Brisbane's impressive 1886 Synagogue

The first Jews in Brisbane were convicts in Moreton Bay penal colony in 1824 - home to repeat offenders who moved from larger NSW convict colonies where c1% of Moreton Bay convicts were Jewish. When Brisbane’s penal colony closed, a free settlement opened in 1842 with no ex-convicts. Instead some families came north from Sydney, seeking new prospects with Qld’s 1859 separation from NSW.

Byzantine minarets & circular stained-glass window 

Beautiful white building, the twin towers soared above the nearby buildings in 1906. 

Brisbane Synagogue in State Library’s collection 

In 1859 there were just enough Jewish men to form a 10-man minyan for worship but by early 1865, services were so popular that private homes were needed. More settlers came and the community needed a proper shule. Most of the new Jewish residents settled around North Quay, meeting in each other’s homes on Sabbaths and holy days.

Ads Brisbane Courier, Mar 1865 said: All members of the Jewish community are requ-ested to attend a meeting at Mr B Benjamin’s Queen St to form a Congregation. A committee was created, to find a fitting site and to recruit members. For 10 years the new group used a leased rooms in Queen St business buildings each Sabbath. Bulcock’s Building Queen St even has a historical wall plaque.

Congregation leaders approached the colony’s Surveyor General to secure land but unlike many Christian neighbours, Jews lacked the infrastructure & land holdings of Anglican and Catholic churches; Jews needed to raise building funds. But young Qld colony’s economy was unstable in the 1860s, closely tied to UK banking investments and agriculture. From mid-1866, a Depression caused financial disaster for many members who returned to Sydney bankrupt; the building fund ended. The other Jews used in rented rooms, buying ritual objects and helping fellow Jews who’d suffered in the Depression. However worship in a rented hall was uncertain eg women needing to sit upstairs.

Men's seating downstairs, women upstairs

 
Rev Jonas Myers moved to Brisbane in late 1865, as President, Treasurer, teacher and kosher butcher. A George St cottage in 1867 served as a synagogue/shule and minister’s home, plus he travelled far up north in the Qld colony to serve their needs. But members who lived in central city liked Adelaide St while members settled in a commercial district Fortitude Valley didn’t. A long weekly journey by horse-cart was too long, so Rev Myers sold Adelaide St. Another member, businessman Samuel Davis, built a small shule hall in the grounds of his big North Quay home in 1870, now Mater Misericordiae Hospital. But the Committee needed a permanent site.

In the 1860-70s many churches went up in Brisbane as part of the civilising role of the new colony’s architecture. Mean-while Jewish members renovated the Masonic Hall in 1876 and stayed until the new synagogue opened. Most early gentlemen’s social clubs excluded Jews from membership; only freemasonry’s universal outlook gave the chance for Jews to socialise widely. These men from Brisbane rose in the Freemasons’ ranks, incl President Adolphus Hertzberg.

To find a architect, some men offered design proposals. But the Building Committee’s decisions led to conflicts. The official Qld Government heritage register for the shule listed British Arthur Morry, engineer-architect-parliamentarian as designer in 1884.

Alas financial struggles continued when the Shule Building Committee asked for ambitious plans. Their minutes showed plans for a schoolroom, board rooms and upper Ladies’ Gallery, plus seating for 600 people within a budget of £3,000. Morry assured the committee that he could deliver their financial requests, but by Jan 1885 when the tenders were returned, the cost blew out. Using an image of the sh-ule’s planned design to raise subscriptions, they advertised in Jewish Chronicle newspaper in London and in the British Empire. The congregation was eventually able to raise £6,450 in private donations from local and overseas Jewish donors, incl from London’s Rothschild and Mocatta banking families. In July 1885 the Building Committee led by Rabbi AP Phillips laid the foundation stone to commence building, in a grand public ceremony reported in local papers. The Brisbane Courier newspaper discussed R’ Phillips speech about the importance of a fixed shule to the Jewish community, esp for the lonely immigrants.

In July 1886 the shule was finally consecrated in Margaret St. In the history of Qld Jewry, there was no more brilliant function than the historic opening of the new synagogue. It was full to capacity with congregants and public dignitaries, including the colony’s Chief Justice, Attorney General, Mayor and members of the Qld Legislative Assembly.

Raised platform & reading table holding Torah scroll while facing the ark.

Surrounded by prayer books for congregants to read in their seats

Holy Ark, the most sacred part of a synagogue,

resting place for Torah scrolls

 

Brisbane was an ornate & exotic marker of Jewish presence. The structure’s elegant design was referred to in reports as Byzantine style, like the public architecture across Europe deriving from C13th–14th Islamic design elements eg Spanish Alhambra. See a pair of minaret-style turrets out front, octagonal columns & horseshoe-shaped buttresses supporting the Ladies’ Gallery. The exterior had a Romanesque style ornate gable & circular tracery, while the interior had a Gothic cathedral style. The members belonged both as Jews and British Subjects in the colony.

As the community grew, school rooms were added in 1906; in 1920s a newly-built hall with a retractable roof was used for Sukkot harvest festivals. Then as time passed, a large new group of Russian Jews, culturally distinct from the older Anglo-German Jews, arrived in the early C20th. They had different identities, speaking Russian and Yiddish, and not feeling comfortable in Margaret St Synagogue. So they created South Brisbane Hebrew Congregation, their own timber shule in Woolloongabba, 1915.

 

When Nazism rose in Germany in 1930s, some highly cultured artistic and religious Jewish refugees fled to Brisbane. Their experiences had a profound effect on the community, esp when Brisbane became the epicentre of WW2’s S.W Pacific campaign. Hundreds of American Jewish servicemen flooded into Qld and sought the comfort of Jewish religious practice in shule.

Stained glass

In 1955 a grand 2-storey Memorial Hall opened for social events and learning. In 1986 new and elegant stained-glass windows were based on Torah stories; and a Star of David behind the Rabbi. The shule remains a testament to the early pioneers who dedicated themselves to Brisbane’s community. Thanks to Morris Ochert for History of the Brisbane Hebrew Congregation, 1984

Jane Austen's Hampshire home and family

In High School I read and loved two of Jane Austen (1775-1817)’s most famous novels. But this was all fiction I assumed, and not Jane’s real life. Her father died suddenly in 1805 and left no property or income to his daughters. And since his wife and 2 daughters were not allowed to work, the women were left dependent on the support of family men. Luckily Jane's brother Edward had been adopted by his cousins, inheriting their estate called Chawton House Hamps and becoming financially secure himself.

Jane Austen lived and wrote in Chawton, Hampshire

built c1690 and later renovated

London Perfect

                                            

By 1807 Edward moved the women into his 2-storey red brick home, providing happy and productive years of Jane’s life. Each day included looking after Jane’s mother, writing at a small table, eating together, games with the nieces and nephews, piano playing, sharing long walks, going to church and sharing sewing with sister Cassandra in the evening.

 Dining parlour and fire. Jane's writing desk

Pinterest

Much of what is known about Jane's domestic routine comes from the niece Caroline Austen who in later life recorded the daily routine at Chawton. But little was written about the house’s architectural history. So now, 63 years after I read the book in Literature, it is time to examine her treasured and final house in the charming Chawton village.

The house was originally built in C14th as a small farmhouse, with later additions and renovations made over the years. The house was a thatched, timber dwelling built on the site for use as a farmhouse and then a coaching inn. In 1769 it was bought by the Knight family, distant Austen cousins, and became part of their Chawton estate. The Knights didn’t have any children themselves, so they formally adopted Jane’s brother Edward as their heir.

There were many minor alterations made by Edward Knight for his family eg the blocking of the window from the drawing room to the street, and adding a new Gothic window, looking onto the garden. The garden was extended for privacy, but retained a view towards Chawton Park and the woods surrounding the House where the ladies exercised.

The Drawing Room

 

The current structure resulted from renovations, blending elements of medieval & Georgian architecture. The exterior featured stone and brick with a steeply pitched roof and a prominent chimney. The interior showed the era’s artistry: ornate fireplaces, wooden panelling, intricate plasterwork.

Chaise Lounge

Destinations Detours and Dreams

Kitchen, 

pan360

In 1809, Edward offered his mum and sisters a small house on his Chawton estate. They moved that year, together with their friend Martha Lloyd, forming a cosy female household. Jane lived there for her last 8 years, but suffering from ill health in May 1817, she left for treatment in Winchester. She soon died and was buried in Winchester Cathedral.

Mrs Austen and Cassandra lived at the House for life. The house returned to the Chawton Estate with Cassandra’s death in 1845, and divided into 3 dwellings for estate workers, then as an estate office and a working men’s club.

In 1940 a local founded the Jane Austen Society to try to save the House. The Society attracted a patron, Mr TE Carpenter; he personally bought the House and bequeathed it to the nation as a permanent memorial to his son who’d been killed in action in WW2. Carpenter created the Jane Austen Memorial Trust to run the House as a Museum, and it was formally opened by the Duke of Wellington in July 1949. Jane Austen Society also built up the collections and funded the building renovations. In particular major roof repairs in 2021-2, via Historic England and the Historic Houses Foundation, keep the building watertight.

Since then, more parts of the House have been restored, the interior being restored to the time when the Austens lived there. Today Jane Austen’s House is a Grade I listed site, a certified Museum and an important literary site. It holds a major collection of Jane Austen’s treasures eg her loved jewellery, first editions of her books, personal letters, textiles, paintings and portraits of her friends and family, and the tiny table at which she wrote her famous novels. There’s also a beautiful cottage garden.

It was here her six novels of manners, ground-breaking at the time, critiqued the landed gentry of Regency England. Sense and Sensibility, published in 1811, was her first full-length; Pride and Prejudice 1813, and two more novels published in her lifetime: Mansfield Park (1814) and Emma (1816). Northanger Abbey and Persuasion were published postdeath in July 1817. Most of the places Jane referenced in her novels were places she lived in, visited or was inspired by. Most of her letters were burned but from those that survived, she was not a boring writer. She had a sharp wit, and she wasn't afraid to use it, especially in private

Persuasion by Austen, 1817

Amazon

Visit the rooms where she lived and wrote; see her writing table, jewellery, letters and first editions of her novels. Explore the pretty cottage garden, play traditional garden games, enjoy Regency clothes and see bonnet designing!

Hampshire and surrounding counties

"The Stamp Thief" a good documentary

The Stamp Thief was a documentary investigating a Holocaust event: that some unknown Nazi stole priceless stamp collections from concentration camp victims and buried the stolen stamps in a small town in Poland. Producer Gary Gilbert set out to confirm the story and recover the stamps. His approach: do a fake film shoot. His goal: to deliver justice by returning the stamps to their rightful owners or community.

The Stamp Thief documentary was written by Gary Gilbert, 2025

Reddit

The film chased the story of a rogue Nazi officer tasked with cataloguing the valuables of Jews sent to concentration camps. Apparently he seized the chance to steal millions of dollars worth of rare stamps and buried them in his home, now in Poland. In a real-life mission, Gilbert embarked on a daring quest to uncover the truth and recover the stamps. Disguising his investigation, Gilbert sought to return the stamps to their rightful heirs or to a museum, delivering a small yet powerful act of justice 75+ years post-Holocaust. This true tale unfolded in the suspenseful documentary.

Director Dan Sturman was an investigative journalist and is now noted L.A-based director, writer and producer who created Academy Award-winning documentaries. Sturman has since filmed many subjects, his works including quality documentaries shown at classy festivals eg Twin Towers.

Sturman and Gilbert debated about finding stamps stolen by the Nazi officer and buried in a basement in Legnica Poland. Stamp Thief set out to find the stamps after hearing the story from his fellow screen writer, David Weisberg. Who could invent a more intriguing premise? David's father, psychiatrist   Paul Weisberg treated a fireman married to the daughter of the Nazi who allegedly stole the stamps from a concentration camp. 

Nazi Trio, found by producer Dylan Nelson

Film Freeway

Stamp Thief was a probing search: while the Nazis occupied Poland in WW2, the Nazi officer whose job was to catalogue valuables belonging to Jews sent to camps saw his chance. Sadly this was not the case of a hero who disobeyed orders and tried to help the victims of the Holocaust. The Nazi officer, who decided to pocket millions of dollars worth of stamps stolen from the victims, buried them in the basement of his home. Thanks to the discovery of a detailed map showing the approximate location of the stamps, a group of Americans flew to Poland.

 When the L.A television writer-producer learned that an SS officer probably stole stamps from Jewish concentration camp prisoners and hidden them in a Polish basement, the American launched a long quest to find the rumoured box of treasures, despite the minimal chance of locating them.

Sample of stamps from pre-WW2

JIFF

How Gilbert found about the stamps was an unlikely tale. It began with a psychiatrist who happened to have a patient in the 1970s. The patient told the story of the missing stamps, and the psychiatrist became so intrigued, he helped devise an elaborate retrieval plan to dig them up behind the Iron Curtain. He never followed through, but he shared the plan with his son, who happened to be an avid stamp collector. As the film unfolded, the pieces fell into place and the story became increasingly engrossing. The team that went to Poland in 2015 grew more invested in returning the stamps to their rightful owners. So does the audience!

The mission was steeped in symbolism. For Gilbert, a single stamp not only represented the many thousands of stamps stolen from Jews, but the 6 million who’d never reclaim their personal treasures. Gilbert knew the second he heard the story that he was going to go, because the only thing crazier than going would be to not go. What’s craziest was how Gilbert tried to retrieve the stamps. The more he talked to lawyers, the more he realised how difficult it was to get seized Jewish property out of Poland. So he planned to access the basement by pretending to use it as a film set for a fake historical drama. [It was hard labour, digging 4+’ into the basement ground that had been solid since WW2]. The Poland expedition meant deceiving the Polish building manager, residents and film crew, and members of the U.S team had to grapple with the ethics of their dishonesty!

The team included Sturman as well as Gilbert’s personal contractor who posed as the set designer. But Sturman really came to supervise the surreptitious dig for the stamps during fake rehearsals in the basement. Those involved all hoped that once the truth emerged, the misled people would see that the deceit happened to right a greater wrong.

Instead Polish reactions to discovering the truth were largely scary, but an unknown hero emerged in Polish crew member, Sylvia. She chose to fully support the Americans and their mission. Her decision as a Polish person was that each Polish person should have been self-responsible.

There were no criticisms in the on-line reviews, but here's my own feedback. I didn’t know the film was going to be about research and although that was my own fault, it was occasionally annoying. I wasn’t fascinated in their endless interviews, phone calls, meetings and letters. It might have been a fictional adaptation of the normal story of Nazis taking gold wedding rings & gold dental crowns from victims before they went into the gas chambers. And although I knew exactly why the team acted secretly and illegally as they did, the immorality of Lying for a Good Cause was barely tackled. 

I already knew that many modern Poles were still denying their nation’s part in the Holocaust. But the intractable mistrust between some Poles and Jewish Polish survivor families was not really challenged in the film.

Gary Gilbert, Judy Kirshner Gilbert, Elizabeth Malloy, Dan Sturman

in Hollywood, April 2025, 

Larchmontbuzz

 

Tower of London: palace, execution, tours

After defeating the last Saxon king of England Harold II at the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror/William I of England would con­trol his new kingdom. He distributed the conquered lands to his fav­our­ite nobles, a useful practice from wars in Norm­andy. They built motte-and-bailey forts and soldiers built a wooden tower to house the battal­ion, its weapons, horses, food and val­uables. The bar­r­acks could become a refuge, if the outer defences were breached. Around the hill, Norman soldiers built an enclosure for a well, rais­ing crops, feeding livestock and holding weap­ons. 

Upper photo: Tower of London

Lower photo: entrance through the Byward Towers

defended by the moat and draw­bridge

Post-Hastings William I wanted to stake his claim to Saxon lands and to control hostile subjects. Clergy­man Gundulf (1024–1108), who des­ig­ned castles & ch­ur­ches in France, became Bishop of Roch­ester in 1077 and was asked to design the new fort­ress-castle. In 1078, William ordered building the White Tower of London, a 90’ high square tower with tapering walls, soaring up over Lon­don. The 1st floor had liv­ing quarters, soldiers’ ref­ec­t­ory, dormitory and Roman­esque Chapel of St John. The 2nd floor’s rooms were for the con­stable/Tower’s comm­ander: a great hall, ch­apel gall­ery, meet­ing room and living-rooms. And there was a cellar.

The Tower took 20 years to build, only finished when William II had a stone wall built around the Tower. Then Gun­d­ulf began a stone curtain-wall enclosing land between the Tower and riv­er. Under Henry III (r1216-72) and Edward I (r1272-1307), the Tow­er reached today’s basic design: the central White Tower surround­ed by two curtain walls with their 20 towers. The main C13th entrance was via two cyl­ind­rical Byward Towers and defended by the moat and draw­bridge.

Two of the Tower’s early prisoners of state were King John the Good of France, taken in Battle of Poitiers in 1356; Char­les Duke of Orléans, captured at Agincourt in 1415.

When King Edward IV died in 1483, Richard Duke of Glouc­ester became lord protector of his son Edward V. Glouc­ester put Ed­ward and his young brother Richard Duke of York in the Tower, awaiting Edward V’s coronation. But spurred on by Glouc­es­ter, Parl­iam­ent made the 2 princes illegitimate, confirming Glouc­ester as King Richard III. Were the young Princes in the Tower mur­d­ered in the Tower in mid 1483?

Inmates wrote of torture in Bell Tower records and torture objects used in 1500s & 1600s are in the Royal Arm­ouries.

By the 1500s Henry VII abandoned his Tower Palace home after losing his firstborn son. His most lasting contribution was founding the Tower Yeo­men of the Guard, direct ancestors of today’s Yeoman Warders/beefeaters.

Yeomen of the Guard

guarded the tower interior, including the crown jewels

Then the site became a notorious prison, the Tower’s most famous prisoners being gaoled by nasty King Henry VIII. When Henry sought to divorce Cather­ine of Aragon and split from the Cath­olic Church, Thomas More wouldn’t accept the king as supreme head of the Church of England. More was gaoled in the Tower, convicted of treason and executed.

2 of Henry’s wives went to the Tower. Anne Boleyn gave him one daug­h­t­er (later Elizabeth I) but no sons, so Anne was arrested for treason & executed in 1536. Henry’s 5th wife, Catherine Howard, was arrested & executed for adultery.

Inevitably the Catholics and Protestants battled on. Young King Ed­ward VI, who’d been raised a Prot­es­tant, created his Device for the Succ­es­sion (1553), dis­inheriting his Catholic half-sister Mary and his Prot­estant half-sister Elizabeth. Instead his crown passed through his aunt’s line to her Prot­estant granddaughter Jane Grey. But noone told Jane & only 3 days after Edward’s death in 1553 she became became queen anyhow. Queen Jane quickly lost the support of her entire Privy Council; in 1553 the Catholic Mary was formally declared by Parl­iament as the next mon­ar­ch. And although Queen Mary rel­uc­t­antly signed Jane’s death warrant, Jane’s trial and execution quickly followed.

 (ex Queen) Jane Grey was executed, 1553

Historic UK

Queen Mary’s fears about usurpers continued. She gaoled her half sister, Princess Elizabeth-whom Mary believed had masterminded the plots. So in 1554, 20-year-old Eliz­a­b­eth was also kept under house arrest in the Tower, living as mum Anne Boleyn had. Still, finding no evidence of treason, Mary moved Elizabeth from the Tower to house-arrest elsewhere.

Mary died in 1558 and Elizabeth took the throne. The new queen still used the Tower to hold enemies of the crown; from Walter Raleigh to Guy Fawkes, infamous prisoners and deaths at the Tower maintained its notorious reputation. Even Samuel Pepys was ac­cus­ed of complic­ity in the Popish Plot, selling naval secrets to France and piracy. He was imprisoned there in 1679 and eventual­ly disch­arged, but was later re-gaoled for plotting to restore exiled King James.

The Tower also stored chancery records, relating to diplomatic corr­es­­p­on­dence and government­ decisions, plus pr­operty ownership docu­m­ents and tax­at­ion. The Records Office was in the Wake­field Tower, the largest in the Tower of London complex, where it remained un­til 1858. Only then did the Public Records Office move to Chancery Lane.

Now the blood has been cleaned up, the Tower is London’s most famous tourist site. Admire the Crown Jewels, including the coron­ation reg­a­lia worn at a new monarch’s investiture, and the cerem­on­ial regalia worn at the State Op­ening of Parliament. St Edward’s Crown is a C17th replace­ment for Saxon King Edward the Confessor’s crown.

Crown jewels

British Heritage