyneton Police Court for having unstamped and unjust weights in his possession. David had been setting up their confectionery booth at the Kyneton Racecourse’s autumn meeting when the weights were seized and confiscated. He claimed that he was intending to bring the equipment to the inspector as soon as the stall was set up but the Inspector had seized them before he was able. Regardless, the bench imposed a penalty on Thomas of more than £3.
The blessing of a healthy family of eleven may have added to the challenge created in 1883 when David himself met a premature death. He was running errands to Fadzen’s store at Allendale, around 70km from Chewton, when he met his fate. While driving his usually quiet horse over the bridge at Birch’s Creek at Smeaton, the animal suddenly became restive, plunging and rearing. David tied the reins to the cart, and was stepping out to settle his horse when it reared violently, breaking the shafts of the gig and fell back onto him.
Mary Rees (nee Jeffreys),
Ancestry.com.au
A little girl saw this accident and ran to Mrs McLoughlin’s store, finding customer James Ward and John McLoughlin who were able to come to the scene. They were able to move the horse, but David underneath was insensible with a ‘frightful gash’ to his forehead and took one final gasp before he expired [i]. David’s body was brought back to Chewton by train after an inquest was held at Smeaton, and a large funeral with a Welsh choir was held. ‘Rarely, if ever has public grief, been so universally expressed in that borough,’ reported the Mount Alexander Mail, which described the hearse followed by 50 members of the Forester’s Lodge, 26 vehicles of mourners, and other local church choirs to a ‘solemn and impressive funeral’ [ii].
Of the eleven children, the eldest was William, 20 years of age and not regularly in good health, and the youngest, Gwendoline, was an infant of no older than seven months. As a result, Mary was left to employ men to carry on her business, but David’s life insurance of £300 enable her to grow the Rees’ confectionery and biscuit making outfit. She continued to offer her business at the races, as her father Thomas had done, and was in charge of the luncheon room at Newstead Racecourse.
After failing to sell the premises, plant and stock-in-trade in 1885, Mary orchestrated the expansion of the business in 1886 by purchasing a machine for £150 that stamped and cut biscuits by automation In February the next year, a ferocious fire ripped through the factory where the biscuits and confectionery boiling works were housed. The fire was noted in the roof of an upper story of the building, sited opposite the Mount Alexander Hotel on the Main Street (now 209 Main Road), and the flames grew so intense that it melted a thick pane of glass at the front of the pub.
The water supply had been turned off at the mains while staff were scouring pipes and so the fire was able to quickly spread to the front and back of the building and after midday, despite neighbours applying buckets of water, the whole of the establishment was ablaze. Mary had been in the kitchens of the front store, and thought that the fire may have been started by an overheated oven. Thankfully, the business was insured for around £500. Later that year, she opened a confectionery and bakery business on a much smaller scale in Mostyn Street in Castlemaine, but by September was so successful that she opened a second shop in the Market Square. It seems possible that Mary’s family helped her, at least with raising her large family, and so when her father moved to the Numurkah district, in the 1890s, the Rees family followed. There, she opened the Star Bakery in the main street, while her sons William, Thomas and Oliver all became bakers, and by 1904, the eldest had been elected mayor of the Rutherglen Shire.
Mary Rees died in 1906, still a baker in Numurkah at the age of 62; her probate papers indicate that she owned the stop and several other properties, which along with her share portfolio and life insurance, left an estate valued at over £1,000. Her real estate and shop goods – including £12 worth of confectionery glasses and confectionery stock – were to be carried on for a further five years before it could be sold. In her will, she directed money to be bequeathed to her daughters, property to Arthur but considered William, Oliver and Thomas, that ‘in a way of doing for themselves are not in need of any assistance from me’ [iii].
The Downhearted Blennerhassetts
Richard Blennerhassett first appears in the Sandhurst rate books in 1880, a confectioner working from Gould’s Buildings on the corner of Pall Mall and Bull Street, which Richard later purchased from the executors when Gould passed away in 1885. Richard (ca1843 to 1923), who originally hailed from Kerry in Ireland, ran the business originally established by his brother-in-law John Parker in 1874 – the Pall Mall Lolly Shop [iv]. Parker called for tender offers on his stock-in-trade, goodwill, tenant’s rights, fixtures and fittings in April of 1886 in favour of retirement. Two years later, and quite late in life, Richard married Annie Paull, daughter of James Paull (of Tarilta near Castlemaine) and a confectioner in her own right, having until 1888 run a confectionery shop in High Street with her sister Louisa.
In addition to confectionery, Richard was also a fruiterer and in 1895 was one of four fruiterers of Bendigo who disputed claims that Chinese fruit dealers were placing green bananas ‘under their beds and in other places where dirt and vermin accumulate, so as to ripen them’ and this practice was thought to be contributing to the incidence of typhoid fever in the city [v]. The year before, Richard himself was prosecuted in the Bendigo city police court for trading on a Sunday evening [vi]. Annie had been seen by a plain-clothes police constable selling lollies to two young men at 7:20PM on a Sunday. While their legal representative argued both that the wording of the law was ambiguous, and that the front door was permitted to be open since it was the only entrance to the buildings, the magistrates decided to fine Richard twenty shillings.
John, Richard Snr, James, Richard, Annie & Arthur Blennerhassett,
Ancestry.com.au
Parish plan of the Pall Mall & Bull Street area
Public Record Office Victoria, VA 3972 Department of Natural Resources & Environment, VPRS 16171 Regional Land Office Parish & Township Plans Digitised Reference Set, P1, S-Ti record Sandhurst Bendigo 18
Weekly Times, 18 Nov 1916, p27
Richard and Annie were lucky in that all four of their children survived to adulthood but they did not follow into the confectionery trade; Richard Paull (1888) entered the clergy after taking holy orders at St Aiden’s in Ballarat, as did John Ponsonby (1894) upon his return from the war, deciding on clerical work of a different kind than his earlier bank clerk employment. Arthur William (1892) passed accountancy exams at the Bendigo Business College and James Rowland (1890) became a pharmaceutical chemist [vii]. Arthur took work in Cohn’s brewery and was an associate member of the Incorporated Institute of Accountants as well as treasurer of the Sandhurst Rowing Club.
In August 1915, aged 23 and 21 respectively, Arthur and John enlisted with the AIF; a year later, Richard and Annie received a letter from John, who was serving with the Field Ambulance Corps in France, and describing his trip through Egypt and on to France [viii]. He safely returned to Australia in 1919, have spent some time in France with a few spells of illness but no injuries. Arthur was not so lucky.
While with the Field Ambulance in France, Arthur also wrote home – about his travels around the Middle East and Europe, and particularly, a train journey to Marseilles – “…not an acre of barren ground visible; the scenery was absolutely beyond description – trees, vines, crops of different hues of green, with red tiled houses amidst them. We travelled along the valleys of several rivers and on the stops overlooking the valley were terraces of vines right to the top of hills steeper and higher than Big Hill in Bendigo. Among the corn and along the railway track were vivid red poppies, marguerites and other wild flowers, whilst we passed fields of sweet lavender. In the morning on putting one’s head out of the window a lovely perfumed air was inhaled, it was a treat in itself” [ix].
“I happened to be next to Private Arthur Blennerhassett when the shell burst and a piece struck him in the neck, severing an artery and he died in a few minutes and felt absolutely no pain whatever. I was with him and can assure you that nothing could be done for him. It was right on the front line of trenches that Arthur was killed. I carried him down and buried him decently, and had the Church of England service read over him. He was a favourite of mine and was working in my stretcher squad at the time. All our boys wish me to convey to you their deepest sympathy” – Private RJ Lelleck, Field Ambulance Corps.
“I always looked on Arthur and Jack as personal friends, having come from Bendigo, and we all came over in the same boat. We went into the firing line on Monday 28th August and up to the time of his death, which occurred on a Sunday morning, Arthur worked strenuously and although he had a sore hand, refused to go out and rest as he was too keen on duty. On Sunday morning he was walking toward the front line when a shell burst nearby and a fragment struck him under the chin, and he died within minutes without saying a word. He was buried at Pozieres village, and the service was read by one of his comrades, Private Percy.” – Private James T Taylor, formerly of the Gravel Hill School.
[All quotes from ‘Private A Blennerhassett, Bendigonian, 16 Nov 1916, p31]
His service record shows that he was buried ‘about 30 yards east of rifle dump … close to a large cross, to a soldier of the CFAA cross with name to be placed on grave’ [xi]. An oak honour roll erected in St Paul’s Church in Bendigo in October 1917, bears Arthur’s name [xii]. James was still living at home at that time and a month after news of Arthur’s death came through, he applied for an exemption from service on the grounds that he was one of just four brothers, two at the front of whom one had already been killed, and further in the clergy who was on the list of chaplains; the exception was granted. A year later, Annie’s nephew, Lance Corporal HG Spencer was also killed in action.
Richard Blennerhassett, by then a retired confectioner, died at his residence in Havelock Street, Bendigo in the September of 1923 aged 80 [xiii]. At the time of his death, Richard (Ballarat) and John (Landsborough) were both ministers of the Anglican church, and James was living in Benalla where he was practising as a chemist [xiv]. Perhaps John’s war experience changed his view on life and prompted the change in career. Leaving most of his estate to his widow Annie, Richard’s probate file shows that he owned the building that had been operated as a lolly shop by various members of the Parker-Blennerhassett family for nearly 50 years, being part of Allotment 5 in Section 11C in Pall Mall, Bendigo [xv]. It was valued at £1,200 and was being leased to Percy Smith (see Lovelorn); the shop at this location still stands today, just south of the Bull Street corner.
Both John and Arthur had been disembarked at Marseilles from Egypt from the Oriana on June 13. Only a few weeks later, and barely a month after they had received his letter about the beautiful landscapes, Richard and Annie received a telegram from John informing them that Arthur had been killed in action at Pozieres in France on 3rd September[x].
Richard Jnr, a Church of England minister at Murtoa at this time, hurried back to Bendigo the following day. Several servicemen wrote to the family with their condolences:
“It was my painful duty to tell your other son, Private J Blennerhassett, of the death of his brother. Words are very cold and inadequate to express all one feels or to give healing to a broken heart, but they are the only means of giving some little expression of the sorrow we feel when we hear of young life being laid down in this way. May the thought that your dear boy died the death of a hero in the defence of King and country be a consolation to your wounded heart” – Chaplain J Condon
“I am so sorry to have to tell you that your fine son, Arthur, was taken to his rest on 3rd September, the day of the great action of our brigade. He was doing his duty manfully and nobly stretcher bearing under great shell fire. He felt no pain, his death was almost instantaneous. You will be glad to know he was buried and a little service read over him on the battlefield. His pal, Lance-Corporal JA Williams, late of the Beehive, was with him when he fell, also Private Robertson. Your son was a general favourite” – Chaplain DB Blackwood
The Benevolent Barrass Businesswomen
The Barrass siblings – Margaret, Isabella, Hannah, William, Lizzy, Emily and Arthur – were prominent in Bendigo and over the decades, opened sweets shops (some also sold fruit) across the town. View Place, Hargreaves Street, Mitchell Street and Pall Mall were all home to the confectioners from the late 1890s when eldest Margaret, with sister Lizzy, kept their store next to the Army Barracks, advertising their stock of Tom Ball’s superior lollies and Everton toffees. The sisters were also involved in the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) and the family active in the Forest Street Methodist Church, singing in the choir and teaching Sunday School.
By 1908, they had taken up a building in Mitchell Street – where confectionery giant MacRobertson’s had been based in the late part of the past century – and also where youngest brother Arthur started manufacturing his own varieties of sweets and lollies. Promoted as the ‘purest sweets’, the line was popular and a second store was opened on Pall Mall, opposite the conservatory [xvi]. As with many of the more successful confectioners around the country, the gave great attention to their promotions which included the ‘Toffee Jumbo’ – a large elephant modelled in the window of the Mitchell Street store, invitations to inspect first hand Arthur’s sweets, and a ‘Made In Bendigo’ display of his lines [xvii].
Public Record Office Victoria, VA 1464 Penal & Gaols Branch Chief Secretary’s Department, VPRS 515 Central Register of Male Prisoners, P1 Item 53, Page 368, #29100 Norman Alexander Byron 1899
Their shop was one of several targeted in a spate of burglaries across Bendigo in the winter of 1908, along with a neighbouring boot shop, Vallance & Harman building contractors, the South Bendigo Bowling Club, Lansell’s Sheepshead Mine, and the Golden Square Fire Station. The thieves got away with ‘three fancy chocolate boxes’, chewing gum, and ‘other sweets valued in all at £2’, but they did not get away from the law [xviii]. Detectives Cahill and Commons were able to apprehend Alexander Byron and Thomas Phillips, finding empty chocolate boxes and other items at the home of the former, and who were soon brought up before Judge Johnson at the City Court.
Eighteen-year-old Phillips was given a twelve-month suspended sentence in light of his age and the fact that he had been an industrious worker and husband until recently losing his job at the mine. In fact, most of Phillips’ haul from the robberies comprised of baby items and food; of the valuable items he received – or refused, it isn’t clear – none, and his role had been more of a ‘looker-on and watcher’ [xix]. Byron, 30 and a coachbuilder, had moved from Heathcote only four or five months but was already known to the court having been previously convicted, and Judge Johnson handed a sentence of two years’ hard labour for each of the four charges, to be served concurrently.
Bendigonian, 24 January 1916, p26
A natural disaster precluded a far greater mechanical one when in 1914 a ‘unprecedented’ storm hit Bendigo, causing £50,000-60,000 worth of damage to businesses. Many businesses had to close temporarily but the store in Pall Mall run by William with his sisters was set up so that the confectionery stock was not close to the walls, which had leaked and become drenched; along with music seller Brady nearby, they were one of the luckier businesses.
Just two years later, the greatest tragedy would strike the Barrass family. Margaret and Lizzie, with several other Bendigo ladies, travelled to Hobart to attend a YWCA conference. On the express train back to Launceston, at a point named Horseshoe Bend, the train with 40 delegates on board left the rails at speed. The crash left five people, including the driver, dead and a dozen others seriously injured.
“I was talking to the Reverend [Harold] Baker,” Lizzie recalled, “when like a flash the carriage was smashed to pieces, splintered timber was hurled in all directions and the scene was rendered more terrible by the hissing of steam and cries of the injured. My sister Maggie cried, ‘Lizzie, Lizzie’ and that was all I heard from her, I was pinned down in the wreckage. Putting my hand out I could feel my sister who gave no sign of life. I felt the sting of the scalding steam for a moment, and then no more of it”.
It was only for the actions of the engine driver, Lewis Goodchild who, though injured himself, was heard to cry, “My poor passengers”, before crawling back into his cab to turn off the steam just as it was reaching the bulk of the injured people [xx]. He soon expired himself, so badly had he been scalded by the steam, but Lizzie and many others were saved from the same fate by his actions.
The 100-ton train jumped the rails on a bend at Campania and crashed down an embankment (see top photo), turning a somersault with almost every carriage suffering serious damage. As well as the YWCA conference delegates, around 50 soldiers returning to the Claremont camp after final leave were on board. Two from each group were among the dead.
Hedley Leggo, of the well-known Bendigo company Leggo & Co, was in Tasmania on business and had been on board the express train but escaped any injury. A friend of the Barrass family, he was able to start making arrangements on their behalf from Tasmania. William drove to Melbourne to collect his sister Lizzie from Queen’s Wharf when the steamer SS Loongana docked, and arranged for Margaret to be conveyed back to Bendigo on the train, but not before Lizzie was subjected to the further indignity of having several possessions stolen while on the ship.
Public Record Office Victoria, VA 2620 Registrar of Probates, Supreme Court, VPRS 28 Probate & Administration Files, P3 Unit 4529 Item 390/458 Elizabeth J Barrass 1947
A mortuary cart was drawn up to the wharf, awaiting Margaret’s heavy backed casket to be brought ashore to be taken to Le Pine’s Richmond facility; it was later brought to Spencer Street station where it was placed in a special van next to the engine. Then Lizzie disembarked to meet Hedley and William, suffering bruises and shock – and the loss of her purse and Margaret’s wristlet watch from her cabin. Another passenger, John Ramsay, had wired ahead to Detective Grieve that he was missing a bank draft for £500, taken from his coat while hung up in the smoking room. Grieve and Constable McPherson boarded upon docking and after a search, arrested sailor Albert Handy, who had the wallet and watch in his possession. He claimed that he was holding them in hope of a reward being offered, and while he appeared in Melbourne City Court on the Ramsay theft, Lizzie’s rather Christian response was that in the circumstances, ‘it could have been worse’ and the watch theft charge was dropped [xxi].
As the reports were published locally, the Barrass family were in receipt of ‘an almost endless stream of callers and messages of condolence’; similarly ‘great grief’ was felt at the rooms of the YWCA and the ‘old folk’ who were entertained every Sunday afternoon by her choir at the Benevolent Asylum were distressed upon hearing the news [xxii]. “One could not speak in too high terms of Miss Barrass,” said assistant YWCA secretary Miss Sinclair, “It seems terrible that the life of such a fine woman should be cut short” [xxiii]. While giving an interview to the Bendigo Advertiser, close personal friend Miss Bradbury became deeply affected. A large group assembled on the Bendigo station platform as the casket arrived, continuing to extend their sympathies to the family members; it was then removed to their Carpenter Street house to prepare for the funeral at the Bendigo Cemetery the following day.
A significant number of people joined the funeral, and hundreds were gathered at the graveside, including members of the Methodist Choir and the YWCA. A year later, as part of the Sunday School Leader conference, the YWCA unveiled a photograph of Margaret, to be displayed in their rooms.
Lizzie, William and Arthur continued in joint trade of their confectionery business and also in contributing to the community, donating sweets to local fundraising events. Lizzie passed away in the family home in Carpenter Street in 1947, her estate comprising a rather substantial property portfolio, including land and houses on Hargreaves, Carpenter, Don and Queen Street, some in co-ownership with her spinster sister, Hannah.
Sandhurst Sweets Sisterhoods
Lizzie and Margaret Barrass weren’t the only set of sisters in the confectionery trade in the north west of Victoria across the centuries; Lily & Elizabeth Cox, Louise & Emma Paull, Ruby & Ethel Dodds, Maud & Rose Whitting, and in the mid-20th century, Mary and Elizabeth Gardner.
The spinster Gardner sisters ran a confectionery shop in High Street, Golden Square which had living quarters behind the storefront. Mary Jane Love Gardner had been born in Hampshire, England and was just a toddler when her parents John, an inspector of police, and Ann immigrated to Australia, Elizabeth Hannah being born a few years after their arrival in the 1850s.
John built a shopfront in High Street – the first one in that locality – and there established a grocer and draper’s business. He continued in this line until he had a stroke in 1886. After his death in the new year, Mary and Elizabeth took over the business and started renting the neighbouring properties to other businesses over the years – baker William Robertson, dressmaker Ellen Burland, tobacconist Eliza Best and bootmaker John Sidebottom among others.
Gardner boys Samuel, Matthew, George and Albert all predeceased their sisters by many decades, indeed they nursed Samuel at the High Street property in the last weeks of his illness in 1900. Neither Mary or Elizabeth were ever married and continued to operate the shop into their old age.
On a Saturday evening in the summer of 1937, Mary, known to local children as ‘Miss Jenny’, 90, and Elizabeth, 80, had retired for the night and chatted for some time with her sister before falling asleep. It seems Mary had forgotten to extinguish a candle next to the bed and Elizabeth awoke at 2AM to find a wall of flames in the room that she shared with Mary, who had been more of less bed ridden due to recent ill health. Finding her sister on the floor, her clothes and hair alight, she desperately tried to extinguish the flames and carry her sister from the room but unable to bear the weight, rushed through the burning building to raise the alarm with neighbours.
“Come get Jennie out,” cried Elizabeth at her neighbour’s door, “For God’s sake get Jennie out” [xxiv]. Violet Jenkinson went back into the building with her, but was unable to find any other person until Elizabeth told her to look down at her feet. At this point, Violet pulled away some parts of clothing that were on fire before her husband joined her and they were able to carry her into the street. Remarkably, she was still conscious at this stage, her clothes almost entirely burnt off. she was taken to the Gray household when the smoke became too dense and then to the Hospital as soon as the ambulance arrived. Elizabeth stayed with the Jenkinson’s until a nephew Vincent was able to come and collect her.
A few minutes afterward, eleven men from the Bendigo Fire Brigade had run out two hoses and took to work on the blaze, joined directly by members of the Golden Square firemen. While they were able to stop the spread to neighbouring buildings, they were unable to save the 1850s building, or the stock and family heirlooms within.
The next morning, at 6:20AM on Valentine’s Day, Mary succumbed to her injuries and was removed to the Bendigo Hospital Mortuary. A private funeral was held for her the following day, interred in the family plot at the Bendigo Cemetery, and an inquest conducted at the Hospital by deputy-coroner, G Moore. Dr Eric Claridge performed an examination and found ‘Miss Jenny’ had suffered second degree burns across the whole of her body and profound shock as a result.
Excerpt from Mary Gardner inquest,
Public Record Office Victoria, VA 2807 State Coroner’s Office, VPRS 24 Inquest Deposition Files, P0 Unit 1325, Item 1937/228 Mary Jane Love Gardner
ENDNOTES
[i] 'Items of news', Mount Alexander Mail, 25 Aug 1883
[ii] 'Remains of David Rees', Mount Alexander Mail, 27 Aug 1883
[iii] Public Record Office Victoria, VA 2620 Registrar of Probates, Supreme Court, VPRS 28 Probate and Administration Files, P2, Unit 788, Item 101/349 Mary A Rees
[iv] PROV, VPRS 28/P2, Unit 127, Item 23/326 probate of Thomas Gould; “Sale of Freehold Property.” Bendigo Advertiser, 27 May 1882: 2; 'Deaths', Argus (Melbourne), 12 September 1923: 1
[v] 'Unclean Bendigo', Bendigo Advertiser, 2 January 1895: 2; “The Ripening of Bananas.” Bendigo Advertiser, 5 January 1895: 5
[vi] 'Prosecutions for Sunday Trading', Bendigo Advertiser, 25 August 1897: 2
[vii] 'Personal', Bendigo Advertiser, 17 December 1915: 5
[viii] 'Beautiful France', Bendigo Advertiser, 9 Aug1916: 3; he had firstly been placed in the Special Reinforcements.
[ix] 'Scenes of beauty', Bendigo Advertiser, 9 Aug 1916, p3
[x] 'Killed in Action', Bendigo Advertiser, 22 September 1916: 5; “Births, Marriages, Deaths.” Bendigo Advertiser, 3 September 1918: 4
[xi] National Archives Australia, Series B2455, BLENNERHASSETT A W, (SERN 13258)
[xii] 'St. Paul’s Honour Roll', Bendigo Advertiser, 22 October 1917: 5
[xiii] 'Deaths', Argus (Melbourne), 12 September 1923: 1; Victorian Death Index, registration number 8910 of 1923, erroneously says he was aged 20.
[xiv] 'Deaths', Argus (Melbourne), 12 September 1923: 1; Benalla Standard, 26 November 1918: 3
[xv] PROV, VPRS 7591/P2, Unit 682, Item 191/706; PROV, VPRS 28/P3, Unit 1369, Item 191/706, the index stats he died in 1922.
[xvi] 'Advertisements', Bendigo Advertiser, 16 Oct 1913
[xvii] 'An elephant in a lolly window', Bendigo Independent, 16 Oct 1913
[xviii] 'City court', Bendigo Advertiser, 23 Jun 1908
[xix] 'The recent robberies', Bendigo Independent, 8 Jul 1908, p3
[xx] 'The Loongana arrives', Bendigo Advertiser, 19 Feb 1916
[xxi] 'Late Miss Barrass – robbed on voyage', Bendigo Advertiser, 18 Feb 1916, p3
[xxii] 'Widespread regret', Bendigo Advertiser, 17 Feb 1916
[xxiii] 'Widespread regret', iAdvertiser, 17 Feb 1916
[xxiv] Public Record Office Victoria, VA 2807 State Coroner’s Office, VPRS 24 Inquest Deposition Files, P0 Unit 1325, Item 1937/228 Mary Jane Love Gardner