Casey Cardinia and the Boxer Rebellion connection

Do you have an ancestor who served in China during the Boxer Uprising? This little known part of our history is the subject of the book The Australian Illustrated Encyclopaedia of the Boxer Uprising, 1899-1901, by Justin Corfield (1).  The book includes maps, photographs, details of the major players and groups involved and for family historians, the biographical details on all the Australians who served in the Boxer Uprising.

What was the Boxer Uprising? Western Countries, especially France, Germany, Britain and the United States controlled most of the trade between China and the West at the end of the nineteenth century. Merchants from these countries also demanded land, the right to build railways and ‘extra territorial rights’ where they were subject only to the laws of their own country and not Chinese law. As a result, many Chinese joined anti European Secret Societies, including the violent I-ho-ch'uan (the Righteous and Harmonious Fists) who were named the Boxers by Western media. In 1899, the Boxers and other militant societies combined in a campaign against the Westerners, including merchants, Missionaries and westernised Chinese. 

In 1900 this uprising became more wide spread and nine Western nations responded by sending in warships and armed forces. Though Australian troops were largely involved in the Boer War in South Africa, the Australian Colonies sent Naval Contingents to China to support Britain. One hundred and ninety seven men came from Victoria, two hundred and sixty three from New South Wales and one hundred and three from South Australia. The first Australian contingents left at the end of July 1900. Many of the Australians were too late to take part in battle and instead had a role in restoring civil order, and they left China in March 1901 to return to Australia. No Australian was killed by enemy hand, although six died of illness or injury.

I have found a Casey Cardinia link in the book. Joseph Edward Hughes, who was born in 1861, was part of the Victorian Naval Contingent (2).  Joseph had married Elizabeth Anna McDonald in 1887 in Sydney. His occupation on his marriage certificate was ship's mate (3). The couple moved to Victoria where their children were born - Edward Dominick, 1889 and registered at Collingwood; Emma Augusta, 1890, Collingwood; Elizabeth Anna, 1892, Carlton; Joseph Edward, 1894, Koo Wee Rup;  Neil Alexander, 1896, Bunyip South (later called Iona) and George, 1900 in Surrey Hills, Melbourne (4). 

In the 1890s, Australia was in a Depression, with up to thirty percent unemployment. Unemployment benefits were generally linked to Public Works schemes, one of which was the Village Settlement on the Koo Wee Rup Swamp. The aim of the Village Settlement was to stop people drifting to the City, allow them to receive an income and become self sufficient on their small farms. Under this Scheme, men could obtain employment with the Public Works Department, if they were married, registered as unemployed and accept a block of land of up to twenty acres (8 hectares). They had to work for wages for two weeks and undertake improvements on their block on the alternate two weeks. By August 1893, 265 men were employed by the Public Works Department.

Was Joseph Hughes one of these settlers? Certainly the time frame fits. He was a married man with children, so he fitted the demographic of the Village Settler. Two of his children were born on the Koo Wee Rup Swamp. By 1899 the Village Settlement Scheme was abandoned, and at least one third of the settlers had left the area, including the Hughes family. The most common reasons for leaving were the fact that twenty acres was not a sufficient size of land to support a family, there was no alternative employment and many settlers had no previous farming experience, such as Joseph Hughes, whose occupation is listed in the book as a painter. 

SS Chingtu, the ship which bought Joseph Hughes back to Australia from China in 1901.

Australian War Memorial Image A05054. Their caption is A parade on board SS Chingtu, returning from China in 1901 with the Australian contingents of the NSW Naval Brigade on board. Note the birds in the cages. The China Steam Navigation Company's SS Chingtu was Transport 105 for the voyage carrying the contingents back to Australia in 1901

The family had moved from the Swamp and were living in Surrey Hills in Melbourne in 1900 when Joseph enlisted. Did Joseph enlist from a sense of duty, a sense of adventure, the need for a secure pay packet or did he have a yearning to go to sea again? We don’t know and it may have been a combination of all these factors. He embarked for China on July 30, 1900 on the SS Salamis, his rank was Able Seaman,  and returned to Australia on the SS Chingtu on April 25, 1901 (5).  It then appears the family moved back to New South Wales and lived in another Surry Hills, this time in Sydney.  Joseph died at the age of 64 in 1925 and Elizabeth died  in 1921, aged 57. They are buried at Rookwood Cemetery in Sydney (6). 

Joseph and Elizabeth’s sons Joseph and Neil enlisted in the First World War. Joseph was 23 when he enlisted in April 1918, but he was rejected on medical grounds due to acute rheumatism. His next of kin was his father, Joseph, of 565 Crown Street, Surry Hills, Sydney (7). His birthplace was listed as Bunyip, but as we saw before the birth was registered at Koo Wee Rup, because the first Registrar of Births and Deaths at the eastern end of the Swamp was not appointed until January 1, 1895 when James Pincott was appointed for Bunyip South (8). 

Neil (service number 3322) enlisted in August 1915 at the age of 19, his birth place is listed as Bunyip and his next of kin was his father of the Crown Street address. In July 1916, Neil suffered a gunshot wound to the back and abdomen and  later returned to Australia and was medically discharged in November 1917 (9). 

I do a lot of research and sometimes you are fortunate that you find a document that ties everything together, so I was pleased to find this letter written by Joseph senior in Neil's A.I.F file at the National Archives of Australia. The letter gives 19 year old Neil, born on the Koo Wee Rup Swamp at Bunyip South, permission to enlist and is signed by his father, Joseph Hughes and underneath he has written Late of the Naval brigade and China Naval Cont [Contingent].

Joseph Hughes' letter, giving his son permission to enlist, from Neil's A.I.F. file.

Image has been cropped. National Archives of Australia www.naa.gov.au 

First Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1914-1920

Joseph Hughes and his family were only on the Koo Wee Rup Swamp for possibly four years, but he does give our region a link to the Boxer Rebellion in China.

Footnotes

(1) The Australian Illustrated Encyclopaedia of the Boxer Uprising, 1899-1901, by Justin Corfield (Slouch Hat Publications, 2001)

(2) Australian War Memorial Nominal Rolls -  https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/R1443019

(3) His marriage certificate is on-line on a family tree on Ancestry. They were married August 8, 1887. Joseph, who was 26,  was born in Monmouthshire, England (According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica on-line - see here - From the 16th to the early 20th century Monmouthshire was sometimes considered administratively a part of England and sometimes a part of Wales). His parents are George Hughes and Emily Maddox. Elizabeth, who was 24,  was born in Pyrmont, NSW to Neil McDonald and Annie Rebecca Baker. 

(4) I believe I have all the children correct - the information comes from the Index to the Victorian Births, Deaths and Marriages https://www.bdm.vic.gov.au/

(5) Australian War Memorial Nominal Rolls -  https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/R1443019

(6) Ancestry Cemetery Headstone Transcriptions, 1837-2003

(7) National Archives of Australia, read his file, here.

(8) Victoria Government Gazette January 4, 1895. p. 1, see here.

(9) National Archives of Australia, read his file, here.

Memorial to General Sir John Monash at Berwick

On January 26, 1932 The Herald published an article by Russell Grimwade (1) on the proposed memorial to General Sir John Monash, who had died on October 8, 1931. Monash was a civil engineer, a soldier and after the First World War  the General Manager of the State Electricity Commission, who established the power stations at Yallourn using the coal deposits (2).  In the 1920s Monash was broadly accepted, not just in Victoria, as the greatest living Australian (3) and thus shortly after his death the Monash Memorial Committee (4) was established to oversee the construction of a suitable memorial to him.

The Committee decided on a statue of Monash, on horseback, but Russell Grimwade, had a more innovative idea, as he wrote who in Victoria, resident or visitor, could pass along the Prince's Highway between Melbourne and Yallourn without being arrested and thrilled by a Monash column set on a suitable hill, say, near Berwick, and without being brought to an understanding of the benefits he has brought to this fair State? Russell Grimwade was a businessman and a partner in the firm Felton Grimwade. This firm was started by his father, Frederick Grimwade (5) and Alfred Felton (6).  They were manufacturers of drugs and later branched out into glass works and chemical works. Felton, is the 'Felton Bequest' person. He left a generous sum of money in trust, half of which was to support charities and the rest to be spent on works of art for the National Gallery.

Mr Grimwade's idea was supported by the artist, Daryl Lindsay (7) who said, inter alia, imagine a hilltop clearly visible from the Prince's Highway, carrying a memorial such as the Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square, built up on a simple base and topped by a dignified and symbolic figure of Monash against the skyline, surveying the vast tracts of country so materially assisted by him towards prosperity. Daryl Lindsay was an artist and the husband of Joan Lindsay (8), perhaps best known for her book, Picnic at Hanging Rock. 

The Monash Memorial was not built at Berwick, it was built in Kings Domain and as Daryl Lindsay said the Committee ended up deciding on an irrevocable plunge into mediocrity.  General Sir John Monash is remembered with Monash University and the Monash Freeway.

From a hill, looking south to Berwick. 

Would this have been a suitable site for the Monash Memorial?

This is the link to the photo at the SLV http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/451960 if you want a good copy so you an zoom in and see all the details.

Harvesting, Berwick, c. 1945-1954. Victorian Railways photographer. 

State Library of Victoria Image H91.50/2193

Russell Grimwade's article from The Herald of January 26, 1928 is reproduced below, or read it on Trove, here.

Monash Memory: a column set upon a hill - tribute to creative genius by Russell Grimwade.
The Monash Memorial Committee is confronted with a problem that has many solutions and one right one. The task is to perpetuate the memory of a rare citizen, whose gifts and abilities benefited his country in various ways. The choice of the particular benefit that is to serve as the theme of the memorial is narrowed by the early decision of the committee to make the memorial a State movement and not a Federal one.

His Gift To Australia
Surely that debars his military achievements from being the underlying theme for the monument now being conceived. His military talent was a gift to the whole of Australia, and is eternally recorded in the history of the Commonwealth in a manner of endurance that stone and bronze cannot surpass. According to the expressions of his friends, his success in war was accidental to his trained scientific thinking and his educated vocation of construction. Ethically-minded persons may consider it a needless perversion of right to choose a theme of destruction for a man of constructive mind when a unique opportunity for the latter is at hand.

A Great Opportunity
The choice of memorial is to be appropriate to the thoughts and acts of the hero. It is also desirable that it should reflect credit for all time on the discernment of its executors. The apparent predilection of the committee for an equestrian statue close to the Shrine is alarming in its orthodoxy, its commonplaceness and its failure to grasp the opportunity of recording in an original manner the constructive genius which our hero represents. Further, it does not strictly comply with the decision that this memorial should mark the appreciation of the people of Victoria of one of their outstanding sons.

Suez Canal Example
The world is dotted with equestrian statues of crusaders, monarchs and generals - crowded in their squares or palace yards, in different garb, but apparently on the same horse - until the passing stream of humanity accepts them with the apathy accorded to the lampposts or the fountains that support them. But who passes through the Suez Canal without thrilling to the welcome of Dr. Lesseps (9) and grasping his invitation to make use of his great work, and that without reading the lettering on the base?
And who in Victoria, resident or visitor, could pass along the Prince's Highway between Melbourne and Yallourn without being arrested and thrilled by a Monash column set on a suitable hill, say, near Berwick, and without being brought to an understanding of the benefits he has brought to this fair State?

The Master Brain
Sir John Monash may not have conceived the brown coal scheme. That may be to the credit of modest men who prefer to have others ask why a statue was not put up to them rather than why it was. But Sir John Monash's was the brain that carried the conception into effect against untold difficulties, that mastered them by choosing the men to master them, so that for all time the citizens of Victoria can live happier, cleaner, and less arduous lives.
Is it not easy to envisage such a monument in a commanding position in the most verdant part of our most verdant State, standing, away from the urbanities of our city and forming a focus of thought and attention that our young countryside so sorely lacks? Picture a chosen hill somewhere on the line of transmission wires about midway between his city and his great works crowned by a column with the figure of our hero in proper posture, surveying for all time the flow of material comfort to his fellow citizens.

The Contrast
Contrast this with the impossibility, of raising an equestrian statue above the standard of many that already exist, and picture it set beside the stupefying mass of masonry that is the Shrine, and then consider which would better perpetuate the memory of a great citizen.

Perhaps a hill on the south side of Berwick may have been suitable for the Monash Memorial. 

Panorama of Berwick, c. 1920-1954. Photographer: Rose Stereograph Co. 

State Library of Victoria Image H32492/8433 http://handle.slv.vic.gov.au/10381/58617

This is Daryl Lindsay's letter published in The Herald, on January 28, 1932, read it on Trove, here.

Letter to the Editor - Monash Memorial: Mr Daryl Lindsay's Views
Sir, - Mr Russell Grimwade's thoughtful article on the proposed Monash memorial should stir the imagination of all thinking people in this State. His unconventional suggestion to place a memorial column at Berwick, or some other conspicuous point between Melbourne and Yallourn, is full of significance.

The idea contains an clement of greatness, lifting it right away from the usual commonplace conception of the corporate mind. Public committees, however well-intentioned, are not usually blessed with Mr Grimwade's ability to visualise exactly what the memorial is going to mean to Victoria in the future. The aesthetic value of an equestrian statue, even of artistic merit, would be automatically negatived by the clumsy bulk of the Shrine in close proximity.

In a few years the inconspicuous horseman would go to join the ranks or Melbourne's forgotten statuary. Imagine a hilltop clearly visible from the Prince's Highway, carrying a memorial such as the Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square, built up on a simple base and topped by a dignified and symbolic figure of Monash against the skyline, surveying the vast tracts of country so materially assisted by him towards prosperity - such a landmark would be noticed and inquired into by every passer-by.

Apart from any personal bias in favor of a civil rather than a military memorial, I feel very strongly as an artist the need to decentralise such public work of art as we possess. In Europe one is continually charmed by the variety of silhouette - a ruined castle, a statue, or a village spire breaking the monotony of nature's outline unrelieved by man.

Australian landscape is sadly lacking in such points of interest. Let us at least consider the suitability and beauty of Mr Grimwade's conception before deciding on an irrevocable plunge into mediocrity.
Yours, etc...
Daryl Lindsay, Frankston, Jan 27.

Footnotes
(1) Sir Wilfred Russell Grimwade (1879-1955). Read his Australian Dictionary of Biography entry, here.
(2) Sir John Monash (1865-1931). Read his Australian Dictionary of Biography entry, here.
(3) Geoffrey Serle, who wrote General Monash's ADB entry, see here.
(4) I have written about the Monash Memorial Committee, here. There is also a photo of the Monash statue.
(5) Frederick Sheppherd Grimwade (1840-1910). Read his Australian Dictionary of Biography entry, here.
(6) Alfred Felton (1831-1904). Read his Australian Dictionary of Biography entry, here.   
(7) Sir Ernest Daryl Lindsay (1889-1976). Read his Australian Dictionary of Biography entry, here.
(8) Joan A'Beckett Lindsay (nee Weigall, 1896-1984). Joan was the great-niece of Sir William à Beckett (1806-1869) the first chief justice of Victoria. Read her Australian Dictionary of Biography entry, here.
(9) Dr Lesseps (1805-1894). Creator of the Suez Canal, read about him, here https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ferdinand-vicomte-de-Lesseps

General Sir John Monash remembered at Lang Lang

On May 7, 1936 the Koo Wee Rup Sun published the following report - At the Lang Lang State School the Monash Memorial Committee presented the school with a memorial volume last week. Memorial trees were planted in the school grounds.

1936 report of the Lang Lang School receiving the memorial volume and memorial tree.

The Koo Wee Rup Sun May 7, 1936

The Age had a fuller report a few days previously - To celebrate the 21st anniversary of Anzac day the Monash memorial committee, through Captain Peters, associated itself with friends of the late Sister Hilda Knox, the late Captain A. Jacka,V.C., Lieutenant Bert Hinkler and ex-scholars of the Lang Lang school who made the supreme sacrifice in the Great War, and presented the Lang Lang State school with a beautiful memorial volume, and planted memorial trees in the school grounds in memory of those honored. (The Age May 1, 1936, see here)

1936 report of the Lang Lang School receiving the memorial volume and memorial tree.

The Age May 1, 1936  https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/204829575

The Monash Memorial Committee was established soon after General Sir John Monash died on October 8, 1931. He was a Civil engineer, a soldier, chairman of the Shrine of Remembrance construction body and manager of the State Electricity Commission. You can read his entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, here. The role of the Memorial Committee, chaired by Major-General, Sir Thomas Blamey, was to establish a memorial to General Monash. The memorial took the form of a statue and was finally unveiled on November 12, 1950. It was designed by William Leslie Bowles and is in Kings Domain. The statue was well under way in 1939, but the Second World War caused the understandable delay in the completion of the statue.

The statue of General Monash, the result of the Monash Memorial Committee endeavours.

General Sir John Monash. Photographer: Sutcliffe Pty Ltd. 

State Library of Victoria H88.33/101

I cannot find any other references in the newspapers of the Monash Memorial Committee donating a book or books to a school, which doesn't mean it did not happen, however if the newspaper report below is correct then the Lang Lang School was the recipient of books the previous year in memory of General Monash and others - At a combined Anzac day service arranged by the local branch of the R.S.S.I.L.A., and five district State schools, more than 200 children, accompanied by their parents and district residents, were present. The address was given by Captain L. G. Buckland, M.C., M.M., and the Last Post was sounded by Trumpeter V. Mills. A feature of the ceremony was the presentation of books to Lang Lang State school library in memory of the late General Sir J. Monash, Captain Albert Jacka, V.C., Squadron Leader B. Hinkler, Sister Hilda Knox, and fallen scholars of Lang Lang

State school. (The Age, April 25, 1935, see here)

1935 report of the Lang Lang School being presented with books

The Age April 25 1935  https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/204286412

I wondered if there was some connection between members of the Monash Memorial Committee and the town of Lang Lang and that is why they received the books, but I can find nothing obvious. Lang Lang School may have raised funds for the Monash memorial, as this was encouraged by the Education Department, as we can see by the newspaper article, below. But I feel sure that other schools would also have raised funds and yet I can find no reference to them receiving books in honour of the General Monash's memory, let alone receiving them twice, as Lang Lang appears to have.

The Education Department allows Schools to fund raise for Monash Memorial.

The Herald May 16, 1932  https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/242792403

There are a few questions that I cannot answer - what were the titles of the books and what sort of trees were planted?  Do the books still exist and are the trees still living?

Before we finish, we will have a look at the other people mentioned in this post -

Blamey, Major General Thomas Blamey (1884 - 1951) - the Chairman of the Monash Memorial Committee. Read his entry on the Australian Dictonary of Biography, here.

Bowles, William Leslie Bowles (1885 - 1954) -  the sculptor of the General Monash statue. Read his entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, here.

Buckland, John Leslie Gibson (1887 - 1956, incorrectly listed as Huckland in the 1935 newspaper report). Captain Gibson gave the Anzac Day address at Lang Lang in 1935. He was born in Werris Creek in New South Wales, enlisted in December 1914 and was awarded both the Military Cross and the Military Medal. He also served in the Second World War, with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Mr Gibson was a consulting electrical engineer, when he was not serving in the Army.

Hinkler, Herbert John 'Bert' (1892 -1933) - aviator who served in the Royal Naval Air Service in the Great War. Read his entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, here.

Jacka, Albert (1893 -1932) - was the first Australian awarded the Victoria Cross in World War One. Read his entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, here.

Knox, Hilda (1883 - 1917) - Army Nurse, who died of illness whilst serving in France. Read her obituary, here. The obituary mentions that after her death, her parents received many letters from around Australia -  One lady wrote to Mr Knox that her only son was in the 4th L.H., and was in the ward in a hospital in Egypt of which Sister Knox had charge. He had been nursed by her, and spoke of the unfailing attention which they had received. He said, "We used to watch the door for her to come in. Every man of us loved her, and called her 'Our Daughter of the Regiment.' 

Peters, Charles Harold (1889 - 1951) - connected to the Monash Memorial Committee. Enlisted in 1916, awarded the Military Cross and Bar. His peace time occupation was a bookseller, he worked at Melville & Mullens.  He returned to that occupation after the War and rose to be the Managing Director of Robertson & Mullens (which later became Angus & Robertson). Read his obituary in The Herald of January 10, 1951, here.