Belinda Murrell: Bringing Australian History To Life | Page 48

AUSTRALIA

IN NEED OF

A NATION

THE IVORY ROSE IS SET IN SYDNEY IN THE 1890s. HERE ARE SOME FAST FACTS ABOUT THE PERIOD.

FAST FACTS
From the collection of the State Library of NSW.

✓ During the 1890s, a deep depression
gripped Australia. Some of the biggest banks
in Australia collapsed, and many of the smaller
ones too, taking peoples’ life savings with
them.
✓ There was a housing shortage, which
pushed up rents and resulted in overcrowding.
During this time, many of the large blocks in
Annandale, the suburb The Ivory Rose is set
in, were subdivided.

Henry King, 1890. Courtesy of the Tyrrell
Collection, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney.

✓ During the 1890s, eighty per cent of
Sydney’s population was working-class.
This meant that most children finished school
aged twelve, but some left as young as eight
and went to work. Many children worked sixty hours per
week for two or three pennies per hour (about two cents),
about one-quarter the wage of a working-class man.

Sydney was very different to how it is today. Much of the waterfront was industrial
and the nearby houses were workers’ cottages. The above picture is of Balmain, which
would have been similar to Johnston’s Bay, Annandale, where The Ivory Rose is set.
A large part of Johnston’s Bay is now reclaimed parkland.
infants were often drugged with laudanum to keep them
quiet or fed watered-down milk laced with lime. Babies
often died a slow, agonising death from malnutrition or fluid
on the brain.

How fortunate that much of Sydney’s architectural history is still around for us to appreciate.
Not all of it survived, though, for instance the Bondi Aquarium. In the 1890s, visitors flocked
to its attractions, which included sharks, vaudeville acts and a rollercoaster on the sand.
✓ Twenty-five per cent of children died by the age of
five, and in some poorer suburbs, as many as one in three
children would die. Killer diseases included whooping
cough, tuberculosis, typhoid and diptheria. As you can
imagine, living in cramped living conditions made matters
much worse.
✓ Baby farming was a common practice during the
nineteenth century, where women would take in many
illegitimate and poor babies for a fee – either a larger oneoff fee or an ongoing weekly payment. The babies were
frequently underfed and neglected, and many di