‘Fair play for a poor orphan boy’: The case of Tasman Wright and the Smithton community

Caroline Evans

On Saturday 4 November 1916, 15-year-old Tasman Wright, an apprentice in the ‘care’ of Tasmania’s Neglected Children’s Department, received such a beating that his screams brought the neighbours running to his defence.¹ One of them, Rev. John Fletcher, went to the local police station to inform the trooper, Michael Kelleher. The beating took place in Smithton, a small town on the far north-west coast of Tasmania. The alleged offender was Samuel Moore, warden of Circular Head, justice of the peace, coroner, former policeman and publican, and now a dairy farmer.² He was already at the police station giving his side of the story. Kelleher spoke to Fletcher and then went to Moore’s place to see Tasman, still lying in the shed where the beating occurred. His left ear and right cheek were bleeding, but he was able, with Kelleher’s persuasion, to get up and walk slowly to the bathroom. Moore fetched an apple tree cutting, about 18-inches long, with buds on it, which he claimed was the weapon.³ A bitter dispute among the residents of Smithton about the seriousness of the beating and if it was justified followed, attracting statewide attention, including in parliament.

Tasman was the eldest son of Thomas Wright, who had died in 1911, and Elsie May, his impoverished widow, from the Lilydale area.⁴ In 1912, the local magistrate committed Tasman, aged 11, to the Neglected Children’s Department for stealing a sovereign.⁵ At the same court session, Tasman’s mother surrendered his three younger brothers, aged 10, 9, and 8 because she could not support them.⁶ At the time of the committal, Tasman was very distressed. Departmental officials placed him with the same foster mother as his brothers, which, according to the case file, was a comfort. In 1914, Tasman was separated from them after being transferred to another foster mother because he looked unwell. He was attached to his family, keeping in touch with his mother while he was a ward of the state. When the case eventually came before a police magistrate, he said that he did not want her to worry about him, so always told her that he was doing well.⁷ His brother, Frank, was apprenticed to W. J. Poke, a grazier, farmer and butcher who lived about 3 miles from Smithton. The brothers saw each other from time to time. Tasman apparently had a good reputation in Smithton because it was after talking to him that Poke asked the department for Frank.⁸

Most of these details about Tasman’s life are set out in his case file. It is one of about 1,500 meticulously kept by the bureaucrats at the Neglected Children’s Department and now online at the Tasmanian Archives. The file, which is remarkably voluminous, includes police and departmental reports, statements by witnesses, and clippings from Hobart and Launceston newspapers. It is unusual in that it shows how the wider community, as well as the officials at the department, responded to corporal punishment in the lead-up to legislative reform in 1918. The file is also unusual in that it alludes to the local, state and national controversies that formed the background to Tasman’s situation. These included the first nationwide conscription referendum⁹ held on 28 October, one week before the beating occurred.¹⁰ Tasmanians voted yes, but residents of the north-west coast were deeply divided.¹¹

Tasman’s case file provides an opportunity to discover how one adolescent’s life was affected by, and at the same time exposed, a range of adult emotions, including grief, pity, anger, ambition and outrage, caused by his situation and the exigencies of his historical period. This is the reason for considering one ward of the state instead of a larger sample, as most child welfare histories do. While the latter makes it easier to identify trends, it has the effect of breaking up the children’s stories so that only fragments of their lives are depicted. By focusing on Tasman, I hope to emphasise his individuality while suggesting that it was the accumulated experiences of his life that shaped his emotional responses to the events in Smithton. On the other hand, the file is so dominated by adult agendas that it is almost silent on Tasman’s point of view. Although he was literate, it does not contain any statements handwritten by him. While my article will explore the adult agendas, it will, more importantly, consider the question of whether Tasman’s unique voice and agency can be discerned above the commotion of those agendas and without his unmediated voice. In doing so, I will draw on a historiography of childhood and adolescence that explores this issue.

The Tasmanian Archive holds a number of record collections created by the state that, like Tasman’s, contain fragments of private lives that are written, not by the person concerned, but by observers. They provide an opportunity to understand not only how the health and welfare systems of the past operated but also how marginalised individuals reacted to them. Yet there are pitfalls. Although the following discussion concerns the historiography of child welfare, it might also suggest some pathways for negotiating those pitfalls in order to write about other individuals whose voice and agency would otherwise go unnoticed.

Voice and agency in childhood and adolescence

Margaret Barbalet’s Far from a Poor Gutter Girl was published in 1983. Its depiction of the experiences of girls in South Australia’s State Children’s Department was the first of its kind in Australia.¹² Since then, historians have added depth and nuance to this approach by exploring how, at first, the concepts of agency, and later of voice, could offer glimpses into the lives of children and adolescents in state welfare and Aboriginal protection systems. This had the advantage of showing that children were not just passive victims but able, by their actions, to effect change.¹³

Nell Musgrove, Carla Pascoe Leahy and Kristine Moruzi define agency as ‘the individual’s ability to make their own choices and act independently’.¹⁴ It is an Enlightenment concept that privileges elite white men acting in a public sphere that they fully understand. Agency is therefore difficult to apply to marginalised groups, such as children and adolescents, especially those from a poor working class. Nevertheless, while emphasising the limited opportunities available to these children and adolescents, historians have shown how they negotiated with authority. Sometimes this was through official channels, such as writing letters to the department, asking families to intervene or going to the police.¹⁵ At other times, especially if the official channels failed them, children and adolescents fought back through insubordination, running away, going slow, stealing, absconding and giving cheek.¹⁶ Some even punched or bit their abusers.¹⁷ Exercising agency could involve compromise or agreeing with adult decisions. It might even mean putting up with abusive situations if that seemed the safest thing to do.¹⁸ Not all agency was in reaction to adults. As Sian Pooley and Jonathan Taylor point out, children and adolescents inhabited a different world and were more than the passive subjects of adult socialisation. The opinions or actions of other children and adolescents were just as likely to prompt agency.¹⁹

Recently, to address the methodological problems with agency caused by its Enlightenment origins, historians of childhood and youth have turned to the historiography of emotions.²⁰ Karen Vallgårda, Kristine Alexander and Stephanie Olsen argue that this historiography is especially appropriate to childhood and adolescence because that is when a process they call ‘emotional formulation’ takes place. This term refers to the shaping of children’s behaviour and feelings according to the events, including war, and social and cultural norms of their place and historical period. It includes efforts by elites to mould the morals and responses to authority of children and adolescents belonging to different classes and racial backgrounds. The concept includes the child’s or adolescent’s ability to manage their own character development, by either accepting or rejecting the prevailing norms. These, as well as events, were multifaceted and always in a state of flux. This meant that children and adolescents had to learn how to navigate what Vallgårda, Alexander and Olsen term the ‘emotional frontiers’ between them safely.²¹ This approach enables historians to employ the concept of voice, which, according to Musgrove, Pascoe Leahy and Moruzi, goes beyond agency to depict the actual ‘opinions, emotions and behaviour’ of children and adolescents, rather than what adults expect them to feel.²² The historiography of emotions provides deeper insights into the past worlds of children. It can also broaden the concept of agency. As Stephanie Olsen suggests: ‘Emotions allow us to access children’s agency and voices in a new way.’²³

Case files offer the best opportunity for accessing early twentieth-century welfare systems from the child’s or adolescent’s point of view. Even so, they are not reliable. This is because bureaucrats compiled them, not to make an accurate record of the children’s lives, but to track their progress and ensure the smooth running of the department.²⁴ Moreover, case files are the product of unequal power relationships and therefore reflect the values and judgements of their creators, not the child.²⁵ This leads to inaccuracies and omissions.²⁶ ‘Care’ leavers who access their files usually find major discrepancies between the content and their own recollections of events. Abuse tends to be under reported.²⁷ Moreover, there is a risk in using case files that the researcher will further distort the lives of state wards. As Kaisa Vehkalahati writes:

In spite of all empathic attempts to give one’s research subjects a ‘voice’, this voice is inevitably produced by second hand sources and is reinterpreted by the researcher in an academic context. It is always the researcher who makes the decisions and whose voice remains the most authoritative.²⁸

These issues make case files a potentially poor source of the voices and agency of state wards, creating an ethical dilemma for the historian. Yet, as Mark Peel argues, failing to engage with them means that their subjects will be silenced and the welfare system only understood in terms of those who managed it.²⁹

Franca Iocovetta and Wendy Mitchinson suggest that one way of mitigating the problems with case files is to read them against their grain, something that can only be achieved by understanding the system that produced them.³⁰ In the case of Tasman’s case file, reading against the grain involved exploring a substantial number of files belonging to other state wards. These showed that many adolescents did express their needs—through complaints to the police, neighbours, inspectors and by writing letters to the department. Moreover, adolescents challenged authority and so disrupted what Naomi Duncan Parry describes as ‘easy assumptions about power relationships’.³¹ Patterns emerge from these letters, especially about reasons for action, that can be applied to those whose voices, like Tasman’s, are less apparent.³² Even so, since not all actions come from the same motives, this requires caution.³³ Mona Gleason suggests enriching the concept of reading against the grain by imagining a child’s or adolescent’s perspective through ‘empathic inference’.³⁴ This also offers possibilities, but only by drawing on a thorough knowledge of the context and without imposing twenty-first century perspectives.³⁵ Used cautiously, all these approaches might provide some tentative insight into Tasman’s voice and agency. Conversely, since he was unable to contribute to his own case file, it is especially important to be wary.

Another option is to explore the ways in which, according to Musgrove, an ‘emotional rupture’—that is, a public emotional crisis—can ‘open up spaces’ to reveal the voices of marginalised people. To make her argument, she uses a case study of abuse and neglect in industrial schools run by the Victorian government in the mid-1860s. Snippets of the children’s voices emerge in official documents and newspapers, especially from an investigative journalist’s interview with a few children in one of the schools. Yet, Musgrove’s approach cannot be applied in every situation. As she says, where the subject of the crisis, for instance a baby farmer, does not attract public sympathy, it can shut those spaces down.³⁶ In Tasman’s case, despite considerable public sympathy, adult emotions concealed rather than revealed his agency. This is perhaps explained by an underlying difference in the two situations. Although many people felt a serious concern for Tasman, the ‘emotional rupture’ appears to have been underpinned, not by a single issue, but by a combination of wider ones that overwhelmed his voice.

Reform in the Neglected Children’s Department

Tasman’s guardian, D’Arcy Addison, was the secretary of the Neglected Children’s Department, established in 1896 by the Youthful Offenders, Destitute and Neglected Children’s Act.³⁷ After 1911, the Neglected Children’s Department was located in the Chief Secretary’s Department. Addison was also undersecretary of the latter, making him Tasmania’s most powerful bureaucrat, with direct access to the premier, Walter Lee.³⁸ With the help of inspectors, bureaucrats in the Neglected Children’s Department managed the children, including those in apprenticeships, usually as farm labourers if boys, when they left school at the age of 14. This involved corresponding with rural inspectors, local police, children’s employers, their parents and the children themselves. In this way, bureaucrats got to know the children and their situations personally. This encouraged a sympathy for the children as individuals that was perhaps less evident in the larger, more impersonal child welfare departments on the mainland.

The Youthful Offenders, Destitute and Neglected Children’s Act provided for a fine of £10 or imprisonment for up to 14 days for any carer of a state ward who ‘illtreats, injures or neglects to discharge his duty’.³⁹ Even so, the Act was more concerned with the control of neglected children than their protection.⁴⁰ Their presence in the streets, which had prompted the Act in the first place, had been as much about their nuisance value and, in the case of girls, sexual morality, as their physical wellbeing.⁴¹

In the early days of the department, the willingness of bureaucrats to do nothing when children received a serious beating reflected the Act’s emphasis on control. Over time, bureaucratic paternalism combined with a personal knowledge of the children slowly changed this attitude. In addition, progressivism, with its technocratic emphasis on the bodily health of children, also influenced policy, although this was tempered by bureaucratic pragmatism.⁴² These developments led to more intervention to ensure the children’s safety. For instance, whereas in the past, local clergy and the police checked on state children in rural areas, after 1915, there were specially appointed inspectors.⁴³ Secretaries acted more quickly to remove children in abusive situations and, by 1916, had instigated at least one successful prosecution.⁴⁴ It was in this context that Addison sent Thomas Telford, the inspector for state apprentices, to Smithton to investigate Tasman’s beating and begin legal proceedings if necessary.⁴⁵

All these factors led to the passage of the Children of the State Act in 1918. While still overwhelmingly concerned with control, it also emphasised kindness and better safeguards for protection. Disobedience was to be dealt with more gently. This Act’s penultimate clause suggested that corporal punishment should be avoided: ‘as far as practicable every juvenile delinquent shall be treated, not as a criminal, but as a misdirected and misguided child, and one needing aid, encouragement, help and assistance’.⁴⁶ The Act increased inspections to wards of the state in rural areas to once every three months, stipulating that they be interviewed away from their employers. It raised the penalty for ill-treating, injuring or neglecting a child to £20 or up to six months in prison.⁴⁷ It failed to prevent abuse, but even so was a more serious attempt than the previous Act. The publicity surrounding Tasman’s beating may have contributed to the passage of the Children of the State Act, but I have no direct evidence of this.

The department’s investigation of the beating

Telford arrived in Smithton on 10 November to take statements. According to Tasman, the beating took place in the shed where he was chopping wood. Moore threw the axe away, then using his hand, hit Tasman on the side of the head and knocked him down. He picked him up, hit him on the face, knocked him down again and kicked him a few times on the back. Moore then got a rope and hit Tasman all over the body with it. After that he took the rope away, coming back later with Kelleher. Telford also interviewed the witnesses. Only one, Mary Cunningham, the next-door neighbour, saw the beating. However, another neighbour, Fanny Bonhote, saw Moore coming out of the shed holding a rope, which corroborated Tasman’s statement. Kelleher told Telford that there had been earlier complaints made to the police about Moore’s treatment of Tasman.⁴⁸

According to Tasman, the abuse began two weeks after he arrived and included being hit with a broom handle as well as stock and horse whips. Former servants reported seeing Tasman being physically abused by Moore and other members of the family, with one describing the injuries. In addition, Tasman’s clothes were dirty, he never had a bath, and he was overworked, underfed and verbally abused. When Moore and his wife threatened Tasman with the Boys Training School, he told one servant he would prefer it. Neighbours had heard him crying during previous beatings. On one occasion, Mary Cunningham’s husband, George, saw Moore punch Tasman on the side of the head so that he hit the stable wall and fell down. Moore then beat him with a horse whip. One of the servants described Tasman as well behaved and truthful. Kelleher agreed:

I have been stationed at Smithton about three months, during that time I have never received any complaint whatever as to the boys [sic] conduct from any person. No, not even from Moore himself.⁴⁹

At a routine inspection in August, Tasman did not tell Telford about the mistreatment because Moore and his son frightened him into keeping quiet. Instead, Tasman said that he had all that he needed and more, including sharing a bedroom with Moore’s sons, eating meals with the family and being allowed to play the piano in the drawing room. During the inspection, Moore complained about Tasman’s behaviour. Telford replied that if he could not manage the boy, he should return him to the department.⁵⁰ Tasman’s reticence, which was for his own protection, was quite common among state apprentices.⁵¹

Telford concluded that the statements were sufficient evidence of longstanding ‘harsh and cruel treatment’ and that Moore had a case to answer, not only for the beating on 4 November, but also for other mistreatment. On 22 November, Lee authorised proceedings against Moore without specifying the date of the beating, suggesting that he supported Telford’s conclusions. The following day he changed his mind, confining the charges to the 4 November occurrence.⁵² Political concerns may have prompted him, but there is no corroborating evidence of this.

In letters to the department, Moore alleged that Tasman was difficult to control, told lies, disobeyed Mrs Moore and had threatened him with an axe. When Tasman was sent with messages, he sometimes did not return home for several hours. Moore said that he had ‘only’ beaten him five times: for playing marbles instead of coming home after putting the cows in the paddock, for not watering a horse, for not using the water closet (toilet) and for refusing to light the fire under a copper, all possible instances of agency. The fifth beating, the one in question, was for lying. Moore accused his political enemy, Archibald (Archie) Ford, of telling the boy to scream ‘Blue Murder’ when beaten to exaggerate the severity. On 4 November, according to Moore, Tasman had deliberately fallen over and started screaming before the beating.⁵³

Ford, who also wrote to the department, believed that Moore should be prosecuted, claiming that people had been concerned about the boy’s treatment for some time. When the police failed to remove Tasman from Moore’s ‘care’ by 6 November, Ford, who was a justice of the peace, did so illegally, claiming police partiality towards Moore. Ford told Addison:

when a JP takes a matter up he does not do it for fun or spite, but to protect a weak boy with no friends or assistance from the brutal treatment of one whose early training and high office should have made him an example, instead of bringing the positions he held into disgrace.⁵⁴

Ford took a statement from Tasman, which is consistent with the one he gave Telford.⁵⁵

Adult concerns and emotions

The anger generated by Tasman’s beating soon became mixed up in other local, state and national issues, which intensified the emotional nature of the controversy. Adults mostly took sides, not only because of their differing perceptions of the case but also because of past enmities, conflicting priorities or current divisions over political issues, including conscription. The superior ability of adult men with status to exercise agency and the cacophony of their voices swamped that of Tasman’s and probably denied him justice. This makes the wider context of his world, with its many divisions and alliances, relevant to his situation. As Hans Renders argues, contextualising biographies in their times can show how ordinary people experienced history. At the same time, those biographies can produce a microhistory that illuminates a wider history.⁵⁶ Renders does not employ the historiography of emotions, yet, as Musgrove shows, it can produce new insights into a microhistory.⁵⁷ Similarly, as my article suggests, it can enrich biography.

My starting point for this context was the case file. Sometimes the issues are set out clearly but more often there is only a clue or, at best, insufficient evidence as to their nature. To flesh this out, I did a search on Trove of the Circular Head Chronicle and the North Western Advocate and the Emu Bay Times, both local papers. As Julia Laite points out, the sheer volume and accessibility of digital sources such as these make it possible to contextualise the lives of people formerly lost to history. This adds depth and humanity to their stories in a way that is denied by the labelling imposed on them by official archival records.⁵⁸ Apart from the case file, a few other official records, including a Police Occurrence Book and the 1915 report of a Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works were also useful.

The case file makes the enmity between Ford and Moore clear. In particular, the depth of feeling between them and the way in which both attracted sympathisers, is indicated by a letter in the case file to Kelleher, dated 20 November. It is from the Anglican minister J. MacDonald, a Moore supporter. According to the letter, Ford and his solicitor, J. W. C. Hamilton, visited MacDonald because they intended to sue him for spreading stories about Ford. The men argued and the meeting ended with MacDonald ordering Ford and Hamilton off his premises. Hamilton threatened to cancel his subscription to the parish fund and to encourage others to do the same. MacDonald told Kelleher that Ford had engaged every solicitor in the area so that there was no-one to defend Moore. He added: ‘many quiet, inoffensive people are afraid of what Mr Ford will do, when he is in a rage’.⁵⁹

In the letter, MacDonald admitted to spreading two stories. First, he had accused Ford of smashing the windows of the Brethren Chapel at nearby Marrawah. Ford was charged but not convicted, later admitting that he did it. Second, on Sunday 19 November, while visiting the home of Ivy Parsons, the church organist, MacDonald claimed that Ford had tied her to a chair. He further claimed that Ford had locked her in her bedroom the week before. Both incidents were attempts to stop her from playing for the Sunday service. This was in retaliation against MacDonald for supporting Moore. In what MacDonald described as an ‘abusive tirade’, he said that Hamilton had told him that he must have known Tasman through church and ought to have supported him. The police interviewed Ivy Parsons but she did not wish to prosecute, telling them that Ford had played a ‘joke’ on her. According to Samuel Weston, the district police inspector, her father was a ‘sworn enemy’ of Moore’s.⁶⁰

It is likely that Ford was genuinely angry with Moore over his mistreatment of Tasman. Yet his case file alludes to a more longstanding animosity in which the boy appears to have been a pawn. Local newspapers suggest that the original cause was the Marrawah Tramway, built to get timber and produce to the port at Smithton. Constructed solely by volunteers from Marrawah, it was 26-miles long through thick bush. One of its main proponents had been Ford and his father.⁶¹ Ford lived at Marrawah until 1913 and represented it on the Circular Head Council.⁶² In 1906, when the Marrawah Tramway Company was formed, he became its director.⁶³ The tramway had timber rails, which meant that the tram cars had to be pulled by horses instead of more efficient steam engines. The journey was slow, dangerous and unsuitable for passengers.⁶⁴ The company made some progress with laying steel rails at the Smithton end but not the last 7 miles to Marrawah. In May 1914, the newly elected Labor government purchased the company, making Ford the manager.⁶⁵ In 1915, a Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works recommended building steel rails all the way to Marrawah.⁶⁶

From about 1911 onwards, the tramway seems to have caused occasional disputes between Moore and Ford.⁶⁷ This meant that the groundwork was laid when, in 1915, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works went to the north-west coast to investigate a means of completing the tramway. Ford and Moore gave conflicting evidence over the rapidly deteriorating Pelican Point line, the final leg of the journey from Marrawah to the port. Moore was a member of the Smithton Harbour Trust that owned the line.⁶⁸ At the hearing, Ford accused the trust of investing £500 of state government funds in Commonwealth war bonds instead of using the money for its intended purpose of upgrading the line. He recommended that the government take it over.⁶⁹ Moore accused Ford of commandeering 500 sleepers purchased by the trust to lengthen the line and instead using them to repair it. After that, according to Moore, the trust felt they had lost control and so invested the £500 instead of spending it.⁷⁰ Ford replied that since the line was increasingly unsafe, urgent repairs had to be done.⁷¹ The standing committee upheld Ford’s testimony by recommending that the government take over the Pelican Point line and wharf at Smithton.⁷² In January 1916, it did.⁷³ The following March, Ford appeared before the magistrate’s court for driving without lights. Moore, who was in the chair, fined him 5 shillings.⁷⁴ This could be irrelevant to the larger story; however, as a possible instance of petty revenge on Moore’s part, perhaps with police collusion, it helps to build a picture of the social world in which Tasman lived.

Telford found that most of the Smithton community already disliked Moore enough to help pay the costs of his prosecution. That dislike appears to have contributed to the outrage over Tasman’s treatment. All the reasons for it are not clear; however, in a letter to Lee dated 28 November, Ford said that collusion between Moore and the police played a part. Ford refused to hand Tasman over to Sergeant A. W. Eyles, as was usual, because his friendship with Moore had prevented Tasman’s immediate removal. Ford preferred Kelleher. Moreover, Ford said that Weston was a friend of Moore’s and could not be trusted. He wanted an inquiry into why, after the beating, the police had not acted against Moore. To ensure that Moore’s trial was impartial, Ford requested that a police magistrate in Stanley preside over it, not Smithton justices of the peace as was originally planned.⁷⁵

The allegation of collusion is somewhat corroborated by the absence in Tasman’s case file of any police statements or reports to the Neglected Children’s Department. In addition, on 2 November, Eyles recorded the beating in the Police Occurrence Book as ‘nothing serious’. Yet, on 6 November, after Ford had taken Tasman into his custody, Eyles wrote in red that ‘further information re assault appears more serious’.⁷⁶ As Stefan Petrow argues, collusion between the police and justices of the peace was a longstanding and widespread problem in Tasmania, which was not entirely resolved by 1916.⁷⁷

The Circular Head Chronicle and North Western Advocate provide other possible clues to Moore’s unpopularity. In the 1916 council elections, Moore’s result was close, leading one letter writer to say that he did not have a ‘moral’ victory and that, as a councillor, Moore had not achieved anything.⁷⁸ The writer might have been referring to an apparent failure to get particular roads repaired.⁷⁹ People who did not want their rates increased may have opposed Moore’s attempts to have street lighting installed in Smithton.⁸⁰ In June 1916, he failed, as a justice of the peace, to act in a timely manner when a man went missing.⁸¹ In his public comments, he appears to have been somewhat brusque, even unkind. When the council elected him warden in 1916 by one vote, he commented:

‘Well I’ve fought my way in three elections now, and am not one of your unanimous men—(laughter)—but the opposition I had at Smithton only came from the insignificant weaklings of the town’ (laughter, and cries of ‘oh’).⁸²

This may have been a joke, but one letter writer who had always supported Moore was sorry to see him ‘take this stand’.⁸³ In another incident, when the council overseer asked for a pay rise for himself and his team, council members mocked him. This included Moore who said he should enlist if he wanted more money. A few days later, in a letter to the Circular Head Chronicle, the overseer said that he would have joined the army but was too old.⁸⁴ Yet Moore did have admirers. The North Western Advocate saw him as ‘a straight-out, clean fighter, solid’.⁸⁵ Similarly, H. G. Spicer, another councillor, described him as a ‘straight goer’.⁸⁶

The other local issue, also a state and national one, was the conscription referendum. In a letter in Tasman’s case file written on 6 November, Moore told Addison that the accusations against him were linked to that. Similarly, in another letter, written after the trial, he said that a lot of ‘cruel things’ had been said against him and believed by the few people who had tried to hurt his reputation. Yet, according to Moore, no ‘unkindness or cruelty’ was mentioned until after the vote on 28 October. Tasman had been used to cause ‘trouble’.⁸⁷

Moore, who had two sons at the front, was an enthusiastic campaigner for conscription, attending and convening rallies to promote it.⁸⁸ In September 1916, at a public meeting in Stanley, he predicted that the referendum would return a yes vote, recommending that single young men enlist before the result to avoid being sent to the war as conscripts.⁸⁹ After the referendum, Moore was a potential candidate for the recruiting committee of the local parliamentary seat of Darwin (now Braddon).⁹⁰

Ford’s position on conscription is less clear; however, he was a supporter and friend of Joseph Lyons, who was the state member for Darwin, leader of the Labor opposition and a pacifist who opposed conscription. There are no reports of Ford attending pro-conscription rallies in the local papers. This supports Moore’s claim that his anti-conscription opponents used Tasman’s beating as a political weapon against him. Yet it was not clear cut. There were men who favoured conscription but supported Ford over the beating. J. W. C. Hamilton, the lawyer who accompanied Ford to see MacDonald, was in favour of conscription.⁹¹ Another lawyer, Kenric Laughton, who also favoured it, wired Addison that, ‘to save local feeling’, Kelleher, not Eyles, should look after Tasman until the trial.⁹²

Moore’s support for conscription took place in an emotionally charged political atmosphere created by the referendum campaign. According to Marilyn Lake’s A Divided Society, there was little reasoned argument from either side during this time. Instead, people’s affiliations revolved around their personal situations, especially whether or not they had family at the front. Those that did often resented those that did not.⁹³ Actual or potential grief probably played its part. As Joy Damousi argues in The Labour of Loss, this could be projected into political activism. While Damousi is concerned with activism directly related to the war, it seems likely that it could spill over into other related spheres, such as the abuse of a state ward.⁹⁴

Local issues played out in state party politics. These had their roots in Tasmania’s first Labor government, elected in April 1914, with John Earle as premier and Lyons as treasurer and minister for education and railways. Labor had come to power after a vote of no confidence in the former government, Earle having assured the state governor that he would immediately call a dissolution. Instead, until March 1916, he governed with the support of the anti-labor independent Joshua Whitsitt, a potato grower in Lyons’s electorate.⁹⁵ According to the Irish Catholic priest T. J. (Tom) O’Donnell, also from the north-west coast, Ford, as Lyons’s emissary, had driven from Hobart to Cooee, where Whitsitt lived, to ask him to support the government, which he did. Lyons therefore owed a debt to Ford, which he may have repaid by appointing him manager of the Marrawah Tramway.⁹⁶ They continued to collaborate, with Lyons and Ford apparently discussing Tasman’s situation when Ford was in Hobart to see Lee on 27 November. Ford had intended to ask Lee not to transfer Tasman to Eyles but did not keep the appointment.⁹⁷

On 28 November, the Daily Post, a Labor paper, ran an article about the beating, stating that the Smithton community was upset by the lack of police action. It supported Ford’s refusal to hand Tasman over to Eyles, demanding that he be placed with someone neutral. The paper called for a public inquiry and for the issue to be brought before parliament. It said that the government had a duty to neglected children to ensure their protection:

Neglected children have sufficient misfortunes while still little children to make [it] very necessary for the State when it takes charge of such, to see that the system of State control is not abused and that the police do their duty wherever it is.⁹⁸

The information in the heavily pro-Ford article probably came from Ford himself.

That same day, Lyons raised the issue in the House of Assembly, citing Ford as his informant. Lyons wanted a full inquiry into the failure of the police to act, alleging that something had only been done because of the residents of Smithton. He called for another full inquiry into Moore’s overall treatment of Tasman, and argued that Weston should not handle the case as he might try to hide evidence. Lyons pointed to the hypocrisy of allowing Moore, ‘a cruel man’, to remain on the bench, where, since the beating, he had fined a man for assault. Like Ford, Lyons wanted Moore tried by a police magistrate.⁹⁹

Lee was suspicious of Ford’s motives, pointing out that there was ‘some feeling’ between Ford and Moore, and that ‘there was more to the case than appeared on the surface’. He did not believe that the police were biased, and Weston was certainly not. Lee was considering prosecuting Ford for not handing Tasman over to the police. He defended the department, which Ford accused of neglect, stating that its officials had acted on Telford’s report quickly. Even so, Lee promised that justice would be done for Tasman and that if there had been police neglect, it would be dealt with. After some debate, all sides, including Lee, agreed that Tasman should be placed, not with Eyles, but a neutral person.¹⁰⁰ Addison found him a temporary home in Stanley with Spicer, the member of the Circular Head Council who saw Moore as a ‘straight goer’.¹⁰¹

The next weekend, despite heavy rain, supporters of Moore held a meeting in Stanley to protest about Lyons’s comments.¹⁰² The main speaker was the Catholic priest O’Donnell, a vociferous pro-conscription campaigner.¹⁰³ He and Lyons, who was a Catholic, had been close friends but fell out over conscription.¹⁰⁴ O’Donnell and Moore were allies over other issues, with O’Donnell consistently supporting him in letters to the department and the press. At the time, Moore was organising a testimonial for O’Donnell as a thank you for his enthusiastic advocacy of conscription during the campaign.¹⁰⁵ O’Donnell told the meeting that Lyons knew there would be a trial in the police court but brought it before the House of Assembly anyway, even though Moore would be unable to defend himself.¹⁰⁶ He further claimed that those who read the speech would have got the wrong idea about both sides, with Ford appearing as an ‘immaculate hero’, and Moore, the police and unspecified others as ‘vile conspirators’.¹⁰⁷ The chairman of the local bench of justices, A. C. Smith, moved a motion that:

the action of the Opposition leader (Hon J. Lyons) was both unfair and contrary to the accepted rules of British justice, as it was calculated to prejudice the case in the minds of the people of the State.¹⁰⁸

It passed unanimously.

In parliament the following week, Lyons appeared unconcerned about what he termed O’Donnell’s vendetta against him:

an insect of that character does not count for much. Whilst his sting is a small matter, the buzz and noise he makes is calculated to mislead the people, especially in connection with his calling.¹⁰⁹

Lyons claimed that he never said Moore was guilty, just requested an investigation. Lee said that the court case would bring out all the facts, while Lyons insisted that since Moore was a warden and a justice of the peace, there should be a full inquiry. Lyons concluded his speech by apparently attempting to evoke pity for Tasman:

I am astonished to find that a minister of religion, who claims to be following in the footsteps of the Master, should take such an attitude. I only sought fair play for a poor orphan boy.¹¹⁰

The trial

The trial was held at Stanley on 17 January 1917 before the police magistrate E. W. Turner. Tasman’s evidence was consistent with his statement to Telford. He admitted to telling a lie but said he had not collaborated with Ford or fallen down and screamed before the beating. Moore admitted to punishing Tasman with a ‘small apple cutting’. He alleged that Tasman appeared to threaten him with an axe shouting ‘Leave me alone! Leave me alone!’ Moore’s solicitor pointed out that the law allowed teachers to use corporal punishment. Turner considered that the beating was justified and that the only issue was whether it was excessive. He decided not, adding that Tasman could not be believed and had alerted the neighbours by ‘squealing’ before he was hurt.¹¹¹ The apple cutting was ‘a very apt instrument’ and had caused the injuries, while the medical evidence suggested that the ‘blows were moderate’.¹¹² He did not mention that the medical examination took place three days after the beating or that it found that some of the injuries were consistent to being hit with a stick, a round object or a rope, while others could have been caused by a punch or a kick and a heavy fall. Turner ignored Telford’s report and Fanny Bonhote’s evidence that she saw Moore come out of the shed holding a rope. He found Moore not guilty.¹¹³ If this verdict was a travesty of justice, which I think it probably was, it indicates that the word of a prominent man was much more likely to be taken than that of a state ward.

After the trial, Moore asked Addison to return Tasman to his home:

the boy who was taken away from me, this step I feel very deeply as I consider I am justly entitled to the boy, or one other boy to replace him. No doubt a lot of cruel things have been said against me & to some extent fully appreciated by a small section of the community.¹¹⁴

Lee replied, telling Moore that he believed him and regretting the ‘inconvenience’. He explained that the department could not return Tasman because of possible discipline problems but offered to find another apprentice. In a memo to the attorney-general, Lee expressed confidence in Weston and Eyles. Meanwhile, Lyons continued to take an interest in the Wright family, finding an apprenticeship for Tasman’s brother, Ernest, with a Deloraine farm manager in November 1917.¹¹⁵

Tasman’s voice and agency

The controversy drew considerable public attention, some of it negative, to Tasman, already a vulnerable adolescent and probably poorly emotionally equipped to handle it. An indication of its effects is that while he was playing with some boys on the beach at Stanley, they got into a fight after the boys called him ‘old Sam Moore’. Tasman hit one of the boys, Archie Airey, with some seaweed. He pulled Tasman over and a scuffle ensued. Tasman got a black eye, and another of the boys got a bruise on the chin. Archie went to the police, where he apologised in his statement. Tasman also gave a statement, which corroborated Archie’s. Weston told Addison that it was just a ‘boys quarrel’ and would not have been reported if Tasman had not been so much in the spotlight.¹¹⁶

Another issue is the dismissal of the court case by Turner. The available evidence makes it impossible to be sure exactly what happened on 4 November, but Tasman was certainly beaten. Even Moore admitted that. Moreover, it is probable that the beating was serious and that there had been ongoing mistreatment. It is significant that Tasman’s statements to Telford, Ford and the court are so consistent and that Telford was convinced by Tasman and other witnesses. When Turner dismissed the case, it made light of Tasman’s suffering and publicly branded him a liar. This was probably difficult to bear.

At his next placement, which was in Stowport, also on the north-west coast, Tasman mistreated a horse then, when challenged, threatened his employer with a piece of rail. When the employer’s sister tried to calm him, he gave her a black eye.¹¹⁷ If true, this is shocking behaviour. Yet perhaps it was not surprising in a boy who came from desperate poverty, had a disrupted upbringing, was separated from his family, probably consistently mistreated, and then not believed. As the ‘care’ leavers and historians Jacqueline Wilson and Frank Golding write, repeated abuse leads to fear and difficulties in regulating emotions.¹¹⁸ Moreover, to Tasman, aggression may have seemed his only option for self-defence. Addison transferred him to the Boys Training School in New Town. He left the department in July 1919, apparently returning home. His case file does not mention any further incidents.¹¹⁹

Tasman does not appear in the public record again until 30 June 1942 when, at Newport, Victoria, he enlisted in the army for service in World War II. At the time he was five-feet-eight-and-a-half-inches (174 cm) tall with ‘blue eyes’, a ‘fair complexion’ and ‘auburn’ hair. He gave his normal occupation as boot repairer, although at the time he was working as a butcher’s labourer. Tasman, who was still single, gave a sister living in Moorabbin as his next of kin. He did not see active service. The army discharged him on 23 December 1944 as medically unfit. He gave his forwarding address as Bilbul, New South Wales. There is no further trace of him.¹²⁰

Conclusion

The beating on 4 November 1916 suffered by Tasman Wright, a teenager from a humble background, made him the focus of local and state attention. The emotions it generated were intensified by already existing animosities and the grief and anger uncovered by the conscription campaign, a national event. The incident sheds light on the attitudes of officials at the Neglected Children’s Department and the wider community towards corporal punishment just before the passage of more progressive legislation. It shows that while such punishment was widely accepted among the community, some people were more willing to condone severity than others. We will never know for sure which allegations were justified, although it seems almost certain that Tasman was mistreated over a long period of time. In the furore, his voice and agency are largely missing. Yet perhaps they can be discerned in his attachment to family; his adolescent play; the goodwill of the community; the consistency of his statements; his minor disobedience at Moore’s; and what appears to be his fear-driven, but nonetheless agentic, attempts to protect himself through both silence and pre-emptive aggression.

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1. 1 I would like to thank Naomi Milthorpe and two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments. ‘Care’ is in inverted commas to indicate that many children in out of home ‘care’ were not cared for but neglected or abused.

2. 2 Circular Head Chronicle, 28 April 1915, 2; 1 May 1907, 3; 7 August 1907, 3; Social Welfare Department (hereafter SWD) 1/1/559 Neglected Children’s Department (hereafter NCD) 1074, Tasmanian Archives (hereafter TA).

3. 3 SWD 1/1/559 NCD 1074, TA.

4. 4 SWD 1/1/559 NCD 1074; Wright, Thomas, file no. 343, index no. 1998163, Tasmanian Names Index, Libraries Tasmania.

5. 5 SWD 1/1/559 NCD 1074, TA.

6. 6 SWD 1/1/560 NCD 1975-77, TA.

7. 7 SWD 1/1/560 NCD 1975-77, TA; North Western Advocate and the Emu Bay Times (NWAEBT), 20 January 1917, 5.

8. 8 SWD 1/1/559 NCD 1074, TA; Examiner, 20 January 2017, 5.

9. 9 The public vote on conscription was not a referendum, but a plebiscite, as it did not involve changing the constitution, just enacting legislation.

10. 10 SWD 1/1/559, NCD 1074, TA.

11. 11 Anne Henderson, Enid Lyons: Leading Lady to a Nation (Pluto Press Australia, 2008), 89.

12. 12 Margaret Barbalet, Far from a Poor Gutter Girl: The Forgotten World of State Wards: South Australia, 1887–1940 (Oxford University Press, 1983).

13. 13 Karen Vallgårda, Kristine Alexander and Stephanie Olsen, ‘Emotions and the Global Politics of Childhood’, in Childhood, Youth and Emotions in Modern History, ed. Stephanie Olsen (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017), 12–29, doi.org/10.1057/9781137484840_2; Stephanie Olsen, ‘Introduction’, in Childhood, Youth and Emotions in Modern History, 3; Sian Pooley and Jonathan Taylor, ‘Introduction’, in Children’s Experiences of Welfare in Modern Britain, ed. Sian Pooley and Jonathan Taylor (University of London Press, 2021), 1–21; Caroline Evans, ‘Protecting the Innocent: Tasmania’s Neglected Children, Their Parents and State Care, 1890–1918 (PhD thesis, University of Tasmania, 1999), 137–41, 150–5, 159–65, 175–9, 264–5, eprints.utas.edu.au/14453/; Caroline Evans, ‘Idealists, Pragmatists and “Simple-minded” Scamps: The Tasmanian Mental Deficiency Board and State “Care” in the 1920s’, Australian Historical Studies 48, no. 2 (2017): 264–79, doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2017.1279195.

14. 14 Nell Musgrove, Carla Pascoe Leahy and Kristine Moruzi, ‘Hearing Children’s Voices: Conceptual and Methodological Challenges’, in Children’s Voices from the Past, ed. Kristine Moruzi, Nell Musgrove and Carla Pascoe Leahy (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019), 12, doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11896-9_1.

15. 15 Nell Musgrove, The Scars Remain: A Long History of Forgotten Australians and Children’s Institutions (Australian Scholarly, 2013), 150–2; Evans, ‘Idealists, Pragmatists’, 264–79; Pooley and Taylor, ‘Introduction’, 13. For examples of adults negotiating oppressive situations see: Shurlee Swain, ‘Negotiating Poverty: Women and Charity in Nineteenth-Century Melbourne’, Women’s History Review 16, no. 1 (2007): 99–112, doi.org/10.1080/09612020601049744; Mark Peel, ‘Charity, Casework and the Dramas of Class in Melbourne 1920–1940: “Feeling Your Position”’, History Australia 2, no. 3, (2005): 1–83, doi.org/10.2104/ha050083.

16. 16 Barbalet, Far from a Poor Gutter Girl, 144; Frank Patrick Golding, ‘Care Leavers Recovering Voice and Agency through Counter-Narratives’ (PhD thesis, Federation University, 2021), 174, 200–3, researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/vital:15293; Musgrove, The Scars Remain, 149–50; Shirleene Robinson, ‘The Employment of Female State Children in Queensland, 1865–1911’, Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society 90, no. 2 (2004): 175–83; Shirleene Robinson, Something Like Slavery: Queensland’s Aboriginal Child Workers, 1842–1945 (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2008), 189–95. 138–63; Caroline Evans and Naomi Parry, ‘Vessels of Progressivism? Tasmanian State Girls and Eugenics, 1900–1940’, Australian Historical Studies 32, no. 117 (2001): 322–3, doi.org/10.1080/10314610108596168; Naomi Parry, ‘Such a Longing: Black and White Children in Welfare in New South Wales and Tasmania, 1880–1940’ (PhD thesis, University of New South Wales, 2007), 77–100, 204–6, doi.org/10.26190/unsworks/17379; Caroline Evans, ‘Protecting the Innocent’, 142–65. See also: Kaisa Vehkalahti, Constructing Reformatory Identity: Girls’ Reform School Education in Finland, 1893–1923 (Peter Lang, 2009), xxvi.

17. 17 Golding, ‘Care Leavers Recovering Voice’, 200.

18. 18 Evans, ‘Protecting the Innocent’, 150.

19. 19 Pooley and Taylor, ‘Introduction’, 11. See also: Mona Gleason, ‘Avoiding the Agency Trap: Caveats for Historians of Children, Youth, and Education’, History of Education 45, no. 4 (2016): 448, doi.org/10.1080/0046760X.2016.1177121.

20. 20 Karen Vallgårda, Kristine Alexander and Stephanie Olsen, ‘Against Agency’, Society for the History of Childhood and Youth (blog), 23 October 2018; Musgrove et al., ‘Hearing Children’s Voices’, 8. For a discussion of the historiography of adult emotions, see: Barbara H. Rosenwein, ‘Worrying about Emotions in History’, The American Historical Review 107, no. 3 (2002): 837, doi.org/10.1086/ahr/107.3.821.

21. 21 Vallgårda et al., ‘Emotions and the Global Politics’; Stephanie Olsen, ‘The History of Childhood and the Emotional Turn’, History Compass 15 no. 11 (2017): 6–7, doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12410; Olsen, ‘Introduction’, 4; Musgrove et al., ‘Hearing Children’s Voices’, 8.

22. 22 Musgrove et al., ‘Hearing Children’s Voices’, 12.

23. 23 Olsen, ‘The History of Childhood’, 3, 28; See also: Vallgårda et al., ‘Emotions and the Global Politics’, 12–28; Musgrove et al., ‘Hearing Children’s Voices’, 8.

24. 24 Nell Musgrove and Shurlee Swain, ‘We are the Stories We Tell Ourselves: Child Welfare Records and the Construction of Identity among Australians Who, as Children, Experienced Out-of-Home “Care”’, Archives and Manuscripts 40 no. 1, (2012): 7–8, doi.org/10.1080/01576895.2012.668840; Golding, ‘Care Leavers Recovering Voice’, 1.

25. 25 Franca Iocovetta and Wendy Mitchinson, On the Case: Explorations in Social History (University of Toronto Press, 1998), 6, 13, doi.org/10.3138/9781442678071; Jacqueline Z. Wilson and Frank Golding, ‘Latent Scrutiny: Personal Archives as Perpetual Reminders of the Official Gaze’, in Golding, ‘Care Leavers Recovering Voice’, 80–1 [originally published in Archival Science 16, no. 1 (2016): 93–109].

26. 26 Golding, ‘Care Leavers Recovering Voice’, ii, 15, 17.

27. 27 Johanna Sköld, Emma Foberg and Johanna Hedström, ‘Conflicting or Competing Narratives? Interviewees’ Stories Compared to their Documentary Records in the Swedish Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse and Neglect in Institutions and Foster Homes’, Archives and Manuscripts 40, no. 1 (2012): 17, doi.org/10.1080/01576895.2012.668842; Golding, ‘Care Leavers Recovering Voice’, 2, 22.

28. 28 Vehkalahti, Constructing Reformatory Identity, xxvi. See also: Wilson and Golding, ‘Latent Scrutiny’, 81.

29. 29 Mark Peel, Miss Cutler and the Case of the Resurrected Horse: Social Work and the Story of Poverty in America, Australia, and Britain (University of Chicago Press, 2012), 1, doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226653662.001.0001.

30. 30 Franca Iocovetta and Wendy Murchison, On the Case: Explorations in Social History (University of Toronto Press, 1998), 13; Nell Musgrove, ‘The Scars Remain: Children, Their Families and Institutional Care in Victoria’ (PhD thesis, University of Melbourne, 2009), 15.

31. 31 Parry, ‘Such a Longing’, 78.

32. 32 Barbalet, Far from a Poor Gutter Girl, x.

33. 33 Pooley and Taylor, ‘Introduction’, 12.

34. 34 Gleason, ‘Avoiding the Agency Trap’, 452. See also: Musgrove et al., ‘Hearing Children’s Voices’, 13.

35. 35 Inga Clendinnen argued against the use of any empathic judgements in history writing, in part because of the difficulties of escaping the cultural mores of the historian’s own era. Inga Clendinnen, ‘The History Question: Who Owns the Past?’ Quarterly Essay 23 (2008): 20–8.

36. 36 Nell Musgrove, ‘Emotion as a Tool for Humanising Histories of the Marginalised: A Case Study of Industrial Schools in Colonial Victoria’, Social History 49 no. 1 (2024): 53–77, doi.org/10.1080/03071022.2024.2281150.

37. 37 Youthful Offenders, Destitute and Neglected Children’s Act, 60 Victoria, no. 24, 1896, 405.

38. 38 Caroline Evans, ‘Protecting the Innocent’, 108–10.

39. 39 Youthful Offenders, Destitute and Neglected Children’s Act, 423.

40. 40 Youthful Offenders, Destitute and Neglected Children’s Act, 400–1; Evans, ‘Protecting the Innocent’, 55. See also: Golding, ‘Care Leavers Recovering Voice’, 175.

41. 41 Evans, ‘Protecting the Innocent’, 49–56. See also: Stefan Petrow, ‘Arabs, Boys and Larrikins: Juvenile Delinquents and their Treatment in Hobart, 1860–1896’, Australian Journal of Legal History, no. 59 (1996): 57–9.

42. 42 Evans and Parry, ‘Vessels of Progressivism’, 321, 326–7.

43. 43 Evans, ‘Protecting the Innocent’, 111, 263.

44. 44 SWD 1/1/314 NCD 675-8, TA.

45. 45 SWD 1/1/559 NCD 1074, TA.

46. 46 Children of the State Act, 9 George V, no. 15, 1918, 142; Evans, ‘Protecting the Innocent’, 251.

47. 47 Children of the State Act, 138, 142.

48. 48 SWD 1/1/559 NCD 1074, TA.

49. 49 SWD 1/1/559 NCD 1074, TA.

50. 50 SWD 1/1/559 NCD 1074, TA.

51. 51 For instance, see: SWD 1/1/692 NCD 1330-1, TA.

52. 52 SWD 1/1/559 NCD 1074, TA.

53. 53 SWD 1/1/559 NCD 1074, TA.

54. 54 SWD 1/1/559 NCD 1074 TA.

55. 55 SWD 1/1/559 NCD 1074, TA.

56. 56 Hans Renders, ‘The Limits of Representativeness: Biography, Life Writing and Microhistory’, in Theoretical Discussions of Biography: Approaches from History, Microhistory, and Life Writing, ed. Hans Renders and Binne de Haan (The Edwin Mellen Press, 2013): 198–9, 203, doi.org/10.1163/9789004274709.

57. 57 Musgrove, ‘Emotion as a Tool’, 53–77.

58. 58 Julia Laite, ‘The Emmet’s Inch: Small History in a Digital Age’, Journal of Social History 53, no. 4 (2020): 980, doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shy118.

59. 59 SWD 1/1/559 NCD 1074, TA.

60. 60 SWD 1/1/559 NCD 1074, TA.

61. 61 Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works, Report on the Marrawah Tramway Completion, 19 October 1915, 1–2; Advocate, 19 August 1961, 13; NWAEBT, 15 September 1915, 4.

62. 62 Circular Head Chronicle, 22 December 1909, 2; 25 May 1910, 3; 30 April 1913, 2; 5 August 1908, 2.

63. 63 Mercury, 27 August 1910, 11; NWAEBT, 14 December 1910, 4.

64. 64 Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works, 1–2.

65. 65 NWAEBT, 9 September 1916, 4; 15 September 1915, 4; Circular Head Chronicle, 17 May 1914, 3; Advocate, 19 August 1961, 13.

66. 66 Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works, 4.

67. 67 Circular Head Chronicle, 18 January 1911, 2; 2 July 1913, 2.

68. 68 Circular Head Chronicle, 23 June 1915, 5.

69. 69 NWAEBT, 9 September 1915, 4.

70. 70 NWAEBT, 10 September 1915, 4.

71. 71 NWAEBT, 11 September 1915, 3.

72. 72 Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works, 4.

73. 73 NWAEBT, 19 January 1916, 3.

74. 74 NWAEBT, 30 March 1916, p. 3.

75. 75 SWD 1/1/559 NCD 1074, TA.

76. 76 Police Occurrence Book Circular Head, POL 93/1/3, TA.

77. 77 Stefan Petrow, ‘Economy, Efficiency and Impartiality: Police Centralisation in Nineteenth Century Tasmania’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 31 (1998): 246–61, doi.org/10.1177/000486589803100303.

78. 78 NWAEBT, 22 May 1916, 4.

79. 79 NWAEBT, 9 September 1916, 5.

80. 80 NWAEBT, 19 May 1916, 4; 9 September 1916, 5; Circular Head Chronicle, 24 May 1916, 2.

81. 81 Circular Head Chronicle, 21 June 1916, 2.

82. 82 NWAEBT, 1 June 1916, 4.

83. 83 NWAEBT, 1 June 1916, 4.

84. 84 NWAEBT, 25 September 1916, 3, Circular Head Chronicle, 20 September 1916, 2.

85. 85 NWAEBT, 16 May 1916, 4.

86. 86 Circular Head Chronicle, 20 April 1916, 2.

87. 87 SWD 1/1/559 NCD 1074, TA.

88. 88 Circular Head Chronicle, 8 November 1916, 16 September 1914, 2; 28 July 1915, 2; 6 October 1915, 5; 22 September 1915, 3.

89. 89 Circular Head Chronicle, 13 September 1916, 5.

90. 90 NWAEBT, 23 January 1917, 3.

91. 91 Circular Head Chronicle, 9 August 1916, 5.

92. 92 NWAEBT, 4 October 1916, 3; Circular Head Chronicle, 22 December 1909, 2.

93. 93 Marilyn Lake, A Divided Society: Tasmania during World War 1 (Melbourne University Press, 1975), 64, 76–7.

94. 94 Joy Damousi, The Labour of Loss: Mourning, Memory and Wartime Bereavement in Australia (Cambridge University Press, 1999), 3–6, doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511552335.

95. 95 Marilyn Lake, ‘Earle, John (1865–1932)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, The Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1981, accessed 4 January 2023, adb.anu.edu.au/biography/earle-john-6077/text10405; Richard Davis, Eighty Years’ Labor, 1903–1983 (Sassafras Books and the History Department, University of Tasmania, 1983), 8.

96. 96 Daily Telegraph, 7 December 1916, 6.

97. 97 Mercury, 29 November 1916, 7; Examiner, 29 November 1916, 6.

98. 98 Daily Post, 28 November 1916, 7.

99. 99 Mercury, 29 November 1916, 7; Examiner, 5 December 1916, 3. A search of the Circular Head Chronicle and North Western Advocate and Emu Bay Times did not find a reference to Moore recently fining a man for assault.

100. 100 Mercury, 29 November 1916, 7; Examiner, 29 November 1916, 6.

101. 101 SWD 1/1/559 NCD 1074; Circular Head Chronicle, 20 April 1916, 2.

102. 102 Examiner, 5 December 1916, 3.

103. 103 Lake, A Divided Society, 76.

104. 104 Henderson, Enid Lyons, 89; Anne Henderson, Joseph Lyons, The People’s Prime Minister (New South, 2011), 110.

105. 105 NWAEBT, 6 December 1916, 3. The presentation was made at a special gathering on 22 January 1917 with Moore as chairman. NWAEBT, 23 January 1917, 3.

106. 106 Mercury, 5 December 1916, 3.

107. 107 Examiner, 5 December 1916, 3.

108. 108 Mercury, 5 December 1916, 3.

109. 109 Mercury, 6 December 1916, 7.

110. 110 Mercury, 6 December 1916, 7; Daily Telegraph, 6 December 1916, 6.

111. 111 Mercury, 20 January 1917, 6; NWAEBT, 20 January 1917, 5; Examiner, 20 January 1917, 5; SWD 1/1/560 NCD 1075-77, TA.

112. 112 Mercury, 20 January 1917, 6; Daily Telegraph, 20 January 1917, 8; Examiner, 20 January 1917, 5.

113. 113 NWAEBT, 20 January 1917, 5; Examiner, 20 January 1917, 5; Mercury, 20 January 1917, 6.

114. 114 SWD 1/1/560 NCD 1075-77, TA.

115. 115 SWD 1/1/560 NCD 1075-77, TA.

116. 116 SWD 1/1/559 NCD 1074, TA.

117. 117 SWD 1/1/559 NCD 1074, TA.

118. 118 Wilson and Golding, ‘Latent Scrutiny’, 80.

119. 119 SWD 1/1/559 NCD 1074; SWD 1/1/560, NCD 1975-77, TA.

120. 120 Wright, Tasman James, Service Record B883, V181327, National Archives of Australia.