More about our naval surgeon

A great guest post today from Jeremy Lillies, third cousin (or thereabouts) to baby-boom Blackwells and Breens. Jeremy has mined some of the same material from the National Archives (of Britain) that I tapped to trace the career of our triple-g grandfather George Lillies (1788-1844), the Royal Navy surgeon. (George’s great granddaughter Vera Isobel Marian Lillies was our Blackwell grandmother; she married Matthew Drummond Blackwell in 1916.)

Jeremy has found additional National Archives material that I didn’t find, and spent more time and effort deciphering and interpreting what he found. He also had in the family or acquired information from other sources. He here presents a summary of his findings to date.

Page from log of navy surgeons showing George Lillies joining HMS Bellette, 1807

I found the photo illustrations of the naval uniform, the uniform of a Navy surgeon of 1805,  at The Dear Surprise, a fabulous fan site devoted to Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/ Maturin series of Napoleonic-era naval history novels. The books trace the history of friends and shipmates Captain Jack Aubrey and naval surgeon Stephen Maturin. One of the books was made into the 2003 Russell Crowe movie, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World.

The site also has some interesting articles about the life and work of naval surgeons of the era, including this one. For a more authoritative essay on the subject, you could look at this article from the website of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.

GEORGE LILLIES 1778 – 1844

HIS LIFE AND SERVICE

Having made new discoveries over the past year, this is an attempt to put my great great grandfather’s life in perspective. I am grateful to Gerry Blackwell my distant cousin via the Lillies Australian branch and the Blackwell family, who is a writer in London, Ontario, Canada. His research and blogs have greatly helped me to understand the complicated life of our joint forebears – George is Gerry’s great great great grandfather!

While there is no concrete evidence of George’s birthplace, it is fairly certain that he came from County Sligo, probably the south west part of the county in the civil parish of Aghanagh or just over the boundary into Boyle, Co Roscommon. This is borne out by Lillies family lore – we were always told that the family came from Sligo. There were certainly at least two Lillies farming in this area in 1749, as borne out by the Aghanagh local census of that date. Almost 100 years later, a family of the same unique name emigrated from County Sligo to Canada, although apart from the name there is nothing at present to connect to the earlier Lillies. Much later in life, in completing the 1841 Census in Poole, Dorset, George gave his date of birth as 1778 and his country of birth as “Ireland”.

The first written evidence of George’s existence is in his Record of Service in the Royal Navy. On 8 May 1799 he was appointed acting Surgeon’s Mate in HMS Cynthia a ship sloop of sixteen 6-pounder guns and fourteen ½-pounder swivel guns, launched in 1796. On 28 August 1799, when George would have been aboard, she was part of the British fleet that captured two Dutch hulks and four ships. Prize money of 6s 8d was paid to all seamen. Two days later, in what is known as the Vlieter Incident, a large part of the Batavian Navy surrendered to the British and the Cynthia was among the ships sharing in the prize money.

Next year, on 4 June 1800 Cynthia was part of a force that attacked and destroyed French forts on the Quiberon peninsula in Brittany. Cynthia lost two men killed and one wounded, so George would have been busy. During these operations the British squadron, of which Cynthia was part, earned prize money from the capture or salvage of a number of ships and the recapture of HMS Lancaster on 28 June. Moving on to the north coast of Spain, on 25 August as part of a large squadron, Cynthia took part in an assault on the forts outside the port of Ferrol. Four days later two of her boats were part of a “cutting out party” that succeeded in capturing the French privateer Guêpe and towing her out of Vigo Bay. British casualties were four killed and 23 wounded. In 1847, three years after George’s death, the Admiralty awarded the Naval General Service Medal (GSM) with clasp “29 Aug. Boat Service 1800” to all surviving claimants from the action.  

Thus, in his first year in the Navy and not yet a fully-fledged surgeon George would have seen plenty of action and been involved in treating the wounded.

On 27 November 1800 George left Cynthia and transferred to HMS Stately, a 64-gun third rate ship of the line, launched in 1784, still as an acting Surgeon’s Mate. He must have transferred at sea, as Stately had sailed from Portsmouth on 25 April, bound for the Mediterranean as part of a large squadron carrying troops and with sealed orders. On 2 March 1801, Stately  was involved in the landing of troops at Aboukir Bay, near Alexandria, in Egypt. On 13/14 September her crew were involved in land operations at Porto Ferrajo on the island of Elba. Stately’s officers and crew qualified for the clasp “Egypt” to the Naval GSM issued in 1847 to all surviving claimants – again after George’s death!

 

Landing British troops at Aboukir Bay, Egypt, 1801 (Edgar Sanderson)

At some point in 1804 George was discharged from Stately and on 13 February 1805 appointed Surgeon in HMS Explosion, a “Bomb” with an armament of “12”, purchased in 1797 and apparently anchored at that time in the Downs off Portsmouth. It was a type of wooden sailing vessel. Its primary mortars mounted forward near the bow and elevated to a high angle, and projecting their fire in a ballistic arc. Explosive shells or carcasses were employed rather than solid shot. Bomb vessels were specialized ships designed for bombarding (hence the name) fixed positions on land. Nothing of note seems to have happened until on 26 April 1806 George transferred to HMS Bellette, an 18 gun brig-sloop, launched on 21 March and now commissioning for the first time.

Uniform of Royal Navy surgeon, circa 1805

Bellette was first deployed in the Channel, based in the Downs and on the night of 8/9 October 1806 was part of a force that bombarded a French fleet in Boulogne, using Congreve rockets for the first time. In early 1807 she was involved in carrying supplies to the besieged Prussian force in Kolberg (now Kolobrzeg, Poland). In June she attempted to land a Prussian envoy by boat on the Suffolk coast, which capsized drowning the envoy, three of the crew of five and the envoy’s despatches were lost.

Photo of tip of early 19th-century Congreve rocket

Contemporary illustrations of ships firing Congreve rockets

Bellette was in the fleet that bombarded the Danish/Norwegian fleet in harbour at Copenhagen (2nd Battle of Copenhagen 16 August – 5 September 1807) resulting in the surrender of the enemy ships. There is little mention of the role of the smaller ships, such as Bellette, but at the end of August she became becalmed off the Danish coast and was attacked by 16 Danish gunboats. She sank three of them before other British ships towed her clear. For her captain’s bravery Bellette was chosen to carry back the admiral’s despatches to the Admiralty. During these actions Bellette was involved in the capture of several ships as well as the fleet in the harbour and shared in their prize money. In February 1808 she brought the British Ambassador back to Britain.

On 3 May 1810 Bellette sailed for the Leeward Islands and on 2 July, after a 12 hour chase, captured the privateer Jalouse near Barbados. Also about this time she captured the privateer Franchise and took her into Barbados. On 17 July George joined HMS Captain, a 74 gun third rate ship of the line, which was in the same waters.  Between 30 January and 24 February 1809 Captain took part in the capture of Martinique. Then between 12–17 April she was part of a squadron that chased a French squadron of the Saintes, West Indies and captured the 74 gun d’Haupoult which was taken into British service and renamed Abercromby.

Modern model of HMS Captain

George left Captain on 18 December 1809 and joined HMS Antelope, a 14 gun brig, on 1 January 1810 probably in Portsmouth. On about 1 February Antelope left Portsmouth for Cadiz, reportedly carrying the Hon. H Wellesley, the Envoy to Spain 1810-1811 and Ambassador to Spain thereafter until 1822.

Diorama showing Napoleonic-era naval surgeon at work (Science Museum, London)

For the next two years Antelope was employed mainly on convoy duties and visited Gibraltar, Bermuda and Newfoundland, before George left the ship on 21 March 1813. 

On 8 July 1813 George joined HMS Severn, a heavy frigate mounting twenty eight 24-pounder guns, twenty 32-pounder carronades and two 9-pounder guns.  She had been launched on 14 June and was not completed until 11 September, so for the second time, George was appointed to a newly commissioned ship. She sailed from Portsmouth on 28 November with a convoy bound for Bermuda and Halifax, Nova Scotia and on 18 January 1814 successfully acted as decoy to draw away two French frigates from the convoy. She arrived in Chesapeake Bay on 4 July and was involved in a number of actions of the War of 1812 in this area, including the Battle of Maryland where troops were landed who burned the White House and other government buildings in Washington, sailing up the Patuxent River and the Patapsco in support of boat landings. Severn made at least 14 captures of American ships and shared in prize money for the successes of the British fleet. She departed Charleston on 18 March 1815 at the end of the war, arriving at Plymouth on 26 August.

Uniform of Royal Navy surgeon, circa 1805, detail

George left the ship on 18 September 1813 and no more is seen of him in his Naval record until his appointment to HM Yacht William & Mary on 22 November 1820. During this time he would have been on half pay and it may be significant that his landfall seems to have been in Plymouth. He could well have remained in the West Country, practising surgery while awaiting orders for a new ship. He would have become acquainted with other surgeons and very probably William Collyns, head of a family of well-known Devon and Somerset surgeons. Certainly, George married Fanny Collyns, William’s daughter in the Collyns home village of Kenton on 14 July 1819 by licence, giving his address as Heavitree, now a part of Exeter. The family and surgeon connection persisted as, to jump ahead in time, in 1841 his Census return shows Arthur Collyns Sydenham among his household as “Surgeon’s Apprentice”. Arthur was the son of Maria Mary Sydenham, née Collyns, George’s sister in law! Arthur appears in the first Medical Register in 1859 as practising with the P&O Steamship Company. He married George’s eldest daughter Elizabeth in October 1850.

Kenton church, probable site of George Lillies' marriage to Fanny Collyns in 1819

On 22 November 1820 George was appointed surgeon to HMY William & Mary. She was the equivalent of today’s Government jet aircraft and allocated to the Lt Governor of Ireland for him to shuttle to and fro across the Irish Sea. Initially, George was based in Kingstown (now Dunlaoghaire) evidently on call for any quick visit to the mainland.

It seems that Fanny did not immediately join George in Ireland, as their first two children, Fanny (16 January 1820) and George William (21 July 1823) were born in Ottery St Mary and Kenton, Devon respectively. Elizabeth Mary was born in Kingstown on 30 April 1825 and christened in Monkstown Church.

George continued in yacht service on either William & Mary or Royal Charlotte up to at least the end of June 1827. On 18 February 1828 he was appointed Surgeon in Ordinary in Portsmouth. During this time he lived in Portsea, nearby and two more daughters were born: Dorothy Lucy (13 March 1830) and Charlotte Eleanor (29 October 1834).

In December 1827 George applied to be placed on the Retired List. This appears to be because of failing health, but after a medical examination he was found to be “Fit for Service”. Continuing in service, in January 1831 he requested details of his “service in the ordinary” before being appointed surgeon. This was assessed as three years and was added to his accrued service as surgeon. In January 1835 George again applied to be placed on the Retired List as being unable to serve due to ill health. This time, the report was that he was unfit for further service due to “affection of the liver and severe dyspepsia & that his health was entirely broken”. On 12 January 1835 George was placed on the Retired List at the rate at the rate of 10/- a day – the equivalent of about £15,000 today.

After this, George seems to have moved West to Poole in Dorset where he appears in the 1839 Robson’s Directory as a surgeon in West Street. His 1841 Census return shows him living as a surgeon at [24?] West Street, with his wife Fanny and daughters Fanny, Dorothy and Charlotte. Also, as mentioned earlier, Arthur Collyns Sydenham, surgeon apprentice and two servants. In the column for place of birth, under “Whether born in Scotland, Ireland or Foreign Parts” he has stated “I”.

Little more is known except that George died at Kenton on 19 March 1844 and was buried in Kenton Parish Churchyard on 28 March.

It is satisfying to know that George was in so many Naval actions across the world – he accrued 23 ½ years of seatime and was involved in both the Napoleonic War, the War of 1812 in America, as well as the actions in the Baltic and the Caribbean. In fact he may not have been at Trafalgar, but he certainly saw a lot of action!

    

Note: this is a reconstruction of a post from a couple of weeks ago that was inadvertently deleted; some of the introductory text may be different from the original and the illustrations may be in different positions.

Canadian soldiers saving Italian waifs

I've been thinking about and researching my Uncle Robert Smith, who was killed in Italy during the war. (More on what I've found about him in a future post.) In the course of that research, I stumbled on this story that ran on CBC a year or so ago, about a bunch of Canadian soldiers who fostered an orphaned Italian five-year-old they found in the rubble of a bombed-out village. They later arranged to have him adopted by an Italian family before the war ended and they went home.

That story reminded me of a somewhat similar one that Toby Yull shared with me a couple of years ago about her Dad. I thought I had published it here as a guest post at some point. I hadn't, but am doing so now. It's a lovely story, told with typical Yull verve. You can hear Ralph and Kay in it, but also Toby, who wrote it up for her column in the Hamilton Spectator.

 THE TIES THAT BIND: A WARTIME STORY

It’s become more rare to “look people up” when you’re traveling.  We’re shy; we don’t want to surprise or inconvenience people who are strangers; what if they’re washing their hair that night; what if they really don’t want company?  Here’s a story about dropping in on someone years later that inspires me to keep the connections I have with people, no matter how slim.

In September of 1943, Canadian troops in the toe of Italy’s “boot” were ordered north to meet the incoming German army.  My dad was in charge of a group of motorcycle dispatch riders moving up the boot towards the fighting.  

When the Italian army capitulated, soldiers were abandoned wherever they happened to be; no provision was made to return them to their homes.  My dad’s company encountered two young boys, only about 17, and asked them where they were from.  The boys had no idea where home was, so the Canadians “adopted” them into their convoy, heading north.

 

Giuseppe Insogna was one of them and he became a bit of a pet to the Canadians.  He foraged for food, ate with them, and taught them Italian songs (which my dad still sang thirty and forty years after the war was over).

Ralph Yull, wartime (background - exact date unknown)

One day along the dusty road, Giuseppe became very excited as he suddenly recognized the hills around his town.  You can imagine the emotional return.   The whole population turned out in the town square to celebrate and thank the “Canadesi”.

Daddy was conducted by a crowd of villagers to the home of “The American Woman”, for a formal thank you in English. Signora Capobianco had married an American and lived in the US before returning to her hometown.

 

Perhaps because her own son had been sent to the Russian front, the Signora took a great liking to the tall blonde Canadian on the motorcycle.  She cooked a chicken for my dad, in a coffee can over a fire, and he practiced his patchy Italian on her.  The happy visit lasted a day or two, and then the Canadians moved on.

Home after the war: Kay, Leo, Ralph

Fast forward to 1970 when my parents went to Italy together for the first time.  They rented a car and drove to Macchia Val Fortore, this time on a paved road instead of the 1943-era donkey path.  Again the whole town showed up to greet the newcomers and when my dad identified himself and asked if by any chance Signora Capobianco was still alive, the crowd hustled them up the street to her door.  Somebody knocked, then stood aside and a tiny old woman stepped out.  She looked at my dad, took his face in both her hands, and called out:  “Ralph Yull!!”

Her husband stood behind her, shaking his head and saying over and over:  “Raffaele”, “Raffaele”.

Of course Daddy asked for Giuseppe.  But that was not possible.  After the war, Giuseppe had decided to emigrate to Canada, maybe meet up with his old buddy Ralph, and make his life in the new country.  He wrote a letter, addressed to “Ralph Yull, Ontario, Canada”, and when it was returned, everyone assumed that my dad had not survived the war.

Convinced, however, of the warmth of Canadians, Giuseppe moved to Montreal, started a family and sponsored his parents over.

Back in Canada after their vacation, my parents drove to Montreal to meet up with the Insognas again.  There was a big dinner, then several more visits over the years.  The warmth was still there.  And when my dad died in 96, one of the cards we received was a very loving one from the Insogna family.

No surprise then:   on my first trip to Italy, you can bet I’m going to take a side trip - call it a pilgrimage - to a little hill town in the Calabria region.

Meet Richard Henry Blackwell

While I've been lounging here in the south of France, our English cousins, Paul Blackwell and Tom Jolliffe, have been busy with family history matters. There is so much to relay to my faithful readers that I hardly know where to begin. Let's start with the tangible and certain.

Tom's branch of the family - his mother was a Blackwell - has in its possession a number of artefacts, including one very old photo album that Tom has been in the process of closely examining. (You'll remember I launched this blog with a similar close examination of one of my mother's old photo albums.) Among the pictures Tom found in the album was this one. Guess who?

It's our great grandfather, Richard Henry, founder of the Australian-Canadian branch of the family. He looks a pretty confident fellow, doesn't he? This is the first known photograph of the man we have. While most of the pictures in the album are not labelled and the subjects remain unidentified (and possibly unidentifiable), this one is inscribed on the back, probably in the man's own hand, with a date.

Given the date, 1878, the year RH emigrated to Australia, and the fact that the picture was taken in Melbourne, it's reasonable to assume he sent it home to family at Christmas his first year down under. The album it was found in originally belonged to RH's younger sister Julia (1850-1917). 

Tom, who has read my blog and remembered a post about the origins of the Drummond moniker in the family, also sent along this next picture. The Drummond name was given to Blackwells in three generations, including to the last of the Drummond Blackwells, my brother Steve.

The picture is inscribed on the back, possibly in the same hand as on the other, Wm Drummond. It was also taken at a Melbourne studio. It seems a good bet that it was sent out from Australia at the same time as the one of RH, or in some later letter home. The fact that he sent a picture home to family suggests William Drummond was somebody fairly important to our grandfather - important enough that a few years later he named his first-born son Matthew Drummond.

But who was William Drummond? And why was he so important to RH? I can find no suggestion they were ever business partners. In fact, we know they both had other partners (who, interestingly, they both parted from at about the same time.)

Cousin Sally Blackwell in Australia remembers a story that Drummond was the name of a family friend, the owner of a Melbourne jewellery business, one that survived into the 21st century. Sally thought the original Drummond was a friend of our grandfather's, but clearly he would have to have been the friend of our great grandfather's. There was a jewellery business known as Brush & Drummond in Melbourne as early as 1878, located only a couple of blocks from where RH had his office in the market area.

More recent research in the National Library of Australia's Trove database of historical newspapers turned up an 1883 advertisement stating that Messrs. Brush and Drummond were dissolving their partnership - the same year RH split with his partner - and that Drummond would carry on in his own name. The Drummond who placed this ad was William. The jewellry business was known afterwards as Wm Drummond & Co. It advertised often in the Argus, the main Melbourne daily, as did R.H. Blackwell's company.

Steve Blackwell remembers another intriguing story about the origin of his Drummond middle name: that a Mr. Drummond had saved our ancestor's life in a near-accident on a dock. Steve, again, thought it was our grandfather, but it would have been RH. 

I can imagine the scene at Hobson's Bay, the old shipping terminus in Melbourne before they dredged and widened the Yarra River. A big packing crate comes swinging out from the hold of a ship, the rope breaks as it's swinging over the pier and, just in the nick of time, Bill Drummond pushes RH out of the way. 

Think about it: we might never have existed but for the heroics of Wm Drummond. Steve, you can bear that name proudly. 

Images of earliest known Blackwell ancestors – or not

After my second-to-last blog post appeared, with the pictures of grandfather Matthew Drummond Blackwell and grandmother Vera (nee Lillies), I heard from a distant cousin in England, Tom Jolliffe. I had known of Tom through our third cousin Paul Blackwell, with whom I’ve been corresponding off and on for a couple of years. This was my first direct contact with Tom.

The ancestors we share are great great grandfather Matthew Blackwell (1804 - 1859), who was a stone mason and architect in early 19th century Manchester, and his wife Ann (1806 - 1889), nee Marsden. Ann and Matthew had nine children altogether, including our great grandfather Richard Henry and his younger brother Marsden, who was Tom’s and Paul's great grandfather. Paul lives in the Manchester area today, Tom in Devon.

Tom, with his wife Gina’s help, has recently set up an extensive Blackwell-Jolliffe family tree at Ancestry.com, to which I now have guest access. (I’m guessing Tom would be glad to add others if they’re interested. Let me know and I’ll make online introductions.) The Jolliffes also have in their possession some interesting Blackwell family artifacts, including the two miniatures shown below, purportedly of Matthew and Ann.

It’s exciting to think these may be portraits of our oldest known Blackwell ancestors, but the identification is at best tenuous. According to Jolliffe family lore, they're of Matthew and Ann, but Tom is the first to admit there is not a lot else to support this. Once I looked closely at the pictures and did some poking around on the web, I had my doubts. Paul Blackwell has also been a skeptic about the miniatures. 

They show quite young people. I would estimate them to be somewhere between 25 and 35. They look prosperous, even fashionable. My understanding is that Matthew was a stone mason to begin with, later an architect. If this is him, he would likely have still been a stone mason at the age he is here. Would a mason, someone who worked in a trade, worked with his hands, look this prosperous and refined? I also had doubts about the clothing styles being consistent with the pictures dating from the 1830s. 

I sent the pictures to my daughter Caitlin, now Dr. Caitlin Blackwell, an art historian specializing in late 18th century British art. Caitlin also has a strong interest in fashion history. She came back to me in an email with a fairly definitive answer, from which I quote here:

“As far as their class, I think it's very possible that a stone mason would have styled himself as a ‘gentleman’ – anyone who had the money to commission a portrait would have styled themselves in the same way (social emulation and all that). Besides, I think a stone mason probably was the sort of artisan/craftsman that would have been at the bottom rung of the middle class...”

The clothing and painting styles, however, are another story. “[T]here's no way that these portraits were made after the first decade of the 19th century,” Caitlin writes, “and I would have dated them to between 1795 [and] 1805. This is smack in the Jane Austen-era for certain.” 

If Caitlin is right, and my amateur research on the web bears it out – note the similarities of dress in the famous picture of Beau Brummel from 1805 (above) – this can’t be Matthew and Ann. Even if the miniatures date from a few years later than Caitlin suggests, our ancestors would still have been very young children when the pictures were made. They could be of Ann’s or Matthew’s parents conceivably, but not Matthew or Ann.

Rats. 

More about Grandma Vera

Last time out I published some pictures I recently rediscovered in an old album of my mother’s, showing our Blackwell grandparents on their wedding day. Along with those pictures was a contact sheet from an undated studio portrait session with Vera as a young teenager. She looks ravishing, with tumbling golden hair. When our cousin Jeremy Lillies in England saw that post, he wrote to remind me that he had earlier sent an even older picture of Vera, with sister Madge, as very young children. Here it is.

The picture, a newspaper clipping, is annotated, “From the Sketch.” It’s dated “January 16 [18]94,” which would make Vera, the child on the left, according to the handwritten annotations, only three years old. She looks older to me.  Her gaze speaks of a keen awareness of her own beauty. The Sketch, I’m assuming, is a long-defunct local newspaper. I can find no trace of it online. 

The image was in remarkably good condition in general, requiring relatively little clean-up. But it is a halftone, composed of quite visible dots of ink. This was the standard way of reproducing monochrome photographs in newspapers right up until fairly recent times. With some Photoshop magic, I’ve managed to make it look a little more like a conventional photograph.

The picture comes from a scrapbook kept by Jeremy’s brother Tim (our cousin too, I suppose). The scrapbook apparently includes mostly clippings about our theatrical great great Lillies uncles. (I wrote about them here.) But Jeremy also found the picture of the little girls and pages from the program for an invitation-only Pupils’ Concert by students of a piano teacher named Miss Frances Osborne. Here they are.

The concert was held in the Melbourne suburb of Malvern, where the Lillies lived, in 1900, at Glen’s Concert Hall on Collins Street. It featured three of the Lillies children, including our grandmother, who would by then have been nine. She and sister Madge played a duet, “A Sleigh Ride” by Loetz.  (Paul de Loetz was the nom de plume of  George Walter Lloyds, pianist, conductor and composer, and founder of an illustrious Australian musical family. His descendants are still making music professionally today.) The full title of the piece, on a theme that must have seemed alien to the little Lillies girls, was “Intermezzo, descriptive of a sleigh ride on the road to Moscow.”

While on the subject of grandma Vera, and jumping ahead several decades, I will also pass on a few brief reminiscences of her from Australian relatives. In an email to Jeremy, our cousin Andrew Lillies (b.1949) who lives near Melbourne, wrote, “She was our Aunt (or Auntie) Vee whom I met when I was very small.  All I remember is that she was very deaf, and used a hearing trumpet which we all used to have to shout in to.  But she only picked up a few words so profound was her deafness.” Rob Blackwell also mainly remembers the ear trumpet. 

Strange and sad to think of that beautiful little piano player, a half a century later, as an old woman with an ear trumpet! She wasn't the only musician who went deaf, though.

Matthew & Vera: New Pictures Discovered

This post is in part a belated response to my cousin Sally in Australia, who in a not-so-recent email asked if I had any pictures of our Blackwell grandmother. At the time, I thought the answer, sadly, was no, but I’ve recently re-discovered some photos in an old album of my mother’s, labeled “John’s mother and father.” 

I had seen the pictures before, but hadn’t really stopped to look at them or taken them in. It’s an old story: the pictures were small, faded and damaged – they hardly registered as pictures of real people.

There are four on the album page. Two appear to be professionally-taken shots, outdoors: one of our grandmother, holding a bouquet of flowers and dressed semi-formally, the other with her arm linked in Matthew’s, with Matthew dressed in tails, holding a top hat. Both are printed with a pronounced vignetting effect, very popular in early photography, and both have residential-looking rooftops in the background. 

Another appears to be a snapshot of Matthew and Vera, with a car in the background. The fourth piece is a contact sheet from a studio session, featuring close-up shots of a teenaged Vera, with flowing golden hair, and in some of them, a feather-adorned tam. My first thought was that she was 16 or 17 in these pictures. I now think she’s more like 13 or 14. 

Do I know for certain the figures in the pictures are Vera and Matthew? 

In the case of the two with Matthew, I can confirm that this is our grandfather (or great grandfather). We have his 1919 passport in which he looks very much the same as he does here, with the same severely centre-parted and plastered-down hair and sticky-out ears. (He’s kind of goofy-looking, isn’t he?) The clincher is the writing on the back of one of the vignetted shots and the snapshot, dating the pictures to July 26, 1916, the date, as we saw in the last post, of their wedding. 

The vignetted pictures are presumably some of the official wedding photos, although the one with both of them in it is out of focus, so if it was taken by a professional, he wasn’t very good. The snapshot, also out of focus, was perhaps taken by a friend, probably as they were about to drive off on their honeymoon.

On the back of the picture of Vera on her wedding day, someone – Vera? Matthew? – has written, “Said to be good.” It’s bound to be one or the other of them. Perhaps a graphologist could tell us if it’s a male or female hand. I’d guess female. But what does it mean? An ironic reference to the bride’s reputation for rectitude – “said” to be good? Or something else entirely?

The scrawl on the back of the snapshot is partly illegible. The closest I can come is, “Fearfully sad you can’t see [illegible] [illegible] which has slipped down onto [illegible.]” The second word I can’t make out looks like it could be ‘skunk’ but that doesn’t seem right. Do they even have skunks in Australia? Anybody else got any ideas?

The pictures are small, not very well taken to begin with, faded, discoloured and damaged. The contact sheet in particular includes eight exposures, each barely the size of a small postage stamp. The others are about 3x5 inches. The scale problem can be partly solved by scanning at more than 100%. The bigger you scan, though, the more pronounced the shortcomings of and damage to the original. I scanned them at between 150% and 300%.  

Enlarged and restored shot from contact sheet

The discolouration problem – yellowing or sepia tone – is solved by scanning in greyscale, which instantly restores them to true black and white. The fading can be largely mitigated in Photoshop using the ‘Automatic Contrast’ command. The damage – dirt, mould, emulsion chipped off, scrapes, etc. – is a more difficult problem. Photoshop has a few tools for tackling this kind of damage. They mainly work by copying adjacent good pixels over damaged sections. It doesn’t sound like it should work, but it does, in some cases, almost magically. It's a tedious and time-consuming process, though. The picture of teenaged Vera took well over 30 minutes to restore.

A note on the last post: both Sally and Rob in Australia have confirmed that the house I showed (in a Google Street View screen shot) is not the house Matthew and Vera lived in. The problem, Rob says, is that there are two 42 Kooyong Roads, in different – but, if I understand rightly, not too widely separated – Melbourne suburbs. The property they really did live in is obscured in Google Street View by a high hedge.

Return to Oz: Matthew Drummond Wed

And so we return at last to Australia, and to the fateful intersection of the Blackwell and Lillies lines, an intersection that produced, with a few additional genealogical detours, the baby-boom Blackwells and Breens, and their progeny.

On July 26, 1916, a cool, cloudy day in Melbourne, Matthew Blackwell, businessman, married Vera Lillies, spinster. The Argus, Melbourne’s newspaper of record, reported the event in fullsome detail, if a little late. Under the heading “Marriages,” this account appeared on September 2:

“BLACKWELL-LILLIES – On the 26th of July, at St. George’s, Malvern, by the Dean of Melbourne, Matthew Drummond, elder son of Mr. and Mrs. R. H. Blackwell, Kooyong road, Toorak, and Vera, younger daughter of Dr. Lillies, Armadale.”

Impressive, I think, that Matthew and Vera were married by the Dean of Melbourne. Deans, though, are not bishops or archbishops. They fit in a different church hierarchy, that of the church “government.” A dean, according to Wikipedia, is “the chief resident cleric of a cathedral or other collegiate church and the head of the chapter of canons.” Other sources note that the dean is responsible for the day-to-day running of the cathedral and its finances. This marriage wasn’t solemnized at the dean’s cathedral, however. It was held at a suburban church, St. George’s, Malvern, established in 1865.

St. George's, Malvern

The Dr. Lillies mentioned is Dr. Herbert Lillies, first-born son of George William Lillies, the naval surgeon whose 1840s African journal I dissected in recent posts. I also wrote about Herbert earlier, here. In the latter post, I mentioned that he had remarried in 1917, presumably after his first wife, Charlotte, whom he’d wed in England before emigrating to Australia, had died. At the time of writing, I didn’t know for sure if or when this had happened. The marriage notice, mentioning only Vera’s father, is another clue that Charlotte was dearly departed before this date. In fact, I now have a record of her death, on December 3, 1911 in  Australia, Victoria, Index to Probate Registers, 1841-1989.

R. H. Blackwell is Richard Henry, founder of R. H. Blackwell & Son, Commission Agents, sole representatives in Australia, New Zealand and the South Sea Islands of champagne maker George Goulet & Co. of Reims, France. I’ve written at some length about R.H., our great grandfather and founder of the Oz branch of the family, starting here.

The Blackwells and Lillies lived not far apart in the same middle class suburban district just east of Melbourne’s centre. The Lillies were at 878 High St., Armadale, also the address of Herbert’s medical practice. The Blackwells lived several blocks away on Kooyong Rd, Toorak.

The Kooyong Rd. residence may have been the house at number 42, where Matthew and Vera were definitely living in 1954, the year Vera died. We know the couple did live other places, i.e. not on Kooyong Rd., in intervening years, but it was here they ended up. Was it the same house as R. H. and Kate and the boys lived in in 1916? 

The house with that number today certainly doesn't look like the home of a successful businessman. (See Google Streetview image below.) It’s more like the home of a modest working man: a middle unit in a low four-wide row house. It’s a marked contrast to the imposing two-storey mansion in which the Lillies lived.

42 Kooyong Rd. (second from right)

I seem to remember stories about the Blackwell family falling on hard times during the Depression. Were Matthew and Vera forced to buy down when the money ran out and just coincidentally chose a smaller house on the same street as the family had lived in 1916, or did they move back into a home the Blackwells had owned all along and rented out during the good years when they were able to live somewhere more opulent?

Perhaps our Australian cousins know the story? Rob? Sally?

I’m assuming too that this 42 Kooyong Rd. house is the one I remember Matthew living in when I met him as a five-year-old in 1955. It has the same low-ceilinged Victorian cottage-y look I recall, but I always assumed it was a single-family dwelling. I do remember our Canadian family being thrilled that citrus trees grew in the back garden. 

But I’m getting ahead of the story again.

Matthew – Matthew Drummond (the origin of whose middle name we looked at earlier in this post) – was at the time of his marriage a mature businessman of 32, with 15 years experience in the family firm under his belt. He was named a junior partner in 1910, when, presumably, the “& Son” was added to the company monicker. According to the 1929 Who’s Who in Australia, Matthew had been educated at Cumloden Grammar School, Melbourne. I can find little about the school. It appears to have closed in 1905, a few years after Matthew left at age 17 to work for his father. He apparently didn’t go to university, or if he did, didn’t finish.

Matthew Drummond Blackwell, as shown in 1929 Who's Who in Australia

About Matthew’s early life before his marriage, I can find little else. We do have a passport for him in the Blackwell Archive, issued in London on March 3, 1915. He was evidently on his way to France, presumably to consult with the George Goulet company, although he may also have been there to talk to the French Mission to Australia. We have a letter from this French government agency, dated a few years later on July 16, 1918, with a retun address of 50 Rue de Vaugirard, Paris. In any case, Matthew presented his passport to the French consulate in London two days after receiving it, and to the British vice-consul in Paris a week later on March 11.

Page from Matthew Blackwell's 1915 passport with stamps from his trip to wartime France

But wait. Wasn’t there a war going on in France at the time? Wasn’t the country over-run by Huns? Certainly the Germans had invaded and were fighting in France, but Paris had not fallen. In fact, unlike in WWII, it never fell  – although the national government did move to Bordeaux, along with the Louvre’s masterpieces, in 1914. (This may be why only a vice-consul was left to look after British affairs in the capital.)

Civilians were apparently still moving freely at least in parts of western France, but in the Champagne region, where George Goulet & Co. was based, there was fairly intense fighting through the first few months of 1915. And the famous Reims Cathedral had earlier been damaged by German shelling in 1914. We can only assume then that the business Matthew needed to transact could all be done in Paris. His passport is clearly stamped, “…not valid for the zone of the armies.”

Reims in 1916 showing bomb damage to houses and cathedral

There is no indication Matthew was anything other than a businessman, or involved in any branch of the military. Still, I’d like to think (on no evidence whatsoever) that he was a spy, using his business dealings as a convenient cover. Why else would he risk life and limb by entering a war-torn country perpetually on the verge of collapse? To secure a supply of bubbly? (As a side note, Matthew's 1929 Who's Who entry notes that he supported the Nationalist Party, which had promoted conscription during the First World War, against strong opposition from Labour. And Matthew's younger brother, our great uncle Richard Marsden, went overseas in 1917 with the Australian Imperial Force and saw action in 1918.)

But back to the wedding.

Matthew’s bride, Vera Isabel Marion Lillies, was 24 when they wed. About her early life, we know even less. She does appear in an electoral roll in 1914, likely the first election in which she was eligible to vote (she would have been 21 or 22). Vera was occupied in 1914, according to the enumerators, with “home duties.”  By the time the next election rolled around, she would have been Mrs. M. D. Blackwell. And no doubt still occupied with home duties.

How did the couple meet? Were the Blackwells patients of Dr. Lillies? Did the Dads, or Mums, belong to the same clubs? The Who’s Who entry for Matthew mentions that he belonged, at least by 1929, to the Athenæum Club, the “V.R.C.” – probably the Victoria [Horse] Racing Club – and the V.A.T.C., probably the Victoria Amateur Turf Club. We know the family was involved in racing, and that the firm stumped up for a race prize at one point.

The Athenæum is a private gentleman’s club, established in 1868. It’s still going strong and sounds very posh. Its website says the Athenæum “is one of Australia’s oldest and finest clubs, confident in its heritage and traditions, yet enlightened and contemporary in its outlook.” Meaning presumably that it no longer excludes Jews and people of colour. But would a suburban general practitioner like Herbert Lillies have belonged to a club located in the heart of Melbourne’s business district? Who knows?

Again, do our Australian cousins remember stories about how the two families came together? My sense is that Lillies and Blackwells didn’t have a lot to do with each other after the fact, but I could be completely mistaken about that.

I’ll leave off here, and hope to come back with more about Matthew and Vera and R.H. Blackwell & Son in future posts, as I learn more.