Tag / Hay Street

by Eddie

Getting to the point

hatpins

Inspector White: “Just the facts, Ma’am”

While British women were being imprisoned for demanding the vote, the fair sex in Western Australia was subject to an even more sinister form of control. We refer, of course, to the notorious anti-hatpin crusade of 1912-13.

It all started in March 1912 in Melbourne, when the Australian Women’s National League resolved to start the crusade. If you were to believe the press (although we never do) numerous people were being blinded by the awful hatpins, and even one case of death where the pin pierced the brain of an innocent man walking by.

Sydney responded immediately with a ban on unprotected hatpins, with a fine of £10 for each offence. By May, Boulder had drafted similar laws. After Perth outlawed these dangerous weapons in August, one Perth drapery firm sold thousands of hatpin protectors in a single week.

And Perth City Council wasn’t joking, officers were appointed to walk the streets and take down the names of offenders for prosecution. In one day in February 1913, forty indignant women were charged with having broken the most serious of all laws.

These Perth women were indignant, claiming that the council was oppressing their freedom to dress as they wished. Sometimes they claimed they didn’t know about the law, which led (male) newspaper journalists to bemoan that the feminine members of the community limit their newspaper reading to the births, deaths, and marriages column and social notes.

A huge sweep was undertaken by Inspector White on 27 March 1913, when seventeen ladies were dragged before the magistrate for having worn unprotected hatpins on Hay and Barrack streets.

One of the ladies successfully argued that her pin was too short to protrude from the edge of her hat, even though the good Inspector White gave evidence to the contrary.

Another defendant, Eliza Tuxford, explained that the protector had fallen off her hatpin, so was fined only five shillings. The remaining fifteen were each ordered to pay ten shillings, and warned to never endanger the lives of the public again.

Most Australian cities dropped the laws quickly after this, leading to the end of this oppression. But Inspector White was determined to press on regardless. He was still bringing cases in 1919, leading to allegations he was on a bonus scheme for increasing the council’s revenue. But that could never be true, could it? Like parking inspectors today, he worked for love, not to aid budget lines.

by Eddie

How WA invented Pommies

pomegranates

A picture of whining poms

Western Australia is famous for many things but, up until now, it has not received credit for its greatest contribution to Australian culture. We invented the word ‘pommy’. Dictionaries like to say the origins of the word are obscure, but they aren’t. It started here.

On the goldfields they liked to play with words. Immigrants got called ‘Jimmy Grants’ because someone thought that was funny. Then it was taken too far. From ‘pomegranate’, Jimmy Grants became Pommygrants. And after that it quickly became the word Pomegranate itself, before getting shortened to Pommy. All this in Western Australia in the first years of the 20th century.

Dictionaries are also wrong when they claim Pommy first appeared during World War I. It is much earlier than that, and even appears in print in WA in January 1912 when immigrant British policemen were referred to as Pomegranate Johns, or Pommy for short. The word quickly spread around the whole country, and by 1913 the whining Poms were claiming it was a racially abusive word and should be banned. A joke from that year went like this:

A canvasser visited a house in Perth, and was referred by the good wife at the door to the “Old Man”, in the garden. He found that the “Old Man” was a Chinaman. “Do you mean to say you’ve married a Chinaman?” he said incredulously to the woman. “Why not?” she replied, “the woman next door married a Pommy.”

Before he died in 1950, John Jones of Leederville used to boast he had invented Pommy while perving on English girls on Hay Street. This is unlikely to be true, but does show that Western Australia has always claimed to be the origin for the word. It is time we were once again proud of our heritage.

by Eddie

The first decent coffee in Perth

Site of the Devonshire Arms Hotel

Site of the Devonshire Arms Hotel

Here in the Dodgy Perth office we have blood type Coffee+. So it’s no surprise we’re excited to hear about the impending launch of a café dedicated to Perth’s first ever bean roaster, Mr Henry Saw.

But in 1852, Henry only sold the roasted beans. He didn’t actually make any coffee. Which for the lazy types in our office is no use at all.

So, the question we asked ourselves was: where was the first decent coffee shop in Perth?

Surprisingly, there wasn’t one until October 1883, when Mrs Woods became manager of the ‘Burnett Coffee Rooms’ in the former Devonshire Arms Hotel. This was on the corner of Hay and Barrack, where the Connor-Quinlan building now stands, currently best known as the home of pen retailer, T. Sharp.

It was no coincidence that a former pub was converted to a coffee palace. This was one of the heights of the temperance movement, and anything that could stop working men drinking was considered a good thing.

Matthew Burnett was a controversial temperance enthusiast. His critics said he was a con man, who got other people to build coffee shops for him in the name of religion, without him having to pay a cent. His followers thought him the man to save Australia from the demon drink.

In either case, Mattie has the honour of opening the first decent coffee shop in Perth.

Mmmm… coffee.

by Eddie

Meet Thomas Jones

82x108mm

I still think we need more beer.

There’s drunk. There’s very drunk. And there’s Thomas Jones, a middle-aged, grey-haired man. In June 1920, on his way into town, Thomas felt thirsty, so he stopped off at the Commonwealth Hotel (now the Hyde Park) for three pints of beer.

He was a little hazy as to which pub was next, but remembered having six pints. Then another hotel. Two, maybe three, pints there. On arrival in town, Thomas decided to have a few at the City Hotel (now the Belgian Beer Café), before wandering down Hay Street.

Unfortunately our hero was not unknown to the Perth constabulary. Sergeant Johnston, noticing an unsteady gait, decided to place an arm-lock on poor Thomas. Perhaps lacking full control, Thomas fought back and used some choice Anglo Saxon.

In court, Thomas tried for sympathy. He denied resisting arrest.

Thomas By Jove, your worship, I really don’t seem to get much of a chance in Perth, when I think of it. As a matter of fact, I should be charged with drunkenness—I was very drunk. I may have used a little warm language—I really cannot recollect.

Prosecutor I don’t think you can remember much of what happened at all, if you had had as many drinks as you say.

Thomas Sir, I can remember things which happened in my boyhood’s days!

Magistrate Oh, we needn’t go so far back as all that. We’d be here much too long. Are you calling any witnesses?

Thomas Sir, of course not. I have no witnesses for the defence. As a matter of fact, I’m not quite right in my head.

The sentence was 28 days.

by Eddie

Celebrating sex offenders? Really?

Town HallReader, we are all friends here, are we not? Good. Then Dodgy Perth can reveal the heavy weight hanging on our collective heart.

Dear fellow Perthite, Dodgy Perth proposes that the Town Hall on Barrack Street should be demolished.

We know, we know. You’ll never be able to look us in the eye again. But hang around for a bit, while we justify this outrageous statement.

In 1913, it appeared likely Perth Council would vacate the Town Hall for proposed new premises. The Institute of Architects, big bunch of softies that they were, proposed the tower of the Hall be preserved for historic reasons, and incorporated into any new design.

(If you want a 21st century example of this way of thinking, look no further than the eyesore that is St George’s Hall façade on Hay Street.)

Fortunately, not everyone was as sentimental as the architects. And a few were willing to speak out, noting it was inconceivable that any sane person could desire to have “such an aggressive monstrosity” as the Town Hall handed down to posterity.

Of course, some will point out it was convict built, and we should treasure these memories of the past. Dodgy Perth, and our 1913 modernists, say no.

What are we commemorating? The dreadful crimes committed by some who constructed the Town Hall? Among those arriving on the Hougoumont (who made up most of the workforce) were men guilty of rape, murder, and incest.

Do you want to venerate rapists? Really?

If not the men, then perhaps we should remember the awful system which condemned people to be transported half a world away and used as slave labour, long after it had been abolished everywhere else in the world.

The impact it had on people like Frederick Bicknell, a young carpenter who did the shingle roofing on the Town Hall. And who was transported for arson and insurance fraud. And who died in Old Men’s Home in Perth, well into the 20th century.

Do you want to venerate slavery? Really?

Instead, argued our 1913 anti-heritage consultants, simply let us forget the Town Hall. In any case, its birthstains can never be forgotten when it has four sets of ghastly broad arrows at the corners of the spires. The Town Hall can only recall an exceedingly dark and blotted page in the history of the State.

If antiquarians really care, then measured drawings and a set of photographs could be made. But not one brick should remain of this awful place.

If we wish to perpetuate early architecture, Government House is pretty enough, and in much more picturesque surroundings.

So Dodgy Perth joins in with the dissenting voices of 1913 and says, with all due reverence and respect, let the Town Hall join its builders, and quietly pass away.

by Eddie

Now that’s entertainment

Bluebeard's Bloody Chamber, 1901

Bluebeard’s Bloody Chamber, 1901

We at Dodgy Perth know how to have a good night out. And we know that a good night out requires a man in drag and dismembered heads.

Sceptical? Read on.

The last time we met George Leake—lawyer and State Premier—some rotters were (and still are) hoping to knock down his widow’s house on Bellevue Terrace. Anyway, it turns out George had another talent. He made a very good drag queen.

In 1888 there was a special charity event at St George’s Hall on Hay Street. A building, we sadly note, now reduced to a parody of heritage conservation. Thank you District Court of WA.

After a few songs, the main act were waxworks borrowed from Jarley’s for the evening. The future Premier dressed up as ‘Mrs Jarley’, and he was surprisingly good at it.

The various waxworks were wheeled out while George—sorry, Mrs Jarley—cracked jokes and kept the crowd amused. There was Chang the giant, the Giant Killer, Jack Sprat and his wife, and Queen Elizabeth.

For those who believe product placement is a recent invention, the next tableaux was Mrs. Pears’ Soap and the Dirty Boy. Quickly followed by waxworks representing Winslow’s Soothing Syrup and Mrs Allen’s Hair Restorer. (Just don’t ask.)

The evening closed with Bluebeard’s chamber. Bluebeard himself was represented in the act of threatening his last wife’s existence with an uplifted scimitar. The heads of his previous victims were hung by their hair, all bleeding copiously, around the walls.

So: drag, rampant commercialism, and over-the-top gore. Sounds like Dodgy Perth’s ideal Saturday evening.