The Leisure Pursuits of Brisbane Children During the 1930s Depression
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1321816600004803Keywords:
Queensland 1930s Depression, leisure pursuits of children, BrisbaneAbstract
Over the last 30 years, many books have appeared on different aspects of childhood in Australia. There has not, however, been an authoritative published history of childhood that is specific to the Depression years. Sue Fabian and Morag Loh's Children in Australia: An Outline History and Jan Kociumbas's Australian Childhood: A History include chapters that offer overviews of Australian childhood during the Depression, and Lynette Finch's special issue of Queensland Review, Young in a Warm Climate, is the only major study specific to children in Queensland. This paper makes a contribution to Queensland Depression historiography and the history of Queensland children by exploring how the children of Brisbane's working-class unemployed spent their leisure hours, and what effect — if any — the Depression exerted over the choices that were made. It will show mat there was neither uniformity of experience nor a sharp discontinuity between the Depression years and those that preceded and followed this decade.
References
Fabian, Sue and Loh, Morag, Children in Australia: An Outline History (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1980): Kociumbas, Jan, Australian Childhood: A History (Sydney: Allen & Unwin 1997), Lynette Finch, ed., Young in a Warm Climate: Essays in Queensland Childhood, Special Issue of Queensland Review 3.2 (1996). See also: G. Dow and J. Factor, eds, Australian Childhood: An Anthology (Ringwood: McPhee Gribble, 1991); Penelope Hetherington, ed., Childhood and Society in Western Australia (Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1988); Janet McCalman, Struggletown Portrait of an Australian Working-Class Community (Ringwood: Penguin, 1988); Janet McCalman, Journeyings: The Biography of a Middle-Class Generation 1920–1990 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1993); Jacqueline Kent, In the Half Light: Reminiscences of Growing Up in Australia 1900–1970 (Sydney: Doubleday, 1991): Kerreen Reiger, The Disenchantment of the Home: Modernising the Australian Family 1880–1940 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985).
David Ports has emphasised what he perceives to be the positive aspects of the Depression, stating that his respondents were ‘happy though poor’ and that the way they viewed their experiences reflected ‘resilience and self-affirmation … an inspirational joy in living, a bright tribute to some diminishing styles of human fulfilment’. David Potts, ‘A Positive Culture of Poverty Represented in Memories of the 1930s Depression’, Journal of Australian Studies 26 (1990): 3–14.
Pons, David, The Myth of the Great Depression (Melbourne: Scribe, 2006), 197.
Potts, ‘A Positive Culture of Poverty’.
Scott, Joanne and Saunders, Kay, ‘Happy Days are Here Again? A Reply to David Ports’, Journal of Australian Studies 36 (1993): 10–22. See also Pons, David, ‘Talcs of Suffering in the 1930s Depression’, Journal of Australian Studies 41 (1994): 56–66; David Pons, ‘There's Nothing Squashed About Me: A Reply to Scott and Saunders on Poverty in the 1930s Depression’, Journal of Australian Studies 41 (1994): 50–56; David Potts, ‘A Reassessment of the Extent of Unemployment in Australia During the Great Depression’, Australian Historical Studies 97 (1991): 378–98.
Scon and Saunders, ‘Happy Days are Here Again?’: 14.
Where respondents have stated that the sole source of income was from relief work, the majority have stated that they did not have holidays.
Children of affluent parents were reported in the social pages of the newspapers of the day. For example, Truth, 28 February 1937 reported: ‘In honour of the twelfth birthday of her eldest daughter, Joan, Mrs W.H. McLelland entertained a number of guests at her home and afterwards at a picture party.’ The Steering Wheel Society and Home regularly reported on the social activities of children who were able to participate in the various clubs and societies such as the Australian Air League and a model plane club, The Junior Birdmen of Australia. Steering Wheel Society and Home, March 1939: 8; also 1 December 1939: 21.
Davis, Annette, ‘Good Times for All: Popular Entertainment and Class Consciousness in Western Australian Society During the interwar Years’, in Western Australia Between the Wars 1919–1939, ed. Gregory, J. (Perth: Centre for Western Australian History, 1990), 68–79.
The Director of State Children advised the Department of Public Instruction that his department would pay for ‘samplers, cotton, needles, etc., but the material for garments must be supplied by the pupils’, Education Office Gazette, 3 August 1938: 185.
Education Office Gazette, 3 May 1934: 45.
Education Office Gazette, 3 July 1934: 71.
The Annual Reports of the Junior Red Cross Circles list activities ranging from assisting the needy with clothing, toys and food to the payment of medical fees; for example, the report for 1938–39 states that the Windsor State School Circle contributed the sum of £1/10/- towards the medical treatment of a young child with a head injury.
Where the Society experienced difficulty in persuading teachers to become involved in the movement, permission was sought from the school administration to appoint a leader from outside the school community. Some Circles held their meetings in the evenings or on weekends at various local and church halls. Junior Red Cross Society (Queensland Division), Annual Report for the Year Ended 30 June, 1935: 32. By 1937, Junior Red Cross had 1,894 members throughout Queensland. Education Office Gazette, 3 August 1937: 183.
Education Office Gazette, 3 March 1937: 55.
Junior Red Cross Society, Annual Report for the Year Ended 30 June 1935: 33.
Education Office Gazette, 3 October 1937: 230.
Education Office Gazette, 3 July 1931: 48.
Education Office Gazette, 3 October 1937: 230.
Education Office Gazette, 3 November 1935: 191, The School Paper cost a penny.
Education Office Gazette, 3 March 1936: 17.
Queensland Past and Present: 100 Years of Statistics, 1898–1996 (Brisbane: Government Statistician's Office, 1998), 88. ABS, Census of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1933, Vol. I, 280–81 gives statistics relating to all denominations and faiths. The combined membership of the Church of England, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian and Methodist denominations accounted for approximately 88 per cent of all Christian denominations.
McCalman, Struggletown, 135.
Presbyterian Church of Australia, Minutes of Proceedings of the Stale Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, held at Brisbane, May 12th to 20th, 1931. Included in the 180 club listings were Boy Scouts, Cubs, Girt Guides and Brownie packs, which were conducted through the Presbyterian and other churches.
Presbyterian Church of Queensland, The Kirk at Work, Souvenir Programme. A Comprehensive Exhibition of the Activities of the Presbyterian Church in Queensland, 20–22 May 1937, 8.
The Methodist Church of Australasia, Minutes of the 29th Queensland Annual Conference 25 February 1930, 40.
Mackenzie, Annie, Memories Along the Boggo Track (Brisbane: Boolarong, 1992), 54, 57.
Brisbane City Council, Brisbane Statistics. Volume 2, Embracing the Period from the Inception of the Council in 1925 to the End of the Financial Year, 1959–40, 58–64.
Minutes, Brisbane City Council Meeting, 8 November 1932, Item 2741/1932.
Minutes, Brisbane City Council Meeting, 19 March 1935, Item 1904/1934–35.
Minutes, Brisbane City Council Meeting, 18 June, 1935, Item 2513/1934–35.
Jurott, Graham F., A Thompson Estate Boy 1934–1935 (Brisbane: Author, 1995), John Oxley Library. The Thompson Estate Reserve (North Greenslopes) in the Council Ward of Stephens covered an area of 12 acres. Brisbane City Council, Brisbane Statistics. Volume 2, 63.
Queensland Year Book, 1940, 363. Summary of Transport and Communication Statistics. See also ABC of Queensland Statistics, 66. The licence fee for listeners within a 250 mile radius of Brisbane was £1/4/-, reduced to £1/1/- in the 1930s.
Queensland Year Book, 1940, 363,
Reg K, whose father was a relief worker, recalled: We had a radio which I think was a hangover from our better lifestyle before the Depression hit. Radio serials I recall in the later 1930s were Dad and Dave and Search for the Golden Boomerang.' The Search for the Golden Boomerang and Dad and Dave are the two serials most commonly referred to by respondents.
Taken from the daily program for Saturday, 1 July 1933, http://4bc.com.au/history.php.
Brisbane Courier. 1 March 1930. See also www.abc.net.au/brisbane/history.
The Queenslander, 27 November 1930: 24.
Lawson, Ronald, Brisbane in the 1890s: A Study of an Urban Society (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1987), 222. See also Greenwood, Gordon, Brisbane 1859–1959 (Sydney: Oswald L. Ziegler, 1959), 429–30.
Jolly, W.A., Greater Brisbane 1929 (Brisbane: Watson Ferguson, 1929), 73.
Ball, Shirley, Muma's Boarding House: Life, Laughter and Lodgers in 1930s Australia (Brisbane: Rigby, 1978), 115.
See Lawson, Brisbane in the 1890s, 240. Lawson describes walking and window shopping as being favoured courting activities of the working classes in the 1890s because they were ‘non-cost’, adding that walking about the suburbs was a popular night out and, as an amusement, it had become ‘very significant’.
Ian B caught creek eels which he sold to the local hotel for twopence or threepence each. Doug B grew lettuce and sold them to neighbours to get money to ‘go to the pictures’.
Respondents Dorothy C and Nell H.
Herb Q stated that none of the children in his family were able to join Scouts or Guides because ‘the cost of the outfits used to put the brake on our finances’. Elsie F, who was an ‘assisted child’, cited the cost of uniforms as being considered ‘too dear’.
The Annual Reports of the Scouts Association mention hardship among their existing members in 1931–32, and a decline in Scout numbers in 1933–34. Statistics are courtesy of Mr Allan Newland, Project Commissioner. Heritage. Scouts Australia, Queensland Branch. For a history of the Scouts in Queensland see Ralph Fones, In the Light of All the Years: A History of Scouting in Queensland (Brisbane: Scout Association of Australia, Queensland Branch, 1992).
Special provisions for the unemployed were made under the State Housing Relief Act of 1930.
