Faster: Manly in the 1920s
By Terry Metherell, 2006
This draft research paper is intended to stimulate community discussion and further local
history research. Your comments, contributions and corrections would be welcome.
The author can be contacted at: [email protected]
Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: “Fit for Heroes”: The Scars of War
Chapter 2: Speeding Up: Transport in the 1920s
Chapter 3: Holiday Visions: Subdividing Manly in the 1920s
Chapter 4: Street of Dreams: The Corso in the 1920s
Chapter 5: Exotic Pleasures: Manly Entertainment in the 1920s
Chapter 6: Outdoors: Manly Childhoods in the 1920s
Chapter 7: The Seasiders: Manly Schooling in the 1920s
Chapter 8: Selling Manly: The ‘Boosters’
Chapter 9: Arena of Dreams: Manly Sports in the 1920s
Chapter 10: Manly’s Chinese Gardens
Chapter 11: Celebration: Manly’s 1927 Jubilee
Introduction
Life changed dramatically for Manly after the Great War of 1914-18. Prosperity
gradually returned. Population grew rapidly and new suburbs were needed to house
new families. The transport revolution of the motor car and truck followed the bicycle
and tram into popular use, speeding up movement of people and goods. Mass
communication by telephone and, later, radio, became cheaper and more popular.
New household consumer goods from America like the refrigerator began to excite
the ‘ice box’ generation. Modern advertising with glamorous images and, later, glossy
colours helped drive a new market of ‘consumers’. Popular entertainment such as music
hall and cabaret attracted huge crowds and picture palaces spread throughout the
suburbs. At home, the phonograph and pianola drew middle-class families around for
singalongs and popular music in preparation for the coming of the radio ‘set’.
Everywhere community, family and work life were changing quickly. Manly as both a
community suburb and popular resort was at the heart of many of these changes. One
word captures Manly’s quickening pulse in the 1920s: FASTER!
1
Chapter 1: Scars of War
Manly’s transition from war to peace was painful and difficult. With 60,000 dead and
over 150,000 wounded, and unhealed wounds from the bitter conscription battles of
1916 and 1917, Australian society was divided and uncertain about the future.
In Manly, the Corso War Memorial unveiled by the Governor-General on Anzac Day
1916, bore the names of local soldiers killed. Nearby, at Manly Public School their
memorial unveiled in 1922 was inscribed with 258 names of ex-students who had
volunteered. Four more names were added in 2003 on a separate plaque donated by
the Taylor family, who lost a relative. Forty-two were killed in action or died of wounds or
disease. Ten of Manly’s soldiers were decorated for conspicuous gallantry.
Scan 29.8.05. Unveiling of War Memorial, 1916.
The first wounded volunteers began to return to Manly in late 1915. By 1916 the
local community recognised the need to help those repatriated, often with very severe
wounds, as well as help the widows and children of those killed. In April 1916, the Manly
Voluntary Workers’ Association was formed – one of the earliest responses to appeals
for volunteers to provide homes for disabled ex-servicemen, or their widows and
families.
Frederick Trenchard Smith, a local architect, and his brother donated land at Manly
Vale for the first homes. Prominent Corso baker and pastrycook, J T Easterbrook
provided space in his shop where goods could be sold to raise money for the
Association’s building materials.
2
Dr Richard Arthur, the local State MP, helped secure Crown land at French’s Forest
for a Soldier’s Settlement and a section was set aside on which the Manly Voluntary
Workers erected the first cottage.
MAN08819.
Trenchbrook.
MAGAM
The first cottage completed in Condamine Street, Manly Vale, was named
‘Trenchbrook’ in recognition of the leadership shown by Trenchard Smith and
Easterbrook. A total of five cottages were built in Manly Vale. Then two cottages were
built in Peacock Street, Balgowlah on land donated by Alderman Keirle (Mayor of Manly
1914-18, 1923, 1925) and two in Panorama Parade, Seaforth on land donated by the
developer of Seaforth, Henry Halloran. Other cottages followed, with the last built in
Birkley Road, Manly in 1922.1
During six years from 1916 to 1922 the Association raised and spent over £4500 on
house construction in Manly. The cash balance of £1224 was distributed equally among
the families for whom houses had been built.
However hundreds of returning ex-servicemen in Manly received no direct help after
their return to Australia. With the world pandemic of Spanish flu in 1919, many were
held in quarantine at North Head despite having spent up to five years away from home.
In February 1919, 1000 quarantined soldiers vented their frustration, marching from the
Quarantine Station to Manly Wharf, then by ferry and a further march to the Sydney
Cricket Ground in protest. One Manly Public School ex-student and local resident, Bert
Owen, recalled hearing the sound of their marching boots down Darley Road as they
headed towards the wharf.2
The protest produced no direct benefits to Manly ‘Diggers’ and their families. Local
hopes were channeled toward a new organisation in Manly, the local Sub-branch of the
Returned Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Imperial League of Australia (RSSIL of A – later the
RSL). The Manly Sub-branch was formed in March 1918 at a meeting held in the club
room of the Manly Amateur Fishermen’s Association in the Darley Flats building, 2A
Darley Road, opposite St Matthew’s Church. It became a small but lively pressure group
to assist in meeting the needs of Manly’s unemployed ex-servicemen, both for cash and
work.
Goodwill and good intentions ran strong in 1918-19. The first annual meeting of the
RSSILA, delayed by the flu epidemic, was held in August 1919 chaired by the President,
1
2
See Swancott, C, Manly 1788 to 1968, p136-137; Curby, P, Seven Miles from Sydney, p209.
Interview with Albert Owen, 29 October 2001, Curby, p215.
3
Major Shillington. Early welfare work competed with the struggle to clarify aims, and
establish a viable organisation. However, by 1921 the focus on helping needy families
seems gradually to have shifted to the raising of funds for the erection of a Soldiers’
Memorial Hall in Manly as a fitting tribute to the sacrifices of local heroes. This memorial
was to be a long and expensive distraction for the Manly Sub-branch and local
community, which was increasingly focused on restoring peacetime normality and
prosperity.
In March 1921, the Daily Telegraph reported:
“Memorial Hall for Manly.
“A movement has been started at Manly to raise funds for the erection of a Soldiers’
Memorial Hall. A number of prominent citizens interested in the welfare of the returned
men have taken the matter up, and they are organising a week’s carnival opening on
March 26, and running till April 2. As a result of their energy it is believed that a
substantial sum will be raised. Various sympathizers have come forward with offers of
assistance, and there is an army of workers prepared to put time and energy into the
affair, in order that the soldiers of ‘The Village’ shall have a hall worthy of them and their
work on active service, and as a memorial to the men who went out, but did not return.”3
Manly’s seven-night fund-raising Carnival for the Hall was a spectacular sight:
“The scheme of decoration extends along the Corso to the ocean beach… The
Mothers and Wives of the Soldiers’ Association – a strong organisation at Manly – the
VADs and the Red Cross Society are all represented in the workers, and they have stalls
at which they hope to do big business.
“Flags and greenery and electric lights are tastefully employed in the decorative
scheme, which right through is a credit to the organisers and their helpers. Everything is
in the hands of amateur carnival workers, full of novel ideas calculated to amuse and at
the same time raise money.”4
One highlight was: “The great arch erected on the Manly Cove end of the Corso, and
through which every visitor to Manly passes when entering ‘the village’ after leaving the
ferry boat. The arch is of attractive design, with an harmonious blending of bunting and
floral devices.”5
In addition to “fresh carnival novelties…one interesting means of raising money is the
disposal of bricks, some of which win prizes for the thoughtful purchaser.”6
Despite the popular success of the first Manly Carnival, as time went on it became
clear that the thousands of pounds required to build a Memorial Hall would require years
of patient fund-raising, and prove a drain on funds otherwise available for emergency
relief to ex-servicemen and their families.
Another strain also entered Manly’s post-war efforts to heal its war wounds. Political
divisions had been sharpened by the great conscription crises of 1916-17, and
exacerbated by British suppression of the Irish Uprising of 1916 and then by the Russian
Revolution of 1917. Sydney demonstrations by alleged ‘disloyalists’ and strike meetings
3
Daily Telegraph, 10 March 1921, quoted in Champion, S & G, Early History relating to Manly
Sub-branch of the Returned Services League, p3.
4
Daily Telegraph, 26 March 1921.
5
Daily Telegraph, 2 April 1921.
6
Daily Telegraph, 2 April 1921.
4
connected with post-war industrial disputes disturbed many Manly conservatives
including office-bearers of the Manly Sub-branch of the League.
As the Champions report in their history of Manly RSL (pp4-5):
“In May 1921 the hon[orary] secretary of the Manly Sub-branch of the League wrote
to the NSW Central body following a ‘Rally Round the Flag’ meeting called for by the
League in the [Sydney] Domain. He forwarded the following resolution, ‘That this Subbranch of the League strongly deprecates the action of certain disloyalists in burning the
Union Jack in the Domain last Sunday, and urges headquarters of the League to put up
the strongest possible protest against such action, and also against the seditious nature
of the speeches which were made in the [Sydney] Town Hall on Sunday night last.’”
Aware that a ‘Loyalist Demonstration’ was proposed by the League for the Domain on
the following Sunday, the Manly Sub-branch Secretary asked that the Manly President,
Major Munro, DSO, be permitted to move the resolution from the Domain platform along
the following lines: ‘We hold that peace and goodwill are necessary for the progress of
humanity, and that under God this can best be achieved by upholding the integrity of the
British Empire. We stand for a White Australia of loyal subjects self-governing within the
Empire. We hold that all political and religious opinions which do not make for the
disruption of a white and free Australia or the overthrow of Christianity should be allowed
liberty of expression. We pledge ourselves to uphold these principles to the utmost of
our moral and material resources. We believe that every candidate for membership of
our Parliaments or our Municipal or Shire Councils should take an oath to maintain the
integrity of the British Empire.’
The RSSILA was supposed to be non-political. Yet this thinly-veiled attack on Irish
Catholic Sinn Feiners, the Labor Party which had just adopted the Socialist Objective,
and militant trade unionists, was unlikely to encourage Manly’s unionists, Catholics or
Labor Party supporters to trust or support the League.
One study of the early RSL, entitled ‘Australia’s Picked Citizens’, concluded:
“While its public role was to promote the well-being of returned soldiers, its true
purpose was to garner a small, but loyal, section of an otherwise fractious AIF for
continued service to the nation and to deflect returned soldiers away from militant labour
activities. As a cross-class organisation, RSL officials, many of them drawn from the
Protestant, middle- and upper-class AIF officer stratum, played an important role in
manufacturing conservative ideology and attempted, through working class League
members, to influence the labour movement from which they were otherwise politically,
industrially and socially removed.”7
It does appear that the RSSILA’s early activities in Manly reflect some of the
influences of conservative, anti-Labor opinion, though without necessarily any overt
political involvement. However, its first President, Major Shillington was elected to the
NSW Parliament as a Nationalist MLA for Petersham in 1919.
Meanwhile, the Mayor of Manly and conservative State Parliamentarian Alderman Alf
Reid MLA, was ‘active’ making political mischief with the same issues. Reid’s letter to a
supportive Manly Daily was headlined provocatively:
“The Mayor: Active Disloyalty
“Sir, As an eye-witness to Sunday’s proceedings in the Domain, I deem it my duty to
warn all good citizens of our country to be at once up and doing… I also witnessed the
hoisting of the red flag and the burning of the Union Jack and soldiers battered and
helpless… Another demonstration was held in the Sydney Town Hall with revolutionary
7
Gregson, Dr Sarah, Footsoldiers for Capital, ch. 3: ‘Australia’s Picked Citizens’ – the RSL in the
inter-war years’, p116.
5
songs, when an IWW8 representative expressed his pleasure at the day’s proceedings…
We have kept quiet too long, and in my opinion not one day should be lost in joining our
forces together to protect Our Flag, and let this unscrupulous mob understand once and
for all that the Union Jack WILL fly, and dare them to pull it down…”9
The picture is complicated by the way prevailing sectarian and even (by today’s
standards) racist attitudes became embroiled with war-time priorities such as recruiting.
The aggressive campaigns by the Hughes’ Government attempting to introduce
conscription in 1916-17 embittered many Catholics, unionists and traditional Labor
supporters. These additional scars of war had a negative effect on community aid to
Manly’s ex-servicemen. The distraction of Manly’s RSSIL sub-branch from its original
priority of aid to the most needy ex-servicemen is highlighted by the call in December
1921 for assistance to help give a Christmas treat to the soldier settlers’ children at
French’s Forest following their difficult year. A donation of only 1 guinea was offered by
the Manly Sub-branch. Yet in their Annual Report for 1921, the Manly Sub-branch
reported:
“Memorial Hall Fund
“The most important matter that has engaged our attention has been the erection of a
Memorial Hall to perpetuate the memory of fallen comrades, and although it is regretted
that it has not been possible up to the present to bring the proposal within measurable
distance of achievement, still we are able to report that by means of carnivals, and in
other ways, the fund has now reached the substantial sum of approximately £3000, and
we are hopeful that before very long something definite will be done in the way of the
acquisition of a site and the commencement of the building.”10
By contrast, under the heading ‘Relieving Distress’, only £113-3-0 had been spent in
1921 “assisting necessitous Diggers, and the dependents of soldiers. As the report went
on to explain, most of the work had been carried out by Manly’s Citizens’ Relief
Committee “who in the distribution of food orders, etc, have done much to relieve
distress amongst returned men and their families.”
The other important role taken by the Manly Sub-branch was to set up a Labour
Bureau. The 1921 report continued:
“By the setting up of a Labour Bureau, we have, thanks to the co-operation of a
number of employers, been able to relieve unemployment amongst returned men in the
district to the extent of placing eight men in permanent employment and finding 25
casual positions. This must be considered a gratifying result seeing that the Bureau was
not established until August last.”
Significant as this achievement was in helping ensure a fairer deal for returned
soldiers, the Sub-branch went on to expose the barriers experienced even this soon
after the war. After reporting a “fair measure of success” taking up soldiers’ grievances
with government departments, it complained:
“As the war recedes further and further into the past, it becomes increasingly difficult
to secure a fair deal for returned men, and this alone should bring home to the Diggers
the necessity of uniting together in one big brotherhood. When it is remembered that
there are upwards of 1000 returned men in the district, it is obvious there is much room
for improvement in this respect. We would urge all existing members to use every effort
8
International Workers of the World, an anarchist group, often known as the ‘Wobblies’ or ‘I
Won’t Works’.
9
Manly Daily, 5 May 1921 (Wellings CB2A, p3)
10
Champion, S & G, Early History relating to Manly Sub-branch of the Returned Services
League, p6.
6
to induce those returned men who, for one reason or another, have remained aloof from
the League, to throw in their lot with us, and so help to carry on the good work.”11
In other States, similar complaints were made. In the 1920s, at least, the early RSL
remained relatively unappealing to returned servicemen. In Manly, the Sub-Branch’s
conservative political opinions may have contributed to this. However, it is clear that
local fundraising was never focused on the real, day-to-day needs of local veterans.
In June 1923, the Mayor of Manly, Arthur Keirle, anxious to promote further work on
the site for the proposed Manly Peace Memorial Hospital, suggested that returned
servicemen should spend £4000 to be raised by local donations on a memorial wing of
the Hospital instead of the planned Memorial Hall. Both projects struggled to raise
sufficient local funds as they competed, in effect, for the limited pool of charitable
fundraising.
It was not until 27 January 1924 that the foundation stone for the Manly Memorial Hall
was laid in Raglan Street by the Governor-General. Despite three years of fundraising,
the estimated cost of £4000 had not been raised for the two-storey building designed by
Frederick Trenchard Smith. Instead of freehold land in a more central location, as
originally planned, the Sub-branch persuaded Manly Council to excise a portion of
Kangaroo Reserve off Raglan Street overlooking Manly Oval.
MAN01488 Soldiers’ Memorial Hall, Raglan Street
In March 1926, the new Mayor A T Keirle, JP, was forced to launch a new appeal for
funds. The five year delay and rising costs meant that the nearly £4000 raised by 1926
was no longer sufficient. The Mayor reminded readers of the Manly Daily that the
foundation stone had been laid more than two years ago and admitted:
“…owing to the delay that has taken place in making a commencement with the
building, it is quite possible that a number of our citizens may have formed the
impression that the proposal… had been abandoned.”
The estimated cost was now £8749 and the Trustees were faced with borrowing
£5000. Recognising the weariness with war-related costs and tragedies, the Mayor tried
to generate some new enthusiasm:
“I appeal to the citizens of Manly, and ask whether they are prepared to leave it at
that. From what I know of the warm-heartedness of our people I should say No!... Manly
11
Champion, S & G, Early History relating to Manly Sub-branch of the Returned Services
League, p7.
7
was in the very forefront of every patriotic movement during the War. Let us show the
Soldiers that we are behind them now, as we were when they were sticking it out on the
other side!”
The Mayor offered his own five guineas to launch the new ‘Mayor’s Fund’.12
MAN08911 Mayor Keirle
The Soldiers’ Memorial Hall was opened in 1927. It had taken nearly seven years to
complete this most substantial memorial to Manly’s heroes of the Great War. Manly had
moved on during the intervening years. Peacetime prosperity had been restored,
however briefly. The pace of community life was accelerating. A new ‘pleasure society’
was in the making. The scars of war remained, especially for the many families struck
by tragic loss or traumatized by separation and mental and physical wounds. However,
most of Manly had its eye on a new way of life, new opportunities and new goods and
fashions.
The Avenues of Honour planted by Manly Council in Condamine Street in 192613 and
at Park Hill, North Head in 193314, had taken years to achieve and remained as silent
symbols to a community that, while proud of its heroes, had chosen to move on.
12
Manly Daily, 20 March 1926 (in Wellings CB2A). Also see Manly Daily, 27 February 1926 (in
Wellings CB2A), public notice convening a meeting to organise the Soldier’s Fancy Fair and
Carnival in aid of the Soldiers’ Memorial Hall Fund.
13
Manly Council Minutes, 26 August 1924; 1 December 1925; 27 April 1926.
14
Champion, S & G, Early History of Manly RSL, pp7-8.
8