1911 - The Smiths

Tom Tunaley's cousin Bill Smith emigrated to Australia with his young family between 1911 and 1913. Bill and Harriet Smith were lifelong friends of Tom and Maggie Tunaley, and shared houses in the years after they emigrated to Australia.

The photograph below is of Bill and Harriet Smith (née Armstrong) and Dorothy, the eldest of their two daughters. The Smiths' three children were Dorothy (b. 1908), Beatrice (b. 1914) and Ted, their youngest.

William John Smith (I've written his name in full because there are so many Williams and Bills in this story, it can get confusing) was three years younger than Tom Tunaley and was always known as Bill. He became a carpenter and may have been apprenticed to his uncle John Charles Tunaley (Tom's father) in Manchester.

Bill Smith's mother, Elizabeth (b. 1854) was the eldest sister of John Charles Tunaley (b.1850). After working as a schoolmistress in Nottinghamshire, at the age of thirty, Elizabeth married a baker from Bedfordshire, George Jarvis Smith (b. 1845) in 1884. Elizabeth and George Smith had three children: William John (b. 1885); Dorothy (b. 1887); and Stanley (b. 1891). In the late 1880s, Elizabeth and George moved their family to Manchester and lived near John Charles Tunaley and his family, so the cousins may have known each other quite well.

This photograph (from John Tunaley's collection) could be of the three Tunaley boys and their two male Smith cousins. The boys are formally dressed, with flowers on their buttonholes, so it is possible that they are attending a family wedding.

Is that a young Bill Smith with his hand on a seated Tom Tunaley's shoulder, or vice versa? Is it a sign of a friendship that would one day have them embarking on an emigration adventure together, or were they simply following the photographer's instructions?

We are probably completely mistaken in assuming that these sweet faced boys are Tunaleys and Smiths. In the sepia tinted photograph below of the three Tunaley boys with their father (middle son Tom standing on the left), there is not much resemblance to any of the lads in the picture above!

By 1911, 26 year-old Bill and Harriet Smith were married and had a daughter Dorothy, who was the same age as Maggie and Tom's first child, John Charles. They were living with Harriet's widowed father and six of her siblings, two of whom - Charles and Beatrice - were still at school.  Harriet's occupation was identified as "Housekeeper" (presumably for her father James Armstrong). These ten people lived at 262 Ashton New Road, Beswick, North Manchester on census night in 1911.

Another mystery: The family story has always been that Tom Tunaley and Bill Smith emigrated to Australia "together", but it is hard to prove that they travelled out together in 1911. (If they did, then Bill returned to England soon after arriving in Australia and returned a year later). There are many passenger lists for ships departing from England and arriving in Australia and I have not examined them all. However, I could not find William John Smith's name on the arrival list for the Themistocles in 1911 that has Thomas Tunaley's name on it.

There is evidence to suggest that Bill and Harriet Smith sailed a year later than Tom and Maggie Tunaley and that like Tom and Maggie, they came on separatenships. William (Bill) John Smith arrived on the "Orama" on 25th October 1912. Eight months later, Harriet Smith and four-year old Dorothy arrived on the "Themistocles" (the same ship that had brought Tom Tunaley out in 1911), on 19 June 1913.

Shirley Tunaley (Bill Tunaley's daughter-in-law) has supplied me with these passenger listings for the Smiths (Thank you, Shirley!). William Smith's name is circled in red in the passenger list for the "Orama" on 25th October 1912, pictured below.

Harriet Smith and her daughter Dorothy appear on the list for the "SS Themistocles" in 1913, (circled in blue below).

The Smiths and Tunaleys lived together or near each other for most of most of their first decade in Melbourne. In Yarraville, they all shared the house at 6 Powell Street, and then both families moved to Hawthorn. When Beatrice Smith was born in 1914 - the same year that Tom and Maggie Tunaley's first daughter Edith Pauline was born, the Smiths and Tunaleys were sharing a six-roomed house at 7 Bell Street Hawthorn rented by Tom Tunaley. According to the Rate books, the house at 7 Bell Street Hawthorn had seven people occupying it in November 1914, which is presumably the sum of both families, but without Bill Smith.

At the start of the Great War, in 1914, Bill Smith returned to England alone. As labour was scarce, he took a job as a munitions worker in an aircraft factory. Harriet and the two children initially remained in Australia, possibly staying with the Tunaleys at 7 Bell Street Hawthorn - seven people were still recorded as living there in the 1915 Ratebooks.

But by December 1916, Harriet and the two girls had moved out of 7 Bell Street, to rooms above a shop on Glenferrie Road, nearby.

The Ratebooks for 1916 to 1918 record only five people living at 7 Bell Street, Hawthorn - all of whom would have been Tunaleys - Tom and Maggie with Billie, Pauline and Thomas Stanley (b. 1916). By 1919, a second daughter, Mary Victoria had arrived bringing the total of Tom and Maggie's children in Australia to four.

In 1918, when Bill Smith returned to Australia, he and Harriet rented a house around the corner from the Tunaleys in Hawthorn. The house at 14 Haines Street was newly built, the last of a row of six 4-roomed brick cottages completed in 1916. The Smiths lived at 14 Haines Street for almost four years, from 1918 to 1921, according to the Rate Books.

In 1922, Bill and Harriet Smith purchased land in Glen Iris, a new suburb on the outskirts of the city, about five kilometres from Hawthorn. After the Smiths moved to Glen Iris in 1922, the Tunaleys took over the lease on 14 Haines Street and lived there for a year, before they moved five kilometres in the opposite direction, to inner city Abbotsford. As Tom Tunaley immersed himself in Labor politics in Collingwood, Bill Smith commenced the arduous task of building a home for his family in Glen Iris, in his spare time.

The Smith's vacant block at 20 Webb Street, Glen Iris had a "creek" waterway running down the middle of it from Toorak Road. During the years it took Bill Smith to build the family home, the whole family lived on the block. The two girls slept in a shed that later became a wash-house, with Bill and Harriet sleeping in a tent alongside. Their son Ted was born at this time. Dorothy and Beatrice worked as assistants to their father in building the house and were always proud of their achievements. The house at 20 Webb Street, pictured above, survived for almost a hundred years and was demolished only recently, after being sold. Having grown up in the family home in Glen Iris, Ted Smith raised his own family there, with his widow Pat staying on after he died in 1911. It was a testimony to his father's workmanship that the house survived intact for so long.

Although the lives of the Smiths and the Tunaleys diverged after 1922 and they lived 10 kilometres away from each other, Harriet Smith and Maggie Tunaley were lifelong friends. Known as "Aunt Harriet" to the Tunaley children, Harriet was a regular visitor to Abbotsford, particularly after Tom died in 1929. She would make the trip by tram from Glen Iris, usually with one or more of her children in tow. June Naylor, Maggie's eldest grandchild, remembers Harriet and Beatrice visiting her "Nan" in the 1940s, hopping off the tram at Victoria Street. My mother, the youngest Tunaley child, Margaret (b.1927), often mentioned her "Aunt Harriet" from Glen Iris in reminiscences about her childhood.

The photograph of Bill and Harriet Smith below looks like it was may have been taken in the 1940s or 1950s. From the corsage and button hole, they look like they are members of a wedding party, perhaps the marriage of a daughter or their son Ted?

When I met Ted Smith for the first time in the late 1990s (at Bill Tunaley's funeral), he remembered being taken on visits to "Aunt Maggie" in Abbotsford and recalled my grandmother with great affection. His face lit up with joy (much as he appears in the picture below) as he described his visits and explained how much he knew about the Tunaley family. I regret that I never met him again before he died in 2011.

I'm indebted to Shirley Tunaley, (Bill Tunaley's daughter-in-law) for these photographs and much of the Smiths' story in Australia. Shirley spoke to Ted's widow Pat in 1911. Phil Tunaley's website has also been invaluable regarding William and Harriet Smith's details and there is more to discover about their trips to and from England and Australia.