The Five Walking Sticks. Henry R Lew

is a complete stranger. In the case of the death certificate it is an authorised agent. In the case of Ada’s birth certificate it is a messenger for the Lying-in Hospital, Carlton. And in the case of Alice’s birth certificate it is a porter for the Lying-in Hospital, Carlton. In the case of the twin’s birth certificates dated November 22^nd 1894, Margaret Morris is the informant. Here she lies about her age saying she is thirty, and not thirty-six, but she gives her birthplace as Melbourne. The Goodwins to whom Margaret fostered Ada were married in Melbourne in 1854, were living in Hobart when their natural daughter Eliza Emma Goodwin Bainbridge was born in 1855, and returned to Melbourne sometime prior to Eliza’s marriage to William Bainbridge in 1872. If Margaret was born in Hobart, she may have known the Goodwins from childhood.

      Margaret’s certificate of marriage to John William Morris has never been found. Her death certificate states that she married him aged twenty. That would make the wedding date 1874, two years before Ada was born. On Alice’s birth certificate it is stated that Margaret Gavin, (a third spelling, Gavan, Gaven, Gavin.) aged 16, married William Morris, aged 19, a cabinet maker, at Forbes N.S.W. on 23^rd. January 1874. Alice is the only child that has William Morris listed as father on the birth certificate. On every other birth certificate found no father is listed.

      No birth certificate specifically mentioning Ada Morris has been found but there is one for Ava Morris born at the Lying-in Hospital in Carlton, Melbourne on June 13th 1876, to mother Margaret Morris, father unknown. This certificate is definitely Ada’s. June 13th was her birthday. There is a surviving note that reads, “With best love to little Ada from her mother on her seventh birthday June 13^th 1883.”

      On analysing this information my biographer felt a need to ask himself the following questions. Did Margaret Gavan, Gaven or Gavin really marry John William Morris in 1874 and then have a child with Maurice Brodzky in 1876? Did John William Morris exist at all or is Morris really a corruption of Maurice (Brodzky)? If John William Morris did exist and he was the husband of Margaret Morris why is he mentioned as father on only one of her seven children’s birth certificates and why is no father listed on any other. Why is there no mention of John William Morris or any other husband in Margaret’s surviving letters? Was Maurice Brodzky the father of all of Margaret’s children?

      Of one fact my biographer was certain. Ada Goodwin Dalton was the daughter of Maurice Brodzky and Margaret Morris. Her mother Margaret Morris and her half brother Horace Brodzky both confirmed it. Horace corresponded with Ada for more than twenty years, and she helped him out in times of difficulty with money and gifts. Ada’s daughter Majorie and her husband Cyril Kent visited Horace in London in 1933. There are three surviving letters from Horace to Ada to confirm this. They are dated June 4^th, September 26^th, and December 22^nd. Of particular interest to Ada, Horace writes, “I am glad you are pleased with the photo of my father. It is a very good photo of him and taken by myself in New York. He was a good man but very impractical. He helped everyone and I am sure never hurt anyone. In return he got little or no help and died penniless. When I say penniless I don’t exaggerate. He had not a single penny to pay for the expenses that were necessary at his death”.

      What my biographer could not understand was that if Ada made the effort to correspond with her half-brother Horace, why didn’t she also write to all of Margaret Morris’s other children, particularly if they were her full brothers and sisters? The only one she was in contact with was Alice Morris Lock.

      As my biographer read Margaret’s letters he was reminded of a comment I had made about Emma Hertz, “that beauty of mind and body” were “happily joined and harmoniously blended.” I liked a girl with a mind as well as a body. A reading of Margie’s letters left him in no doubt as to her mind. She was a varied reader. Her tastes in poetry extended from Robbie Burns to Omar Khayyam. She read Victor Hugo and H. G. Wells. She quoted Robert Green Ingersoll, ‘the great agnostic,’ “The world is my country, mankind are my brethren, and to do good my religion.” She studied Marie Stopes on ‘birth control and wise parenthood’ and she strongly recommended “The Jungle” and “The Brass Check” by Upton Sinclair. She had a strong social conscience. She sympathised with the unemployed and those underpaid for their labour. She disagreed with the Russian Czar’s murder but felt that he had much to answer for. She wrote, “In 1905 Father Gapon led a deputation of starving workers to the Czar’s palace asking for bread. Nicholas ordered guns turned on them and men, women and children were blown to smithereens. They have now had their revenge.” She disliked liars, Governments that lie to their citizens on a variety of issues, and the lying Capitalist press. She had been a devout Catholic. “Sunday evening Vespers- the music is glorious. The 11 o’clock mass- there is nothing to compare with it. It’s all Latin. I remember every word of it.” Yet she comments at length about Easter being a pagan festival and states that “the Catholic Church today is distinctly pagan, the ritual, the priest’s vestments, the incense, the candles and the carrying of the effigy of the dead god.” She even goes so far as to say that “all the pagan gods were born of virgins, suffered an ignominious death, rose again and ascended into heaven just as Jesus did.” She was clearly a woman who had lost her faith. She regarded civilisation as a tenuous veil over the laws of the jungle, one that needed continuous nurturing. “You only have to attend the opening of a department store’s post-Christmas sales to verify that for yourself.” You name it; she definitely had an opinion on it. She was a strong forthright determined opinionated woman who had made up her mind not to reveal too much as to my role in her life.

      Once Ada was fostered out it seemed pointless to prolong our relationship. I decided to quit Melbourne and start again as far away as possible. I chose Rockhampton in Queensland. It was as far as I could go without leaving Australia. I taught school there briefly for the very last time before joining the local newspaper. Rockhampton was some miles up the Fitzroy River and lay on the Tropic of Capricorn. It was not Vienna, not London, not Paris, and not Melbourne, and believe me it was not for Maurice. Its population was less than ten thousand and it was stinking hot. It was so bloody hot that the standard joke there, amongst its inhabitants, was that when you died and went to hell, you had to send back to Rockhampton for your unused blankets. Like JF I didn’t last long in Queensland. By 1879 I had moved to Sydney. I got a job as a reporter on the Sydney Evening News and on my first day, when I walked into the office, it was slap-bang straight into a fellow reporter named J.F. Archibald.