Riding the cycling craze: Safety bike a transport breakthrough

 Safety Bike group about 1900: Note the heavy dresses that had to be accommodated on the bikes, giving us the girls' and boys' bikes we know today. Photo National Museum.

“Twas Mulga Bill, from Eaglehawk, that caught the cycling craze” is the opening line in one of Banjo Paterson’s poems first published in the Sydney Mail on 25 July 1896. That poem signals the arrival of one of the most important inventions of the late 19^th century, the safety bike.

I was reminded of this a few weeks back. I had been doing some contract writing in the city. Each day I walked from the bus stop to the office past construction work underway for the Sydney metro. There, suddenly, the side of a building was revealed through demolition carrying the words Bennett and Wood. I was at what had once been Sydney bike central, the home of the famous Speedwell brand. 

Cycling had been popular for some time, although some of the early variants such as the velocipede or the later Penny Farthing are strange to modern eyes. They were heavy, expensive and could be dangerous.

There were three wheelers suitable for the ladies. Queen Victoria had one, although there is no record of her ever using it, but cycling was the largely the domain of men,

The arrival of the safety bike changed all this. It had a diamond shaped frame, two equal sized wheels, pedals that provided drive to the back wheel by a chain.

Women with their bulky dresses could not easily ride the new bikes. They were accommodated with a step through frame with a guard over the chain to stop their dresses becoming caught.

Men and women could now ride together. The result was a cycling craze that swept the world. 

In Sydney, Bennett and Wood had opened a cycle sale shop in 1882 in humble premises in Clarence Street, a single fronted two-storey warehouse. They were both cycling enthusiasts.

Initially they imported Penny Farthings, but then began importing the new safety bikes from England. In 1887, Bennett took full control of the business. As demand grew, he began local manufacture.

Demand continued to grow and the company bought premises in George Street and then Market Street. Meantime, down in Melbourne, a cycling enthusiast called Tom Finnigan had established a cycling business in the suburb of Malvern. The famous Malvern Star bike was born.  

The cultural and social effects of these developments were quite profound. They formed a pattern of life that survived in Australia to the 1960s.

Next week, I will take you down memory lane with a particular focus on Armidale, bringing back a world in which kids could roam wild in a way that’s no longer possible. 

This is the first of a two part series. You will find the second part here. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 19 June 2019. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015,  here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019   

Kettling for the cause: workers' rights and wedding nights

Cacophony: Depiction of charivari in the early 14th century.

My historical research takes me down some strange by-ways.

I was listening to a radio report on demonstrations in Istanbul where the demonstrators were tin kettling, banging pots and pans together to create noise. I had not heard that phrase for a long time!

I first came across the term reading about the history of the miners’ union in the Lower Hunter, the Northern Coal Districts. This is a long and fascinating story that has had a more significant impact on Australian history than most realize.  

Coal miners were paid under a complicated system of piece rates. While earnings were better than average in good times, the work was hard, often dangerous and insecure.  

Starting with Miners’ Lodges in the 1850s, a concept drawn from the English and Welsh coalfields, the miners tried to organise collectively. For their part, the proprietors also organised, creating what came to be called the Combine.  

The miners’ main weapon was withdrawal of labour, strikes, while the proprietors retaliated with lock-outs and the importation of non-union labour, the scabs. The relationship was far more complex than this simple description, for unions and proprietors would also combine if anything threatened the powerful market position held by Hunter Valley coal.

Tin kettling was a powerful miner weapon in these industrial disputes. As the scabs arrived, the miners’ women and children would greet them by blocking roads and banging on pots and pans, creating a constant and often effective cacophony.

I had thought that this was the end of the story, but when I came to investigate, I found that this was not the common Australian usage for tin kettling. The dictionaries don’t mention the industrial usage. Instead, they focus on tin kettling as a custom in Australian marriages!

I shuddered a bit on this one. When I spoke to female friends, they shuddered too.

Imagine. You have just married. Tired, you come back to your new marital home for the first time after the wedding.

Unknown to you, your guests have all followed you home secretly carrying pots and pans. You are ready to go to bed and suddenly the silence is broken by banging, kettling and drumming accompanied by raucous noise! Ouch.

This is still not the end of the story. Researching, I found the practice of charivari or, in England, skimmington or rough music, a practice that spread to North America. Here performance, vulgarity and loud noise, including the banging of pots and pans, were used to embarrass wrong doers in small communities.

The next time your young child or grandchild gets the pots and pans out and starts banging them, remember they may be an extension of a long tradition!

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 12 June 2019. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015,  here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019   

The mysterious life and death of Harry Freame

Over the last few months, my Armidale Express history columns have been devoted to the mysterious life and death of Harry Freame, soldier, orchardist and spy.

This post brings all the columns together into a single series so that you can follow the story through post by post. Each post opens in a new window, so read, close and then click the next link in this post.

The first part of the series discusses Australia's early intelligence activities beginning pre-Federation and then through to the immediate period after the ending of the First World War.

We then trace the life of Harry Freame from his birth in Japan through the First World War including Gallipoli to his early involvement in espionage activities as a consequence of his fluency in Japanese. .

Harry then becomes a soldier settler and orchardist  at Kentucky south of  Armidale and Uralla. There Harry and his wife became involved .in a variety of community activities, a son was born, but also experienced troubles.because of May's illness.

As war with Japan becomes closer, Harry is again drawn back into intelligence work, this time with fatal consequences.       

Setting the Scene

• Wednesday, January 23, 2019 Australia ventures into foreign policy - and spies
• Wednesday, January 30, 2019 Australia ventures into intelligence
• Monday, February 18, 2019 Early Royal Australian Navy intelligence makes a difference
• Tuesday, February 19, 2019 Politics burns spy moves

The Life of Harry Freame

• Monday, February 25, 2019 Creating the Freame legend
• Wednesday, February 27, 2019 ‘Spy’ a hero of Gallipoli
• Wednesday, March 06, 2019 Harry in the frame for new agency
• Wednesday, April 10, 2019 Settlement for soldiers: half the new farms would fail
• Wednesday, April 17, 2019 Building a new life book-ended by war
• Wednesday, April 24, 2019 Battling settlement and separation
• Wednesday, May 01, 2019 The Growers' Co-operative debate
• Wednesday, May 08, 2019 A brief period of stability and success for the Freame family as the clouds gather
• Wednesday, May 15, 2019 Japan's Empire a threat
• Wednesday, May 22, 2019 Nation unprepared for threat of war
• Wednesday, June 05, 2019 Harry Freame: odd jobs man in Japan
• Wednesday, June 12, 2019 End of a mysterious life: Harry Freame returns to Australia to die

A Note on Sources

I have called Harry Harry because that is the name normally used in Australia. He was Henry to his wife's English family. I have called his wife May rather than Edith, her formal first name, because that seems to have been how she was known.

 I have used John Fahey's Australia's First Spies: The remarkable story of Australia's intelligence operations, 1901-45 (Allen & Unwin 2018) for background material on Australia's intelligence operations as well as his chapter on Harry Freame. I have also drawn from James W. Courtney, 'Freame, Wykeham Henry Koba (1885–1941)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/freame-wykeham-henry-koba-6241/text10743, published first in hardcopy 1981, as well as military history web sites. 

Family material including references to family letters is drawn from Sheila Goodyear's WYKEHAM HENRY KOBA FREAME, DCM: an ANZAC in the family

Material on the Kentucky period is drawn especially from Sheila Goodyear supplemented by the regular reports on Kentucky activities contained in the Uralla Times accessed via Trove. 

End of a mysterious life: Harry Freame returns to Australia to die

Final chapter: The SS Tanda, the ship that carried Harry Freame to his death.This is the seventeenth in a series on Australia's early intelligence activities, the thirteenth on the life of Harry Freame. And so our story comes to an end. .

On 11 October 1940, Harry Freame sailed for Tokyo on the SS Tanda to set up the new Australian Legation.

Harry was worried by all the publicity, including the identification of his previous intelligence activities. He thought that he had been followed in Sydney in the weeks before his departure. He was right to be worried.

The economic sanctions imposed by the United State in1939 in response to the Japanese invasion of China were biting hard. Japan was already considering pre-emptive military action. The month before he sailed, Japan had signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy.

The new Australian Legation could probably have done little in any case, but the delays in appointing Sir John Latham meant that it was arriving after the signature of the Tripartite Pact.

John Fahey records that as the political climate worsened, the feared Kenpeitai was instructed to crack down on foreign intelligence activities in Japan.

Many Australian service members would meet the Kenpeitai to their cost. Founded in 1881 as the military police wing of the Imperial Japanese Army, it had evolved into military police plus intelligence plus enforcement wing. It was, in effect, a law in itself.

Political considerations limited action against US nationals, but all others were targets. Harry Freame had a particular problem because he was half-Japanese.

Events now are as confused as anything else in Harry Freame’s life.

The family believed, and there is evidence to support this view, that he was garroted on 27 January 1941, destroying his larynx. The official Australian position at the time was that he had throat cancer. Later family attempts to gain adequate compensation would be unsuccessful.

Severely ill and barely able to speak, Harry Freame was repatriated to Australia where he died and was buried on 29 May 1941. It had been quite a life!

This is not quite the end of our story, nor the last sad part.

Finding the orchard unprofitable with wartime restrictions, Harry Jnr decided to enlist. He tried to join the air force, but was unsuccessful. He therefore joined the 33^rd Battalion, a militia unit, on 31 October 1941.

On 27 March 1943, he entered the Royal Military College, Duntroon, graduating as head of his class on 4 April 1944. He had now achieved that office rank his father had sought so many years before. 

Harry Jnr was posted as Lieutenant to the 2/24 Battalion where he served on Tarakan. On 7 May 1945, Australian papers carried stories of a successful attack he had led on a Japanese pillbox. He was killed the following day.

It happened almost by accident. Suffering from a tooth abscess, Harry Jnr had called into a medical post. Invited to stay overnight, he was asleep when a Japanese soldier crept in and threw a fused shell under his bed. He died instantly. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 5 June 2019. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015,  here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019   

Harry Freame: odd jobs man in Japan

John McEwen, Australian Minister for External Affairs: "the Consul-General of Japan considers the Freame appointment an excellent one, as Mr Freame had created a very favourable impression." This is the sixteenth in a series on Australia's early intelligence activities, the twelfth on the life of Harry Freame.

We come now to the next and last stage in the life of Harry Freame, one that would be as shrouded in mystery as all those that had gone before.

 I have spoken before in this series about the problems Australia faced in finding Japanese language speakers. I have also talked about the sometimes chaotic and ad hoc Australian approach to Australian intelligence gathering.

We will now see both in operation.

On 4 December 1939, Australian Military Intelligence employed Harry Freame on “secret defence work”.

There is no evidence that Harry had retained any intelligence links while living at Kentucky, but now there was need for Japanese speakers. His role was to monitor the small Japanese community living in New South Wales.

August 1940 was a big month for Harry. He married again. His new bride was a nurse, Harriet Brainwood, a divorcee with a son and daughter. He began working for the Military Censor as a Japanese linguist while retaining his intelligence role. He was also under consideration for another role.

Japan was a strategic threat to Australia, but it was also a major trading partner. Still hoping to avoid war, the Australian Government decided to open a Legation in Tokyo. This was an historic move, for this was Australia’s first diplomatic post outside the Empire and Commonwealth. 

Sir John Latham was appointed as Australia’s first Minister to Japan. A special act of Parliament was required since Latham was also Chief Justice of the High Court. Harry was offered and accepted the job of interpreter and odd jobs man, an unusual combination, at the new legation. 

In September 1940, Australian newspapers carried detailed stories on the Freame appointment including, in many cases, references to his secret defence work. Someone had backgrounded the papers and all hell broke loose.

 The Minister for the Army, P A McBryde, wrote to the Minister for External Affairs, John McEwen, to express his concern at the leak. The “possibility cannot be overlooked that this appointment may now be viewed with suspicion in Tokyo.”

McEwen defended his Department.

Freame’s activities were well known to the Japanese authorities in Australia. Further, his Department had specifically raised the question of Freame’s appointment with the Consul-General of Japan who had responded that the Freame appointment “was an excellent one, as Mr Freame had created a very favourable impression.”

Despite the assurances from the Consul-General, this leak would have unfortunate consequences.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 29 May 2019. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015,  here for 2016, here  2017, here 2018, here 2019   

David Reich on who we are and how we got here

Over the last few weeks I have been binge watching YouTube videos about prehistory. I haven't been taking notes, simply immersing myself  in the latest content with a special focus on the latest results from DNA analysis. I suppose this approach lacks rigour, being more akin to the last minute approach I used to follow to get through exams, but I find that it works for me in providing structure and generating thoughts and linkages. 

As I listened, I thought how much our knowledge had changed and just how quickly.

This is a video of a talk given by Professor David Reich last year at Harvard: "Who we are and how we got here - Ancient DNA and the new science of the human past". This the second presentation I have seen on the same topic by Professor Reich, this is the link to the first. Both presentations follow  the release of his 2018 book of the same title.

The book has attracted some criticism not so much on the science but on some of the wording used. I haven't read the book, it seems to have got caught up in current preoccupations about language, but the presentation strikes me as scientifically rigorous and indeed quite fascinating.  It's quite a long video, over an hour, but will give you an insight into the way that scientific research is challenging our deeply held perceptions about the human past.