The Ratbag Encyclopedia

Family history, Western Australian history, or just history

Tag: Andrew Drewy Dyson

  • A little bit of war profiteering

    A little bit of war profiteering

    Sam Dyson was in Egypt at the time. He was among the first to sign up for the Great War and was among the first quota of Western Australians in the AIF. He has been identified in the famous photograph of the ANZACs posing on the side of the Great Pyramid on the Giza Plateau.

    Group portrait of all the original officers and men of the 11th Battalion, 3rd Brigade, AIF

    Sam would be one of the first on the beach at ANZAC cove, and would survive for his Dad to tell that story.

    His father was Andrew “Drewy” Dyson and it’s important to remember that any story mentioning Drewy will always end up being about Drewy.

    The following is from a Perth newspaper called “The Truth” published 27 March 1915:

    Defendant Drewy Dyson.

    Clashes with the Board of Health And makes some Noise in Court.

    Some amusement was caused at the Perth Police Court on Wednesday during the very first opening stages of a case in which Andrew Dyson was charged with allowing an accumulation of offensive matter on his premises, situated at 999 Charles-street, Perth. Incidentally, the place was also named “Ararat,” and it had some significance, as will be seen later.

    Messrs. W. J. Holmes and W. A. Grenike, J’s.P., were occupying the Bench in solemn state when the charge was called by the police orderly. The day being a little sultry indoors, all the court doors were left open so that a little air could be induced to travel through the No. 3 Court, which is situated right in the centre of the building. “Andrew Dyson,” called the orderly. “Here,” came the answer in
    A BELLOW FROM DYSON as he lifted up his bulky frame and came forward. Those who know “Drewy” Dyson will fully appreciate the definition of “bulky.”

    An inspector whose name nobody heard, entered the box to give evidence. He did little more than make an entrance when Dyson took charge. He rapidly did that by telling the Bench, in tones that drowned all other noises, that he was neither the owner nor the occupier of 999 Charles-street. In dulcet tones the inspector proceeded to say something. “Shout it out,” roared Dyson, “I’ve got a bit deaf since all these cannons went off.”

    Everybody paused and gasped for breath at the noise the obese gent was making. “Come here,” said lawyer Hale, soothingly, “and sit closer to the witness.” “With pleasure,” replied Dyson in an extravagantly polite manner. He was given a seat at the lawyers’ table, and grabbing a pencil and heap of paper he started, only just started, to make notes. The Inspector then managed to say his name was Joseph Dunn, when Dyson emitted a weird, subterranean, sort of growl. “Be quiet, now, you can ask questions afterwards,” soothingly assured Mr. Hale, who was appearing for the Board of Health.

    “You’re NOT IN THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY now,” shouted Dyson, “I won’t be quiet.” As Mr. Hale has never so far fallen from grace as to belong to the Assembly, the reply was enigmatic, but it transpired later that Dyson mistook him for Mr. Walter Dwyer. Comparative silence being restored, Mr. Holmes remarked to Dyson, “I know you of old. Don’t make so much noise.” “Well, they say I live at 999 Charles-street,” said Dyson. “I don’t. Let “em prove it. I put the number on, and called it Ararat. Do you know what Ararat means? Well, It is the partition between heaven and hell. That’s scripture for you. Have a look in the dictionary. I don’t live there. I live in the bush.” All this was given forth in a loud tone.

    When the noise stopped, Mr. Holmes said, “If you talk so much we will have to take extraordinary measures with you.” Dyson, with a wink at the press table, “Don’t make it too hot.” The inspector, summing up courage, “The place was in an INDESCRIBABLE STATE OF FILTH“—

    Dyson, bawling in tones that made the windows rattle and shut up everybody else, “I don’t admit I’m the defendant. D’ye hear me?” Only, dead people could not have heard him. Drew.y has a remarkably fine voice, although it may sadly heed musical training. Continuing, in the same terrific bawl he said, “Andrew Dyson is summoned. I’m Andrew Dyson The place belongs to Andrew Samuel Dyson, and he’s in Egypt. What about it now? To Mr. Hale: Look here, Mr. Dwyer, that man (the inspector) never saw me at all I ask for an ADJOURNMENT TO GET A SOLICITOR.”

    Mr Holmes: All right, we’ll adjourn it. Dyson: I have two doctors and an inspector to say this inspector is a liar. Mr. Holmes: if you don’t behave yourself you will be dealt with for contempt of court. Dyson (with respectful air): Do it, your Worship, do it. Mr. Holmes: We adjourn the case until Friday. Dyson: All right, your Worship.

    He started to leave the court, when he commenced to have another go at the inspector. He was pushed outside, and the door was banged violently behind him. Peace and a beautiful calm was restored. The court had hardly got going on other business when Dyson unexpectedly appeared at another open door

    “May I ask,” he said in deafening tones, “that the evidence that man (the inspector) is going to give shall be impounded.” Mr. Holmes: You go away. How can we impound any evidence especially when it has not been given? Go out. Dyson: The OTHER INSPECTOR IS A GENTLEMAN, but this one”— The Court Orderly: Get out!

    Under persuasion Dyson went out, and another door was banged upon his exit. Then the court settled down to business again, but above all that was done could be heard the strident tones of Dyson as he delivered himself to some people who had gathered in the pasage with wonder at the fearful noise that had attracted them. Gradually the sounds died away, and things resumed a normal state, the silence being tomb like in comparison with the previous noise.

    “Defendant Drewy Dyson.” Truth (Perth, WA : 1903 – 1931) 27 March 1915: 1. Web. 8 Jul 2024 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article209404021>.

    ~

    A few days later Drewy was back in court and was fined £3 anyway. It may have been his son’s home, but Drewy owned the property and it was his livestock currently in occupation.

    Health inspectors who visited the premises, stated that they found in the yard goats, fowls, cats, dogs, and pigeons. The yard itself was in “an indescribable state of filth, and fowl and goat excreta were all over the place.”

    The Daily News (Perth, WA : 1882 – 1950) Wednesday 31 March 1915 p8

    999 Charles Street is located near the intersection where Charles Street transforms into Wanneroo road. For fairly obvious reasons there is nothing remaining of “Ararat” today.

    Drewy went on to have the the letter his son sent him on the Galipoli landings published in the local paper:

    WITH THE AUSTRALIANS.
    PERTH SOLDIER’S NARRATIVE.
    EPISODES AFTER THE LANDING.
    An interesting sketch of the landing of the Australian troops on the Gallipoli Peninsula, and the early fighting, is given in a letter received by Mr. A. Dyson, of West Perth, from his son, who at the date of writing was lying at a hospital in Heliopolis, recovering from the effects of drinking water poisoned by the Turks Mr. Dyson, junr. writing on May 10, and speaking of the events after the arrival of the Australians at Lemnos, from Mena Camp in Egypt, says:—

    Troopships began to arrive again, until there were about 100 in harbour. One day our colonel called the battalion together on the ship, and told us that we would very shortly be going aboard the battleship — as a covering force for the rest of the army. He said it was a great honour for us. It turned out that A and C Companies of each of the four battalions in our 3rd Brigade had to go as advance guard to the covering force, and the other two companies were to come along on destroyers about an hour later. At 2 o’clock we left the Suffolk on destroyers, and from the destroyers we went on board the warship mentioned, and an hour or so later we steamed out of the harbour. We could hear the rest of the transports cheering us until we got outside. The blue jackets would give us anything, and they loaded us up with tobacco and ribbons of their caps and I do believe they would have given us the ship if we had wanted it. A big bowl of tea was served to us at 4.30 p.m., and at 5.30 p.m. we had our proper tea, another big bowl of tea, and an apple pie. We did not half touch the pie! We had not seen anything like it for months. After tea we had a smoke and a chat, and we were were then told to turn in, and get a little sleep, as we had to be up at 12.30. All this time the four British battleships with the half of our brigade were steaming round and about, waiting for the time of landing. It is only a two or three hours’ run to the Dardanelles from Lemnos.

    At one o’clock, on Sunday morning, April 25, we had a meal, a big sea pie and a basin of cocoa, and we then fell in on the quarter deck, to receive our last instructions which were to fix bayonets as soon as we touched the beach, and not to load our rifles. At 3 o’clock in the morning we got over the side in the small cutters, and they started to tow us about, while the battleships moved closer in to the land. When the ships were drawing up in battle order we started for the shore, about 12 pinnaces in all. We could not see anything, or hear anything, and, by the way, I might tell you that I was in charge of a box of ammunition, and that I was perched in the
    Bow of the Boat,
    head and shoulders above everybody else, except the steersman. We saw a big hill loom up in front of us, and we were about in the middle of it. You could just see the dawn breaking at the back of it, and at this time we were about 200 yards off. All of a sudden two shots ran out, and two bullets pinged over our head. They must have been from the Turkish sentries. It all happened quicker than I can write it. After the two shots there was about one minute’s dreadful suspense, and then, my God, machine guns and rifles started, and I was perched in the bow of the boat. The steam pinnace cut us loose, and told us to row for our lives to the beach. Then we found we were 100 yards out of our course, and we had to row that distance along the beach under that awful fire. By this time I had taken what cover I could behind the ammunition box. The boat grated on the beach, and I was the first to get out, and I went in up to my neck in water. The language was awful, I can only say that. I fixed my bayonet and charged up the hill, and I do not know what I did or anything that happened until we formed upon the ridge, about a mile and a half inland, at 9 o’clock. They say that between 20,000 and 30,000 Turks were holding the hill, and 2,000 of the 3rd Brigade took it and another ridge at the point of the bayonet. I do believe that we would have gone right across the peninsula if we had not struck the Turkish supports and been forced to retire to a position on the ridge. We entrenched ourselves there, and
    The Devil Himself
    will not be able to shift us. The other troops are landing every day. Our wounded to date number 6,000, and it is reported from Turkey that their wounded number 30,000. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, the Turks kept counter-attacking continually, but they could not shift us. We have ‘dug-outs’ in the trenches, so that we can get out of the road when the shrapnel begins to fly. It is funny. We will perhaps be sitting down in the bottom of the trench when somebody, it may be one of the officers, will yell out, ‘Bob down, you’re spotted,’ and then there will be one dive for these holes, and I can tell you that we don’t waste much time getting down. It is natural to bob and swear when one misses you. Snipers are very bad here. A man walks down the gullies, and he has a good chance of catching a bullet in the back of the head, and when a sniper hits you he either kills you outright or else gives you a serious wound. On going with others one day to reinforce one of the flanks, I had nearly reached the top, when they started to
    Pour the Shrapnel Into Us.
    A staff officer and myself had to lie down in a bit of a gully, and I was flat up against the side, clinging on by a couple of roots about 2in. long. About 6in. above my head was a little bramble, about 18in. high, and along came a shrapnel shell and took the whole of that bramble away. The staff officer remarked that it was getting a little hot, and I agreed with him. At daybreak one morning the Turks attacked us, and we gave it to them hot. We could see them coming up, and each man would pick his mark, and you could see the poor devil spring in the air, throw up his hands, and then drop like a stone. It did not need more than one bullet per man. They will not face the bayonet in daytime. They advance on us trying to get us to come out and meet them, but we never have any of it. Their idea is to get us to come out, and then they would open out to each flank and turn machine guns on us. Instead, we let them get
    Within 50 Yards Or So,
    and we turn machine guns and rifles on them. Things get very busy at night time. One of our chaps caught a sniper and shot and bayoneted him. I didn’t think my life was worth sixpence on the Sunday and Monday. We had a good view of our ‘Queen Lizzy’ dropping her 15-inch shells among the Turks. When they would land among the ‘Turks we could see pieces of humanity flying hundreds of feet in the air. I was in the trenches for eight days, and then came down to the beach to get a drink of water. Coming down the gully, I saw a pool of water and had a drink. That was the end of me. I was in the hospital the next day and in a few days afterwards I was sent aboard the hospital ship and brought back to Cairo.
    The Turks had Poisoned the Water.
    Two chaps died of it on the trip, but in another week I will be back and at it again. One night a German officer was leading a charge against us and he yelled out to us, ‘Come along, you kangaroo hopping ——. We will give you all the fight you want.’ He did not speak an other word, and when we found him he had thirty or forty bullets in him. I could tell you hundreds of things like this, but I must leave them till later on.”
    […]

    The West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879 – 1954) Monday 21 June 1915 p8

  • Grave Matters

    Grave Matters

    Help save the grave of James Dyson and his two wives in East Perth Cemetery

    The bodies of James Dyson and his wives Fanny and Jane lie in the old East Perth Cemetery. The three were united only briefly together under the same roof in life, and when they died many years apart, they were not necessarily buried in the same plot. But eventually all three were reunited on (not under) a single headstone in a family grave, in the oldest burial ground for the pioneer residents of Perth in Western Australia.

    The stone in 2013
    The same stone in 2018

    James Dyson was buried in the Methodist Cemetery, as that portion of the East Perth site was then known, the day after he died on 19 June 1888. Fanny died in 1854 (not 1850 as the headstone suggests) but the error is understandable as this monument was commissioned after the death of Mrs Jane Dyson on 12 August 1899 by one of her many sons with James. Andrew “Drewey” Dyson was born in 1858 many years after the death of Fanny (she is referred to as “Frances” nowhere else but on this headstone) and he was famous for many things including being a funeral director.

    The Daily News, Friday 18 March 1892 p 2

    Drewey (or Drewy) was famous for mostly the wrong reasons. As a funeral director he pioneered the use of advertising for his trade but there was substance as well to his notoriety :—

    A Perth undertaker got it for the axe-ing last night — that is to say, somebody rapped him over the head with an axe. The undertaker was a Mr. Dyson ; but as no serious consequences are anticipated, he will not— ahem !— die soon.

    The Daily News, Tuesday 3 November 1896 p3
    The West Australian. Tuesday 11 December 1894 p6

    He won the government contract to bury the paupers. Business was good in 1896 when a smallpox epidemic hit the town. How good? Drewy and a friend drank the profits and its always possible to date exactly when he went on a bender from the records of the police courts in the days afterwards:—

    Andrew Dyson, the well-known coachbuilder and undertaker, of Murray-street, became involved in a very serious row yesterday. He had been drinking all day and was very violent and abusive. He caught one of his men smoking while at work, and he abused him soundly. Finally he made a rush at him to inflict summary punishment, but as he came on, the man struck him a heavy blow on the head with an axe, Medical assistance was at once summoned, and the wound was dressed. Dyson retained consciousness, though at times he become rambling and incoherent, No arrest has yet been made.

    The Daily News, Tuesday 3 November 1896 p3

    Drewy was a favourite of the press — he provided them with so many good stories — but the one told above had a sequel many years later when the Subiaco-Jolimont Cemetery was closed and the bodies transferred to the newer Karrakatta burial ground:—

    THE COFFIN ROMANCE
    The Way “Drewy” Dyson—Buries Old Bones
    Drewy Dyson seems to have had a good deal to do with the burying, digging up again, and replanting of small-pox and typhoid corpses. The 48 who were buried in unregistered ground at Subiaco were entrusted, to “Drewy” and a friend named Lee to inter. The specifications, set out that the bones should be encased in jarrah coffins, but Drewy, if all accounts be true, packed them with much Christian ceremony into kerosene cases painted to a suitable hue. Then during the burial, he splashed up some of the profits in two dozen of ale, which he satisfactorily consumed while the bones were consecrated. This is not Drewy’s first experience of the same bones. He was the original planter, and probably thinks that anything will do for a secondhand burial.
    It is not likely that the bones will object to the nature of the coffins, but the imposition is there all the same.

    Sunday Times, 14 October 1906 page 4S
    (It wouldn’t have been printable!)
    Sunday Times, 28 October 1906 p 1S

    Drewy Dyson’s notoriety overshadowed not only his own real accomplishments but those of his family. None of his parents were angels though. His father served his sentence in Van Diemen’s Land as a convict before starting afresh in Perth during the 1840s, rising up to be one of the largest employers of labour in the Colony (including ticket-of-leave Western Australian convicts). James Dyson built the town of Perth — It was his timber that paved the streets during the 1870’s, his bricks that made up so many buildings of the time (of which only the Wesley Church on William Street now remains) and his membership of the Perth City Council at a time when the Perth Town Hall was opened on his watch. He owned lake Julabup — known in his time as Dyson’s Swamp — an integral part of the network supporting the beef and dairy industry that kept Perth fed during the nineteenth century (pre-refrigeration) and the corner in Perth known as Dyson’s Corner where his butcher’s business and bakery operated out of.

    Yet there are few other memorials to James Dyson, his two wives and they twenty-one children they produced together. Many of their children buried in the Karrakatta Cemetery that ultimately succeeded East Perth as the community’s principal burial place at the beginning of the twentieth century. Few had headstones, and the policy of that institution after 120 years of operation is to recycle the ground for new burials. As the years pass it will become near impossible to locate the unmarked graves or even the location of headstones once they are built over.

    The destruction of monuments at Karrakatta is ongoing and deliberate. The damage to the monuments at East Perth Cemetery between the time of its closure to its protection as a heritage site was far worse, but in 2019 it is still possible to visit the family grave of Dysons with it’s fallen headstone and wrought iron railings around the plot. But for how much longer? The gravestone is snapped into multiple pieces and the lead-lettering is wearing away after 120 years exposed to the elements. The iron railings are rusting.

    A plan has been drawn up to preserve the historic grave of James, Fanny and Jane Dyson for future generations to come. A quote from the conservators to do the work has been prepared… The problem is that it is expensive… bloody expensive. The estimate is $5,000 (Australian) if all goes well, up to $6,000 if something unexpected is discovered like the stone is especially fragile now.

    None of us individually can afford anything like that amount — but collectively… how many children, grand-children, great-grand children and onwards did J,F&J produce? There were 21 in the first generation alone, of whom ten of these produced children too. For reasons of privacy it is difficult to accurately calculate how many living descendants there are today. A conservative guess is about four hundred people. If two-thirds that number contributed $20 each the amount would be raised, but every little bit would help.

    John and Julie Dyson are great-grandchildren of James and Jane. They have set up a go-fund-me campaign to raise the funds to complete this vital restoration work. If you are able to contribute anything at all that would be grand, but if you could pass on a link to this page or the go-fund-me page to anyone else who has a passion for history and preserving the past could you please do so: —

    https://www.gofundme.com/restoring-james-dyson039s-grave

  • Thomas Dyson: The Canny one

    Thomas Dyson: The Canny one

    When Thomas Dyson was a young boy, he shot the son of his father’s main business rival in the head. After that, his fortunes could only improve…

    Wheelwright, house builder, real-estate mogul, furniture manufacturer, poultry breeder, entrepreneur— Thomas Dyson was all of these things. Like his father, he was a success at most of his endeavours. Unlike his father, his success mostly endured.

    Thomas was the first child of James Dyson and Jane to be born after Jane’s first husband was no longer on the scene, but some years before his parents finally tied the knot. Perhaps it was to avoid the word “bastard” scrawled across his official birth certificate (as was the custom of time), his parents did not bother to apply for such paperwork. Nevertheless, Thomas Dyson was born in Perth on 15 January 1855.

    He was not immune to the scandal and tragedy that dogged the family name, but perhaps because he got his own personal downfall out of the way at such a young age (even by Dyson standards) he was able to better weather the later catastrophes that befell the wider family; insulated by both physical distance and (perhaps) a lesser set of personal failings than his hapless parents, brothers and sisters. While he was more than capable of being a bloody idiot, Thomas was probably the most lucky Dyson of his generation at his chosen endeavours, and his family life appeared to be mostly a happy one. Thomas, essentially, was the non-dysfunctional one of the clan.

    The greatest event of moronic stupidity in his life he committed when he was thirteen. It was the year 1867 and the family fortunes were on the rise. His father was fast becoming one of the largest employers in the colony on the back of a growing business empire, the core of which was supplying timber and other building supplies, shopkeeping, a butchers and bakers, market gardening and horse trading. With such economic clout his father could no longer be socially ignored. He was treasurer for such societies as the Oddfellows and a rising member of the Sons of Australia Benefit Society, a seat on the Perth Municipal Council beckoned as the highest civic appointment someone of Dyson’s class could hope to aspire to. Then his teenage son shot the much younger child of a business rival in the head at near point-blank range with a rife.

    The wetlands around Perth have long been drained. This is the nearby Canning River.

    It was somewhat beside the point that the rifle was loaded with a blank charge and the eight year old Benjamin Mason junior seemed to have escaped with naught but a severe blow to the side of the head and powder burns. If Thomas’s intention was to scare the living daylights out of the young kids who accompanied him on his hunting expedition into the lakes that still sprawled to the north of Perth, he well and truly succeeded. Police Magistrate Edward Wilson Landor was not impressed. The only thing that saved young Thomas from a gaol sentence was the absence in the Colony at that time of any juvenile detention facilities. Thomas was confined to a cell for 24 hours before being returned to the court, and Landor saved his harshest language for Thomas’s father, whom he lambasted for “allowing little boys to go out shooting” in the first place. He then surrendered the lad into the custody of that same father.

    What happened next is not in doubt. Only the timing of “when” remains obscure. Most of Dyson’s sons by his second marriage were placed into apprenticeships for some mechanical trade. There were at least two blacksmiths, two print compositors — Thomas was apprenticed to a wheelwright. Those other sons often completed their apprenticeships at locations some distance away from Perth, such as Champion Bay (Geraldton) or York — Thomas was sent (or exiled, if you prefer) much further away than that. His apprenticeship was most likely served out in Geelong, in the colony of Victoria.

    An unrepresentative photograph of Geelong, Victoria taken by the author, 2017

    It was in that city that his future wife was born on 3 August 1857. Miss Margaret Wilkinson was the daughter of Thomas, a hat maker (deceased) from Cumberland in England, while her widowed mother was an Irish force of nature called Catherine (known as Kate). The youngish couple married on 15 February 1879 in the Anglican Church of St Luke, Emerald Hill (which was an early name for South Melbourne).

    The new Mrs Dyson lied about her age on her marriage certificate, presumably to smooth over the fact that Margaret was not quite 21 at the time. This must have been a subterfuge for administrative simplicity rather than deception, for as future events would demonstrate, one did not cross the iron will of Thomas’s new mother-in-law lightly. All the evidence so far suggests that Thomas did get on well with his new extended family and his marriage was a loving and successful one. They had six children together—all boys—at various locations around the Melbourne metropolis between 1879 (near exactly nine months after they wed) and 1888 (which was also the year Thomas’s father died).

    Independent (Footscray, Vic. : 1883 – 1922) Saturday 28 July 1888 p2
    Independent (Footscray, Vic. : 1883 – 1922) Saturday 28 May 1892 p2

    Thomas’s independent success at business came through work as a house-builder and real-estate agent operating in the Melbourne suburb of Footscray. One of the more appealing aspects of Thomas’s story (we’ll get to the less appealing bits eventually) is how his wife gave every appearance of being an active, equal— perhaps more than equal— participant in the family’s business affairs. Many commercial properties were in her name alone, as was newspaper advertising. Mrs Margaret Dyson’s properties did, however, have an unfortunate tendency to keep burning down.

    Thomas might have been insulated from the family’s implosion of fortune back in the west, he could not escape the whiff of scandal that being linked to a disreputable family could bring —  in this instance Thomas had married into the scandal. His brother-in-law was William John Henry Wilkinson. Back in 1880 William married Miss Ellen Teresa Bradford. In 1885 (at the urging of his mother), Wilkinson, now a government telegraph clerk, instituted divorce proceedings against his wife on the grounds that he had been under-age at the time of their wedding and did not understand what he was doing. William had been seventeen and his bride-to-be was eight years his senior. William, (like his elder sister) had lied on his marriage licence.

    The Argus, Saturday 3 October 1885 p9
    Launceston Examiner Saturday 7 November 1885 p1S
    Launceston Examiner Saturday 7 November 1885 p1S

    The continent-wide moral panic was vocal and furious. The idea that someone might end a marriage because they were merely young and stupid struck a chord with everyone across the continent stuck in a loveless union because the option to legally end it simply wasn’t there. The anger focussed on the young man for daring to think he could get away with what so many must have thought of, but dared not do. There was a strong stink of misogyny to the whole proceedings: He was held in contempt for the power his mother seemed to exert over him— and probably also his failure to dominate a much older wife. Wilkinson was not granted his divorce. Instead his case was discussed in the Victorian Parliament as the Postmaster-general recommended he be sacked from government service. Finally he was charged with perjury— for lying on his marriage certificate. But even worse scandal was to follow: By a jury of his peers William Wilkinson was acquitted on that charge.

    Williamstown Chronicle, Saturday 16 January 1886 p2

    This was where Thomas Dyson came to notice. By early 1886 the family had been settled in Footscray for about twelve months. One day William Wikinson and Thomas’s mother-in-law paid a visit. Outrage that she was living next to someone with scandalous in-laws was one provocation too many for his next door neighbour Mrs Scott. However, the offensive language charge she brought against Dyson was dismissed when it finally reached court. (In case you were wondering, a “Poll” is a type of cow.)

    Thomas Dyson (unlike the rest of his clan) tended to win his court cases.

    At the end of 1889, Dyson was listed as provisional director for a new company: The G. M. Pickles’ Melbourne and Suburban Carriage Company (Limited)— a similar style of business to that which his younger brother Drewy was attempting to run back in Perth. Thomas’s involvement with (and the company itself) was short lived. The last years of the 1880’s and the first years of the 1890’s was a time of economic depression in the eastern colonies. Meanwhile, back in the West, a gold-mining boom was getting underway, and the population of Perth was expanding at last.

    Thomas’s transfer back to Western Australia was a gradual process between 1893-1896. He occupied property on the west end of Murray Street, not far from his mother’s well-established brothel. He had maintained relationships with at least some of his siblings during his long exile, most notably sisters Mary Jane (Jacky) and Mabel Grace, who he may have housed in Footscray during 1892, given that the address where Mabel gave birth to an illegitimate child (who was then adopted by their other brother Drewy) was only a few blocks away from his home there.

    Part of William Victor Dyson’s Victorian birth certificate. The Victorian bureaucrats were not wimps—unlike their Western Australian counterparts.
    Independent (Footscray, Vic. : 1883 – 1922) Saturday 22 December 1888 p3

    The long period of transition to the west might have been to avoid disrupting his children’s education at schools in Melbourne, but eventually all the family was living in Perth, including at least one of Margret’s brothers (but not the infamous one). Their initial address was on George Street (a lost street of Perth) off Hay Street. There are advertisements for Thomas offering seeds for sale, and for recruiting an interior decorator, but by October 1893 the Dyson family were definitely established back on Murray Street and Thomas was advertising household furniture for sale.

    The Daily News, Saturday 5 February 1898 p5

    At some stage during the late 1890’s from premises on Murray Street, Thomas Dyson, was not just buying and selling furniture but manufacturing it in  as well. He might have been the first large-scale manufacturer of furniture in Western Australia, (but this might also just be family propaganda). He was however, considered a significant enough manufacturer in the Colony that he was invited to speak to at a Perth Town Hall meeting on the impact of Federation (of the Australian colonies) would have on trade. Dyson’s position was that the abolition of the tariff between the colonies would have no adverse effect at all and was in favour. Offering an opposing view was Mr James Pearse, who owned a large boot factory in North Fremantle. He stated that he would immediately have to close his factory if Federation went ahead (The Pearses then made a fortune selling boots to the army during the Boer and Great Wars, and the factory remained open to the 1960’s ).

    The West Australian, Monday 16 July 1900 p8
    Not Thomas Dyson [SLWA 9689B/118]

    It might have been more than just friendly commercial rivalry with his younger brother, Drewy. The two shared obsessions with animal breeding— both were contestants (and judges) for dog and poultry shows in Perth. They were both similar physically, much to the chagrin of the victim of Drewy’s more volatile tongue, when he dragged Thomas by mistake into court instead:

    “Yes, myself and brother are very much alike, only the brother is better looking”

    Thomas quipped.

    Thomas might have shared the same wry sense of the ridiculous as his brother, but he also had a streak of arrogance, verging on bloody-mindedness, that could land him in serious trouble.  He was lucky in August 1899 not to be imprisoned for contempt of court when he told his fourteen-year-old son Gilbert not to front the magistrate for throwing stones in Wellington Street. It was only Margaret’s intervention on behalf of both recalcitrant father and son that saved the day. He also drove his work-cart through King’s Park at the end of the day to unwind… raising the ire of the Perth City Council. It is hard to work out who was being the more bull-headed on this occasion—The Perth city council passed a bye-law specifically targeting Dyson for doing this. But Thomas escaped a court-imposed fine on a technicality.

    If Thomas did not himself actively retire around the beginning of the twentieth century, he certainly stepped back from public view. It was his wife Margaret and several of their sons, particularly James and Percy Dyson who fronted the family businesses from this time forward. Eldest son Harry was a pearler, then a publican up in Broome in the north-west of the State (now part Commonwealth of Western Australia).

    The Daily News Friday 26 July 1901 p3

    The last decade-and-a-half of Thomas’s life was punctuated by several family tragedies that may have contributed to his own end. His mother died down the road from where he lived in August 1899. How close Thomas was to her is not recorded, but she left nothing to him in her will. Then in July 1901 his seventeen-year-old son Frederick, who was in training to be a jockey, was killed in a gruesome riding accident at Belmont. First on the scene was horse trainer George Towton, who cradled the dead boy in his arms. Several years later, Thomas’s brother Septimus (not to be confused with Thomas’s own son of the same name) would marry Towton’s widow—so it was very much a family tragedy.

    The West Australian Tuesday 26 March 1912 p1

    In March 1911 son Gilbert died, aged 25. It had been a long illness, and to his funeral came his uncles Joseph and Drewy, and his aunt Jacky, to whom Gilbert may have been especially close. Joseph Dyson himself was dead within a year.

    Thomas Dyson died at his home at 535 Murray Street on 22 July 1914. He was 59 years old. He was buried in the Methodist portion of the Karrakatta Cemetery in Perth by the undertaking firm of C. H. Smith & Co. (Founded by the former husband of his sister Hannah, who divorced her and remarried!) in the same plot occupied by his sons Frederick and Gilbert. His wife Margaret eventually joined him there in 1938,  They had the good fortune to be interred in a corner of Karrakatta that is (for the time being) immune from the renewal process that will shortly obliterate the monuments of most of his children and wider family.

    The grave of Thomas, Margaret, Frederick and Gilbert Dyson in Karrakatta Cemetery, WESLEYAN section AA no. 0238

    Thomas was canny to the last.

  • The Stranger In the Mirror

    The Stranger In the Mirror

    There is currently no known authentic likeness that exists of James Dyson.

    He was a prominent man of his time— merchant, land owner, Perth City Councillor—he was present at certain key events in the history of the city: He was definitely present at the opening of the Perth Town Hall, he was most likely present at the opening of the Perth Railway Station, The Wesleyan Church, Royal visit, parades… All these events were photographed, but there is no currently identified photograph of James Dyson. Even of his many, many children (with one notable exception that possibly explains the rule), no images appear to have survived.

    The veracity of the sole written description that comes down to us of his appearance depends whether you accept (as I do) that he was a Van Diemen’s Land convict, in which case we have this documentation:

    CON18/1/15

    Now, it is possible to feed these details into an identikit program to generate an impression of what Prisoner 901 looked like. Best of all, there is such a program exactly for Australian Convict records, and when you run that program, you get this:—

    © Roar Film 2012 – 18

    (The only parameter I had to change was the eye colour that the program kept trying to make brown rather than the stated grey.) Try it for yourself!

    Although he was a bit shorter than today’s average, a number of his sons were noted for their height… and width. (Given that the family were involved in both the butchering and baking trades, it’s a fair bet that improved diet had much to do with this).

    Always classy: Drewy Dyson

    Going to the extreme (as always) was Andrew Dyson. Drewy achieved his greatest fame at the end of the nineteenth century for being the fattest man in Western Australia. He is (I guess, inevitably) the only child of James for who original likenesses exists*, and being Drewy, they exist in excess: many photographs, written descriptions and even cartoons.

    *[Edit: no longer true]

    Drewy Dyson also provides us with a very good idea of what his elder brother Thomas looked like. One day in May 1897 Thomas Dyson was hauled into Court to face Mr. Cowan, the Police Magistrate:—

    The Inquirer & Commercial News (Perth, WA : 1855 – 1901) Friday 14 May 1897 p3

    Traces of James might be seen in a scattering of images of his grandchildren. George Henry “Harry” Dyson (left) was Thomas’s eldest son and clearly shows shows the family similarity to his famous uncle if not also his grandfather.

    Ellen Christina Edwards is sometimes considered to be James Dyson’s daughter although in all probability she actually was the daughter of Jane Devling (Dyson’s second wife) and her first husband Richard Edwards.

    This image of one of her own daughters is interesting to compare how much of Jane and how much of James there might be in the many children they did have together. While we might have some sort of image for James now, for his wives we have less than nothing.

    Including Ellen, Dyson had twenty-two children, nine of who would go on to produce offspring of their own — of those nine there would be only one surviving grandchild from the children of his first wife. (This happens to be the branch of the tree that I am descended from). Recently the existence of some earlier family photos of my Dyson family have become known to me and some of the blanks of a visual map that ties me to this family were filled in, but there is still so much missing. The appearance of Joseph Dyson, James’s eldest son remains a complete mystery to me.

    What do you see when you see a family photo?

    About ten years ago I started researching my own family history. As a graphic designer, it was perhaps inevitable that I would start by collecting and restoring family photos… Isn’t there a saying: “When your only tool is a hammer, every solution starts resembling a nail”?

    Scanning and cleaning up the old photo albums was to make connections with how grandparents looked like their grandchildren, children like their parents… or not, as was my case. Then my siblings started families of their own, and in the faces of my beautiful nieces and nephews I saw the their parents, and grandparents, and back through the generations as far as the visual record stretched. What I didn’t see is me. When I looked in a mirror I didn’t see family, only a stranger stared back.

    For until that time the only family I had ever known was my adoptive family.

    To be utterly clear, they are and always will be my family. And 100% of the time me being adopted has been a non-issue. It had never been a secret; just a matter of fact— like the sky being blue, or that pineapple on a pizza is an abomination. —But there was something missing that until I found it I could not define.

    The Dysons are part of my biological family. My maternal grandmother was born a Dyson. In 2009 we finally made contact. In 2017 she was 88 years young.

    My grandmother and me, 2017.

    There is no one reason why I began my family history search, or why I continue with it—I refuse to differentiate between my adoptive and biological family trees — They are both integral to who I am, and that is possibly one of the answers, I feel a sense of completeness in myself that I had never felt before—that and the ability to channel the inner bastard that I know now to be integral to my heritage.

    When I look in the mirror I no longer see a stranger.

    Now where the hell is that photo of James Dyson I know must exist?

  • Kill the Joke (AKA: “You had to be there”)

    Kill the Joke (AKA: “You had to be there”)

    “Finally, a loud, long-continued whistling was heard from the bush where now is Leederville. Later it sounded from about West Perth, and owing to a temporary break in the line the engine remained there some time, occasionally whistling to let the waiting crowd know it would be soon coming along.

    “There you are!” roared Drewy Dyson, who had been one of the most consistent pessimists; “it’s lost in the bush. Listen to it coo-ee-ing” ! ! !”

    Sunday Times (Perth, WA : 1902 – 1954) Sunday 20 December 1914 page 8

    Nothing kills a joke like having to explain it…

    The actual event in 1881. I call bullshit. [SLWA]
    Eastern Districts Chronicle (York, WA : 1877 – 1927) Friday 15 April 1881, p2

    The story of Drewy Dyson and the locomotive engine lost in the bush is undoubtedly utter fantasy. Its also the most re-published story of Drewy, retold at least five times in the pages of the Sunday Times between 1914 and 1932. The signs of the pen of Dyson’s old friend “Dryblower” Murphy is all over this tale, set thirty-three years before it was first presented. At the time of the the rail line’s formal opening in March 1881, Drewy was most likely not even in Perth. He was then aged twenty-three, newly married, and wreaking havoc in the inland town of York, where he had recently completed his apprenticeship. He was about to start up his first business venture on his own account.

    The Inquirer & Commercial News (Perth, WA : 1855 – 1901) Wednesday 26 November 1879 p3

    There was, of course an actual Dyson connection with the new railway (You knew there had to be, didn’t you?) The contractor who built the original Perth station building was a Mr Thomas Smith. No less than two of Smith’s sons were married to sisters of Drewy. John Thomas Smith was a carpenter, and was married to Drewy’s half-sister Ellen (from his mother’s first marriage). His full sister Hannah had been married to Charles Henry Smith. They had separated messily back in 1877. C. H. Smith was an undertaker by trade. Many years later Drewy would be an undertaker by notoriety…

    I guess its not impossible Drewy was present on a trip in from the country. This idea is supported in the second telling of the tale:

    LOST.
    The recent alterations at the Subiaco railway crossing recalled the story of the opening of the line from Fremantle to Perth, and subsequently on to Guildford.

    The local cockies, and other inhabitants had but a vague idea of how a line and locomotives, worked, and spent much rime[sic] arguing the point, very few going down the line to see how it was getting on.

    One section reckoned from what they’d seen in pictures the engine would choke itself with coal-dust, while another group estimated that no rails such as they saw could hold iron wheels on (they were used to deep bush ruts and calculated accordingly). A third section who mostly lived up at where now is Chidlow’s Well, Northam and elsewhere, and had never seen a yard of line laid, hung on to the theory that the engine and a train couldn’t possibly dodge the trees and would get bushed!

    When the eventful day arrived when the little locomotive and a few box carriages were to dash in from Fremantle at a breakneck speed of about 7¼ miles per hour, the fences, sheds, gravel heaps, and trees in the vicinity of what is now the Perth Central Station, was cocky-clustered in dense masses of fully fifty. The majority had come into Perth the night before per. bullock dray, brumby, and other means, and were impatient to behold Puffing Billy.

    About midday the train reached what now is West Perth, having started out of Fremantle early in the morning, a few rail-jumps and other troubles having delayed it. As a sign of joy as it left West Perth, and as a signal of success, the engine emitted several furious blasts.
    The cockies listened to the toots for a few moments.
    “There you are!” grunted Drewy Dyson. “I knew she’d get lost. Listen to her coo-eeing in the bush! ! !”

    Sunday Times (Perth, WA : 1902 – 1954) Sunday 10 October 1915 page 8s

    On the third telling, the cast of characters expands and the fictional origin of the tale becomes a little clearer. Horace Stirling and father join the narrative and the owner and editor of the Perth Inquirer paper and the Daily News couldn’t represent a fact straight if it ran over them.

    LOST.
    And old picture of Perth that has just drifted in recalls a very early day happening.
    The faded photograph shows the Turning of the First Sod of the Perth-Fremantle railway, and is a splendid memorial of bygone days.

    The picture shows a collection of cottages, gardens, etc, where now is the busy Central Station and Wellington, Beaufort, Roe and William streets, the Pinjarra Volunteer Cavalry and an assemblage of the populace and civic dignitaries being seen.

    During the time the railway was being pushed into Perth no engine or carriage was in the State, the line being gauged by a construction truck pushed along as the line proceeded.

    “How will this locomotive, as you call it, find its way through the thick trees down around Karrakatta,” demanded half the natives of Perth, that portion of the country between here and Fremantle being densely wooded.

    “The line will bring it along,” explained Horace Stirling, a young man then who had in Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney seen any amount of iron horses.

    The populace, however, regarded the small rails as fences, and could not see how they would keep the engine and carriages IN, as if they were fences.

    “Is there any chance of her getting lost in the scrub, Mr. Stirling?” asked Drewey Dyson of the dad of Horace S.

    Stirling senior explained again the mode of laying the rails and the general procedure thereof.

    One day they clanged the old town fire bell to let the people know that the first train would arrive in Perth on the following day.

    A huge crowd” of several hundreds assembled to welcome in the first engine and a couple of carriages containing the then Governor and Administrator—Broome.

    “At exactly noon a faint whistle was heard.

    The train had reached where now is Leederville.

    Ten minutes later another heart-rending shriek emanated from a bit further along, where now is West Perth.

    It stayed there a while, to receive the congratulations of the ancestors of Pat Hughes and a few others, and then, amid a salvo of escaping whistle steam, it essayed to again move along.

    West Perth was then all scrub and trees, and the huge crowd of 250 in Perth listened in wondering incredulity.

    “There you are!” bellowed young Drewey Dyson, as he heard the short, shrieking whistle, “I said she’d get lost. I can hear her coo-eeing in the bush!”

    Sunday Times (Perth, WA : 1902 – 1954) Sunday 6 June 1920 p 4S

    The story survived even Drewy’s own demise in 1927, while at the same time elaborating and entrenching his part in the tale. Version 4:

    “LOST!”
    Apropos of a story elsewhere, and also as the Town Hall last week held souvenir photos and sketches of the opening of the Perth-Fremantle railway, a story.
    In the year 1881, when the line from Fremantle to Perth was at last completed, a public holiday was proclaimed to mark the coming of the Iron Horse.
    The rails had been laid right from the Port to the metropolis, a small gauge truck, pulled by a horse, being used to get the rail paralleled correctly.
    The grades had all been made correctly, bridges built, cuttings and embankments made, and all was ready for the steam locomotive and its two trucks and a carriage load of distinguished citizens, officials, visitors, etc
    Where now is the Central Station had gathered (for those days) a huge crowd, the fences, sheds, trees, poles, etc, being fully occupied.
    Never having seen a real steam locomotive and a train, the indigenous Gropers, always used to horse teams, argued long and loud as to how it could keep from getting tangled up in the trees, the mystery of the flanged wheel not being then known to the younger inhabitants thereabouts.
    “How long is a train?” asked several of the local youths.
    They were told an average train would be about 100ft. or 150ft long.
    Those who had never seen a train, but had seen drays, waggons, etc., with two to twelve horses in line, scoffed in scorn.
    “Bet you it gets tangled up in the scrub!” said one.

    “Bet you it gets bushed down near Butler’s Swamp” (now Claremont), said another (history made it the late Drewey Dyson who was so cocksure of the train’s failure).

    Eventually the train puffed out of Fremantle, over the bridge, past Butler’s Swamp, up the grade where now is West Leederville, and finally ran down the long grade into where is situated the West Perth station.

    As it entered the last lap of its journey to Perth, the engine, with its vehicles behind, still shrouded by the then thick scrub, set up a series of whistle blasts, long and short, regular and irregular, drawn out and staccato.

    The crowd at Perth could see nothing of the exhaust steam, the day being hot, but it could clearly hear the whistling.
    “There you are!” excitedly yelled Drewey Dyson, “what did I tell you? She’s lost. Hear her coo-ee-ing away down there in the scrub!”

    Sunday Times (Perth, WA : 1902 – 1954) Sunday 22 September 1929 p6S

    By 1932, Drewy Dyson was just a memory, once a participant, now just the reputed story teller. Every version of the story was slightly different, so like a colonial Rashomon, I reproduce all the versions I have found so far, here for you… Version 5:

    COO-EE.
    The story of Mrs. Agnes Reeve concerning how she kept the Stirling street railway crossing gates 40 years ago, near where now is this office, recalls the opening of the line from Fremantle to Perth. The late Drewey Dyson and the also demised Horace Stirling both revelled in telling the story.

    When, the line was being laid, a gauge truck being used to get the proper width of the rails, the natives of Perth, who had never seen a railway train, wondered how the same could possibly dodge through the trees. When told a train of engine and carriages would be approximately 150 feet long, and as they had had acquaintance only with horse-drawn waggons, they wondered how such a line of vehicles would get along in and out the gum trees and scrub.

    The day arrived, and a thousand-odd men; women, and children were assembled where now is the central station, and the horseshoe bridge.

    Those who had seen a train in England endeavored to tell those who hadn’t something of the wonders of the iron horse, but it was in vain.

    How was she to get through the trees and scrub?

    “I’ll bet she gets lorst comin’ along’ by Butler’s Swamp,” said one, “Butler’s Swamp” now being Claremont.

    “I beleeve you’re right. Bill,” said another. “But we’ll see—an’ ‘ear.”

    By and by a long, plaintive whistle was heard away down where now is West Perth.

    It was repeated.

    And repeated again.

    It was the loco. engine whistling or trying to whistle “Cock-a-doodle-doo!”

    “There you are!” excitedly yelled one of the bystanders. “There you are! She’s lorst! You can hear her coo-eeing in the bush!”

    Sunday Times (Perth, WA : 1902 – 1954) Sunday 10 July 1932 p 4S

    Boom Boom!

  • Steam Powered Luddites

    Steam Powered Luddites

    James Dyson had built something of an empire in Western Australia on the back of supplying timber sourced the old fashioned way—by hand. Pity the other pit-sawyer though, who had to stand in that pit when the logs were being sliced into planks, and pity also the poor sap (pun intended) whose on-the-job-training did not include lessons where not to stand when the tree fell.

    Dyson’s business portfolio included more than just being a timber merchant, so his decline from being one of the largest employers in the colony to near penury cannot be attributed solely to competition in the timber trade, but one of his sons shooting a business rival’s son in the head would not have been conducive to any sort of cooperation when Benjamin Mason (father of the wounded party) together with his partner Francis Bird took the next logical step and introduced steam-powered machinery into the timber cutting process.

    The “convict fence” in the Canning River off Riverton in 2012.
    The Inquirer and Commercial News, 2 September 1868, p. 2

    Bird & Mason’s business was conducted on a scale that Dyson’s business model might have been unable to complete with. They also employed  many convicts. In 1864, they built a new mill at a place called Bickley Brook in the Darling Scarp east of Perth. Steam power was used to run a circular saw. On horse-drawn railway tracks, cut timber was carted to a landing site on the Canning River and sent down in barges to Perth and Fremantle. The traces of the posts that made up the path for the horses that dragged the barges across the shallow waters can still be seen today.

    Although Mason and Bird’s enterprise was not to survive the test of time, even better resourced companies would arise to carry on what they had started. But Dyson while was unwilling or unable to make the transition to the mechanised future of timber processing, other members of his family might not have been not so reticent.

    Back in the “Old” Country…

    A Lancashire Hand Loom Weaver.
    The Morning Post (Lancashire), 21 November 1870 p7

    Dyson’s father, Joseph, had been a cotton-spinning machine seller. That put him on the cutting edge of technology for the late eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century. His other sons who were not juvenile delinquents: Andrew, William and Joseph, all were involved in the spinning and weaving processes for cotton that was increasingly being centralised in powered mills, rather than in private homes and tenements such as their father had serviced. Bower Mill in Hollinwood, near Oldham, was initially an unpowered factory; it had been built for rope making, and that process was by hand. But during the same period of the 1860’s when James Dyson’s hand timber sawing business was at its peak, his brothers converted the ancient building to process cotton using coal fired steam engines.  Across the road from the mill was a Colliery, a seam of coal even ran underneath the mill itself. It should have been a match made in heaven, but instead subsidence in the mining tunnels caused severe damage to the floor of the factory. Not to worry though. After the inevitable protracted legal tussle, the two surviving brothers Andrew and Joseph won a frankly gianormous sum of money in compensation.

    Back to us Luddites.

    The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal (WA : 1833 – 1847) Sat 29 Aug 1835 Page 555

    The Swan River Colony that James Dyson found himself in what was possibly the most isolated British settlement in the world at that time (prepares to be bombarded with other examples). News from home was six months away at best (Home being defined as the British Isles in this case). The nearest neighbouring colonies were weeks away by sail, or more. Technological progress took some time to filter through to what was essentially an agrarian economy, but you’d be daft to think they weren’t aware of progress happening elsewhere. When steam ships eventually regularly paid visits to the western third of the Australian continent, they would bypass Perth entirely and call in at Albany on the far south coast for coaling. The coal they required in vast quantities had to be imported to the colony. King George’s Sound and Princess Royal Harbour were simply more sheltered locations to complete this laborious work then storm swept Gage Roads.

    The Perth Gazette and West Australian Times (WA : 1864 – 1874) Fri 25 Nov 1870 Page 2 (P.S. This is actually satire, y’know!)

    The Government imported a steam dredge at vast expense  in 1869 to reclaim land on the Perth foreshore and to deepen the river estuary. Like the other much derided plan of the time—The volunteers wanted a troop of mounted rifles, but their C.O. wanted them to be mounted artillery, the dredge was the subject of active derision.

    The Steam Dredge “Black Swan”

    Eventually the dredge did fulfil it’s promise, but the joke is still on us. After all the resources expended in reclaiming the foreshore for the public, a more recent government decided that this very same foreshore should have a large hole dug into it so rich people could pay a lot of money to stay in buildings around it. The pointless inlet that was created was about as popular as the dredging machine that had first filled it in, nearly 150 years ago.

    By 1871, even as his businesses were gradually running down, more and more of James Dyson’s attention may have been on his civic duties. He was on the council of the Perth City and the Perth Road Boards respectively. That year the members of the road board went to inspect a new timber cutting machine. I would be interesting to have heard Dyson’s reaction.

    The Perth Gazette and West Australian Times (WA : 1864 – 1874) Friday 10 November 1871 p3

    During his time on the City Council, both the electric telegraph and the first steam powered fire engine was delivered to the city.

    Dyson’s sons, you would imagine, would have been more in tune with new technology. You would mostly be wrong. Horse power was their limit. Their father had been born into the white heat of the cutting edge of the industrial revolution, which might have been why Thomas, Andrew, John and possibly Matthew were apprenticed as blacksmiths, but only Andrew and Thomas did any manufacturing. They had been born and grown up into a poor, rural and insular corner of the British Empire, where (essentially) a slave labour force rather than ingenuity was what got things done. Thomas had the most success mass producing furniture, but he went to Victoria. (Maybe shooting your father’s business rival’s son hadn’t turned out to be such a bad career move after all) Andrew built coaches (when he wasn’t on the bottle or behind bars) John ended up digging coal.

    Truth (Perth, WA : 1903 – 1931), Saturday 12 December 1914, page 7

    Andrew Drewy Dyson for all his many flaws, was no simpleton. He understood marketing. He was praised for his craftsmanship, (which was considerable when he stayed away from the bottle).  So when the first steam locomotive came to town in 1880, take this tale of the country yokel with a massive grain of salt, after all, Drewy probably wasn’t even there…

    THE RAILWAY.
    A week-end contemporary which specialises in reminiscences of Old Sydney should stick to yarns of Chowder, Clontarf, Surry Hills, the Argyle Cut, and other haunts of Noo South pushdom.

    Recently it printed, a picture of a railway locomotive in the Perth-yards, attached to some seated trucks, and labelled it “The First Railway Engine Used in WA” The letterpress goes on to say it ran on the Fremantle-Guildford line, and was the pioneer of all such traction.

    As a matter of fact, there was a well-equipped State-owned railway line between Geraldton and Northampton long before the Fremantle-Perth Guildford line was thought of, it being used for the cartage of passengers and base metals.

    When the Perth-to-Fremantle line was nearing completion a popular query amongst the younger of the local population was as to how the engine and carriages would dodge the trees en route.

    The elders explained, but the juvenile native-born, were a bit sceptical.

    The day arrived when the first Puffing Billy was to arrive in Perth from the Port, and the population of the capital gathered in expectant, half-doubtful multitudes where now is the Central Station.

    After a long wait some of the crowd voiced the opinion that the train wouldn’t be able to find its way up to Perth, and made bets of kangaroo skins, logs of sandalwood, etc., that black trackers would have to be sent out to bring it in.

    Finally, a loud, long-continued whistling was heard from the bush where now is Leederville. Later it sounded from about West Perth, and owing to a temporary break in the line the engine remained there some time, occasionally whistling to let the waiting crowd know it would be soon coming along.

    “There you are!” roared Drewy Dyson, who had been one of the most consistent pessimists; “it’s lost in the bush. Listen to it coo-ee-ing” ! ! !

    Sunday Times (Perth, WA : 1902 – 1954) Sunday 20 December 1914 page 8

    …continued.

  • Timber!

    Timber!

    Timber was the business of James Dyson from his earliest years in Western Australia. A year after his arrival in 1841 he was working as a labourer. Of the few people from this time we know for sure that he associated with, Stephen Hyde was a carpenter, and his next door neighbour in Perth for the next ten years.  By 1845 James was describing himself as a sawyer, and the earliest mention of him in the newspapers of the Swan River Colony was as the successful bidder for a government contract to supply timber boards for a building on Rottnest Island.

    The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal (WA : 1833 – 1847) Sat 15 Jul 1843 Page 4
    The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal (WA : 1833 – 1847) Sat 14 Nov 1840 Page 2

    Neither of these articles from the period mention Dyson but they do illustrate an important point. It was not possible to just wander out and collect timber, particularly not from unoccupied crown land. To be a sawyer, you needed either money, or a patron. (Apropos to nothing, Peter Brown (or Broun) and Robert McBride Brown were brothers.)

    If Dyson was working as a sawyer prior to 1843, he must have (in conjunction with someone else) been employed by or worked with, one or more of the following gentlemen:

    The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal (WA : 1833 – 1847) Saturday 26 November 1842 p3

    After this date, the regulations changed, and most frustratingly, names of licensees were no longer published in the papers. We can know, however, how the work was done by James, at least in the beginning:

    A generic illustration of pit sawyers at work. [http://www.nationaltrusttas.org.au]

    Shortly after his arrival he commenced business as a pitsawyer — a laborious occupation, but of a most lucrative nature in days previous to the application of steam machinery. After about nearly twenty years he established himself in town as timber merchant and general dealer, and in those days was amongst the largest employers of labor in the colony.

    The Daily News (Perth, WA : 1882 – 1950) Saturday 23 June 1888 p 3

    From 1850, two equally momentous events transformed the Western Australia; on the 25th October 1849, Dyson’s future second wife Jane Develing arrived in the Colony on the Mary. On 1 June 1850 the ship Scindian landed the first large scale cohort of convicts to Western Australia. These prisoners were initially occupied building their own gaol in Fremantle, but Dyson would eventually employ one of these men: Thomas Hart was a burglar, but his professed trade was as a mason. In what capacity Dyson employed him I have not yet uncovered.

    The Perth Gazette and Independent Journal of Politics and News (WA : 1848 – 1864) Friday 11 April 1851 p4s

    From later ships, a convict would usually be granted probation very soon after he arrived in the form of a ticket-of-leave. They were by no means free, but they were no more a slave labour force than any other employee in the colony at the time.

    The Perth Gazette and Independent Journal of Politics and News (WA : 1848 – 1864) Friday 18 July 1851 p2

    A convict depôt was established under the shadow of Mount Eliza near where the Swan Brewery buildings now stand. This place was also adjacent to a stone quarry that recalcitrant or unemployed convicts could be assigned to. (In later years after transportation had ceased, this depôt would become the old men’s home.) The men’s skills were advertised for prospective employers. From the attached list, Dyson would choose Henry Rugg, brickmaker and Thomas Molineux, Miner. Dyson was involved at various times with brick making in Perth, but once again it is by no means certain that this was what these men were employed for by him.

    Thomas Matthews was serving a ten years for theft and had arrived on the convict ship William Jardine on 4th August 1852. His trade was watchmaker, but he was employed by Dyson as a sawyer on 28th April 1855. It was not a great choice for either…

    The Inquirer and Commercial News (Perth, WA : 1855 – 1901) Wed 10 Oct 1855 Page 2

    Matthews was working near Lake Monger, north of town, which does give a clue about where Dyson was operating and what sort of timber he might have been collecting at the time. Tuart was a valued hardwood for general construction work and sheoak was used for roofing shingles.

    An example of a shingle roof.

    Convicts, as a rule, do not write testimonials to their masters’ treatment of them, so we only hear anything about them when something goes wrong. Richard Griffin was a housebreaker who arrived on the Lord Raglan, 1 June 1856.  Dyson most definitely did employ him as a sawyer from 14 May 1860. Under a month later he was returned to the depôt, and thence to the police court:

    The Perth Gazette and Independent Journal of Politics and News (WA : 1848 – 1864) Friday 8 June 1860 p3

    This is a rare example of a Dyson being complimented by a magistrate. William was James Dyson’s third son and was born free, but he was in turn complimented by father for his action? Remember, James Dyson had once been a convict himself, in Van Diemen’s Land. He had never been granted either ticket-of-leave or conditional-pardon status and had served out the full seven years of his sentence. If you look at his record, you could see it was far from spotless. This was a man that understood exactly what it entailed to be accused and convicted of “Idleness & neglect of duty”. His attitude seems to be, “I know what you are thinking, because I thought it myself, once. I didn’t get away with it then, and I’ll be d—ed if I let you get away with it now.” This impression is reinforced by a later recollection of Drewy Dyson, of his father.

    Drewy’s father was a man who held very strong opinions on the jury system of trying criminals and suspected criminals, and more than once in his time when in a panel has been the cause of pulling up a barrister and even a judge during the course of various cases. Old Man Dyson was exceedingly well-versed in law and not bush-law at that, and could quote off hand chapters from British authorities that would not be possible to any but those possessing a wonderfully retentive memory. As a boy Drewy received many strong lessons in common humanity and equity from his father, the latter taking him on more than one occasion to see condemned men being brought chained through the streets of Perth in an open cart, just as they were taken to Tyburn in London in days long gone by.

    Sunday Times (Perth, WA : 1902 – 1954), Sunday 24 April 1927, page 14

    So it was that Drewy Dyson’s older brother probably came to regret messing about with that gun in the wetlands north of town in the year 1867.

    The Inquirer & Commercial News (Perth, WA : 1855 – 1901) Wednesday 24 July 1867 p2

    Thomas might have preferred prison. He was exiled from Perth, not to return for nearly twenty years. He served an apprenticeship in Geelong, Victoria, but eventually, out of all Dyson’s many children, he would end up with the greatest success in business. Young Benjamin Mason was the son of Benjamin Mason, senior. The Mason family of Perth were another clan of storekeepers, publicans, carpenters and general entrepreneurs very similar to the Dysons in many respects. One can’t help but fear that having your son shoot your near neighbour’s son in the head must have put a crimp in the personal relations between the two families and may have thwarted any potential business cooperation. This is especially unfortunate as Ben Mason’s name, in conjunction with that of his parter Francis Bird, will be forever linked with the next stage of development of the timber industry in Western Australia. It was part of an evolution Dyson was not able to or was unwilling to adapt to.

    …continued.

  • The Little Boy Lost: Enter Drewy.

    The Little Boy Lost: Enter Drewy.

    He was a monster. That has to be made plain from the start. He could be very funny, he was creative and he was intelligent. He loved animals. He probably loved his family, but he also hurt them. He hurt them a lot. He also hurt many of the animals he loved as well, and he also hurt himself. He could laugh at himself. Others laughed at him too, a lot. He would have been fun to know personally but he humiliated those who had no choice but to share his name. He was the meanest drunk Western Australia has possibly ever known (and I realise that is a bold claim to make) and he was the fattest Western Australian of the nineteenth century. He was Andrew “Drewy” Dyson.

    Sunday Times (Perth, WA : 1902 – 1954) Sunday 22 December 1907 p 1S

    He was born in Perth on 30 October 1858. His father was the colonial entrepreneur James Dyson. His mother was Mrs Jane Edwards. There were still a few more years to go before Jane’s first husband could be declared legally dead and the two could finally marry, so rather than face any needless embarrassment— as with the previous two children they had already had together— Andrew Dyson’s birth was not  formally registered.

    The colony that Andrew was born into was not the same place his parents had arrived into, eight and seventeen years before, respectively. It was a far more dangerous place, for one. Half the population was under legal curfew at night, the other half huddled behind locked or bolted doors in a de-facto state of curfew in terror of any curfew-breakers from the other half. Western Australia was now a Convict settlement, and a rough and rowdy place to live in and bring up children. On a positive note, those same convicts had made Andrew Dyson’s father quite rich, and soon he might completely paper over his own chequered past with a thin veneer of promissory notes.

    Labour shortages back when James Dyson arrived in 1841 had enabled him to fill a niche as a timber cutter and he must have had at least one other confederate to assist him in that enterprise. (Pit sawing requires at least two people) But that same shortage of labour must have at the same time limited how much Dyson could grow his business, which now included contracts for wood used to construct public buildings. That all changed with the arrival of the convicts in 1850. Usually paroled as soon as they stepped ashore, these men were available for hire almost straight away, and Dyson was soon one of the biggest employers of labour in the colony. So when someone was referred to as working for James Dyson, odds-on that person would be a ticket-of-leave convict.

    Young Andrew Dyson first burst in to public prominence when he was nine in October 1867. He was travelling with a party of his father’s men deep into the Canning district south and east of Perth. They followed the rough dirt track that was then the Albany road to a location some way past what is now known as Armadale. It was there that the carter had some unspecified work to do about 100 metres away from the track. For some further unspecified reason Andrew tagged along with him accompanied only by his dog. The carter sent Drewy back to wait by the cart, or so it was reported, however the boy never reached that destination.

    Lost, 1907, Frederick McCUBBIN [National Gallery of Victoria]

    It is one of the greatest tropes of Australian culture — the child lost in the bush. For parents who came from a very different landscape in the northern hemisphere where the deep dark forest was a fairytale nightmare from the distant past, here it was for real. It scared the living shit out of them, being in it. Even more gut wrenching was the thought of their children out in it, alone and helpless, and there was nothing they could do. People would rather have thought the mother done it than a “dingo took my baby”…

    The news would have shuddered through the populace — everyone would have known. Children died of diseases like dysentery every day. That was sad, but it did not make it into the paper. A child lost in the bush did.

    The Perth Gazette and West Australian Times (WA : 1864-1874) Friday 4 October 1867 page 2

    Dyson rode out to join in the search personally. His mind must have jumped back to all the children he had lost: His first daughter Hannah, aged only seven months; his eldest son George in a cart accident aged 16; Samuel, barely a year old from whooping cough two years before. Then just a few months ago, there was that regrettable affair with Thomas, his second eldest child with Jane. Thomas was thirteen, but he had disgraced himself so he had been sent far away to Melbourne to serve an apprenticeship there; it must have felt like he had died too.

    James Dyson reached Narrogin on the Albany road on the 8 October 1867.  It was not the town of that name about 150km from Perth along the route, but the other settlement called Narrogin that was only about 50km from home on the Albany road. If you are confused you were not alone. Some of the papers mixed them up too. This might be why the closer of the two to Perth changed their name to Armadale. The Narrogin Inn that Dyson would have passed through is still there, but not in any form that he would recognise.

    The Inquirer & Commercial News (Perth, WA : 1855 – 1901) Wednesday 8 November 1865 p 3

    Dyson, that day, carried with him the hopes and best wishes of all his peers, hoping for the best, but expecting the worse. Dyson skated on thin ice sometimes in regards to authority, but no-one could doubt he loved his children. Right now, right then, everyone was on his side, everyone was riding with him that day. Andrew had been missing now for six days.

    As anyone knows who have taken the Albany Highway from Perth to Albany even today, the road twists and rises past Armadale, climbing into the Darling scarp. Even today, tall dense timber hugs the sides of the road, you would think, wandering in there, you would never come out again. But some distance past the Narrogin Inn, that was where Dyson encountered a man on a horse with a young boy and his dog. Andrew had been found, safe and sound. The paper tells the story:

    LOST IN THE BUSH.— An unfortunate case of being lost in the bush occurred last week. A lad of about nine years of age, the son of Mr. J. Dyson, of Perth, accompanied a carter with a team of his father’s to the Canning, and when about 26 miles from Perth, the carter occupied himself in some work off the road, and sent the boy back to the cart, some 150 yards distant. He lost his way while attempting to reach it ; and was unable, from the nature of the country, to recover himself. In his rambles he discovered a horse track, which he followed some miles, but night closed on him, and he lay down in the hollow of a tree till morning with his dog, which had faithfully kept by him the whole time. On waking in the morning, he continued on the track he abandoned the night before, which soon led him to the house of a man named Hesketh, who conducted him over to the residence of Mr. T. Buckingham, whose kindness and hospitality are highly commendable. Mr. Buckingham, as soon as possible, sent the child on the road towards Perth, in charge of one of his servants, who were met near Narrogin by the child’s father, by whom he was brought to his home.

    The Inquirer & Commercial News, Wednesday 9 October 1867 p2

    For James, from this moment, everything started going right in his life, and his good fortune continued for the most extended period he would ever experience. The previous year he missed out on a spot in the Perth City Council by only a few votes. That December he was finally elected as a Councillor for the West Ward, a position he would hold continuously for eight years. Once again, I have no hard evidence for this; but I believe the good will for his son’s safe recovery might have pushed him over the line.

    Drewy was not named in his first media appearance, but there is not doubt that it was he.  But one question remained unanswered; did his father hug him, or did he get a cuff around the ear? This was Drewy’s first mention in the papers, but it would be far from being his last, and the next time around his family would be wishing they would keep his name out of print.

    Further research

    Who was Hesketh (who “rescued” Drewy)? He was not Joseph Hesketh, the former convict, who was already dead…
    Did Drewy encounter “Moondyne” Joe Johns on the lam?

  • Going Postal: The great family rift.

    Going Postal: The great family rift.

    …About half-past nine last Friday night, my attention was attracted by a number of persons standing in front of prisoner’s brothers’ residence, in Murray-street; I was in plain clothes at the time, and Dyson’s sister — a little girl — came up to me and said that her brother Andrew was killing her Father;

    The evidence of P.C. Grant.

    The Daily News (Perth, WA : 1882 – 1950) Tuesday 13 January 1885 p 3

    The location of Joseph Dyson’s Bakery, also known as “Dyson’s Corner”. If you would like to see a larger, clearer version of this picture so would I.

    When Joseph Dyson, junior, was just thirteen years of age he would have been present when his uncle Andrew entered his father’s home on the corner of William and Murray Streets and proceeded to beat up his grandfather.  Old James Dyson had lived with them for a few years now.  A man named Barker separated Andrew “Drewy” Dyson from his father. Drewy then went out into the street to hurl, instead, abuse of the verbal kind at the gathering crowd. Finally, he returned inside the house and vented his frustrations on a small dog, before the police arrived to haul him away.

    The Wesley Church in the centre of Perth.

    Joseph’s step-grandmother Jane was no longer living with them. She was residing several streets away from them by then, in the old Perth Gaol — seven months into a five year sentence for theft. Meanwhile Matthew Dyson had been sentenced (in absentia) for disorderly conduct, and was now serving a spell down in Fremantle Prison. Joseph’s other uncle’s crime was to have thrown a rotten egg at a religious procession entering Wesleyan Church. That also happened to be the same church Joseph’s father, Joseph (the Elder), was a Sunday School teacher for, and lay just on the other side road from the Dyson’s home.

    All things considered, its not that strange that Joseph Dyson, hunior, might now have a jaundiced view of certain sections of his family…

    Perth Boys School in 1861 photographed by Alfred Hawes Stone (SLWA)

    Scholastically he resembled his father. They both went to the same Perth Boy’s School, and were awarded similar prizes for their academic achievements. Back when they were all much younger, he and several of his aunts and uncles (many younger than he) had all marched together as school children for a parade celebrating the Queen’s Silver Jubilee (1879).

    By 1888, the year his grandfather died, Joseph (then 16) played Australian Rules football for a Perth team. In 1890 he was a member of a team called the “Pearlers”. Their captain was a lad only a year younger than he, by the name of Strutt. Arthur Ernest Strutt came from Melbourne, Victoria, to the west in 1885 with his widowed mother and several other siblings. He had a young sister, then aged twelve, called Jessie.

    The Inquirer & Commercial News (Perth, WA : 1855 – 1901) Friday 15 May 1891 p3

    Joseph junior, was just as capable of being an idiot as any other member of his family. On 11 May 1891 Uncle Drewy fronted the magistrate yet again, for another matter (this time for nearly running down a clergyman in his cart). The same day Joseph and a young friend appeared before the same magistrate for allegedly firing a gun in the street near a policeman. Fortunately for Joseph, this would his first and last appearance on the wrong side of a court room. Soon, he would have a very strong motivation for keeping his nose clean.

    This is the only photo this side of the family has of Joseph Dyson the younger. What was it with him and guns?

    Sometime in the year 1892, Joseph Dyson joined the Western Australian Postal and Telegraph Service as as a letter-carrier. Although there is nothing to suggest that influence was applied either way, Dyson had an relative in this sphere of the public service. Mr Richard Tremlett Hardman (1848-1927) was married to his Aunt on his late mother’s (Elsegood) side. Hardman was a mail contractor during the 1860’s, postmaster at York for a couple of decades, then appointed an Inspector in July 1893. Later he would be the Chief Inspector, rounding out his career as Deputy Postmaster General.

    Dyson’s career in the postal service was extremely respectable. By 1895 he was a mail assistant in the Perth General Post Office. By the time of Federation in 1901 he was head of the “Poste Restante” department within the GPO, a very responsible position. When the Western Australian Postal department was absorbed into the new Commonwealth Postal  service in June 1904, Dyson transferred to the new organisation, and retained his same pay grade: £180 per annum.

    He could afford to marry and start a family. He did so— to a now grown-up Jessie Christensen Strutt — in the Wesleyan Church on 7 February 1900. Their first house together on William street in the city, they named “Hawthorn“. Their first child, a son, was born there on the 5 November 1900, a very respectable nine months later. His mother-in-law, Mrs Annie Strutt died in this same house on 19 January 1901. She was a Scottish immigrant who ran a respectable boarding house in Perth during her long widowhood. The family next moved to a new house in the fresh Perth suburb of Subiaco. Respectability mattered to this family. Yes, brother-in-law Arthur Ernest Strutt would abandon his wife and two children never to be heard of again, but the Strutts were respectable. Why, back in Tasmania, (where that side of the family had come from) they were senior bureaucrats, politicians and brigadier generals during the 20th century.

    But those terrible Dysons, they were nothing but trouble…

    St George’s Hall. The pillars remain, nowt else.

    Previously in 1893, when the junior Joseph was still attempting to establish himself as a public servant, another incident involving his outrageous uncle Drewy ensnared Joseph’s own father this time. The venue was the then newly opened St George Hall in Hay street; The performance was a play called “The Silver King”; The encore spilled out into the street and into the Police Court five days later.

    Andrew “Drewy” Dyson, if he had never quite redeemed himself after the death of his father, was now — gloriously and scandalously — who he would always be.  He owned a cart-manufacturing works located on a site directly across the road from the family home on the corner of William Street and Murray Street. The disagreement he had that evening may have had something to do with a dissatisfied customer (One of the milder obscenities he seemed to have uttered was something to do with it being “a b—— good cart”. It was obscene language — one word in particular — that had landed him before the court this time (but no, it is has not been recorded in the press).

    His the elder Joseph turned up at court to give testimony on behalf of his younger brother. He had been upstairs in the hall during the commotion, so he had heard nothing — and that was his evidence. Another witness called was a young lady named Emily Bates. Her evidence was likewise. However Miss Bates also happened to be Drewy’s mistress, further more, she was heavily pregnant with their child.  Only a month later she was packed off to the family’s property in Wanneroo for the birth. The boy — Andrew Samuel Dyson — was subsequently raised by Drewy’s long suffering wife as her own. Charlotte Dyson, but with certain pre-conditions.—

    The West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879 – 1954) Friday 22 September 1893 p5

    Drewy Dyson was the very antithesis of respectability, a well known racing identity in every sense of the term, then and now. Yet despite everything, he always remained close to his half-brother Joseph. Why, I’ve no idea. In 1910, on the centennial of their late father’s birth, they jointly placed a memorial in the local paper. They were proud of their father.

    The West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879-1954) Tuesday 19 July 1910 page 1

    But Joseph, junior, was not so enamoured of his heritage. Back in 1893 he was attempting to cast off the inky shadow of his father’s family’s name, a task all the more difficult because they shared the same name. The week after the reports of the court case were published, (Drewy was fined — yet again) a classified advertisement appeared in the same paper:—

    The Daily News (Perth, WA : 1882 – 1950) Friday 19 May 1893 p2
    The West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879 – 1954) Monday 27 May 1912 page 8

    Old Joseph Dyson finally passed away in 1912 aged 66 years, at his house in Robinson Street, North Perth. His son performed the required conventional pieties, and had him buried in Karrakatta Cemetery in the same plot as his late mother-in-law. No headstone was purchased. The grave is unmarked.

    But it was the day after the funeral that the final rupture between Drewy and his nephew most likely took place. Drewy didn’t even bother to turn up to the resultant court case; he sent along his wife to plead guilty on his behalf. The magistrates were without sympathy (it was rare that they were) and the fine of £10 for obscene language (yet again) was a very steep one. The words were uttered outside a house in Robinson street, the house is not specified, nor the two witnesses who gave evidence against Drewy, but a good guess can be made.

    As far as I can tell, from 22 May 1912, no member of the family of Joseph Dyson had anything to do with any other strands of the Dyson clan for the next one hundred years.

    The last resting place of Mrs Annie Strutt and Mr Joseph Dyson, parents-in-law, in Karakatta Cemetery, Perth.