Speaker 1: And Mabel's brother writes a letter to the State Children's
Speaker 1: Council accusing Mabel of being a prostitute and saying that
Speaker 1: she's living in a brothel just off Hindley Street, and
Speaker 1: that she has hidden her daughter away and that if
Speaker 1: someone goes in checks they'll find that Mabel is being
Speaker 1: very bad. Indeed.
Speaker 2: I'm Jen Kelly from The Herald Son and this is
Speaker 2: in Black and White, a podcast about some of Australia's
Speaker 2: forgotten characters. Today we're returning to the late eighteen hundreds
Speaker 2: and the dramatic tale of a vaudeville performer called Mabel Warling.
Speaker 2: Mabel gave birth in a destitute asylum after falling pregnant
Speaker 2: in scandalous circumstances. Then she ran away, joined a circus
Speaker 2: and rubbed shoulders with star entertainers of her day, before
Speaker 2: she lapsed into a life of crime. To tell us
Speaker 2: the remarkable tale, we're chatting today with Carin Ball, Senior
Speaker 2: curator at the History Trust of South Australia. Karin has
Speaker 2: written a book called Three Ring Circuits, The dramatic, mysterious
Speaker 2: and tragic life of Mabel Wallely, a gestitute asylum girl
Speaker 2: and you can find a link in the show notes
Speaker 2: to this episode. Welcome to the podcast, Karin, Hello, thank
Speaker 2: you for having me.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I love the evocative title of your book. It says
Speaker 2: so much. It's called Three Ring Circus. The dramatic, mysterious
Speaker 2: and tragic Life of Mabel Wally, a destitute asylum girl.
Speaker 2: Mabel really did pack a lot into her seven decades
Speaker 2: of life, didn't she.
Speaker 1: She really did. Yes, yes, So she gives birth to
Speaker 1: a daughter in the destitute asylum. She gets married, domestic
Speaker 1: life never really works out for her, so she quite
Speaker 1: literally runs away and joins a circus. This leads into
Speaker 1: a tale of love and loss. She rubs shoulders with
Speaker 1: some of the big star entertainers per day, but then
Speaker 1: it all goes wrong. The wheels fall off, and lapses
Speaker 1: into a life of crime and spends the last thirty
Speaker 1: years of her life living rough on the streets of
Speaker 1: Adelaide and Melbourne, and spends a lot of time in
Speaker 1: prison for being drunken, disorderly and a vagrant. So she
Speaker 1: has a very sensational tale, but things go wrong. I
Speaker 1: like to say, up, roll up for this tale of sex, stardom,
Speaker 1: betrayal and secrets.
Speaker 2: Such a tragic story. Where does the whole tale begin? Korean?
Speaker 1: So it begins in little Adelaide, little old Adelaide, sleepy Adelaide,
Speaker 1: at the far edges of the British Empire. So she's
Speaker 1: born into this very volatile world of people coming and going,
Speaker 1: high traffic area. There's theaters, there's brothels, there's prostitutes, there's politicians.
Speaker 1: So she's born into this very vibrant world where the
Speaker 1: European population of South Australia is surging past one hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: And she from very early on, as many working class
Speaker 1: girls of her situation, she gets typified as a bad
Speaker 1: girl very early on. So when she's fourteen, she's surrendered
Speaker 1: by her mother to the care of the South Australian
Speaker 1: government as an uncontrollable girl. And in that context, uncontrollability
Speaker 1: usually means sexual activity. Boys are surrendered much less for uncontrollability,
Speaker 1: usually for things like petty theft, disorderly behavior like throwing
Speaker 1: stones at trains, all that kind of thing. For girls,
Speaker 1: it's much more associated with bad behavior and bad sexual behavior.
Speaker 1: But you know, Mabel's a teenager. She's doing what teenagers
Speaker 1: have always done. But she's yes, So she's surrendered by
Speaker 1: her mother as uncontrollable and she ends up at the
Speaker 1: girl's reformatory.
Speaker 2: And Karin, would she have been at school at all?
Speaker 1: Yes, I don't have any schooling records for her, but
Speaker 1: the records from that period of the late eighteen seventies
Speaker 1: early eighteen eighties are quite patchy. But we can tell
Speaker 1: from later letters that are on file with government records
Speaker 1: that she has a very good, very good hand, She's
Speaker 1: got good and writing, and she composes her thoughts well.
Speaker 1: The research I've done into the family seems to indicate
Speaker 1: that one of her sisters might have been a student
Speaker 1: teacher for a while, so I think that's where she
Speaker 1: gets her good handwriting and way of composing herself on paper.
Speaker 1: But I don't have any firm information about her education
Speaker 1: because she's just in this very early period of compulsory
Speaker 1: education in South Australia.
Speaker 2: And was she actually working as a prostitute? Do you
Speaker 2: think at some stage?
Speaker 1: Well, she certainly gets accused as such by her brother
Speaker 1: later down the track, but I might get to that
Speaker 1: in a moment when she's you know, when she's an
Speaker 1: uncontrollable girl being sent to the reformatory. It's probably much
Speaker 1: less serious. You know, it might be talking about but
Speaker 1: she might have a boyfriend, she might be engaging in
Speaker 1: sexual exploration, that sort of thing. But you know, she's
Speaker 1: really just a teenager being a teenager and doing what
Speaker 1: teenagers do. So at the reformatory, she's given basic training
Speaker 1: on household tasks. She didn't already know those things from
Speaker 1: being in her parents' boarding house. And then she is
Speaker 1: sent out into service. So she's fifteen or so, and
Speaker 1: she's sent to work as a domestic at a house
Speaker 1: in Norton Summit, so up in the Adelaide Hills, a
Speaker 1: million miles away in many ways from the wild west
Speaker 1: end of Adelaide. So she's sent to this house called
Speaker 1: Grove Hill, which is owned by the Giles family. We
Speaker 1: are a very wealthy family. And yeah, so she's at
Speaker 1: this lovely property in the hills which is surrounded by
Speaker 1: orchards and gardens and has all this beautiful architecture. And
Speaker 1: while she's there, she becomes pregnant to the young man
Speaker 1: of the house. Ah.
Speaker 2: Interesting, So the young man of the house as in
Speaker 2: a sort of the one of the children of the house,
Speaker 2: one of the teenagers.
Speaker 1: So yes, yes, he's nineteen nineteen sixteen by that point
Speaker 1: just about we know, you know from later descriptions of
Speaker 1: her that she's you know, she's tallish, she's five for
Speaker 1: three five four, she's slim, she's got Hayes lies and
Speaker 1: being mable. She has a wild streak a mile wide,
Speaker 1: and she attracts the attention of this young man, Charles Giles,
Speaker 1: who's the young man of the house. And what's key
Speaker 1: to their relationship is that when he's twenty one, he
Speaker 1: will inherit the entire estate from his grandfather. So yes,
Speaker 1: so she is returned to the to the State Children's
Speaker 1: Council from Grove Hill. She's initially returned as unwell, but
Speaker 1: it's rapidly discovered that she's pregnant.
Speaker 2: Ah, and she was obviously just working as a maid
Speaker 2: while she was at this amazing home.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, so she's just a house stage, she's just
Speaker 1: a domestic servant. And this is what you know, this
Speaker 1: is what happens to girls in service. They go out
Speaker 1: and they work as domestics, or they work for small businesses,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. Boys tend to be sent to
Speaker 1: farms for agricultural labor, that sort of stuff. Or into apprenticeships.
Speaker 2: So what happens to this baby, given it's illegitimate, does
Speaker 2: it stand to inherit this fortune?
Speaker 1: Probably not, I think that's probably quite unlikely. But for
Speaker 1: some reason, and we don't know exactly why the Giles
Speaker 1: family pays the State Children's Council one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: pounds in consideration of all demands. Now, I have spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time going through the correspondence books for
Speaker 1: various of these institutions, and I can't find any correspondence
Speaker 1: that tells us why they paid this one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty pounds. But it's a very very unusual tacit admission
Speaker 1: of paternity on behalf of the Giles.
Speaker 2: Family, and it's also a huge amount of money at
Speaker 2: that time.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming it really is. Yes, we did the maths
Speaker 1: and it's twelve years dipend for a state child. So
Speaker 1: it's what the family is basically paying off the government
Speaker 1: for having to look after this child for the twelve
Speaker 1: years that is the minimum that they would be that
Speaker 1: she would be in care. So Mabel has this baby
Speaker 1: at the lying in home of the Destitute Asylum. So
Speaker 1: if anybody's been to the migration museum in Adelaide, my
Speaker 1: form alma mata. The two story building in the courtyard,
Speaker 1: that's the lying in home. So Mabel would have had
Speaker 1: her daughter in one of the upper upstairs labor wards.
Speaker 1: And so that's the twenty sixth of November eighteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: and she has a little girl that she calls Hillgrove.
Speaker 1: So Hillgrove is not usually a girl's name, it's a
Speaker 1: boy's name, and it is significantly the name of Charles
Speaker 1: Giles's deceased little brother, who died about five years before
Speaker 1: Mabel goes to work at the house. So I suspect
Speaker 1: that this is a potentially loving and consensual relationship between
Speaker 1: Mabel and the young man of the house. It might
Speaker 1: not have been. She wouldn't be the first maid to
Speaker 1: be despoiled by a man of the house, and she
Speaker 1: certainly wouldn't be the last. But the fact that she
Speaker 1: calls her child this family name, it could be a
Speaker 1: big middle finger from Mabel to the Giles's But it
Speaker 1: could also be a much more loving and consensual relationship. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, even the fact that she knows the name of
Speaker 2: the deceased little brother.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, actually, that's an excellent point. I had never
Speaker 1: thought about that, so thank you for that wonderful detail.
Speaker 1: So yes, so she named this child Hillgrove and that
Speaker 1: does not go down very well at all.
Speaker 2: How do you know that?
Speaker 1: Because the State Children's Council make her change the child's name.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1: So it happens at some point in the baby's first
Speaker 1: few months, but her birth is registered as Hillgrove Warley,
Speaker 1: and then by the time she's six months to a
Speaker 1: year old, she's now being referred to in the official
Speaker 1: documentation as Eleanor Giles Worley. So she's had her name
Speaker 1: changed from Hillgrove, but she still retains the Giles. So
Speaker 1: really interesting speculation. I don't have any firm answers, but
Speaker 1: that and the payment, the one hundred and fifty pounds payment,
Speaker 1: does make me wonder if it's genuinely loving relationship. It
Speaker 1: could also be, you know, an aion of a tacit
Speaker 1: admission of guilt. It could be payoff to the authorities
Speaker 1: for keeping is quiet. It could be all sorts of things.
Speaker 1: But yes, there's lots to speculate about, maybe of costumesities,
Speaker 1: any of that money. You know that undred and fifty
Speaker 1: pounds doesn't go to her, it goes to the government.
Speaker 1: She may not even know that one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: pounds ever existed, but yes, it certainly. As a researcher,
Speaker 1: that really kind of caught my attention and made me think, oh,
Speaker 1: what's going on here. There's all interesting stuff going on
Speaker 1: in the background.
Speaker 2: Amazing, there's so much intrigue in her life and she's
Speaker 2: not even yet an adult.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, she's only a teenager at this point.
Speaker 2: We'll be back shortly to find out what happened next,
Speaker 2: So stay with us. So what happens once she becomes
Speaker 2: so she's able to stay there until she's eighteen, and
Speaker 2: then what happens then?
Speaker 1: So what happens next is Mabel turns eighteen, and she
Speaker 1: collects her daughter from the industrial Score and she goes
Speaker 1: about her way. But things don't go smoothly. And we
Speaker 1: talked earlier about whether she's accused of prostitution. Her daughter
Speaker 1: is probably about a year and a half, yes, she
Speaker 1: said Toddler and Mabel's brother writes a letter to the
Speaker 1: State Children's Council accusing Mabel of being a prostitute and
Speaker 1: saying that she's living in a brothel just off Hindley Street,
Speaker 1: and that she has hidden her daughter away and that
Speaker 1: if someone goes and checks, they'll find that Mabel is
Speaker 1: being very bad indeed, and this causes a great flurry
Speaker 1: at the State Children's Counsel, who send an inspector round
Speaker 1: to do a check, and they find Mabel in bed
Speaker 1: in the middle of the day with a young man
Speaker 1: partially clothed, and of course this doesn't look good at all,
Speaker 1: and they go and pick up her daughter from the
Speaker 1: foster mother that Mabel has secreted her with, and they
Speaker 1: take the child into care, and poor Mabel, she really
Speaker 1: suffers from this decision. She writes several letters to the
Speaker 1: State Children's Council asking for her child back, but of
Speaker 1: course she's been judged of being of low repute and
Speaker 1: poor character, and they're not going to release the child
Speaker 1: to her. So Mabel's about eighteen and a half, she's
Speaker 1: nearly nineteen at this point, and what's she going to do?
Speaker 1: She has no legal recourse to get her child back.
Speaker 1: The State Children's Counsel is her baby's legal guardian because
Speaker 1: she's been found of living in a brothel and her
Speaker 1: mother is a poor character. So she thinks about it
Speaker 1: for a little while, and Mabel being Mabel, she's always
Speaker 1: got a wily solution to these sorts of problems. And
Speaker 1: she gets married in July eighteen ninety one. She marries
Speaker 1: a young man called Henry Hawkins, and he is very
Speaker 1: slightly higher than her in the social scale. He has
Speaker 1: quite a whiff of drama about him. He was born
Speaker 1: in colonial Fiji and came to Australia when he was
Speaker 1: a very small child, and his father very dramatically dies
Speaker 1: or died in eighteen seventy two on one of the
Speaker 1: Northern Telegraph the Overland telegraph Line expeditions. So Henry has
Speaker 1: this little kind of cachet of colonial drama, and he's
Speaker 1: born overseas, and he's a printer. He's only young, he's
Speaker 1: in his early twenties. He's two or three years older
Speaker 1: than her, and he works at a the Christian Colonist newspaper.
Speaker 1: And so the day after the wedding he starts writing
Speaker 1: to the State Children's Council saying I would like to
Speaker 1: take charge of my stepdaughter please. Actually those letters aren't
Speaker 1: very successful, and you can see the letters at State
Speaker 1: Records at Cavern. It was an utter delight to be
Speaker 1: able to go to State records. Wonderful colleagues, and they
Speaker 1: got the letters out for us, so we could read
Speaker 1: Henry's letters to the State Children's Council and Mabel's letters
Speaker 1: to the State Children's Council, and it's really wonderful. It
Speaker 1: puts you over their shoulder, just really looking at how
Speaker 1: they feel where they're trying to get this child that
Speaker 1: means so much to both of them, trying to get
Speaker 1: her return to them and.
Speaker 2: Finding it had to understand why they were still refused.
Speaker 2: If there were two loving parents that wanted to adopt
Speaker 2: or to take back this child.
Speaker 1: Well, Henry apparently has reputation for being a drinker, so
Speaker 1: there's a note on the bottom of the file that
Speaker 1: says that he has a poor reputation as well, and
Speaker 1: that initially it's not thought that it's in the interest
Speaker 1: of the child, but something changes. They eventually managed to
Speaker 1: persuade the State Children's counsel to give it a try,
Speaker 1: and so little toddler Eleanor she's called Eleanor at that point,
Speaker 1: and we think her nickname is probably nell Or Nellie,
Speaker 1: and she is returned to Mabel and Hawkins.
Speaker 2: Amazing, and what happens next. So for a little while
Speaker 2: they're a happy family. They're a happy family, and that's
Speaker 2: the early few years of the eighteen nineties. They pass
Speaker 2: in wonderful serenity. Nothing happens.
Speaker 1: They're inspected regularly that the household is doing well and
Speaker 1: that the child is being well cared for. And then
Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety four, Henry requests permission to take eleanor
Speaker 1: baby Eleanor out of South Australia. They're planning a trip
Speaker 1: to New South Wales and they're going to take this
Speaker 1: child out of the state, out of the colony, sorry
Speaker 1: as it was at the time, And they get permissioned
Speaker 1: to do that, and nothing has heard of them for
Speaker 1: two years, and they come back in eighteen ninety six. Now,
Speaker 1: from the point of view of the State Children's Council,
Speaker 1: this is all fine. She's been traveling with her stepfather,
Speaker 1: that's all well and good. But what it's happening behind
Speaker 1: the scenes, what is happening behind the scenes, is much
Speaker 1: much more interesting. So it turns out that Mabel has
Speaker 1: a career as a vaudeville singer, and her daughter has
Speaker 1: also been singing on the stage as a small child.
Speaker 1: So as four and five year old. She's performing at
Speaker 1: the races because Mabel's brothers are jockeys and she's performing
Speaker 1: on the stage. And when this news hits the State
Speaker 1: Children's Council they go ballistic threat to take the child
Speaker 1: away again.
Speaker 2: So were they traveling in New South Wales and performing
Speaker 2: on stages around New South Wales or was that all
Speaker 2: just a bit of a furfee.
Speaker 1: It's very hard to tell because there's lots of changes
Speaker 1: of names, and it's across multiple colonial lines. Before nineteen hundred,
Speaker 1: all of these colonies have entirely separate administrations. So from
Speaker 1: what I've been able to piece together, Mabel travels to
Speaker 1: New Zealand, she begins performing as her stage name is
Speaker 1: Triscy Darcy, and her little daughter is also performing with
Speaker 1: Mabel's brothers who have a small kind of traveling show
Speaker 1: at this point. And then so when Mabel comes back
Speaker 1: in early eighteen ninety six, her daughter is also performing
Speaker 1: with this traveling show, and that's when the State Children's
Speaker 1: Council gets wind of it. They've managed to keep its
Speaker 1: secret while they've been into state. They've probably been further
Speaker 1: than New South Wales. They may have even gone as
Speaker 1: far as Fiji to go and see Henry Hawkins family.
Speaker 1: But I haven't found any definitive proof of that. But yes,
Speaker 1: they're desperate to keep this performance aspect quiet from the
Speaker 1: State Children's Council because obviously vaudeville and the theater and
Speaker 1: circus they're all considered to be quite low forms of entertainment,
Speaker 1: some lower than others, and it's not felt to be
Speaker 1: in the best interests of the child. So they're trying
Speaker 1: to keep the secret. But somebody spots them and it
Speaker 1: all goes to.
Speaker 3: Pooh, have you been able to come? Have you come
Speaker 3: across any more descriptions of the show and what Mabel
Speaker 3: and her daughter were doing. Was it singing and dancing
Speaker 3: and so forth? Yes, there's lots of singing. Mabel is
Speaker 3: described as a serio comic, which means that she's doing.
Speaker 1: You know, kind of light operetta, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Apparently she has a really nice voice. Her daughter is
Speaker 1: quite the stage sensation. So she's by eighteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: she's seven or eight, she's eight, and she is causing
Speaker 1: a real flurry when she's performing. She's probably doing sentimental ballads,
Speaker 1: plantation songs, that sort of thing is very popular in
Speaker 1: the eighteen nineties. What is also happening on stage is
Speaker 1: around Australia and around the anglophone world, is that people
Speaker 1: are doing a lot of work in blackface. So I
Speaker 1: don't know if you remember things like the Black and
Speaker 1: White minstrel show that used to be on TV in
Speaker 1: the seventies and eighties. That sort of blackface performance has
Speaker 1: a long, long history. It's got hundreds of years of
Speaker 1: history of white folks blacking up to perform, and in
Speaker 1: the late the latter part of the nineteenth century, it's
Speaker 1: everywhere everybody is performing, So it's unlikely that Mabel her
Speaker 1: daughter did, but they would be on stage with male
Speaker 1: actors and singers who were performing in blackface. There was
Speaker 1: also quite a bit of cross dressing on stage, which
Speaker 1: was very titillating to audiences, but also causes a lot
Speaker 1: of tension that these gender roles can be dispensed with
Speaker 1: so easily. It's all the sort of stuff that you
Speaker 1: know is swirling around us now with this people on
Speaker 1: the right getting upset about drag and all that sort
Speaker 1: of thing and seen as destabilizing in many ways. So
Speaker 1: the vaudeville and live performance world and circus world of
Speaker 1: the late nineteenth centuries is a much more interesting place
Speaker 1: we might think these days. It's very it's very international.
Speaker 1: All of these troops know each other, all of the
Speaker 1: performers are interconnected in many ways. They're either related, or
Speaker 1: they've worked with each other, or they owe each other money,
Speaker 1: or they've got their big break together. So this is
Speaker 1: how Mabel and her daughter start performing on stages in
Speaker 1: particularly in Adelaide on Hindy Street with some of the
Speaker 1: really quite upcoming names of the day, who will then
Speaker 1: go on to perform around Australia and internationally.
Speaker 2: And was it always a mother and daughter act? Were
Speaker 2: they always performing together?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. No. I think that Mabel often
Speaker 1: is traveling on her own, and I think that that
Speaker 1: means that her daughter is with either with her father
Speaker 1: or with one of Mabel's brothers and their families. So
Speaker 1: Mabel has three brothers. The oldest one, Walter, is the
Speaker 1: one who accuses her of being a prostitute, and they
Speaker 1: obviously have quite a difficult relationship. Her middle brother, Frank,
Speaker 1: is her favorite brother, and then her youngest brother, Alfred,
Speaker 1: is the baby of the family. So Frank has a
Speaker 1: small traveling show, which they end up calling Barton's Circus.
Speaker 1: Barton is the family stage name, and that's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why it's so difficult to track all these
Speaker 1: people because they're using Barton, they're using Darcy, they're never
Speaker 1: using Walley or Hawkins, but they're using lots of other pseudonyms.
Speaker 1: Throughout her long life, Mabel understands the power of crafting
Speaker 1: a new identity by sliding on the new name. You know,
Speaker 1: she changes names like she's changing her dress. She puts
Speaker 1: on accents to pretend to be from elsewhere. She's clearly
Speaker 1: drawing on this huge family performance vein of you know,
Speaker 1: the family has been performing for several decades. It actually
Speaker 1: turns out, and that's one of the things that happens
Speaker 1: in the book is that I uncover the history of
Speaker 1: this family performance gene you might say, which turns out
Speaker 1: to have its genesis right in the eighteen seventies. I
Speaker 1: get to that later.
Speaker 2: And did Henry ever perform or was he more of
Speaker 2: a backstage manager.
Speaker 1: I think he does do some performing. There's a couple
Speaker 1: of reports that he is traveling with a fox. So
Speaker 1: this is when Edison has developed the phonograph of the
Speaker 1: wax cylinders. People might be familiar. You can always google it,
Speaker 1: so that it's a way of recording sound that's very
Speaker 1: new and very exciting. And so he is traveling as
Speaker 1: mister Darcy with a phonograph. And then the brothers, Mabel's
Speaker 1: brothers have this small performing circus and they're doing all
Speaker 1: the side shows and playing at the races again and
Speaker 1: doing all these little venues around South Australia, Country, South
Speaker 1: Australia and Victoria. And really that's how they kind of
Speaker 1: keep going until the end of the eighteen nineties. And
Speaker 1: then in eighteen ninety nine they notify the State Children's
Speaker 1: Council that they're moving to Melbourne and Mabel and her
Speaker 1: daughter disappear out of the historical record.
Speaker 2: We'll be back shortly to hear more about Mabel's life,
Speaker 2: so stay with us so before they disappear. Just from
Speaker 2: the records that you do have, do you get any
Speaker 2: impression about whether Mabel's daughter enjoyed being on the vaudeville
Speaker 2: circuit or whether she was forced into this.
Speaker 1: Well, no, I think she really enjoyed it. I've read
Speaker 1: quite a few biographies of circus families from the period
Speaker 1: and the general consensus seemed to be because this is
Speaker 1: the golden age of Australian circus, so the eighteen eighties
Speaker 1: to the nineteen teens really once moving pictures come along
Speaker 1: in a serious way. In the nineteen teens, it kind
Speaker 1: of starts to fall off. But these last couple of
Speaker 1: decades and first decade of the New century are really
Speaker 1: considered a golden age of Australian circus, and family troops
Speaker 1: would travel the length and breadth of the country. It
Speaker 1: was a very free world for children in some ways.
Speaker 1: You know, they didn't do a lot of schooling. They
Speaker 1: got to be with friends who were having lots of adventures.
Speaker 1: They were, you know, seeing parts of the country that
Speaker 1: most of their school friends would never have seen and
Speaker 1: having experiences that they would never have had. But it
Speaker 1: does come at a cost. You know. It's a very
Speaker 1: physically hard world, traveling by wagon almost exclusively, sleeping under wagons, camping,
Speaker 1: and there's reports of babies being born in tents on
Speaker 1: the road, all that kind of stuff. But I think
Speaker 1: for a kid, you know, you're growing up with your cousins,
Speaker 1: So Ellenor's cousins, so Mabel's brothers have got a couple
Speaker 1: of children by that point, so you know there's a
Speaker 1: kind of built in family unit and they're having fun.
Speaker 1: You know, they get to do all this really interesting
Speaker 1: stuff from a very young age. You know, children were
Speaker 1: put on the stage and in the script in the
Speaker 1: circus ring from three or four.
Speaker 2: And we're Mabel and Henry actually breaking any laws by
Speaker 2: putting Mabel's daughter on the stage in this way and
Speaker 2: taking her on tour or was it more that this
Speaker 2: was just something that was frowned upon.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not illegal, but it's, as I said, it's
Speaker 1: not considered to be entirely proper. There's always the whiff
Speaker 1: of the disreptible to the traveling shows, particularly the smaller ones.
Speaker 1: We're not talking about the big you know, the big
Speaker 1: international circuses and the big outfits like Burdens and It's Geralds,
Speaker 1: who are quite well, quite well respected, but these small
Speaker 1: jobbing family shows, you know, they're really just kind of
Speaker 1: at the very bottom of that scale. But yes, all
Speaker 1: indications seem to suggest that the children enjoyed doing it.
Speaker 1: They weren't really paid to do it, but you know,
Speaker 1: they are having experiences that children would never have had normally,
Speaker 1: and it becomes it becomes a way of life for them.
Speaker 1: It's natural for them. All their family and friends are
Speaker 1: doing it, So why would you want to sit down
Speaker 1: in one place and go to school?
Speaker 2: So true, So take us now to Melbourne. So this
Speaker 2: is where we lose part of the timeline. I guess
Speaker 2: we don't really know what happened for a period there.
Speaker 1: No, no, This is one of the frustrations of doing
Speaker 1: this sort of research. So without going into too much
Speaker 1: detail and giving too much away, they moved to Melbourne
Speaker 1: and it would appear that Mabel and Henry split. He
Speaker 1: goes off to Western Australia to become a minor and
Speaker 1: she is with her daughter, and her daughter then goes
Speaker 1: to South Africa as part of a traveling show at
Speaker 1: the height of the Boer War. This really blew my
Speaker 1: mind when I found out about this. So your listener's
Speaker 1: probably familiar with the Second Boer War, which was fought
Speaker 1: from eighteen ninety nine to nineteen oh two, I think
Speaker 1: from memory. So it's between the South African Boers and
Speaker 1: the British authorities who want to secure rights to all
Speaker 1: the gold that's coming out of the ground. And the
Speaker 1: early ones about Diamonds in the eighteen seventies, and so
Speaker 1: it's an active war zone in the northern parts of
Speaker 1: the Southern African continent, and so the idea that you
Speaker 1: would take a troop of children performing children to this
Speaker 1: sort of environment seemed completely unhinged to me. But the
Speaker 1: general feeling seems to have been that so long as
Speaker 1: the performing theatricals kept to the southern parts, so kept
Speaker 1: to the coastline, that they would be fine, although there
Speaker 1: are certainly reports of theatrical troops having some quite hair
Speaker 1: raising escapes from the fighting areas in the early nineteen one,
Speaker 1: in nineteen oh two. So yeah, it's a completely bizarre
Speaker 1: thing to do to take these little children, you know
Speaker 1: that anything from seven or eight up to about thirteen
Speaker 1: or fourteen, and they go to South Africa. And so
Speaker 1: her daughter spends two years touring South Africa as a
Speaker 1: performing theatrical.
Speaker 2: And who were they performing for. They weren't performing for
Speaker 2: soldiers on breaks or anything like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so they do, they do do some performances for military,
Speaker 1: but mostly it's just performing the same vaudeville traveling circuit.
Speaker 1: So all of these, you know, all the anglophone colonies
Speaker 1: are obsessed with live performance and they're desperate to get
Speaker 1: performers from overseas because it's exciting and new and it's
Speaker 1: all about, you know, keeping the market share interested. So
Speaker 1: traveling troops from Australia to South Africa or you know,
Speaker 1: British troops would go to South Africa, or they would
Speaker 1: come to Australia. It's a very interconnected and very very
Speaker 1: mobile world. And so yes, you would think that, you know,
Speaker 1: a little kid that was born in Adelaide at the
Speaker 1: destitute Asylum is not going to end up on the
Speaker 1: stages of at least three continents, but she does. It's
Speaker 1: a very very exciting story to have been able to uncover.
Speaker 2: How did you and first come across this story?
Speaker 1: So Mabel came to my attention when I was a
Speaker 1: curator at the Migration Museum and in twenty fifteen we
Speaker 1: were redoing the gallery. There's a permanent gallery at the
Speaker 1: museum that talks about the history of the site. So,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, the two story building at Migration Museum
Speaker 1: is the former lying in home and the whole courtyard
Speaker 1: is all that's left off Adelaide's Destitute Asylum. So Adelaide's
Speaker 1: Poorhouse's workhouse, and so we've always had a gallery that
Speaker 1: tells that story. And in twenty fifteen I was one
Speaker 1: of a team of three with my wonderful former colleague,
Speaker 1: Nikky Sullivan and then director of Migration Museum who's now
Speaker 1: Head of Collections, Mandy Paul, and we did the research
Speaker 1: to revitalize and bring new stories into this gallery, and
Speaker 1: Mabel was one of the stories that we found. So
Speaker 1: Nicky and I were State records at Cavin looking through
Speaker 1: the registers and we found that detail of the one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty pounds being paid to the State Children's Council,
Speaker 1: and that really was what pequed our interest. It was
Speaker 1: like Maybel kind of reached up out of the archive
Speaker 1: and tugged on shold on our sleeve and said, you know,
Speaker 1: there's something really interesting here if you dig, and so
Speaker 1: we did. And so if you go to Migration Museum,
Speaker 1: there are four story boxes in that gallery which tell
Speaker 1: four different family stories from the asylum, and Maybel is
Speaker 1: number three of four, and so we did some research.
Speaker 1: We did know the research about her daughter being born
Speaker 1: in the building and then her having to ask for
Speaker 1: her back, so we knew her story up to eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety nine, and something about it after we delivered the
Speaker 1: gallery opened in twenty sixteen. Something about her story just
Speaker 1: kind of stuck with me and I had to find
Speaker 1: out what happened, because at that point we didn't know
Speaker 1: anything about the theatrical performances, because Mabel had been very
Speaker 1: successful about hiding that. We didn't know anything about South Africa.
Speaker 1: We didn't know anything about the family circus. We had
Speaker 1: been in touch with some of Mabel's brother's descendants who
Speaker 1: told us a bit more about the circus stuff, but
Speaker 1: they also didn't know a lot of this detail. They
Speaker 1: didn't know what had happened to Mabel's daughter, They didn't
Speaker 1: know about any of the performing aspects. So gradually I
Speaker 1: just unpicked it. Over five years or so, she just
Speaker 1: wouldn't leave me alone. She was very insistent that all
Speaker 1: of this come to light.
Speaker 2: We'll leave part one here and we'll return on Thursday
Speaker 2: to hear about Mabel's thrilling life as a vaudeville performer,
Speaker 2: the challenges she faced, and her lapse into a life
Speaker 2: of crime. Thanks for listening. This has been in Black
Speaker 2: and White, a podcast about some of Australia's Forgotten Characters,
Speaker 2: written and hosted by me Jen Kelly, edited by Nina Young,
Speaker 2: and produced by John Ti Burton. You can find all
Speaker 2: the stories and photos associated with their episodes at Heraldsun
Speaker 2: dot com dot au slash I be a Double. If
Speaker 2: you've enjoyed this podcast, we'd love you to leave a
Speaker 2: five star rating on Apple Podcasts. Even better, leave a review.
Speaker 2: Any comments or questions please email me at in black
Speaker 2: and white at Heroldsun dot com dot au. Any clarifications
Speaker 2: or updates will appear in the show notes for each episode,
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