WEBVTT - A high-wire act for poor Mabel Worley: Part 1. 0:00:03.520 --> 0:00:06.840 And Mabel's brother writes a letter to the State Children's 0:00:06.840 --> 0:00:10.200 Council accusing Mabel of being a prostitute and saying that 0:00:10.240 --> 0:00:13.760 she's living in a brothel just off Hindley Street, and 0:00:13.960 --> 0:00:16.560 that she has hidden her daughter away and that if 0:00:16.560 --> 0:00:19.000 someone goes in checks they'll find that Mabel is being 0:00:19.160 --> 0:00:20.000 very bad. Indeed. 0:00:20.840 --> 0:00:22.919 I'm Jen Kelly from The Herald Son and this is 0:00:22.960 --> 0:00:25.800 in Black and White, a podcast about some of Australia's 0:00:25.800 --> 0:00:30.160 forgotten characters. Today we're returning to the late eighteen hundreds 0:00:30.480 --> 0:00:35.120 and the dramatic tale of a vaudeville performer called Mabel Warling. 0:00:35.800 --> 0:00:39.879 Mabel gave birth in a destitute asylum after falling pregnant 0:00:40.000 --> 0:00:44.720 in scandalous circumstances. Then she ran away, joined a circus 0:00:45.040 --> 0:00:49.120 and rubbed shoulders with star entertainers of her day, before 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:52.519 she lapsed into a life of crime. To tell us 0:00:52.560 --> 0:00:56.760 the remarkable tale, we're chatting today with Carin Ball, Senior 0:00:56.880 --> 0:01:00.840 curator at the History Trust of South Australia. Karin has 0:01:00.880 --> 0:01:05.520 written a book called Three Ring Circuits, The dramatic, mysterious 0:01:05.560 --> 0:01:09.640 and tragic life of Mabel Wallely, a gestitute asylum girl 0:01:10.040 --> 0:01:11.960 and you can find a link in the show notes 0:01:12.000 --> 0:01:18.000 to this episode. Welcome to the podcast, Karin, Hello, thank 0:01:18.080 --> 0:01:18.720 you for having me. 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:19.559 Now. 0:01:19.600 --> 0:01:23.040 I love the evocative title of your book. It says 0:01:23.040 --> 0:01:28.000 so much. It's called Three Ring Circus. The dramatic, mysterious 0:01:28.040 --> 0:01:32.640 and tragic Life of Mabel Wally, a destitute asylum girl. 0:01:33.080 --> 0:01:36.520 Mabel really did pack a lot into her seven decades 0:01:36.560 --> 0:01:38.560 of life, didn't she. 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:42.760 She really did. Yes, yes, So she gives birth to 0:01:42.760 --> 0:01:46.200 a daughter in the destitute asylum. She gets married, domestic 0:01:46.200 --> 0:01:48.160 life never really works out for her, so she quite 0:01:48.240 --> 0:01:51.480 literally runs away and joins a circus. This leads into 0:01:51.560 --> 0:01:55.080 a tale of love and loss. She rubs shoulders with 0:01:55.160 --> 0:01:57.840 some of the big star entertainers per day, but then 0:01:57.880 --> 0:02:00.560 it all goes wrong. The wheels fall off, and lapses 0:02:00.600 --> 0:02:03.680 into a life of crime and spends the last thirty 0:02:03.760 --> 0:02:05.480 years of her life living rough on the streets of 0:02:05.520 --> 0:02:08.320 Adelaide and Melbourne, and spends a lot of time in 0:02:08.320 --> 0:02:11.400 prison for being drunken, disorderly and a vagrant. So she 0:02:11.440 --> 0:02:14.960 has a very sensational tale, but things go wrong. I 0:02:15.080 --> 0:02:18.560 like to say, up, roll up for this tale of sex, stardom, 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:22.160 betrayal and secrets. 0:02:22.160 --> 0:02:26.120 Such a tragic story. Where does the whole tale begin? Korean? 0:02:26.800 --> 0:02:31.560 So it begins in little Adelaide, little old Adelaide, sleepy Adelaide, 0:02:31.760 --> 0:02:34.560 at the far edges of the British Empire. So she's 0:02:34.600 --> 0:02:38.120 born into this very volatile world of people coming and going, 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:44.640 high traffic area. There's theaters, there's brothels, there's prostitutes, there's politicians. 0:02:45.919 --> 0:02:49.280 So she's born into this very vibrant world where the 0:02:49.320 --> 0:02:54.440 European population of South Australia is surging past one hundred thousand. 0:02:54.840 --> 0:02:58.480 And she from very early on, as many working class 0:02:58.480 --> 0:03:02.639 girls of her situation, she gets typified as a bad 0:03:02.720 --> 0:03:06.840 girl very early on. So when she's fourteen, she's surrendered 0:03:06.880 --> 0:03:09.520 by her mother to the care of the South Australian 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:14.840 government as an uncontrollable girl. And in that context, uncontrollability 0:03:14.960 --> 0:03:20.399 usually means sexual activity. Boys are surrendered much less for uncontrollability, 0:03:20.520 --> 0:03:24.720 usually for things like petty theft, disorderly behavior like throwing 0:03:25.000 --> 0:03:27.760 stones at trains, all that kind of thing. For girls, 0:03:27.760 --> 0:03:31.399 it's much more associated with bad behavior and bad sexual behavior. 0:03:32.160 --> 0:03:34.600 But you know, Mabel's a teenager. She's doing what teenagers 0:03:34.600 --> 0:03:38.080 have always done. But she's yes, So she's surrendered by 0:03:38.080 --> 0:03:40.120 her mother as uncontrollable and she ends up at the 0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:41.120 girl's reformatory. 0:03:42.000 --> 0:03:44.280 And Karin, would she have been at school at all? 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:48.000 Yes, I don't have any schooling records for her, but 0:03:48.040 --> 0:03:50.680 the records from that period of the late eighteen seventies 0:03:50.720 --> 0:03:53.680 early eighteen eighties are quite patchy. But we can tell 0:03:53.680 --> 0:03:57.080 from later letters that are on file with government records 0:03:57.120 --> 0:03:59.640 that she has a very good, very good hand, She's 0:03:59.640 --> 0:04:03.000 got good and writing, and she composes her thoughts well. 0:04:03.800 --> 0:04:06.360 The research I've done into the family seems to indicate 0:04:06.360 --> 0:04:08.200 that one of her sisters might have been a student 0:04:08.280 --> 0:04:11.040 teacher for a while, so I think that's where she 0:04:11.080 --> 0:04:15.040 gets her good handwriting and way of composing herself on paper. 0:04:15.440 --> 0:04:18.600 But I don't have any firm information about her education 0:04:18.720 --> 0:04:21.279 because she's just in this very early period of compulsory 0:04:21.320 --> 0:04:22.640 education in South Australia. 0:04:23.800 --> 0:04:26.120 And was she actually working as a prostitute? Do you 0:04:26.120 --> 0:04:27.560 think at some stage? 0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:31.719 Well, she certainly gets accused as such by her brother 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:34.320 later down the track, but I might get to that 0:04:34.400 --> 0:04:37.760 in a moment when she's you know, when she's an 0:04:37.800 --> 0:04:41.520 uncontrollable girl being sent to the reformatory. It's probably much 0:04:41.600 --> 0:04:44.000 less serious. You know, it might be talking about but 0:04:44.040 --> 0:04:46.160 she might have a boyfriend, she might be engaging in 0:04:46.400 --> 0:04:50.160 sexual exploration, that sort of thing. But you know, she's 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:53.400 really just a teenager being a teenager and doing what 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:57.480 teenagers do. So at the reformatory, she's given basic training 0:04:57.480 --> 0:05:00.360 on household tasks. She didn't already know those things from 0:05:00.560 --> 0:05:03.359 being in her parents' boarding house. And then she is 0:05:03.400 --> 0:05:07.480 sent out into service. So she's fifteen or so, and 0:05:07.520 --> 0:05:11.200 she's sent to work as a domestic at a house 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:13.960 in Norton Summit, so up in the Adelaide Hills, a 0:05:14.680 --> 0:05:18.080 million miles away in many ways from the wild west 0:05:18.160 --> 0:05:21.240 end of Adelaide. So she's sent to this house called 0:05:21.279 --> 0:05:23.680 Grove Hill, which is owned by the Giles family. We 0:05:23.760 --> 0:05:26.560 are a very wealthy family. And yeah, so she's at 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:29.000 this lovely property in the hills which is surrounded by 0:05:29.120 --> 0:05:33.680 orchards and gardens and has all this beautiful architecture. And 0:05:34.040 --> 0:05:36.440 while she's there, she becomes pregnant to the young man 0:05:36.480 --> 0:05:37.680 of the house. Ah. 0:05:37.920 --> 0:05:41.080 Interesting, So the young man of the house as in 0:05:41.400 --> 0:05:43.599 a sort of the one of the children of the house, 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:45.200 one of the teenagers. 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:50.000 So yes, yes, he's nineteen nineteen sixteen by that point 0:05:50.040 --> 0:05:53.640 just about we know, you know from later descriptions of 0:05:53.680 --> 0:05:57.440 her that she's you know, she's tallish, she's five for 0:05:57.640 --> 0:06:01.719 three five four, she's slim, she's got Hayes lies and 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:05.080 being mable. She has a wild streak a mile wide, 0:06:05.600 --> 0:06:08.479 and she attracts the attention of this young man, Charles Giles, 0:06:08.520 --> 0:06:11.000 who's the young man of the house. And what's key 0:06:11.000 --> 0:06:13.320 to their relationship is that when he's twenty one, he 0:06:13.360 --> 0:06:17.599 will inherit the entire estate from his grandfather. So yes, 0:06:17.680 --> 0:06:20.920 so she is returned to the to the State Children's 0:06:20.960 --> 0:06:24.880 Council from Grove Hill. She's initially returned as unwell, but 0:06:24.960 --> 0:06:26.920 it's rapidly discovered that she's pregnant. 0:06:27.360 --> 0:06:30.599 Ah, and she was obviously just working as a maid 0:06:30.800 --> 0:06:32.920 while she was at this amazing home. 0:06:33.400 --> 0:06:35.320 Yes, yes, so she's just a house stage, she's just 0:06:35.360 --> 0:06:38.120 a domestic servant. And this is what you know, this 0:06:38.160 --> 0:06:40.160 is what happens to girls in service. They go out 0:06:40.200 --> 0:06:44.400 and they work as domestics, or they work for small businesses, 0:06:44.440 --> 0:06:47.159 that sort of thing. Boys tend to be sent to 0:06:47.200 --> 0:06:50.320 farms for agricultural labor, that sort of stuff. Or into apprenticeships. 0:06:50.800 --> 0:06:53.960 So what happens to this baby, given it's illegitimate, does 0:06:54.000 --> 0:06:56.360 it stand to inherit this fortune? 0:06:57.120 --> 0:07:01.400 Probably not, I think that's probably quite unlikely. But for 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:05.560 some reason, and we don't know exactly why the Giles 0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:08.520 family pays the State Children's Council one hundred and fifty 0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:12.560 pounds in consideration of all demands. Now, I have spent 0:07:12.600 --> 0:07:15.480 a lot of time going through the correspondence books for 0:07:15.840 --> 0:07:19.240 various of these institutions, and I can't find any correspondence 0:07:19.280 --> 0:07:21.320 that tells us why they paid this one hundred and 0:07:21.360 --> 0:07:26.280 fifty pounds. But it's a very very unusual tacit admission 0:07:26.280 --> 0:07:28.520 of paternity on behalf of the Giles. 0:07:28.160 --> 0:07:31.040 Family, and it's also a huge amount of money at 0:07:31.040 --> 0:07:31.480 that time. 0:07:31.560 --> 0:07:35.040 I'm assuming it really is. Yes, we did the maths 0:07:35.080 --> 0:07:38.880 and it's twelve years dipend for a state child. So 0:07:39.080 --> 0:07:42.480 it's what the family is basically paying off the government 0:07:42.560 --> 0:07:45.200 for having to look after this child for the twelve 0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:47.480 years that is the minimum that they would be that 0:07:47.560 --> 0:07:50.680 she would be in care. So Mabel has this baby 0:07:50.720 --> 0:07:53.560 at the lying in home of the Destitute Asylum. So 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:56.840 if anybody's been to the migration museum in Adelaide, my 0:07:56.960 --> 0:07:59.840 form alma mata. The two story building in the courtyard, 0:07:59.880 --> 0:08:01.960 that's the lying in home. So Mabel would have had 0:08:02.000 --> 0:08:05.480 her daughter in one of the upper upstairs labor wards. 0:08:05.960 --> 0:08:08.720 And so that's the twenty sixth of November eighteen eighty eight, 0:08:09.160 --> 0:08:11.360 and she has a little girl that she calls Hillgrove. 0:08:11.680 --> 0:08:14.880 So Hillgrove is not usually a girl's name, it's a 0:08:14.920 --> 0:08:18.600 boy's name, and it is significantly the name of Charles 0:08:18.640 --> 0:08:22.360 Giles's deceased little brother, who died about five years before 0:08:22.400 --> 0:08:26.560 Mabel goes to work at the house. So I suspect 0:08:26.600 --> 0:08:30.680 that this is a potentially loving and consensual relationship between 0:08:30.680 --> 0:08:32.719 Mabel and the young man of the house. It might 0:08:32.760 --> 0:08:34.640 not have been. She wouldn't be the first maid to 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:37.520 be despoiled by a man of the house, and she 0:08:37.559 --> 0:08:40.000 certainly wouldn't be the last. But the fact that she 0:08:40.240 --> 0:08:43.320 calls her child this family name, it could be a 0:08:43.320 --> 0:08:45.679 big middle finger from Mabel to the Giles's But it 0:08:45.720 --> 0:08:50.400 could also be a much more loving and consensual relationship. Yeah. 0:08:50.440 --> 0:08:52.600 Well, even the fact that she knows the name of 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:53.800 the deceased little brother. 0:08:54.720 --> 0:08:57.959 Yes, yes, actually, that's an excellent point. I had never 0:08:58.000 --> 0:09:00.000 thought about that, so thank you for that wonderful detail. 0:09:01.240 --> 0:09:04.000 So yes, so she named this child Hillgrove and that 0:09:04.040 --> 0:09:05.800 does not go down very well at all. 0:09:06.080 --> 0:09:06.800 How do you know that? 0:09:08.000 --> 0:09:11.080 Because the State Children's Council make her change the child's name. 0:09:12.760 --> 0:09:14.240 Oh my goodness. 0:09:14.559 --> 0:09:17.520 So it happens at some point in the baby's first 0:09:17.600 --> 0:09:20.960 few months, but her birth is registered as Hillgrove Warley, 0:09:21.280 --> 0:09:24.040 and then by the time she's six months to a 0:09:24.120 --> 0:09:26.400 year old, she's now being referred to in the official 0:09:26.440 --> 0:09:31.280 documentation as Eleanor Giles Worley. So she's had her name 0:09:31.360 --> 0:09:34.960 changed from Hillgrove, but she still retains the Giles. So 0:09:35.280 --> 0:09:38.840 really interesting speculation. I don't have any firm answers, but 0:09:39.480 --> 0:09:42.360 that and the payment, the one hundred and fifty pounds payment, 0:09:42.840 --> 0:09:46.120 does make me wonder if it's genuinely loving relationship. It 0:09:46.160 --> 0:09:48.840 could also be, you know, an aion of a tacit 0:09:48.840 --> 0:09:52.079 admission of guilt. It could be payoff to the authorities 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:55.120 for keeping is quiet. It could be all sorts of things. 0:09:55.120 --> 0:09:58.200 But yes, there's lots to speculate about, maybe of costumesities, 0:09:58.240 --> 0:10:00.520 any of that money. You know that undred and fifty 0:10:00.520 --> 0:10:02.600 pounds doesn't go to her, it goes to the government. 0:10:03.120 --> 0:10:05.000 She may not even know that one hundred and fifty 0:10:05.000 --> 0:10:09.400 pounds ever existed, but yes, it certainly. As a researcher, 0:10:09.480 --> 0:10:12.680 that really kind of caught my attention and made me think, oh, 0:10:12.760 --> 0:10:15.400 what's going on here. There's all interesting stuff going on 0:10:15.440 --> 0:10:16.199 in the background. 0:10:16.360 --> 0:10:18.920 Amazing, there's so much intrigue in her life and she's 0:10:18.960 --> 0:10:20.079 not even yet an adult. 0:10:20.880 --> 0:10:23.319 Yes, yes, she's only a teenager at this point. 0:10:23.600 --> 0:10:26.400 We'll be back shortly to find out what happened next, 0:10:26.559 --> 0:10:35.160 So stay with us. So what happens once she becomes 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:38.839 so she's able to stay there until she's eighteen, and 0:10:38.880 --> 0:10:40.000 then what happens then? 0:10:41.400 --> 0:10:45.280 So what happens next is Mabel turns eighteen, and she 0:10:45.320 --> 0:10:48.640 collects her daughter from the industrial Score and she goes 0:10:48.679 --> 0:10:53.760 about her way. But things don't go smoothly. And we 0:10:53.880 --> 0:10:58.200 talked earlier about whether she's accused of prostitution. Her daughter 0:10:58.320 --> 0:11:01.360 is probably about a year and a half, yes, she 0:11:01.440 --> 0:11:05.000 said Toddler and Mabel's brother writes a letter to the 0:11:05.000 --> 0:11:08.679 State Children's Council accusing Mabel of being a prostitute and 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:11.920 saying that she's living in a brothel just off Hindley Street, 0:11:12.520 --> 0:11:15.240 and that she has hidden her daughter away and that 0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:17.719 if someone goes and checks, they'll find that Mabel is 0:11:17.760 --> 0:11:21.160 being very bad indeed, and this causes a great flurry 0:11:21.160 --> 0:11:24.440 at the State Children's Counsel, who send an inspector round 0:11:24.520 --> 0:11:27.000 to do a check, and they find Mabel in bed 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:29.280 in the middle of the day with a young man 0:11:29.920 --> 0:11:33.000 partially clothed, and of course this doesn't look good at all, 0:11:33.480 --> 0:11:35.240 and they go and pick up her daughter from the 0:11:35.240 --> 0:11:38.719 foster mother that Mabel has secreted her with, and they 0:11:38.760 --> 0:11:42.360 take the child into care, and poor Mabel, she really 0:11:42.360 --> 0:11:46.559 suffers from this decision. She writes several letters to the 0:11:46.600 --> 0:11:49.520 State Children's Council asking for her child back, but of 0:11:49.559 --> 0:11:52.480 course she's been judged of being of low repute and 0:11:52.559 --> 0:11:54.839 poor character, and they're not going to release the child 0:11:54.880 --> 0:11:58.000 to her. So Mabel's about eighteen and a half, she's 0:11:58.040 --> 0:12:00.720 nearly nineteen at this point, and what's she going to do? 0:12:00.800 --> 0:12:03.240 She has no legal recourse to get her child back. 0:12:03.760 --> 0:12:07.720 The State Children's Counsel is her baby's legal guardian because 0:12:07.760 --> 0:12:10.240 she's been found of living in a brothel and her 0:12:10.240 --> 0:12:13.320 mother is a poor character. So she thinks about it 0:12:13.320 --> 0:12:15.600 for a little while, and Mabel being Mabel, she's always 0:12:15.640 --> 0:12:19.520 got a wily solution to these sorts of problems. And 0:12:19.800 --> 0:12:23.720 she gets married in July eighteen ninety one. She marries 0:12:23.800 --> 0:12:27.120 a young man called Henry Hawkins, and he is very 0:12:27.160 --> 0:12:30.000 slightly higher than her in the social scale. He has 0:12:30.120 --> 0:12:32.680 quite a whiff of drama about him. He was born 0:12:32.679 --> 0:12:35.679 in colonial Fiji and came to Australia when he was 0:12:35.720 --> 0:12:40.680 a very small child, and his father very dramatically dies 0:12:41.120 --> 0:12:44.400 or died in eighteen seventy two on one of the 0:12:44.440 --> 0:12:49.319 Northern Telegraph the Overland telegraph Line expeditions. So Henry has 0:12:49.360 --> 0:12:53.000 this little kind of cachet of colonial drama, and he's 0:12:53.040 --> 0:12:55.880 born overseas, and he's a printer. He's only young, he's 0:12:55.920 --> 0:12:58.040 in his early twenties. He's two or three years older 0:12:58.080 --> 0:13:02.559 than her, and he works at a the Christian Colonist newspaper. 0:13:02.800 --> 0:13:05.320 And so the day after the wedding he starts writing 0:13:05.360 --> 0:13:08.240 to the State Children's Council saying I would like to 0:13:08.280 --> 0:13:12.120 take charge of my stepdaughter please. Actually those letters aren't 0:13:12.200 --> 0:13:14.920 very successful, and you can see the letters at State 0:13:15.000 --> 0:13:18.120 Records at Cavern. It was an utter delight to be 0:13:18.200 --> 0:13:21.320 able to go to State records. Wonderful colleagues, and they 0:13:21.400 --> 0:13:24.080 got the letters out for us, so we could read 0:13:24.240 --> 0:13:27.240 Henry's letters to the State Children's Council and Mabel's letters 0:13:27.320 --> 0:13:31.680 to the State Children's Council, and it's really wonderful. It 0:13:31.679 --> 0:13:34.000 puts you over their shoulder, just really looking at how 0:13:34.040 --> 0:13:36.000 they feel where they're trying to get this child that 0:13:36.120 --> 0:13:39.080 means so much to both of them, trying to get 0:13:39.080 --> 0:13:40.960 her return to them and. 0:13:41.040 --> 0:13:44.160 Finding it had to understand why they were still refused. 0:13:44.240 --> 0:13:47.680 If there were two loving parents that wanted to adopt 0:13:47.800 --> 0:13:49.080 or to take back this child. 0:13:50.400 --> 0:13:54.600 Well, Henry apparently has reputation for being a drinker, so 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:56.480 there's a note on the bottom of the file that 0:13:56.520 --> 0:14:00.120 says that he has a poor reputation as well, and 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:02.880 that initially it's not thought that it's in the interest 0:14:02.920 --> 0:14:05.400 of the child, but something changes. They eventually managed to 0:14:05.440 --> 0:14:08.200 persuade the State Children's counsel to give it a try, 0:14:08.679 --> 0:14:12.560 and so little toddler Eleanor she's called Eleanor at that point, 0:14:12.559 --> 0:14:14.920 and we think her nickname is probably nell Or Nellie, 0:14:14.960 --> 0:14:18.760 and she is returned to Mabel and Hawkins. 0:14:19.360 --> 0:14:23.240 Amazing, and what happens next. So for a little while 0:14:23.560 --> 0:14:26.920 they're a happy family. They're a happy family, and that's 0:14:26.960 --> 0:14:30.760 the early few years of the eighteen nineties. They pass 0:14:30.840 --> 0:14:33.080 in wonderful serenity. Nothing happens. 0:14:33.120 --> 0:14:37.920 They're inspected regularly that the household is doing well and 0:14:38.000 --> 0:14:40.480 that the child is being well cared for. And then 0:14:40.520 --> 0:14:44.320 in eighteen ninety four, Henry requests permission to take eleanor 0:14:44.400 --> 0:14:47.920 baby Eleanor out of South Australia. They're planning a trip 0:14:47.920 --> 0:14:50.160 to New South Wales and they're going to take this 0:14:50.320 --> 0:14:53.320 child out of the state, out of the colony, sorry 0:14:53.440 --> 0:14:55.320 as it was at the time, And they get permissioned 0:14:55.320 --> 0:14:57.720 to do that, and nothing has heard of them for 0:14:57.760 --> 0:15:02.360 two years, and they come back in eighteen ninety six. Now, 0:15:03.400 --> 0:15:05.680 from the point of view of the State Children's Council, 0:15:05.760 --> 0:15:08.200 this is all fine. She's been traveling with her stepfather, 0:15:08.320 --> 0:15:12.960 that's all well and good. But what it's happening behind 0:15:13.000 --> 0:15:15.800 the scenes, what is happening behind the scenes, is much 0:15:15.880 --> 0:15:20.160 much more interesting. So it turns out that Mabel has 0:15:20.280 --> 0:15:23.520 a career as a vaudeville singer, and her daughter has 0:15:23.640 --> 0:15:27.000 also been singing on the stage as a small child. 0:15:27.000 --> 0:15:29.720 So as four and five year old. She's performing at 0:15:29.760 --> 0:15:34.760 the races because Mabel's brothers are jockeys and she's performing 0:15:35.120 --> 0:15:38.080 on the stage. And when this news hits the State 0:15:38.160 --> 0:15:41.240 Children's Council they go ballistic threat to take the child 0:15:41.320 --> 0:15:41.880 away again. 0:15:42.520 --> 0:15:47.680 So were they traveling in New South Wales and performing 0:15:48.000 --> 0:15:52.160 on stages around New South Wales or was that all 0:15:52.320 --> 0:15:53.760 just a bit of a furfee. 0:15:55.640 --> 0:15:58.000 It's very hard to tell because there's lots of changes 0:15:58.040 --> 0:16:03.320 of names, and it's across multiple colonial lines. Before nineteen hundred, 0:16:03.360 --> 0:16:08.040 all of these colonies have entirely separate administrations. So from 0:16:08.080 --> 0:16:10.640 what I've been able to piece together, Mabel travels to 0:16:10.680 --> 0:16:14.520 New Zealand, she begins performing as her stage name is 0:16:14.520 --> 0:16:18.920 Triscy Darcy, and her little daughter is also performing with 0:16:19.320 --> 0:16:22.800 Mabel's brothers who have a small kind of traveling show 0:16:22.880 --> 0:16:27.000 at this point. And then so when Mabel comes back 0:16:27.000 --> 0:16:29.760 in early eighteen ninety six, her daughter is also performing 0:16:30.520 --> 0:16:34.200 with this traveling show, and that's when the State Children's 0:16:34.200 --> 0:16:36.040 Council gets wind of it. They've managed to keep its 0:16:36.080 --> 0:16:39.160 secret while they've been into state. They've probably been further 0:16:39.240 --> 0:16:41.160 than New South Wales. They may have even gone as 0:16:41.160 --> 0:16:44.480 far as Fiji to go and see Henry Hawkins family. 0:16:44.520 --> 0:16:47.800 But I haven't found any definitive proof of that. But yes, 0:16:48.040 --> 0:16:51.320 they're desperate to keep this performance aspect quiet from the 0:16:51.320 --> 0:16:54.800 State Children's Council because obviously vaudeville and the theater and 0:16:54.920 --> 0:16:58.000 circus they're all considered to be quite low forms of entertainment, 0:16:58.360 --> 0:17:01.600 some lower than others, and it's not felt to be 0:17:02.320 --> 0:17:04.240 in the best interests of the child. So they're trying 0:17:04.280 --> 0:17:07.520 to keep the secret. But somebody spots them and it 0:17:07.560 --> 0:17:09.680 all goes to. 0:17:08.880 --> 0:17:13.359 Pooh, have you been able to come? Have you come 0:17:13.359 --> 0:17:17.800 across any more descriptions of the show and what Mabel 0:17:17.840 --> 0:17:20.440 and her daughter were doing. Was it singing and dancing 0:17:20.480 --> 0:17:24.879 and so forth? Yes, there's lots of singing. Mabel is 0:17:24.880 --> 0:17:28.919 described as a serio comic, which means that she's doing. 0:17:29.119 --> 0:17:31.320 You know, kind of light operetta, that sort of thing. 0:17:31.840 --> 0:17:35.000 Apparently she has a really nice voice. Her daughter is 0:17:35.160 --> 0:17:38.640 quite the stage sensation. So she's by eighteen ninety six, 0:17:38.760 --> 0:17:43.560 she's seven or eight, she's eight, and she is causing 0:17:43.560 --> 0:17:47.840 a real flurry when she's performing. She's probably doing sentimental ballads, 0:17:47.880 --> 0:17:50.359 plantation songs, that sort of thing is very popular in 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:54.240 the eighteen nineties. What is also happening on stage is 0:17:54.280 --> 0:17:57.160 around Australia and around the anglophone world, is that people 0:17:57.200 --> 0:18:00.520 are doing a lot of work in blackface. So I 0:18:00.520 --> 0:18:02.480 don't know if you remember things like the Black and 0:18:02.480 --> 0:18:05.040 White minstrel show that used to be on TV in 0:18:05.119 --> 0:18:10.000 the seventies and eighties. That sort of blackface performance has 0:18:10.040 --> 0:18:12.199 a long, long history. It's got hundreds of years of 0:18:12.280 --> 0:18:17.399 history of white folks blacking up to perform, and in 0:18:17.440 --> 0:18:20.320 the late the latter part of the nineteenth century, it's 0:18:20.400 --> 0:18:24.000 everywhere everybody is performing, So it's unlikely that Mabel her 0:18:24.119 --> 0:18:26.560 daughter did, but they would be on stage with male 0:18:26.800 --> 0:18:30.000 actors and singers who were performing in blackface. There was 0:18:30.040 --> 0:18:33.120 also quite a bit of cross dressing on stage, which 0:18:33.240 --> 0:18:36.560 was very titillating to audiences, but also causes a lot 0:18:36.560 --> 0:18:40.800 of tension that these gender roles can be dispensed with 0:18:40.880 --> 0:18:43.800 so easily. It's all the sort of stuff that you 0:18:43.840 --> 0:18:46.479 know is swirling around us now with this people on 0:18:46.480 --> 0:18:48.680 the right getting upset about drag and all that sort 0:18:48.720 --> 0:18:51.960 of thing and seen as destabilizing in many ways. So 0:18:52.520 --> 0:18:56.720 the vaudeville and live performance world and circus world of 0:18:56.760 --> 0:18:59.840 the late nineteenth centuries is a much more interesting place 0:19:00.720 --> 0:19:04.720 we might think these days. It's very it's very international. 0:19:04.840 --> 0:19:07.080 All of these troops know each other, all of the 0:19:07.119 --> 0:19:11.199 performers are interconnected in many ways. They're either related, or 0:19:11.200 --> 0:19:13.399 they've worked with each other, or they owe each other money, 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:16.280 or they've got their big break together. So this is 0:19:16.320 --> 0:19:18.800 how Mabel and her daughter start performing on stages in 0:19:18.880 --> 0:19:22.000 particularly in Adelaide on Hindy Street with some of the 0:19:22.040 --> 0:19:24.479 really quite upcoming names of the day, who will then 0:19:24.560 --> 0:19:26.880 go on to perform around Australia and internationally. 0:19:27.800 --> 0:19:29.760 And was it always a mother and daughter act? Were 0:19:29.800 --> 0:19:31.000 they always performing together? 0:19:31.960 --> 0:19:34.600 I don't think so. No. I think that Mabel often 0:19:34.760 --> 0:19:36.600 is traveling on her own, and I think that that 0:19:36.720 --> 0:19:39.960 means that her daughter is with either with her father 0:19:40.480 --> 0:19:43.600 or with one of Mabel's brothers and their families. So 0:19:43.640 --> 0:19:48.119 Mabel has three brothers. The oldest one, Walter, is the 0:19:48.119 --> 0:19:50.000 one who accuses her of being a prostitute, and they 0:19:50.000 --> 0:19:53.359 obviously have quite a difficult relationship. Her middle brother, Frank, 0:19:53.480 --> 0:19:56.360 is her favorite brother, and then her youngest brother, Alfred, 0:19:56.440 --> 0:19:58.480 is the baby of the family. So Frank has a 0:19:58.520 --> 0:20:02.840 small traveling show, which they end up calling Barton's Circus. 0:20:03.600 --> 0:20:06.240 Barton is the family stage name, and that's one of 0:20:06.240 --> 0:20:08.560 the reasons why it's so difficult to track all these 0:20:08.600 --> 0:20:11.600 people because they're using Barton, they're using Darcy, they're never 0:20:11.680 --> 0:20:15.240 using Walley or Hawkins, but they're using lots of other pseudonyms. 0:20:16.080 --> 0:20:19.840 Throughout her long life, Mabel understands the power of crafting 0:20:19.920 --> 0:20:22.280 a new identity by sliding on the new name. You know, 0:20:22.400 --> 0:20:25.720 she changes names like she's changing her dress. She puts 0:20:25.760 --> 0:20:29.760 on accents to pretend to be from elsewhere. She's clearly 0:20:29.840 --> 0:20:34.240 drawing on this huge family performance vein of you know, 0:20:34.280 --> 0:20:37.080 the family has been performing for several decades. It actually 0:20:37.080 --> 0:20:39.119 turns out, and that's one of the things that happens 0:20:39.160 --> 0:20:42.080 in the book is that I uncover the history of 0:20:42.119 --> 0:20:45.480 this family performance gene you might say, which turns out 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:49.280 to have its genesis right in the eighteen seventies. I 0:20:49.480 --> 0:20:50.320 get to that later. 0:20:50.560 --> 0:20:53.600 And did Henry ever perform or was he more of 0:20:53.640 --> 0:20:54.840 a backstage manager. 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:57.879 I think he does do some performing. There's a couple 0:20:57.880 --> 0:21:00.560 of reports that he is traveling with a fox. So 0:21:00.600 --> 0:21:03.639 this is when Edison has developed the phonograph of the 0:21:03.680 --> 0:21:07.239 wax cylinders. People might be familiar. You can always google it, 0:21:07.800 --> 0:21:10.720 so that it's a way of recording sound that's very 0:21:10.720 --> 0:21:14.840 new and very exciting. And so he is traveling as 0:21:14.920 --> 0:21:18.719 mister Darcy with a phonograph. And then the brothers, Mabel's 0:21:18.760 --> 0:21:21.760 brothers have this small performing circus and they're doing all 0:21:21.760 --> 0:21:25.000 the side shows and playing at the races again and 0:21:25.040 --> 0:21:28.000 doing all these little venues around South Australia, Country, South 0:21:28.000 --> 0:21:31.560 Australia and Victoria. And really that's how they kind of 0:21:31.640 --> 0:21:35.840 keep going until the end of the eighteen nineties. And 0:21:35.880 --> 0:21:39.360 then in eighteen ninety nine they notify the State Children's 0:21:39.359 --> 0:21:42.440 Council that they're moving to Melbourne and Mabel and her 0:21:42.520 --> 0:21:45.399 daughter disappear out of the historical record. 0:21:45.640 --> 0:21:48.399 We'll be back shortly to hear more about Mabel's life, 0:21:48.480 --> 0:21:57.920 so stay with us so before they disappear. Just from 0:21:57.960 --> 0:21:59.480