CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

THE AUSTRALIAN RIFT OF THE EARLY 1900S

“It sounds plausible enough tonight but wait until tomorrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.”

—The Time Machine, H.G. Wells, 1895

Erskin Place, Melbourne, Victoria State, Commonwealth of Australia, October 23 to November 11, 1912

Kyle and Henry trudged through the forlorn streets of Erskin Place in North Melbourne taking care where they planted their shoes since the streets were muddy and served as the sewer system for the slum. Children and emaciated dogs played in the mud without a care. Smoke billowed from the chimneys of the nearby factories making Kyle’s throat raw and his eyes to sting. Trams and horse-drawn carts moved helter-skelter through the rutted roads and alleys. The housing stock was of strikingly poor quality. Most of the dwellings had small—on average under 50 square meters– living space with separate living quarters, wash house, and privy. Those living quarters had no real bathrooms or facilities for sewerage. Bathing involved hauling buckets of heavily polluted water, often up several flights of stairs for a washrag once-over.

Bathing was a luxury that required too much time and effort to accomplish with any frequency. In fact, the popularity of June as the month for weddings came about because for many slum dwellers the yearly bath took place near the end of May; so bodily odor was still under some control by June. The same water had to be used for drinking and cooking. Survival required straining the water through cheese cloth followed by prolonged boiling of the water and a good memory. Babies were bathed in the grey water left over from clothes washing.

Erskin Place—like other slums throughout Australia—provided only a squalid existence with all houses facing back-yards or railways. The ramshackle housing, with leaky roofs and holes in the walls was the norm and not the exception; and the streets were woefully over-crowded and posed real risks to people’s health just as did the poisoned air and the appallingly filthy streets. Many streets were no more than narrow winding lanes lined with tiny weatherboard and brick houses—many of which had long since converted to boarding houses–that dated as far back as the 1850s. Horses rushing down such lanes were a danger to oblivious children. Erskin Place–like other housing areas for the poor—was homogeneous and unchanging. The denizens of such places were locked into a never-ending cycle of poverty, producing too many children for the family’s income, and crime.

Disease was rampant and serious. Treatable diseases, fractures, and head trauma more often than not went untreated because the poor had insufficient means to afford to see a doctor or to go to a hospital. They suffered lasting disabilities and premature death from problems that the rich could either avoid or could receive preventative and curative care.

Hank said, “Do you realize that as recently as 1901, an epidemic of bubonic plague struck here and killed several dozen people, most of them children and the elderly. There was not a single case seen in any family outside this fetid slum.”

“I never heard of that. I guess not much news gets out about these places,” Kyle commented. “I guess no one really cares.”

Hank nodded. Kyle was being rapidly converted to the cause of the poor without Hank even half trying.

“Kyle, I want to take you to the home of one of my men from the dock. It will be the final way to convince you that something needs to be done. The more people like you that come in here, the louder will be the voices being raised to the government. You are a builder, a developer. Did you know that inner city developers have no obligation to contribute anything to essential public infrastructure; so, no kind of community facilities like sewer plants or affordable housing ever becomes obligatory?”

“I didn’t know that either, Mate. It’s a bloomin’ shame, and I guess that’s why bupkis gets done.”

“We’re here,” Hank said. “This here’s my boy, Fred Shine’s place. It don’t look like much outside, but wait ‘til ya have a Captain Cook at the inside.”

Hank knocked on the door of the shanty; and after what seemed to be an especially long wait, the door opened. A young man opened the door a crack, and, seeing who it was, let the two men in. Kyle had his first Captain Cook [look] at the inside of a shanty scarcely fit for keeping pigs.

“Hank, good to see ya. Come in. Sorry there ain’t no place ta set and its kinda a dog’s breakfast in here—hard ta get good help these days.”

“And a g’day to yous,” Hank said, taking note that there was another man and two grimy tackers present in the room.

Fred was right, there was no furniture; literally no place ‘ta set’. Kyle and Hank stood and looked around. Kyle was glad he did not have to sit down; he was afraid he might catch something. The tiny hovel was built with three walls of corrugated iron, and an open side facing the back alley which was covered by a tattered sheet of canvas. The roof was made of old thatch with worn-out clothes stuffed into the holes. Kyle could hear the scurrying of little feet running about in the dirty thatch. There was only one room, and it was tiny. A baby cart was hanging from a rafter because there was no space on the floor. The single source of heat was a fireplace which held a three-inch thick layer of old soot and ash and gave out no heat. Two little children played with mud balls on the dirty bare floor; the room served as kitchen, bedroom, living room, and store room. There was barely space enough to stand.

An older man whom Hank seemed to know was leaning against one of the walls holding cards in his right hand and a bottle of cheap Rutherglen Muscat red wine in the left. Evidently Kyle and Hank had disturbed Fred and his friend from their fascinating game of Swedish Rummy.

“How’s it hangin’, Mikey?” Hank asked the red-faced bruce bloke with a gin blossom nose.

“None too bad, Hank. You foine?”

“Can’t complain.”

“Any news on when there’ll be work? asked Mikey with a slur in his speech.

“Any time now, I’m told,” Hank said although he knew no more than Mikey did about it.

“So, we’ll be keepin’ on the dole for a while longer. Down-market blokes the like of us never do git a fair suck off the sauce bottle. Ain’t right, but it ain’t never gonna change, neither.”

“Ya got that right, Mikey.”

Having finished the scintillating conversation with the two drunks and taking in the depressing scene long enough, Kyle and Hank left.

“Known those bruces long, Hank?” Kyle asked.

“Too long. They’re both bludgers and are second or third generation dole grabbers. The strike could notta come at a worse time for blokes like them. They never seem to rise. A man can sorta understand what the big end ‘o town means when they say that all of us down at this end are worthless as a billabong fulla spit. You saw ‘em today. I never seen either of ‘em when they weren’t legless as any other drunk layin’ around in one the ditches in any of the slums.”

Kyle nodded, but the visit to Erskin Place produced serious food for thought for him. They stopped for a pint at one of the gin joints on the wharf before heading home. The docks were only recently coming back to life after the damages done during the strike. It was only a little less dismal that Erskin Place.

After supper, Kyle sat down to write a serious letter to Alexandra—a last try to get her to accept the dreadful inequality extant in Australia and to join him in his planned efforts to lessen the suffering in the slums and among the menial laboring families. It was heartfelt and imploring. He had a bit of hope that working together in a good cause might help heal the growing rift between them.

November 12, 1912

Dear Alexandra,

I have missed you sorely. I want things to get back to the way they were when we took our little honeymoon trip up to Bulahdelah. You have to admit that we’ve had some good old times. I think we can be fair dinkum again if we give it a try.

There is something I want to ask you. Please take a little walkabout with me to see one of the slums and conditions at dockside. They are terrible and getting worse all the time. I know you are woman with a big heart, and you will want to help before more people die of disease, starvation, and crime. We have enough to help, and we should. Please, just one walkabout. Everything I read says that poor-quality housing makes the already poor blokes even worse off. The slums are crowded with struggling young people, people with disabilities and sicknesses that get worse without proper care and education, renters, foreigners, and indigenous people. All of those try to get along with wretchedly low incomes, and can’t get full-time employment, if any.

There is a massive separation between rich and poor, both classes leading completely separate lives from each other. Might as well be from different foreign countries. Where your house is located shows your social status. The rich live at the top of the hill where we do. It very rarely ever floods; we’re away from the dirty air and filthy streets that come from factories’ smoke. The poor live down at the bottom of the hill in the slums; just as soon as they seem to be getting a bit ahead, they get flooded. All the time they are surrounded by bad air, infectious diseases, and their streets and homes down there at the bottom end of the market are horribly unsanitary, unsafe; and the houses are too little for people to live decently because of the crowding. You have to see what most of the houses are like: for those living in them. Houses—if you can call them that—are just prefabricated iron boxes that were shipped from Asia. They freeze in the winter and roast in the summer. Women and children live miserably and die too young.

Imagine not having enough money; so, you have to rent and to live in those cans. You got no skills, no education; so, you can’t make enough to pay the rent; and you are out on the street; and nobody cares a hapenny’s worth. We have a house ten times the size of the average in the slums. We have separate bedrooms for the adults and children. The kitchen is inside, and we have specialty rooms like a laundry, sitting rooms, game room, and an inside bathroom. Lots of those poor blighters just use the ditches and the streets as their bathrooms. We even have a nice clean garden. We have a much lower chance of catching diseases and also far better medical care if we do.

Alexandra, we can’t change it all; but we can do something. We must do something. It will haunt me to the grave if we don’t. I love you. Please love me and come back to me; so, we can work together on this.

Love,

Kyle

There was never any reply, written or verbal.

Melbourne Magistrates’ Court, Corner of Russell and Latrobe Streets, Trial Division Building, Commonwealth of Australia, January 24, 1913

The case of Mikey Dixon v. State of Victoria, Commonwealth of Australia

Date: 24 January 1913

Presiding Magistrate, Hon. Isaac Douglass-Winthrop

Barristers: For Mikey Dixon, Plaintiff-Christopher Bernard, QC. For the State of Victoria et.al., Defendant-Larimer Devin Cullimore, QC.

Nature of the Cause: Plaintiff alleges that the Defendant [State of Victoria, City of Melbourne, Port Authority of Melbourne, and Departments of Sanitation and Security] failed to carry out their fiduciary duties for the citizens of several impoverished neighborhoods by not providing proper zoning, policing, sewage management, clean and safe culinary water, failure to maintain order, failure to provide education for the children of the neighborhoods in question, and protection from flooding and spread of infectious diseases.

Witnesses for the Plaintiff: Kyle Dewit Herman Bradshaw, Builder and Notable Citizen, Henry “Hank” Clapham, Elected Leader of the Dock Workers Union, Fred Shine, Citizen of Erskin Place Neighborhood, Melbourne, Mikey Dixon, Dock Worker and Citizen of Erskin Place Neighborhood, Mrs. Ruth Prescott Housekeeper, Citizen of North Melbourne, housewife and mother of ten, Augustus Byron Moore, President of the Australian Labor Party.

Witnesses for the Defendants: Hon. Quentin Overton McBride, State Senator representing Melbourne in the senate, Lord Mayor Thomas James Davey, City of Melbourne, Constable Mervin “Merv” Fenwick, law enforcement officer, Erskin Place Neighborhood, Mrs. Alexandra Tarasova-Yusupov Bradshaw, Notable Citizen of Melbourne, housewife, business woman, and mother of three, H.V. McKay, Notable citizen and Owner of the Sunshine Harvester Works in Melbourne, Augustus Byron Parker, Notable Citizen and President of the Associated Northern Collieries, McIlwraith McEacharn, Notable Citizen and President of the Adelaide Steamship Company.

Judgment of the court:

Slums are a manifestation of the two main challenges facing human settlements in general and development in Victoria State and Melbourne City specifically: rapid urbanization and the urbanization of poverty. The court stipulates that slum areas have the highest concentrations of poor people and the worst shelter and physical environmental conditions. The issue of the case of Mikey Dixon v. State of Victoria, Commonwealth of Australia, 24 January, 1913 is the question of what person(s) or what social entity(s) should be held responsible for the causation of the poverty and therefore to be responsible for repair of the problem. The plantiffs insist that the rich, reputable employers, the state, and the city, are responsible either individually or collectively.

The first question is–of course–whether an actual problem exists or is inner city poverty more a perception on the part of activists who view life through the prism of their own social, economic, religious, and ethnic perspectives. Seldom admitted by such people is the positive side of so-called slum life. Studies done by British and Australian institutions of higher learning correctly point out that slums are the first stopping point for immigrants. Inner city concentrations of newly arrived people provide the lowest cost and, in fact, the only affordable housing that will enable the immigrants to save for their eventual absorption into greater urban society peopled by such as the defendants in this action. As the place of residence for low-income employees, slums keep the social and economic institutions of the city—including Melbourne—functioning in a variety of different and effective ways.

The majority of slum dwellers in developing country cities such as Melbourne and Sydney earn their living from informal sector activities located either within or outside slum areas, and many informal entrepreneurs operating from slums have clienteles extending to the rest of the city. Most slum dwellers are people struggling to make an honest living, within the context of extensive urban poverty and formal unemployment. Slums are also places in which the vibrant mixing of different cultures frequently results in new forms of artistic expression. Out of unhealthy, crowded, and often dangerous environments can emerge cultural movements and levels of solidarity unknown in the suburbs of the rich. A fact often overlooked is that slum dwellers have developed economically rational and innovative shelter solutions for themselves, however inadequate or inappropriate the solutions may seem to people in the higher strata.

It must be accepted as a given—unfortunately–that poverty is the underlying and most important causation of the existence of slums and the slow progress towards the goal of adequate shelter for all. The important studies from the University of Melbourne have demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that provision of improved housing and related services through slum upgrading or even physical eradication of slums will—by themselves—fail to solve the slum problem at issue in this case. Solutions based on this premise have failed to address the main underlying causes of slums, of which poverty is the most significant.

Urban stratification has multiple dimensions: economic, political, cultural, social, ethnic and—as demonstrated in Mikey, et. al.–spatial. These stratifications find expression in various status markers. For example, people in different strata will often dress differently and they may use different vocabulary or pronunciation. There will also often be differences in what and how much they possess, the type and amount of food they consume, and their living environments. By tradition, status also prescribes certain behaviors and ‘manners’. Segregation by ethnic groups, which, in turn, have been associated with specific occupations, occurred widely in preindustrial cities. Ethnic quarters tended to be self-sufficient, physically and socially separated from the rest of the city. Often, they have their own unique social structure, including political leaders and schools. So, one of the questions prompted by this case is “should slums and slum life be eradicated and permanently changed?”

Ideally, housing provides us with the secure, comfortable shelter that people and their families need to live healthy, productive lives. In general, we have a modern housing stock with good heating and cooling, few major structural problems and few problems with damp and mold. By contrast, bad housing makes it much more likely you will get sick and stay sick once ill. The Reserve Bank governor acknowledged young Australians need their parents’ help to buy a home in Sydney.

The answers to the questions posed constitute the findings—the judgment—of this court. Nowhere in Australian law are inner city developers found to be under obligation to provide or even contribute to essential public infrastructure, such as affordable housing and community facilities, based on density bonus systems anymore than they must provide special services for the affluent to enable their children to receive advanced educational degrees. Reputable employers have been required to provide livable minimal wages for workers and their families, and no more.

Any action by this court to impair free action of union and employer boards, city, county, and national governments and would deprive such entities of any value under the law or in the eyes of ordinary citizens of Australia. The law prevents this magistrate from doing so. Therefore, I find in favor of the defendants.

Since the legislative bodies and, therefore, the courts, have not seen it prudent or lawful to enact such reforms as demanded by the plaintiffs, this court makes the following suggestions to citizens with an interest in making changes for the people living in Australia’s slums:

1. Seek legislation to require governmental entities to mandate slum conditions reforms and to provide funding to do so.

2. Provide mandatory education for all Australians to enable them better to participate in their own welfare.

3. Unite labor organizations, syndicates of employers, benefactors, and governmental institutions to study conditions and to provide realistic solutions which can be implemented.

4. Urge governments to raise taxes on the public and on businesses if such is required to effect the changes above.

A benefit of establishing such requirements along with designation of what persons and what organizations are responsible will–of necessity–lead to accountability. Failure to establish such changes will necessarily cause blame to fall on the shoulders of agitators such as the present plaintiffs without excuse.

Signed,

Isaac Douglass-Winthrop

Hon. Isaac Douglass-Winthrop,

Presiding Magistrate, Melbourne Magistrates’ Court

Alexandra waited for the reading of the magistrate court judgment before doing anything of importance regarding her life with Kyle and, indeed in Australia. Having been fully vindicated—so far as she was concerned—by Judge Douglass-Winthrop’s finding, she considered that much of her problem with Kyle was a dichotomy of classes. In short, she was right; and he was wrong; and never the twain shall meet, as Kipling stated in his classic poem. She could no longer be content to live in a marital arrangement so completely mismatched. It was time—posthumous–for her to rectify the situation.

Kyle was conveniently away on business—another one of his hair-brained money-making schemes. He and a partner were exploring Milford Sound on the South Island of New Zealand determine the prospects for making their fortune in the fur seal business. Alexandra recognized it as an excuse to stay away from her. Therefore, the timing was right.

She had the servants pack twelve new stateroom trunks with her best dresses and other high-quality items she would need for an extended stay. She also filled four steamer trunks with sturdy outdoor clothing and equipage, including the new eye protectors called Foster-Grant sun glasses from America. She planned and replanned each item she was going to take and forced herself to define a purpose that would make it worth her while to keep it with her. Satisfied with her efforts, she set about to manage her accounts.

She sought out her creditors and paid off every one of them, including the very small debts. When that was completed, she took a Hansom Cab to the Victoria branch of the Commonwealth Bank and the Queensland Government Savings Bank where she removed all her money and had it transferred to her account held by Wáng Wen Sheng, head of the Wáng Family Tong.

“How is such an account managed, Madam?” the concerned bank assistant asked.

“It is held in the Commercial Bank of China—one of the institutions the Chinese refer to as a yinhang or silver institution. Here is the account number and the names of the signatories. They are Wáng Wen Sheng, his daughter, Caihong, and me. Can you make a wire transfer of the funds?”

“Of course. We use Western Union. Will that be satisfactory?”

“Completely. The funds will be held under the name of Wáng Caihong as I require complete anonymity.”

“I beg your pardon, Mrs. Bradshaw, but do you have that much trust in a Chinese person?”

“I have complete trust. It is a family matter.”

The assistant manager could not resist raising one eyebrow to give the patron a dubious look. It was ignored; so, the employee decided that it was not any of her business and quickly completed the process.

The process–and even the conversation—was almost identical in the Queensland Government Savings Bank. Alexandra had to admit to herself that it was rather discomfiting to be a person with no money in a city where she had lived for so long. She hurried from the bank to catch her train to Sydney. She was escorted aboard the Victorian Railways Premier Train and to her first-class compartment by an obsequious under-conductor named Franklin. She tipped him two dollars, and he looked at her as if she had just guaranteed his children’s educations.

The ride was smooth and comfortable except for a mandatory transfer of trains in Albury owing to the break-of-guage in the tracks. She had to walk down a long island platform to the new train on an old-style narrow guage track with Franklin carrying her en-suite luggage. He nearly swooned when she gave him another two dollars—more than five days pay—as a tip. It amused her to see him bow and scrape and to have a chance to imagine giving herself a secret pat on the back for her ability to be so generous, another of the perquisites of her class. The trip to Sydney was without incident and entirely comfortable—even luxurious. She was served two fine meals in her stateroom. Attendants in starched white coats attendants served from silver dome covered platters onto lace-edged linen table clothes with matching napkins bearing the train’s monogramed logo. The eight utensils were silver, and the three glassware offerings were an exotic assortment of Imperial Dragon, Hindu Ganesha, and Tropical Elephant goblets imported for exclusive use by the railroad.

High tea included buttered bread with thinly sliced cucumber, Egg Mayonnaise, thin slices of medium rare roast beef, an assortment of cheese, tuna, and tinned salmon with a slice of Polish sweet pickle, and an English scone. Alexandra chose a well-aged Chardonnay from the Australian wine offerings and crème brulee for dessert. Dinner was more that she could eat: Beef Wellington, small portions of roast lamb and mutton with side servings of horse radish and Hollandaise sauces, cold mixed frutos del mar salad, an assortment of fresh vegetables, and choccy biccy and Italian gelato assortment for dessert.