The High Line, New York: an urban park in the sky

The High Line was built under an agreement between the New York Central Railroad, New York State and New York City, to elevate dangerous and congesting railroad traffic ABOVE city streets. It was used to transport freight along the Westside waterfront, replacing the street-level tracks at 10th and 11th Aves. Built in 1929 at a cost of $150 million ($2 billion today), it originally stretched from 35th Street to St. John's Park Terminal, now the Holland Tunnel rotary. It mostly ran mid-block, designed to avoid dominating an avenue with an elevated platform. The warehouses and markets in the Meatpacking District were major users of the freight line.

The viaduct was raised off the ground in 1929, to serve the Meat Packing District

Actually The High Line was part of the larger solution, known as the West Side Improvement Project, which was completed in 1934. The West Side Improvement Project, which included the construction of the Henry Hudson Parkway, stretched for 21 ks; it extended from the  Riverdale section of the Bronx at its northern edge... to Spring Street at the south. It eliminated 105 street crossings, added 32 acres to Riverside Park, and brought food and merchandise into the city.

The rise of trucking in the 1950s led to a drop in rail freight on the High Line, and in the 1960s, the southernmost portion was torn down. The final train carried freight down the High Line in 1980. In 1993, more of the viaduct, between Bank and Little West 12th Sts, was demolished.

Although the elevated structure is basically sound, the abandoned 3 ks stretch of railroad viaduct was ugly and overgrown with weeds. Worse, it was accessible only to those who risked life and limb, trespassing on Railroad property. It was mostly forgotten, except by architects, conservationists and neighbours who were mesmerised by its solitude and wild quality.

In 1999 the Giuliani administration signed an agreement joining the property owners’ move to DEMOLISH the rusting and ugly High Line. So a community-based group, Friends of the High Line, immediately got itself established. Locals Robert Hammond and Joshua David created plans to turn the High Line into an elevated park or greenway, similar to an unused rail viaduct in Paris’ 12th arrondissement that became the Promenade Plantée. The Municipal Art Society, American Institute of Architects, the Society for Industrial Archaeology, the New York chapters of the American Planning Association and the American Institute of Architects also urged preservation.

Sunbaking in the greenery, just next to where High Line meanders through Chelsea Market

In 2004, the New York City government committed $50 million to establish the proposed park. A design competition was conducted, attracting 720 entries from 36 countries, and in July 2004 the four finalists’ proposals went on display at the Centre for Architecture on LaGuardia Place in Greenwich Village. The semi finalists included plans for all sorts of facilities - high-flying pools, wetlands, outdoor art projects, bicycle paths and nature trails.

At places where the High Line went through buildings, like the former National Biscuit Company building that is now the Chelsea Market, the decision-makers were open to commercial uses for the High Line. This was presumably to generate income to maintain the project.

In April 2006, Mayor Michael Bloomberg presided over a groundbreaking ceremony, marking the beginning of construction on the High Line project. By early 2007, most of the old rail tracks had been removed, making way for the elevated park.

By mid 2008 a natural oasis was created in an urban city. This southern section included five access stairways and three elevators. A hotel developer built The Standard Hotel,  straddling the High Line at Little West 12th St. The Gansevoort Street terminus at the south end of the High Line was considered for a new museum by a number of organisations.

The new Standard Hotel straddles the old High Line

In June 2011 another ribbon cutting ceremony to open the High Line's second section, from 20th Street to 30th Street, was held. This time the mayor, politicians and dignitaries were all there.

The High Line Channel features art films and videos, including historic works, new productions and curated series. During the High Line’s regular operating hours, the Channel can be viewed from the Seating Steps at West 22nd St.

Having a 22-block elevated urban park that connected neighbourhoods and provided a special sense of place… was a unique and transformative public experience. I actually believe it was a radical demonstration of people-power and local planning. What an interesting premise - that an open space can be at the heart of neighbourhood revitalisation.

Can there be further growth in the future? Of course. Someone may be inspired to built a beach on the High Line, or a golf course, or a music bowl. Architect Steven Holl hopes one day to make the High Line part of a green loop, connected to the new Hudson River Park by a series of pedestrian bridges that would soar above the fierce traffic of West Street. The sky is the limit!

The sense of wild plants has been maintained

And High Line has had important financial considerations as well. Like the Promenade Plantée in Paris, High Line has spurred the construction of domestic and commercial buildings in the surrounding area. 8000 construction jobs were created on High Line itself, and many more on other neighbourhood developments. Two million people a year visit the structure, half of them tourists. Needless to say, citizens in other American cities are now looking very carefully at their own rusty, industrial hulks.

Bedford Park 1875-80: the first garden suburb?

The garden city movement was a British approach to urban planning that was founded by Sir Ebenezer Howard. Howard’s book Garden Cities of Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform came out in 1898, just one year before he founded the Garden City Association in 1899.

The intention was to combine the advantage of town life with the attractions of living in a healthy rural environment. Garden cities were to be planned, self-contained communities surrounded by green belts. They were to include carefully balanced areas of residences, industry and agriculture. Standards had to be maintained beyond the design and building phases; it was important that both the town and the agricultural belt would to be permanently controlled by the public authority under which the town was developed.

Semi detached Queen Anne houses in Bedford Park

In my earlier post, I had discussed Letchworth Garden City 1899, Hampstead Garden Suburb 1907 and Welwyn Garden City 1919, all of them in or near Greater London. All of which begs the question, where did Ebenezer Howard and his association's ideas come from?

Bedford Park Garden Suburb was one of the world's first garden suburbs. As far as I can see, the merchant Jonathan Carr was politically progressive but he was not interested in free housing for impoverished families and he did not believe in communal living. Since we know, for example, that Carr formally created the Bedford Park Company, we can assume that Carr was interested in raising money for his speculative ventures. As it happened, the Company later collapsed, but that only meant that the remainder of the Bedford Park land was sold off to other developers.

Shops and tavern in Bedford Park

Jonathan Carr bought 24 acres of land, just beyond the western fringes of London, in 1875. In his discussions with potential architects, Carr prioritised his needs: attractive houses for middle-class families; clean and healthy village living; and an easy commute into London.

The first architect for the estate was Edward William Godwin a leading member of the Aesthetic Movement. Developer and architect did not get on well together, and as Bedford was not built in the cooperative manner like some later developments, Carr simply asked Godwin to pack up his plans and pencils, and leave. In 1877 Carr hired the architect Richard Norman Shaw instead.

Individually designed detached and semi-detached houses, arranged as terraces, were used at Bedford Park. Shaw adapted C18th styles in red brick and white joinery that he called Queen Anne. So his scheme was important because Bedford was one of the first garden suburbs, but it was also unusual in architectural terms. The nature strip, with its mature street trees, as well as the private garden separated from the neighbours by low fences, appeared everywhere. It won’t surprise anyone that Shaw’s work became very influential.

St Michael and All Angels Church, Bedford Park, 1880

The modern historian Richard Cavendish thought the strong sense of community grew out of the estate’s dendritic layout, with the streets spreading out like tree roots from Turnham Green station. I suspect the newly arrived residents also loved the idea of having a pub, church, club, parish hall and shops at the centre of their village.

St Michael and All Angels Church 1880 was not just any old church, of course; it was designed by Shaw as the centrepiece of Bedford Park. I wonder how the rest of the community sympathised with Shaw’s Anglo-Catholic preferences. Perhaps they were mollified by the presence of the great pub, mentioned above, opposite the church.

The concept of a special estate owed much to the Aesthetic Movement of the 1870s, a movement that romanticised the simple and honest rural life, and celebrated freely expressed beauty. Bedford in turn attracted the families of artists, architects and other aesthetic types, and provided dedicated studios in many of the houses. Perhaps only fashionable, very literate people could afford to live there eg writer WB Yeats, painter Camille Pissarro and Granville Fell, editor of Connoisseur (my second favourite learned journal).

T. Affleck Greeve's book, Bedford Park: The First Garden Suburb

So a full 25 years before the Garden Cities Association was formed in 1899, Bedford Park had showed that many of Sir Ebenezer Howard’s goals were achievable. Bedford Park also showed that arts and crafts developments thrived in the garden suburbs in and near London, as Hampstead Garden Suburb later did.

In 1967 the government formally listed and protected the greater part of the estate, a total of 356 houses. Many of them have since been renovated.

You might like to read Bedford Park: The First Garden Suburb, written by T. Affleck Greeves and published in London by Anne Bingley in 1999. The book includes a selection of old photos taken soon after the suburb was built in 1875. Other illustrations include maps, drawings and architectural plans.

James Joyce - the great years in Trieste

James Joyce

I have had a great deal of pleasure writing up the life and times of important authors and artists for this blog eg Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, Rudyard Kipling, Sigmund Freud and Dylan Thomas. But writing about Irishman James Joyce (1882–1941), who lived happily in Trieste for most of the years between 1904-20, proved to be more difficult.

Had he chosen to live in Venice, Florence, Rome, Milan, Florence etc, I would have felt right at home. But James Joyce lived in Trieste, 116 ks NE of Venice.

Trieste was one of the oldest parts of the Habsburg Monarchy from the high Middle Ages until the end of WW1. And it had been a very beautiful Adriatic port. So in his years there, Joyce witnessed the last years of the city's Austro-Hungarian glory and saw the impressive buildings that had belonged to prosperous Habsburg merchants.

Presumably because of its unique location, Trieste was a cosmopolitan city loved by Bohemian artists and writers.

Bronze statue of Joyce, canal bridge in Trieste

Joyce met Nora Barnacle in 1904 in Dublin, just before the writer was attracted to Trieste. The couple arrived there in 1904, an impoverished Joyce apparently planning to fund some time on the Continent by teaching English.

map of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Trieste is marked with a cross

Joyce and Nora didn’t marry until many years later (1931), although they had two children (in 1905 and 1907). James didn’t sound like a reliable family man; in fact his family probably would not have been properly fed and clothed without the help of his younger brother Stanislaus who also moved to Trieste. Despite the brother, James Joyce’s many moves between flats seemed to have occurred because the rents were rarely paid on time and rarely paid in full. Perhaps endless boozing was responsible.

When James did manage to make a regular income, it was because he was working for the daily paper, Il Piccolo. At other times, he worked as an English teacher at the Berlitz language school and was an English tutor to some wealthy Triestine families.

Joyce breakfasted on presnitz at the Pasticceria Caffè Pirona

This was a creative and productive period. While living in this city, Joyce wrote most of the stories in Dubliners, first published in 1914. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was also written in Trieste and was serialised in The Egoist  magazine in 1914 and 1915. Portrait was not published in book form until the Egoist Press published it in 1917.

Now there is a Literary Trail. Modern visitors can walk between the eight houses that Joyce lived in during his Trieste life and to dozens of his favourite haunts. His happiest years were spent in #4 Via Bramante, near some elegant steps leading to the Basevi Gardens. The upper floors of a different palazzo have been converted into a hotel called Hotel Victoria, recently opened. It is described as a "literary hotel" because Joyce was once a tenant there.

Trieste's funicular tram

Joyce was a good walker, despite Trieste having steep hills. A funicular tramway had already opened before Joyce and Nora arrived, and operates still, offering magnificent views over the harbour.

Joyce loved high bourgeois coffeehouses like the Caffè San Marco, still evocative of Viennese elegance, and the Caffè Stella Polare near the Canal Grande. Pasticceria Caffè Pirona was Joyce’s breakfast place of choice, an historic Art Nouveau bakery still in business.  Apparently Joyce was passionate about presnitz, a horseshoe-shaped pastry stuffed with raisins and walnuts—a house specialty since Alberto Pirona founded the shop in 1900.

Via San Nicolò was where the Joyces lived above the Berlitz School which employed Joyce. Next door is the Umberto Saba Antiquarian bookshop, still in business.

I was not surprised to read that Joyce frequented the Teatro Verdi to watch opera, but alas he was limited to the cheapest seats. What WAS surprising was that Joyce enjoyed different centres of religious architecture. As the main port of the mighty Austro-Hungarian empire, Trieste embraced many different cultures. One of Joyce's favourites was the exotic Greek-Orthodox church of San Nicolò with its twin towers facing the sea. Many of his most friends and students were from the even more exotic Jewish community, which was confident enough to open a beautiful synagogue in Via San Francesco d'Assisi. Joyce's timing was perfect - he could watch every step of the synagogue's construction process (1908-12).

Trieste synagogue, built between 1908 and 1912

Susan Griffiths’ article provided very helpful information. She mentioned The Hotel James Joyce which is located in the colourful historical area of old Trieste, and I would love to know whether Joyce was ever a guest there. She also noted 45 plaques around the city that mark places of Joycean interest. One of these plaques highlights the red light district of the Città Vecchia quarter, including a brothel at 7 via della Pescheria. Another helpful suggestion was the guide book James Joyce: Triestine Itineraries by Renzo Crivelli. A bridge over the canal has a distinctive bronze statue of the ex-pat Irishman, sunning himself in this old Austro-Hungarian-Italian city.

World War One must have been a difficult time. Although Joyce was too old to be a soldier himself, it must have been galling for him when his students were called up to fight in a war between Italy (and the Allied Powers) versus Austria-Hungary (and the Central Powers). So in 1915 the Joyces moved to Zurich, a neutral city that became home to exiles and artists from across Europe. They didn't return to Trieste till 1918.

The Austro-Hungarian Empire did not dissolve until the end of the war and many of its border areas were disputed among its successor states. In November 1918, a treaty was signed to end hostilities between Italy and Austria-Hungary. Trieste was occupied by the Italian Army and the city was formally absorbed into Italy.

James Joyce died in Zurich in 1941 and was buried there. Nora died in 1951 and was buried alongside her husband. Stanislaus died in Trieste in 1955, and was buried in the Trieste cemetery. None of the bodies was repatriated back to Ireland.

Despite our perhaps preconceived ideas, Literary Traveller said it was Trieste that claimed James Joyce. Trieste was more significant than Dublin, which Joyce immortalised in Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses; more than Zurich where he was buried; more than Paris where he wrote Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. I have not read John McCourt’s book The Years of Bloom: James Joyce in Trieste 1904-1920, but it may be very helpful.

James Joyce Hotel, Trieste

Degenerate Music, Dusseldorf 1938.

It stands to reason that some nations profited immensely from the unexpected arrival of brilliant musicians and artists who fled Nazi Germany and Austria from 1933 on.  I certainly knew all about the visual artists from Nazi-controlled countries. But what happened to the musicians who were still in Germany before the war and what happened to those who came to Australia?

In 1938, senior Nazis wanted to open a Degenerate Music Exhibition in Dusseldorf, like the Degenerate Art Exhibition that opened in Munich in 1937.  As fuzzy as the concept of Degenerate Art was, at least it was visually detectable – anything Jewish, Bolshevik, abstract, negroid, abstract, cubist or anti-Teutonic. But what was Degenerate Music?

catalogue cover, Degenerate Music Exhibition, 1938

Because the Dusseldorf curator in 1938, Dr Hans Ziegler, was an expert on theatre and was not a musicologist, he had no idea what “degenerate music” meant. But he was a very loyal member of the Nazi Party and did his best. Ziegler decided that a simple chord structure was inherently Germanic and natural. And anything which departed from tonality was basically Jewish and therefore degenerate. Hitler believed that music had absolutely immense power and that with music, a human personality could be shaped. Thus Dr Ziegler also thought that music was powerful, and that they needed to mould their fellow citizens along approved cultural lines.

The 1938 Degenerate Music Exhibition included works by Jewish composers or those with Jewish parents or grand parents (eg Felix Mendelssohn, Arnold Schoenberg, Kurt Weill, Gustav Mahler), by socialists, modernists and jazz musicians. Why a right winger like Igor Stravinsky was included as a degenerate eludes me, but he was just as reviled as the Jewish and Jazz musicians were.

For this event, a small catalogue was published that included the opening-speech by Ziegler and Goebbels, quotations of Hitler's words, photographs, caricatures and paintings as they appeared in the exhibition.

Dr Ziegler must have done his job well. After Dusseldorf, the Degenerate Music Exhibition travelled to Weimar, Munich and Vienna, where the displays continued to be very popular.

Visitors to the Degenerate Music Exhibition, 1938. Anne Frank Museum photo.

No musician was safe from scrutiny or Nazi re-branding. In his recently published book Mozart and the Nazis: How the Third Reich Abused a Cultural Icon, Erik Levi explored the way in which the Nazi regime manipulated Mozart's music for political gain. Puccini and Verdi seemed to have been subject to a similar appropriation.

Now let's leap forward to the 1980s. Albrecht Duemling was a Berlin-educated musicologist, responsible for Entartete Musik in 1988, a reconstruction of the Nazis’ Degenerate Music Exhibition in Dusseldorf fifty years earlier (in 1938). How perfect that the reconstruction opened, of all possible places, in the Dusseldorf Tonhalle. The exhibition travelled to other countries, but alas did not come to Australia.

In 2003-4 the same Dr Duemling used the National Library of Australia’s music and manuscript collections to document both the personal experiences of refugee musicians and their professional contributions to the musical life of Australia. In his new book The Vanished Musicians: Jewish Refugees in Australia, 2011, he discussed the reception Australia offered to German-speaking refugee musicians who arrived in Australia from 1933 on.

Australia should have felt blessed when world-famous Jewish musicians arrived on our shores. Consider Jascha Spivakovsky and the other two members of the trio (Nathan Tossy Spivakovsky and Edmund Kurtz), Artur Schnabel, Richard Tauber and Yehudi Menuhin and the conductor Maurice Abravanel. German born and educated Felix Werder was only 18 when he was imprisoned on the Dunera ship in 1940, so his splendid works, including symphonies, chamber music, choral works & operas, were all written in Australia. The composer and bassoonist George Dreyfus was even younger when he left Germany in 1938, so he did all his musical studies in Australia. How tragic that these Jewish refugees, fleeing Nazism at home, would be declared enemy-alien-Germans in Australia. Most were imprisoned in rural camps, in isolated Hay and Tatura.

The modern viewer wants to ask if at least the Musicians’ Union of Australia tried to save these professional musicians and composers during the late 1930s. Apparently not. The Musicians’ Union of Australia felt it was hard to find full-time work for “real” Australian citizens and applied pressure to the Immigration Department to turn foreign musicians away from our shores or put them in non-musical jobs.

The idiocy of making a truly gifted violinist become a shoe-maker must have seemed breath-taking. If a musician wanted citizenship in Australia in 1939, he was well advised to say he was a factory worker or farmer. Most did.

Spivakovsky-Kurtz Trio c1936, published in The Australian.

Read Albrecht Duemling's book The Vanished Musicians: Jewish Refugees in Australia, 2011

William Bland - convict, surgeon, politician, inventor

“Lost and Found” is a television programme that focuses on the contents of The State Library of NSW, one of Australia’s loveliest heritage buildings. Inside lurk plenty of amazing, yet little known stories that shine a light on Australian history in the earliest decades. One character I had never heard discussed, except at the University of Sydney Medical Museum, was Dr William Bland.

William Bland (1789–1868) was born in London, the son of D Robert Bland. He trained in medicine and was qualified by the Royal College of Surgeons as surgeon's mate in the navy in 1809. He was promoted to the rank of naval surgeon in 1812. While serving on a navy ship in Bombay, this middle class naval officer was involved in a brawl with the purser. As a result, Bland fought a duel with the purser and killed him. Bland was tried for murder in Bombay in 1813 and found guilty. It is not clear why he was recommended for mercy, but luckily he was only sentenced to transportation for seven years. He was not hanged.

Dr Bland, c1845, oldest daguerreotype known in The State Library of NSW

Bland was shipped to Australia, reaching Hobart Town in January 1814 and then Sydney in July 1814 where he was a prisoner of His Majesty’s at Castle Hill gaol. Once again the gods shone on William Bland - he was totally pardoned in January 1815! Presumably this was because Bland was the first private doctor to arrive in Australia.

He immediately began private medical practice in Sydney, which apparently did very well, to the extent that in 1817 he was able to afford an assistant. But clearly he didn’t learn to stay out of trouble. In September 1818 Bland was back in court and convicted of libel against noone less that the Governor, Lachlan Macquarie. This time the good doctor was given a hefty fine and sentenced to 12 months imprisonment which he served at Parramatta.

Bland returned to his private medical practice, and in 1821 began a long association with the Benevolent Society, providing much needed medical services at the Castle Hill lunatic asylum. This was the colony's first mental hospital, established in 1811, which was in fact an old barn surrounded by a stockade. He must have been a very busy man, since he was also on the staff of the Sydney Dispensary. Plus he lectured and wrote on important medical topics such as Dislocations, Sanitary Reform and Bites of Venomous Snakes in Australia. The surgical instruments that he invented were published in The Lancet.

Most people agreed that despite his argumentative and somewhat prickly personality, Dr Bland was an able and patient surgeon who showed selfless affection for the sick and the poor.

133 Macquarie Street, Sydney, built on land that Dr Bland once owned.

For a medical man, I think some of his greatest contributions were, surprisingly, in the field of education. In 1830 Sydney College, which later became the very prestigious Sydney Grammar School, was founded with William Bland as president. He was also a generous benefactor to the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts and helped in its formal opening in 1833. [Mechanics’ Institutes were my favourite providers of education to working families in the C19th].

Only on one occasion was he a major promoter of higher education yet was not credited for his contributions. Dr Bland was very involved in the foundation of the University of Sydney, but his name was dropped from the senate because former convicts were excluded from taking part in the management of that august institution.

Bland was a person of well thought out political views. In 1830 he actively opposed attempts to alienate large areas of crown land, and in 1831 joined the committee of the Australian Landowners Association to fight against land regulations. At another public meeting in 1830 a committee, which included Bland, was formed to demand legislation by representation and to appoint a parliamentary agent in the House of Commons. 

NSW Parliament House, Macquarie Street, Sydney

He had some failures. Petitions demanding representative government and trial by jury failed in 1830 and 1833. But he also had amazing successes. Having been a transported convict and gaolbird was clearly no handicap politically. Bland was an elected member of the NSW Legislative Council twice (1843–48, 1849–50) and after the introduction of responsible government, was appointed to the NSW Legislative Council once (1858–61). A banquet held in July 1856 celebrated the granting of a new Constitution by the British government. Dr Bland was given the honour of chairing the evening. In 1858 he was given a valuable award for his services to the community.

Perhaps the greatest medical office that he achieved was becoming the inaugural President of the Australian Medical Society, following its foundation in 1859.  Bland continued in active medical practice until his death.

In 1861 he was surprisingly declared a bankrupt, even though he had at one time been a large landowner, with property at Prospect Hill, Hunters Hill, Yass etc. What went so badly wrong? Bland died intestate in Sydney in 1868 at a decent age, and the family graciously accepted a state funeral. Not bad for an ex convict.

Sydney University had become a very impressive campus, 1859

I am very grateful to the author of Duelling Surgeon, Colonial Patriot: The Remarkable Life of William Bland, Robert Lehane, for sending me a copy of the book. Unfortunately it was published by Australian Scholarly Publishing in Dec 2011, long after I had written this post. However there was more and more to learn about Bland, as I soon found out. Never has a person lived his life so brightly in the public gaze.

I am sure that much of the information. available on the public record, Bland would have prefered not to have seen in print. After discovering his wife's infidelity, for example, Bland placed an advertisement in the Gazette, warning vendors not to extend any credit to his (first) wife Sarah since he was no longer going to cover any of her debts. Worse still he had more court appearances, on both sides of the litigants' tables, than most people had had hot dinners. Some were very petty indeed.

Other projects would have made him very proud. For example, Bland proceeded with a very tricky operation on patients' aortas that had never been successful before. Although Bland's patients also died, he wrote up the surgical data in immaculate detail in The Lancet, building up a body of evidence that would revolutionise surgery after the introduction of anaesthesia. Another breakthrough came via Bland's collection of venomous snakes. He analysed the impact of each venom in minute detail and wrote up the treatments, both successes and failures, in The Lancet.

This was a man who moved from the ridiculous and degraded, to the sublime and heroic, and back again. Often.

Napoleon, The Briars and the Melbourne connection: The Balcombe family

Earlier this year I published a post about Napoleon's house in exile, on St Helena Island and noted that sections of the Napoleon’s island House Museum were in urgent need of repair. An appeal has been launched by the Foundation Napoleon to rescue the house, grounds and woods, hopefully attracting tourists and historians back to St Helena.

What I didn’t know and didn’t mention in that post was that there was a connection between Napoleon Bonaparte, St Helena Island and Melbourne. His intended prison home, Longwood, was not finished by the time he arrived on the island in December 1815. So Bonaparte had to stay with the merchant and Purveyor for the East India Company William Balcombe (1779-1929). The prisoner lived in a garden pavilion on the family estate, The Briars, and according to all reports, Napoleon became particular friends with the family's youngest teenage daughter Betsy.

Betsy’s friendship with the “enemy” did not endear the Balcombes to the governor of St Helena. But it seems more likely that William was suspected of being an intermediary in clandestine correspondence with Paris. In either case, William Balcombe decided to return to Britain in 1818 with all his family. Napoleon, as it happened, died soon after.

An excellent blog called Reflections on A Journey to St Helena was very useful. It discussed why the Balcombe family lived in very straitened circumstances back in England and why the governor of St Helena might have eventually removed his objections to Balcombe's juicy new preferment, a government post as Colonial Treasurer in New South Wales in 1823.

The Briars 1842, Balcombe homestead near Melbourne

The Balcombe family eventually settled in Australia in 1824. William died after only a few years while still Treasurer (in 1829), leaving his widow with a handsome land grant but no pension. She returned to London to plead her case and the Colonial Office gave her money to return to Sydney, together with promises of government posts for her sons.

William’s son Alexander Balcombe (1811-77) took up lots of land at Mt Martha just outside Melbourne in 1840. He and his wife were creating a large family, so they quickly built a rough-hewn slab house, and called it The Briars. The 1842 Briars homestead, one of the oldest pastoral properties on the peninsula outside Melbourne, recalled The Briars home on St Helena Island.

The family prospered and Mrs Balcombe moved to East Melbourne sometime in the 1850s, first into a prefabricated house that used British materials and an Indian design. Then the Balcombes built a new and large house in East Melbourne c1857 which they called East Court. Alexander Balcombe must have been dividing his time between town and country. He settled down to pastoral pursuits and the life of a country squire, was appointed a magistrate in 1855 and was first chairman of the Mount Eliza Road Board from 1860 on.

Napoleon's own furniture, in The Briars museum near Melbourne

In another remarkable connection, Dame Mabel Balcombe Brookes (1890-1975), Australia’s most famous society and charity leader, was the granddaughter of Alexander Balcombe. She was the president of every charitable and cultural organisation in Melbourne. And she married well. Her husband Norman Brookes won Wimbledon in both the singles and doubles, and was later appointed commissioner for the Australian branch of the British Red Cross in Cairo. After the war ended, Norman resumed his previous employment at Australian Paper Mills Co. Ltd, becoming chairman in 1921. He too led a blessed life.

But it was Dame Mabel’s connection with Napoleon that most interests me here. In her older age, she wrote St Helena Story and had the book published in 1960. She wrote of her family's substantial collections of furniture, objets d'art, books and relics of Napoleon. She even purchased the freehold of the pavilion that Napoleon had occupied on her great-grandfather's estate on St Helena, and presented it to a grateful French nation in 1960.

Dame Mabel Brookes’ city home, East Court, had some of the furniture used by Napoleon on St Helena, a teak table used by both Wellington and Napoleon, a writing desk bearing Napoleon's kick marks on the lower panels and the Frenchman’s death mask. The Briars homestead near Melbourne is now a museum where visitors can see the Dame Mabel Brookes Napoleonic Collection. It includes furniture that Bonaparte shared upon his stay with the Balcombes, plus some of his hair, papers, letters, a legion d'honneur medal and artworks.

The St Helena Story 1960, a book written by William Balcombe's great grand daughter

I was interested to see a reference to Betsy Balcome Abell's book To Befriend an Emperor: Betsy Balcombe's Memoirs of Napoleon on St Helena, Welwyn Garden City, Ravenhall, 2005. Betsy, the little girl who had been so kind to Prisoner Napoleon, was the great aunt of our other author, Dame Mabel Balcombe Brookes.

The link between Napoleon Bonaparte, The Briars on St Helena Island, William Betsy and Alexander Balcombe, The Briars in Melbourne and Dame Mabel Brookes' Napoleonic Collection is irresistible. The Briars homestead-museum is open daily.

**

The connection between Napoleon Bonaparte and the Australian politician Michael Kroger is less persuasive, but the timing (for my blog post) is sublime.  My Napoleon Obsession noted that Kroger collected a vast array of Napoleonic objets d'art in his Melbourne home, taking decades to amass imperial eagles, candelabras, clocks, vases, paintings, furniture and military paraphernalia. In October 2011, all these precious Napoleonic objects went up for auction in Paris. And left Melbourne for good.

Buyers of Napoleonic artefacts at the Paris auction did not seem to have been deterred by the Euro’s recent difficulties. A clock in Levanto marble, with rich gilt and bronze decoration, sold for €22,000. A watercolour pennant design for Napoleon's 2nd Artillery sold for €39,000. A post-abdication portrait of Napoleon, by the school of Delaroche, made €39,000.

Portrait of Napoleon, by the school of Delaroche, painted 1845 or after

Other collectors of Napoleonic artefacts existed, of course, including collectors I had written up in this blog. The Napoleon Room in Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight, for example, was large enough to accommodate the sprawling 22-piece acanthus-tailed griffin suite of furniture designed for the Emperor's uncle, Cardinal Fesch. All the furniture and artefacts in the Napoleon Room were bought by Lord Lever specifically because of their associations with the French Emperor, although many of these associations have subsequently been brought into question. 

Recently important relics of Napoleon Bonaparte's last years have been analysed in New Zealand, including a daily diary kept by an officer on the island. The most interesting was a lithograph taken from a drawing of the former French emperor, made the morning after his death in 1821. The precious objects reached New Zealand via the son of Capt Denzil Ibbetson, one of only four British officers to remain on St Helena island with the deposed Napoleon. It was Capt Ibbetson who recorded Napoleon's features soon after his death... and wrote the diary.

The very ugly side of British Fascism, 1936

I first heard about the 1936 Battle of Cable Street in the early-middle 1950s, a story told with great pride by my grandparents. Then this year, at a conference, I heard the story discussed again.

Sir Oswald Mosley arriving at a Fascist rally, London, 1936

The Battle of Cable Street took place on 4th Oct 1936 in London's East End. On that day, Britain’s Fascist movement was enjoying the triumphs of its brethren in Italy, Germany and Spain, convinced of its righteousness and invincibility, claiming to voice the frustrations of the abandoned and disenfranchised.

The Fascists believed they were popular, locally. They carefully targeted areas where there were large numbers of immigrants and where the left wing parties were trying to gain support. The Fascists were harnessing their energy to a renewed national purpose i.e promising a “Greater Britain” by getting rid of Jewish and socialist citizens and by giving their jobs to the deserving unemployed.

The East End of London had been specifically targeted by the Fascists. In 1936 the Jewish population of Britain was 350,000 (0.7% of the total population). However nearly half of the nation’s Jewish population lived in the East End – 60,000 in Stepney alone.

Police clearing demonstraters from Cable St, Oct 1936. In History Today

All through the summer of 1936 the British Union of Fascists (BUF) had organised street-corner meetings, fire-bombing and smashing the windows of Jewish shops, daubing racist abuse and launching physical attacks.

Later that year, Sir Oswald Mosley planned to celebrate the anniversary of the founding of his Fascist party; he wanted to send 3,000 uniformed black-shirts in marching columns through London’s East End streets where the terrified Jewish community was living. The Jewish People’s Council quickly organised a petition calling for the Fascists’ march to be banned, but the government refused to cooperate.

It turned into a clash between the police protecting the Fascists on one side, and local Jewish and socialist groups on the other.  As the photo shows, the anti-fascist groups erected road blocks in Cable Street in an attempt to prevent the march from taking place. The police tried to clear the barricades. As a result, there was a series of running battles between the police and local residents.

Why did the police look after the Fascists and not the local residents of Cable St? Why did the government not protect local residents' homes and families? I am assuming the government felt hamstrung; after all Sir Oswald Mosley was a member of the aristocracy, as was his first wife and his second wife. But even more importantly, the list of titled donors and supporters closely connected to the British Union of Fascists read like Debrett's Peerage.

c300,000 demonstrators from the local East End population turned up. They included many from the equally struggling Irish citizens, the very people Mosley had tried to turn against the Jews. The residents' slogan was the same as the Spanish Civil War slogan - "they shall not pass".

Police baton charging local residents to allow the Fascists through, 1936, The Socialist Newspaper.

A human wall blocked every entrance to the East End, especially at Gardiner’s Corner Aldgate, and a series of barricades were built in Cable St. 7,000 police, including all of London’s mounted police regiment, could not clear a pathway through for the Fascists. Much to the surprise of the Fascists, the police and the government, Police Commissioner Sir Phillip Game called the march off two hours into the rally; Mosley conceded defeat and disbanded his troops. 80 anti-Fascists and 75 policemen lay injured in the streets, but at least the march had been stopped.

Even today, there is debate about exactly how successful the anti-Fascist Cable Street action was, in the long run? The left wing newspaper The Daily Worker reported on the next day: ‘The rout of the Mosley gang is due to the splendid way in which the whole of East London's working-class rallied as one to bar the way to the Black Shirts. Jew and Gentile, docker and garment worker, railwayman and cabinet-maker, turned out in their thousands to show that they have no use for Fascism.’ This quotation probably did illustrate a general feeling among those who vigorously opposed Fascism, but what of the others?

One great result: a housing estate was opened where unity between the Irish and Jewish communities was reinforced. Even more significantly, the Home Office was forced to act, to ensure greater public order. As a result of the Cable Street events, the Public Order Act 1936 was quickly passed. This made the wearing of political uniforms in public and private armies illegal, using threatening and abusive words a criminal offence, and gave the Home Secretary power to ban marches. And local authorities in other cities started to forbid the use of town halls by the BUF.

In any case, it must have been difficult to estimate how unsuccessful (or otherwise) the BUF was in other parts of Britain, especially Scotland.

Perhaps we can conclude that Mosley’s movement had their pride dented at Cable Street, but it was hardly a huge body blow to Fascism. Subsequent BUF rallies attracted larger and larger crowds, the party's membership increased and BUF candidates stood in London local government elections in 1937. Along with most active Fascists in Britain, Mosley was not interned until May 1940!! Saving the lives, homes and businesses of the East Enders had not stopped the Fascists. It took until the second year of a catastrophic world war before the British Government saw a clear threat to national security in Mosley and the BUF.

Tower Hamlets mural commemorating the Battle of Cable St, painted 1980s 

In the 1980s, a large mural depicting the Battle was painted on the side wall of the old St. George's Town Hall building in Cable Street. Designed by a local artist, Dave Binnington was forced to abandon the project after it was repeatedly defaced by modern-day Fascists. Varnish protects the mural today from those who would destroy its powerful images. And just off Cable Street, at the junction with Dock Street, a red plaque commemorates the success of the anti-fascists on that October day.

Helpful reading:
David Rosenberg Battle for the East End: Jewish Responses to Fascism in the 1930s, Five Leaves Publications, 2011.
Daniel Tilles, Fascism and the Jews: Italy and Britain, Vallentine Mitchell, 2011.

Learning history; preparing for life

The History Boys was a film directed by Nicholas Hytner that I first saw in 2006.

Set in 1980s Britain, Cutlers' Grammar School in Sheffield was trying to get its students into the university and college of their choice. It was a process that everybody I have ever met in my entire life has gone through, so members of the audience were all nodding their heads in recognition. Even better, the two senior teachers, played splendidly by Frances de la Tour and Richard Griffiths, were characters I knew very well from my own Matriculation experience in 1965. Clive Merrison, the principal, was less successful, but I suppose that was the very point the director was trying to make.

The language used by the boys and by the staff was brilliantly written, and remained a key part of the film, regardless of the scenes. I presume that was because the film had been adapted by Alan Bennett from his play of the same name; the script had not originally been written for a book or for the screen. In plays, there can be sets, costumes and actions, but the language remains central. Perhaps the language was, if anything, too sophisticated. As with anyone who has raised or taught boys at that stage of their development, I know they grunt a lot. And hit each other, instead of using words. And they talk about sex a lot, often in poorly constructed English.

The history students and their three teachers, Sheffield, 1980s

Still... these were clever boys, and motivated to do well academically. The conflict only appeared when a very young man named Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore) was invited into the school to assist the more traditional teachers in preparing the boys for the university entrance exams. I am not sure what Irwin's exact duty statement contained, but the boys were asked to prepare slick and polished historical presentations, regardless of content. The search for documented facts and historical truths became secondary.

Since I am a lecturer in history and art history, there was something compelling and personal about this film. I now realise why first year history students at university these days are more assertive in their historical perspectives than I had been in the 1960s, but less well equipped for seeking solid evidence.

I would have liked to end the film after these talented young lads went to Oxford or Cambridge for their interviews, filled with awe at the endless grounds, the stunning buildings and the serious college staff. It was wonderful seeing the day when the universities’ letters arrived, received by excited and anxious families in their kitchens.

In real life, there is normally no way of knowing what will happen to boys in their future lives; the last day of school is normally the end of one (perhaps beloved) era and the start of a totally unknown new era. But the director decided to let the viewer know who became successful in their careers, who became ordinary workers and who died tragically in the army. Although this annoyed me, I suppose from a teacher’s perspective it would be very satisfying to find out what happened to their once-young charges.

Broken Hill: outback yes, gold rush yes, but Jewish?

There have always been Jews in European Australia, since the first transport of British convicts in Jan 1788 which included 12 Jews. Later Jewish families arrived in outback desert towns,  usually run­ning small businesses or hotels.  As I suggested in the history of Ballarat, Jewish migrants came to Australia in response to the Gold Rush in the 1850s, where they largely acted as shopkeepers and traders. Thus there were Jewish communities in remote gold rush cities, including Broken Hill (NSW), Bendigo and Ballarat (Vic), Kalgoorlie and Koolgardie (WA).

Map of the SE corner of Australia, 

see how remote Broken Hill is from the State and Federal capitals

Broken Hill, an isolated town surrounded by desert and red earth in the middle of Australian outback, 1160 ks west of Sydney, app­ear­ed in the late 1800s as one of the country’s top mining towns. Huge deposits of iron ore, silver and zinc were discovered there late in the C19th, leading to a rush of migration.

The town is home to the Broken Hill Proprietary Co/BHP, which today is still one of the world’s largest mining companies. BHP was the mining company that ran the town of Broken Hill for its 27,000 citizens at the turn of the new century. This outback city could not have been more isolated from the urban cen­tres of Australia, nor more remote from the centres of Jewish learning. From Broken Hill, Sydney is 1,160 kms, Melbourne 817 kms and Adelaide 506 kms. Yet Jewish migrants were attracted to Broken Hill, presumably because employment was always available and small businesses always had a ready market with the mining families.

“When Jews started to arrive in Broken Hill in the 1880s, there was no natural water there and the region was served by Indian and Afghan camel drivers. Living conditions were harsh and Broken Hill has always been gripped by drought so all supplies had to be carried to Broken Hill. But within years, Broken Hill had become the third-largest provider of silver in the world. 

Some early evidence of the community comes from the tombstones. The first Jewish burials in Broken Hill’s cemetery occurred when a typhoid epidemic hit the town in 1888. Other gravestones tell of how the young son of Rebecca and Isaac Joseph died in 1892, and how Louis Dias was killed in the mines by a runaway cart in 1895.

Broken Hill synagogue, 

opened 1910

Plaque outside Broken Hill synagogue, 

marking the opening ceremony, 1910

“Broken Hill was known around the world as a place where there was opportunity and wealth to be earned from the rich ore deposits disc­ov­ered in the 1880s,” said Professor Leon Mann who was born in Broken Hill in 1937 and co-authored Jews of the Outback, a history of the Broken Hill community. Mann’s parents migrated to Aust­ralia from East­ern Europe and British Palestine in 1929 during the Great Depression. When his parents arrived in Broken Hill, there was still work there from silver, lead, and zinc mining. The entrepreneurial Jewish community who supplied and provisioned the miners fared quite well.

Knowing that Broken Hill mining was prospering, some Jewish imm­igr­ants decided to set­tle in remote Outback Australia. Among the Jewish immig­rants escap­ing the Ukrainian massacres, many already possessed know­ledge and exp­erience in the mining industries as they came from the Donetsk region. These immigrants set up businesses to serve the boom­ing mining indust­ry, and Broken Hill Jews becoming involved in politics and the union movement.

In that mining frenzy, the small group of Jewish settlers began to make their way to the town. A Jewish cemetery was con­secrated in 1891 and in 1900, when there were c150 in the local Jewish community, a congregation was form­ed.  But as there was no special building available, religious services were held in the Masonic Hotel. In 1905 Rev Z Mandelbaum from Minsk was appointed the first minister.

In 1907 Wolfram St site was granted by NSW government for the erection of a synagogue. The foun­dation stone for the Broken Hill Syn­ag­ogue was laid there in Nov 1910 by Solomon Saunders, Pres Adelaide Hebrew Congregation. The façade was roughcast stone brick, but the rest of the building was corrugated iron, a typically Australian material. Next to the synagogue there was a house for the minister and his fam­ily, the place where Sunday school classes were held. Thus a vibrant and successful community of Jewish people existed in Broken Hill for three generations.  The consecration of was performed by Sydney Rabbi F Cohen in Feb 1911.

In its heyday from the 1910s to the 1960s, it served the c200 members of the Jewish commun­ity. After the 1960s, the descendants were scat­t­er­ed all across Australia.” Today Broken Hill remains isolated: this town of 17,000 is a 3-hour drive from the next town of 1,000+ people.

Even since Prof Mann’s family left for Melbourne in 1942, Broken Hill remained iconic outback town in regional Austr­al­ia. There are a number of exotic places in Australia, but Broken Hill on the edge of the des­ert and miles from anywhere was special. Even with a total population under 20,000, the town had a lovely, functional synagogue.

When the Jewish community declined and the synagogue closed in 1962, the remaining Jewish men in Broken Hill rented the residence adjoining the building to try and keep it up. Eventually the synagogue was sold and purchased in 1990 by the Broken Hill Historical Society. These days there is no act­ive Jewish community. The synagogue still stands, but in 1991 it reopened as the Synagogue of The Outback Museum, owned and maint­ain­ed by the Historical Society. Be­hind a stone faç­ade, the build­ing comprises the former rabbi’s resid­ence and the synag­ogue, wh­ich includes the original pews, lectern and ark, as well as a Torah. I will examine the Museum in a later post.

The foundation stone for the synagogue in Wolfram Street was dated 1910, at a time when the Jewish population of Broken Hill was c150. The façade was roughcast stone brick, but the rest of the building was corrugated iron, a typically Australian material. Next to the synagogue there was a house for the minister and his family, the place where Sunday school classes were held.

Broken Hill's great days were in the 1920s and 30s, but WW2 was the beginning of the end of this impressive community. All young male citizens went into the army, the mines were closing and the remaining Jewish congregation was thinking of moving to Melbourne or Sydney. In 1962 the synagogue was permanently closed, with fittings given away to a Melbourne congregation. The last senior citizens of Broken Hill’s synagogue, too elderly to move once again, eventually died and were buried in the Jewish section of the local cemetery. 

Synagogue interior

The Synagogue was purchased by the Broken Hill Historical Society in 1990 and restored, then re-opened in 1991 as the Synagogue of The Outback Museum. The building has since been heritage listed! To celebrate the centenary of the synagogue in November 2010, a programme of historical talks and personal reminiscences about the Jews of Broken Hill and their contribution to the town was organised. They also arranged a bus tour of places where Jews had lived and worked, a walking tour of the Jewish section of the cemetery, and a tour to the Miners’ Memorial Arch. 200 ex-members of the town, or their children, gathered in the restored synagogue.

During the weekend, the visitors viewed the exhibition prepared for the Broken Hill Art Gallery. This was where the book, Jews of the Outback: The Centenary of the Broken Hill Synagogue 1910-2010, was launched by Professor Colin Tatz. He spoke about the issues relevant to a rural city: migration, family life, isolation, hard labour and assimilation – key elements that had been so well illustrated in this particular community.

While there are no known Jewish descendants left in Broken Hill in 2023, the 120 years old synagogue tells the long-forgotten story of Jews in rural, regional, remote Australia. The comm­un­ity was so vibrant and active that it raised money for the Jewish Nat­ional Fund. A cert­ificate hangs on the wall inside.

                                                    

Jews of the Outback was edited by Suzanne Rutland, Leon Mann and Margaret Price, 

and published by Hybrid Publishers in 2010