Not Brighton

When the residents of Manly wanted to have the place recognised as a Municipality, they lodged a copy of their petition on 18 March 1876, but, as historians George and Shelagh Champion discovered “the document was lost by the Government!” A second petition was lodged, with more success, which was published in the New South Wales Government Gazette of 14 August 1876. There are two odd things about this second petition. It stated that it was signed by 63 persons, but as far as I can see only 60 names were appended. And it asked that the Municipality to be incorporated should be named ‘Brighton’, so how did it come about that the place was proclaimed as Manly? At a public meeting called on 27 November 1876 in Manly for the purpose of recommending a person to act as Returning Officer for the first election of aldermen of the soon-to-be-declared Municipality, a Mr Slattery took the opportunity of protesting against the change of name from ‘Manly’ to ‘Brighton’ and suggested that a deputation wait upon the Colonial Secretary, John Robertson, to ask him to retain the old name. As George and Shelagh Champion note: “A comparative newcomer to Manly Beach proposed as a secondary and unforeseen item on the agenda, at a meeting called for another purpose, that the name ‘Manly’ should be used instead of ‘Brighton’!” And surprisingly, the Colonial Secretary granted the request of the deputation, and proclaimed the Municipal District of Manly, on 6 January 1877, despite noting in the same paragraph that the petition he had received had prayed for the Municipality to be known as the Municipal District of Brighton.
So who was the 'Mr Slattery' who pulled off this coup? In fact, he was rather more influential than has previously been thought. Born in Ireland in 1844, Thomas Michael Slattery came to Australia with his family in 1847. He became a lawyer, and at the time of the petition, had risen to be Chief Clerk of the Supreme Court of NSW, no less, at the very heart of the NSW Establishment. He was a crony of the influential Manly businessman and Mayor of Sydney, John Woods, a fellow Irishman. Slattery was a wily operator, and later became a Member of Parliament for Boorowa and Minister of Justice in the 1880s, not to mention a Knight of St Gregory. He would have had the ear of Robertson, the Colonial Secretary, and between them he and Woods would have had no difficulty in persuading him to drop ‘Brighton’ and go with ‘Manly’, or indeed any other name they chose. But after all that, having finagled the name change Mr Slattery soon moved elsewhere. He died at Mosman in 1920.

Gallipoli Nightingale

Among the names on the Manly Roll of Honour of those who served in World War One are a handful of women. most of whom served as nurses. One Manly nurse in particular appears to have been an unsung heroine. She was Florence Ethel Spalding, daughter of the late William and Mrs Mary Spalding, of Hope House, West Esplanade, Manly, and later of 52 Darley Road, Manly. Born in Goulburn in 1881, she lived in Manly with her mother before serving in the AANS prior to the war. When war broke out, she rejoined and left Sydney on28 November 1914 on the Kyarra for Cairo. In April 1915, she was one of the team of nursing sisters who served on the hospital ships at the Gallipoli landings. “I went backwards and forwards there till the evacuation”, she wrote. She was twice Mentioned in Despatches, and for distinguished services in the field she was awarded the Royal Red Cross Decoration (2nd Class) on 1 January 1916; the Decoration 1st Class is only very rarely awarded. While nursing Australian soldiers at Cairo, she fell in love with Mr William Fidler, and left the nursing service to get married to him, returning to Australia in March 1916. National Archives records show that she was also the recipient of the 1914/15 Star, the Victory Medal, and the British War Medal. She applied for the Anzac commemorative medal and badge in 1967, by which time she was living at Hunter’s Hill. She died in 1976. Marianne Barker’s book Nightingales in the Mud, though it does not mention Sister Spalding, is a very good source of further information on the Gallipoli nurses.

History Week

History Week runs from 5-13 September 2009, and Manly Library is marking this year’s theme of “Scandals, Crime and Corruption” with a display of memorable front page stories from the Manly Daily and other newspapers. One of the more unusual cases was recorded by the Queenslander newspaper in March 1883. Two Queensland Aboriginals were discovered in the bush near Manly, one wearing a shirt, the other nude. When challenged by the local policeman, Senior-Constable John Leplaw, the two ran off. When Leplaw went to apprehend one of them, he produced a knife from under his shirt and wounded the constable. But with assistance, Leplaw was able to subdue and handcuff the pair, and took them by the Fairlight ferry to prison in Sydney.
It transpired that the two Aboriginals, with seven others, had been procured in Queensland by an agent for the well-known P T Barnum circus, who had brought them to Sydney with the intention of removing them to the USA. None of them could speak a word of English. When the case came to court the Magistrate, Mr Marsh, stated that it appeared to him as though the Aboriginals had simply been kidnapped. The two men in question had escaped from the agent and were endeavouring to find their way home when they were approached by Senior-Constable Leplaw. Marsh instructed the police to investigate the agent’s behavior to see if criminal charges should be brought against him, and the two Queensland Aboriginals were set free. But did they find their way home? The newspapers don’t tell us, so we can only speculate.