Jack Curtin’s early childhood should have been one of the most secure periods of his life. A photograph taken outside one of the family’s Creswick homes certainly suggests a picture of domestic harmony. It shows Curtin’s father, dressed in his constable’s uniform, standing outside the picket fence, beyond the boundary of the house, with his hand resting on the fence, while Kate stands inside the boundary nursing her baby son. The separate domains of men and women seem clear, and were common enough for the time, with the strong-willed Kate dominating the domestic domain while his father’s domain, and the source of his authority, was the external one of money and work. As for the character of the relationship between husband and wife, that perhaps can be glimpsed in a studio photograph taken around the same time, when infant Jack is pictured on his father’s lap while mother Kate stands erect at their side, one hand resting firmly on her husband’s shoulder.
But the photographs are misleading. They conceal the chronic illness that continued to beset Curtin, with a serious bout laying him low at the time of his son’s birth in 1885. It was so serious that the local paper reported in April of that year that, ‘owing to failing health, he had been compelled to withdraw from the police force’. It observed that he had ‘for some time suffered acutely from rheumatism’.1 Despite the paper’s report, the plucky constable battled on, apparently enjoying a period of remission. However, the lot of a police constable in Creswick was not calculated to benefit his illness. Constantly pounding the beat around the town, or attending to his duties in the damp police station, which required a ton of firewood a month to ward off the winter chill, was not likely to aid the humour or the health of the increasingly arthritic policeman. His illness effectively put paid to any hope he may have entertained of being promoted within the force. During the early 1880s, Protestant officers at Ballarat had apparently discriminated against Catholic police in the district when recommending constables for promotion. By the time that examinations had been introduced for promotions in 1884, Curtin was too affected by his illness to be able to expect preferment.
So young Jack was born to a father whose domestic authority as a parent and external authority as a police officer was compromised by his crippling ailment. The onset of the illness meant that young Curtin would never know his father without this physical shadow being over him. And there was also the shadow of his shame in Sandridge. There was an even darker shadow as well. It seems that he was also afflicted at this time by syphilis,2 the so-called ‘French disease’ that affected some 5 to 10 per cent of the population in the late nineteenth century and which would eventually kill him. It cannot be known for certain when Curtin contracted this disease, but it is likely that it occurred prior to his arrival in Creswick, perhaps when he was living in the police barracks in Melbourne. Since neither his wife nor his children showed signs of having the disease, it suggests that it had reached the latent stage by the time of his marriage. How much these various shadows affected Curtin’s childhood cannot be known. Although Curtin was relatively silent on the character and influence of his father, a fact that is interesting in itself, there is a suggestion that his illnesses may have caused his father to be so irascible that it blighted the home atmosphere. An incident in 1884, which spilled onto the pages of the Ballarat press, provides some evidence for this.
An anonymous letter to the Ballarat Courier in January 1884 claimed that, at six o’clock one morning, two ‘well behaved and respectable’ boys delivering mail and newspapers were ‘bailed up by a big constable in uniform’ who ‘shook them, knocked them about, and threatened to “schoke” them’. When a ‘respectable resident . . . came to his door and civilly advised the constable to let the boys go’, the unnamed constable ‘turned on this gentleman, and threatened him, and told him that if he would come out on the footpath he would “smash” him’. The correspondent asked ‘whether such a constable is fit to be guardian of the peace’. When the police superintendent in Ballarat requested details of the incident from Creswick, Curtin came forward to admit that he was the constable concerned. He claimed that he had been returning in the early morning from a night on duty when he saw two boys who ‘ran off at full speed’ when they sighted him. Thinking they were boys who had escaped a few days previously from the Ballarat Reformatory, Curtin gave chase and caught the boys but made no mention in his report of having assaulted them. The elderly Sergeant Moran, who was in charge of the Creswick force, generally backed the account of his constable although conceding that a witness had seen Curtin ‘shake the boys by the collar’. No further action was taken.3
The incident, as reported, suggests that Curtin, who may have already developed a limp as a result of his disease, was the butt of some derision from the youths of Creswick. The boys confessed that they ran from Curtin ‘only to take a rise’ out of the ailing constable. They were presumably surprised to be caught. Norman Lindsay, who was growing up in Creswick at this time, later wrote incidents like this into his Creswick novels. As historian Graeme Davison observed, ‘In Lindsay’s stories old people are forever being taunted for their physical deformities and disabilities, depicted in ungainly or ridiculous situations . . . and even subjected to physical assault. [In one novel] the lads of the town make sport of stoning a rheumatic old man . . .’4 Although Curtin was only 29 at the time of this incident with the boys, his rheumatism had shackled him with the physical characteristics of an older man. And as his condition worsened, it would have come to dominate more and more his relations with his young son. The authority of Curtin as a father figure, cloaked as it was with the added authority of a policeman, must have been diminished by his physical infirmity. It would have been difficult for Curtin not to have been affected by the disparaging view of his father apparently held by the youth of Creswick.
However, reflecting on his childhood, Curtin painted a more benign picture of his father as a policeman who eschewed conflict rather than the ‘boots and all’ portrait painted by the anonymous correspondent. As prime minister, Curtin told reporters that his father
was a sergeant of police at Creswick, and one night when he was standing in front of the Unicorn Hotel a man ran up to him in a state of great agitation and said, ‘Sergeant, come down to the American Hotel at once. Two men are fighting dreadfully’. ‘How long have they been fighting?’ my father asked. ‘Oh, fully ten minutes’, was the reply.‘Very well’, my father said, ‘I’ll be down in – let me see – in about 20 minutes’.5
It makes an amusing story and conforms to the image of the shrewd Irish copper. What is particularly interesting is that Curtin raises his father to the rank of sergeant, when he actually remained a foot constable for the whole of his ten-year career with the force. Given that Curtin was a very young witness to his father’s Creswick days, the story was probably told by his father some time after they had left Creswick and was a reflection of how his father wished to be seen by his son. A better indication of his father’s temper was perhaps given in a rather enigmatic comment by his son, without mentioning his father by name, that he had ‘been taught to curse at the child’s sob in the darkness’.6 Living in cramped quarters as they did, with children and parents sometimes sharing the same bedroom, and with his father suffering the pain of his affliction, it is not surprising that Curtin would have heard his father often ‘curse at the child’s sob in the darkness’. Later, his father’s illnesses would turn his young life upside down as he and his mother were forced to assume the burden of earning the family’s sustenance.
The photographs of Curtin’s infancy are misleading in another respect. They show Kate as a determined and upright woman and the controller of the family’s domestic affairs, suggesting that she bulked large in her young son’s life during these years and that he had her to himself until the birth of his brother George. In fact, the woman who bulked largest in Curtin’s young life was an outsider, Edith Jordan, who was recruited from among Creswick’s single women to take care of him. ‘I absolutely loved that little boy’, recalled Jordan, claiming that she ‘had complete care of him’.7 Another local woman claimed also to have nursed Curtin as a child and to have later received telegrams from him on her birthday.8 With all the domestic chores that family life in the Victorian era entailed, together with the added burden of caring for an intermittently ill husband, it is not surprising that Kate should seek outside assistance to care for her children. Indeed, it was not uncommon for the times, even in relatively humble homes, to have some domestic assistance. Moreover, it was not the practice for mothers to be closely involved in the lives of their children who, while being ‘expected to obey the older generation in terms of behaviour and belief’, were also expected ‘to become responsible for themselves and their everyday existence at an early age’.9 Nevertheless, the psychological effect on Curtin of being mothered by outsiders may have been such as to cause his later apparent ambivalence towards his formidable mother.
So Curtin was raised in a household where his father was racked by increasingly debilitating illnesses and seems to have sought solace in the bottle,10 and where his mother was unable to cope alone with a domestic burden exacerbated by an invalid husband. If his home life was less than idyllic, the life of the surrounding town may have provided some compensation for the young boy. Just as the population of Creswick was drawn from disparate parts of the world, so too did the regular festivals of the townsfolk draw on various traditions for their inspiration. From England, the ‘Jack-in-the-green’ festivities, when English chimneysweeps traditionally celebrated the coming of spring by having one of their number enclosed in a pyramid-shaped structure of wood covered with leaves, were associated in Creswick with the celebration of Christmas and Easter. As the town’s early historian recorded, it was then that
Lorries, waggons, spring carts, drays and other vehicles drawn by horses were decorated with branches of gum trees, flowers and ribbons. The occupants were groups of men representing a variety of characters, mostly South American negroes. They beat drums, blew horns and tin whistles and rattled money boxes. They were the joy, or the terror, of children when they entered the homes and presented their boxes for donations to the hospital.11
After the procession, sports were held in a similar spirit mixing traditional English merry-making and Australian improvisation. They played Aunt Sally, trying to knock a pipe from the head of a female figure; they tested their skill in the shooting galleries or laughed at the Punch and Judy show; they rode the merry-go-round and pitched in the skittle alley; and ‘well-known district men, stripped to the waist, engaged in [wrestling] matches in the Cornish, Catch-as-Catch-Can and Cumberland styles’ or competed in woodchopping competitions.12
Beneath these apparently inclusive festivities, the divisions of sectarianism still cut deep. Six weeks after Curtin was born, the Catholics of Creswick joined their priest and fellow believers from several surrounding towns who journeyed to Ballarat on two chartered steam trains. The Curtins may well have been among their number, either that year or on subsequent occasions when such communal excursions were held. The crowd of some two thousand spent a fine February day strolling around the delights of Ballarat’s botanic gardens and steaming about its expansive lake on pleasure steamers. Not to be outdone, the Protestants of the town reacted by organising their own excursion the following month, prevailing upon shopkeepers to close their businesses and upon the mayor to declare a holiday while the pleasure-seekers, under the leadership of a future Victorian premier, Alexander Peacock, puffed off on a pointedly longer excursion to seaside Queenscliff, confirming their economic and political superiority over the stay-at-home Catholics in the be-shuttered town.13 The religious divisions that these rival excursions revealed were ones that Curtin would spurn as a young man and later, as a political leader, seek to surmount.
Away from these occasional festivities, there was much in Creswick and its surrounds to distract the attention of curious and active children. In the novels based upon his relatively privileged childhood in Creswick, Norman Lindsay portrays a boyhood life of relatively carefree days marked by mischief-making away from the prying eyes of distant parents. There was swimming to be had in the local waterhole during hot summer days and there was the perennial interest in the laneways of the increasingly decrepit Chinese quarter of Creswick. There on the river flats, the Chinese sold fresh produce from beneath the shingled verandahs of their roughly constructed timber dwellings. Of all the divisions within the town – whether deriving from culture, class or religion – the division between the Chinese men and their fellow Creswickians was the deepest. As elsewhere in Australia, the Chinese were tolerated for the fresh produce they provided but, as Lindsay reveals in one of his novels, they were the butt of many a childhood taunt and prank. John Graham, the chronicler of Creswick, recalled how ‘Chinamen were commonly known amongst boys as “Monkeys”, and pelting them with stones was a common but reprehensible practice’.14
It is difficult to determine the influence on Curtin of his childhood in Creswick. For reasons that we can only speculate upon, he was very reticent about talking of his early life. While he did spend only five years in Creswick, he always claimed to be conscious of coming from there. Perhaps it was because of Creswick’s proclaimed status as the place to which an inordinate number of prominent people could trace their origins. Apart from the Lindsays, various politicians, union leaders and generals were nurtured in the town. The mother of the man who would later be his political opponent – Robert Menzies – was also born there. And the town, which was proud of its progeny, was quick to claim Curtin for its own when he later became leader of the Labor Party. In return, Curtin seems to have been conscious of the burden of expectation that coming from Creswick imposed. On becoming prime minister in 1941, Curtin responded to a congratulatory message from the people of Creswick by claiming that ‘[I have] never forgotten my birthplace, and I have often recalled, with pride, the number of great men who can claim it as such’. He promised to ‘worthily uphold the record of achievement which Creswickians have gained’.15 However, any developing attachment to Creswick that Curtin had as a child was abruptly cut short when his ailing father finally was forced to resign from the police force.
At the end of October 1889, after some nine months’ paid sick leave, part of which was spent in Adelaide, presumably visiting his policeman brother in a vain search for alternative employment,16 Curtin returned to Creswick unable to resume work. Sergeant Grady, who had replaced Sergeant Moran in charge of the Creswick police, reported that ‘from his present appearance there is no likelihood of his being again fit to perform Police duty’. Curtin’s doctor agreed that ‘the effects of his first illness [in 1882] have never been got over’ and he had been ‘gradually becoming more and more helpless from Chronic Rheumatic Arthritis’. He was ordered to report for a medical examination in Melbourne. Taking up temporary residence in Eloise Cottage in Barkly Street, Brunswick, the ailing Curtin received the expected ruling from the medical board on 15 November. The police doctor found that Curtin was suffering from ‘Chronic Rheumatism affecting chiefly the fingers, wrists, shoulders and toes. Wrists much thickened, and muscles of shoulder joints wasted.’ The doctor decided that Curtin was ‘unlikely to recover sufficiently to become an efficient member of the Force’.17
Writing to Chief Commissioner Chomley five days later, and pointing out that his incapacity was due to ‘the exigencies of Constabulary duty’, Curtin appealed for ‘such pecuniary consideration as will . . . enable me to support my wife and young family until the latter are in some way able to render assistance’. He claimed that he was ‘in such a bad state’ that he was ‘totally unable to do anything towards the support of my family’. He indicated at this stage that he would prefer the option of a pension rather than the alternative of a lump sum payment.18 Chomley was sympathetic to the constable’s plight. He had earlier testified to the police royal commission that ‘after twenty years police service a man is generally done for’.19 Curtin had not lasted even that long and Chomley would help to see that he was provided for.
Staying on in Brunswick for more than a month, Curtin was presumably exploring his post-police options. Only after seeing Chomley on 5 December did he finally return to Creswick. The commissioner had apparently pointed out to Curtin that taking a pension would require him to resign immediately while, in the case of a gratuity, he could remain with the police until the sum was determined. This seems to have caused Curtin to rethink his options and to seek the opinion of his doctor and the decision of the superannuation board on the level of pension to which he would be entitled. The doctor may well have given him a poor prognosis for Curtin now decided at the end of December that, rather than accepting the security of an annual pension, he would take the lump sum gratuity. This suggested that he was anticipating his early demise. Or it may have been that he needed the lump sum to buy the lease of the Melbourne pub that he would soon run and which he hoped would provide equivalent or greater security than a pension. He sought to maximise the gratuity by requesting that he be allowed to stay on until the end of January 1890 so as to complete thirteen years’ service with the Victorian Government. The request was granted.20 Curtin’s choice would have important ramifications for his 5-year-old son’s future. Instead of an early death, Curtin lived for nearly thirty more years during which, in the absence of a pension and with his gratuity exhausted, his son would have to assume much of the burden for the family’s livelihood.
Before leaving Creswick, Curtin was entertained in February at the American Hotel by ‘a good number of gentlemen’ who had collected a purse of sovereigns as a testimonial for the departing constable in recognition of his ‘services to the town’.21 By March 1890, as he received notice that his gratuity was set at £201 10s, Curtin had already installed his family in Eloise Cottage in Brunswick.22 Despite his protestations the previous year about his incapacity for work, Curtin was soon running the Letterkenny Hotel on the corner of Heape Court and Little Lonsdale Street in the centre of Melbourne after having apparently invested his gratuity in its lease. It would prove to be a fateful decision, both for Curtin and for his eldest son.