11 Gurner Street Archives

Wep’s maternal grandmother, Isabella Garrick White, nee McRitchie (1853-1924), c.1916

[19 September 1924]

WHITE .—The Relatives and Friends of Mr. JOHN WHITE, Master Builder, are kindly invited to attend the Funeral of his late beloved WIFE, Isabella Garrick, which will leave her late residence, “Trelawny”, Gurner-street, Paddington, THIS FRIDAY, at 3 p.m., for the Church of England Cemetery, Waverley.
CHARLES KINSELA, Funeral Director,
‘Phone, Padd. 694., 143 Oxford-street. Sydney.

WHITE.—The Relatives and Friends of Mr. and Mrs. JOHN A. WHITE, EDWARD C. WHITE, HARRY F. WHITE, Mrs. T. J. PIDGEON, Mr. and Mrs. S. E. PATERSON are kindly invited to attend the Funeral of their late beloved MOTHER,- Isabella Garrick Whlte, which will leave her late residence, Trelawny, Gurner street, Paddington, THIS FRIDAY, at 3 p.m., for Church of England Cemetery, Waverley.

WHITE.—The Relatives and Friends of Mr. D. MCRITCHIE, Mr. ROBERT MCRITCHIE, Mrs. R. THEW, Mrs. F. CROWE, Mrs. J. MCRITCHIE, Mr. and Mrs. McLEAN, Mr. and Mrs. E. CARR. Mr. and Mrs. CAMEREAUX, Mr. ROBERT MACKEY, and Mr. JAMES MACKEY are kindly invited to attend the Funeral of their late beloved SISTER and AUNT, Isabella Garrick White, which will leave her late residence, Trelawny, Gurner-street, Paddington, THIS FRIDAY, at 3 p.m., for the Church of England Cemetery, Waverley.

Family Notices (1924, September 19). The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 – 1954), p. 7. Retrieved February 6, 2023, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article16160237

WHITE.— September 18, 1924, at her late residence, “Trelawny,” Gurner Street, Paddington. Isabella Garrlck, dearly beloved wife of John White, and mother of William, Frederick, Thlrza, John, Edward, Harry, Percy, Isabella, and Blanche, aged 71 years.

Family Notices (1924, September 19). The Daily Telegraph (Sydney, NSW : 1883 – 1930), p. 6. Retrieved February 6, 2023, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article245208210

Grandma was dead. It must have been in the morning sometime in December [sic] because I was given some money to go to the pantomime down at Tivoli. What the pantomime was about, or its name and its impact on me remains securely forgotten, rotting away in some remote and atrophied cell of the brain.

Amy Rochelle could have been the Principal Boy. Principal boys were always girls anyway and Amy Rochelle boarded with us once. So maybe a little boy was sent off to see the big girl boy he knew while the family went about the duties attendant to the proper care of the dead.

Funerals were always a big occasion in those days. Uncles, aunts, cousins, even down to the fourth remove would congregate at “Trelawny” while the men went off to do the right thing at Waverley Cemetery, the women busied themselves in the preparation of sandwiches, tea, fruit cake and the inevitable port wine to refresh the returning mourners.

Glasses of the ale too were served under the dancing shadows of the grape vine trellis to the convivial grievers.

All those garrulous relatives, complete strangers flushed out of obscurity by death mingled in monetary bonhomie and parted till death again did them join. I suppose there were extra trams on these great days – no one had a car.

It was 1924 when “Trelawny” first housed a motor vehicle.

Uncle Sep, a devastatingly handsome and successful dentist had married Aunty Bella. They lived at “Trelawny” and looked after Grandpa White.

Somewhere along the line, the old dray, the buggy and the mad town (carriage) had been sold to more rural folk. The old carriage house was taken over by the Dodge. Uncle Sep’s friends had successfully updated and hard-sold him into switching from trams to a car. I was appointed car-washer and mechanic. Like all young boys, I knew more about cars than it is possible to know. I was constantly tuning the engine from perfection to imperfection. If anything was right I’d fix it.

L-R: Bill’s mother Thirza Pidgeon (nee White), Bill Pidgeon (in car), Sep Paterson (Bill’s dentist uncle), Ted Paterson and his mother, Isabella Rose (nee White) and possibly Sep’s brother with Sep’s 1924 Dodge Brothers Four Door Tourer car

Still we used to go so far as Windsor or Katoomba at speeds of up to 45 mph and have picnics on the running board safe from bull ants and other bushland horrors.

I learnt to drive it like a kangarooish motion. All very safe for the streets were as vast and “unencumbered” as the only hazards on the Nullabor Plain.

[W.E. Pidgeon]

[In 1925, Wep was employed as a Cadet Newspaper Artist for the Evening News and Sunday News, after his dentist Uncle Sep “armed with forceps and needles ‘intimidated’ his patient”, editor of the paper, Marmion Dart.]

That tuck-shop and residence opposite the school gate has not changed its shape in sixty years. The weatherboards and the paint of what is left of it are still as they were when the Thomson widow ran it. Of course it had to all come back in a gush of memory. Nowhere else in recent years have I seen the small sunflower stretching in glory to the face of being. Only here in the weedy ground have I seen the remnants of old time proliferation of sunfire blaze. Everywhere, sunflowers bright like the burst of color of coreopsis in bloom along the north shore line.

Long ago, before Van Gogh made the big ones commonplace, we as small children would stare up to the swaying sol six feet above and with a face as big as a soup plate – bending over the fences to radiate a joy to small children in the shadows of the lanes. Sunflower and chokos over bore the tattered fences – the sunflowers were gay – we got sick of chokoes and chops. The little sunflower plants had leaves like the feel of a cat’s tongue, raspy on the skin the loving tactile semblance of a sedge tooth file.

There used to be the depths of night shaped into gramophone horns adorning the more neglected lanes. With our bited dogs we passed the convolvulus bells with siren tendrils clutching at our throats. In the twilight, the vibrant blue weeds of our back yards. I never remember ever seeing a frangipani or hibiscus or any other modern exotica. There were scents of the evening – perhaps we were too young to notice the small white jasmines or the occasional tuberoses. Red geraniums, yes everywhere in little window boxes – not children’s flowers at all – very adult.

Arum lilies and cannas yes (mostly around the semi detached) -seemed to lend a glory to the necessities of human functions.

Who was not enabled on the way back from the out-house by the soft lick of the lily leaves and a fairy touch brush across the face of the asparagus fern?

My Grandmother had grape vines which bore somewhat edible fruit. She had too, a sturdy clump of verbena shrub. Somehow this seemed to go along with her personality extremely well.

On Sunday afternoons after being let out of Sunday School we would aimlessly roam around the cabbage patch (fenced off of course) past the manure bin through the carriage paint shops (as those sheds were called) all mucky & soiled. A good fistful of verbena leaves crushed up in smelly hands. How those verbena leaves reminded me of Grandma.

Just like carraway seed cake. You’d have to have been born in 1860 to have acquired a taste for that. Sunday afternoon tea was a bloody trial. Carraway seed cake and Sao biscuits, or Thin Captain. Perhaps we were given lemonade – if we had been, the occasions have left no impact on my junior memories.

Only one other plant ever impressed me. Grandpapa’s glossy tree on the 3’ x 4’ lawn in front of “Trelawny”. Grandpapa used to sit on the gas bar during the dusk and note the comings and goings of the locals. Everyone was on foot just like in a communist city. This tree, or shrub, was not more than three times taller than I. Looking from underneath its leaves were dull and undistinguished but from the verandah they were miraculously transformed bright green and glossy as a cerebric glaze. It was a very formal affair & impressive but never to the day has it had a name or a signature of being. Perhaps it is still there – I should look again.

Trelawny (1896), 11 Gurner Street, the home of Wep’s grandfather, John White, master builder and Mayor of Paddington at the cnr Gurner and Duxford St Paddington, c.1920

[W.E. Pidgeon]

Tag: 11 Gurner Street

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