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24 Foolscray and the First World War
Lilian Honeycombe's marriage to her uncle, John Honeycombe, was still a long way off in
September 1897, when Richard and Elizabeth Honeycombe (now 68 and 75) celebrated their
50 years of marriage in Footscray.
Lil, the third and youngest daughter of Dick and Fanny Honeycombe, was then a mere three
years old, and but one of the eleven grandchildren of Dirty Dick and his Scottish wife.
We presume there was a celebration in 76 Albert Street, or even at some local hotel. Fifty years
was a long time in anyone's life, let alone as a wedded pair. Perhaps something was made of the
coincidence of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. But as three of Dirty Dick's sons were in
South Africa, and as the fourth and eldest, George, had no fondness for his father and lived in
the far off and more salubrious suburb of South Yarra, perhaps any celebration excluded the
three daughters-in-law, who also had young children, and was confined to the unmarried eldest
daughter, Elizabeth Jane, soon to be 49, and the two youngest married daughters, Harriet (Mrs
Joseph Steel) and Louisa (Mrs William Allen). Richard's second oldest daughter, Mary Ann
(Mrs Charles Regelsen), lived in Benalla, and may have found the demands of her family and the
journey to Footscray too much for her.
But Jane and Lawrence Mountjoy may have travelled to Melbourne from their affluent home in
Geelong. For Jane, now 71, may have felt closer to her brother since their father's death at
Wharparilla the previous year. It is also possible that Dirty Dick's youngest brother, John, came
to Melbourne from Queensland about this time, finally abandoning his mentally unstable Irish
wife and their six children in Charters Towers.
However, Richard's brothers and sisters, and his children, were never very close. His grand-
daughter, Lil, said years later: 'None of us got together much. Not like they do now... We had a
funny grandma and grandpa. They never wanted to see their grandchildren. Very peculiar. The
whole family didn't want to meet up somehow. Everybody seemed so distant - you weren't
good enough for some of them.
If there was a family gathering, which could also have included Dirty Dick's younger married
sisters, Elizabeth (Mrs Charles Franklin) and Martha (Mrs Charles Chapman), it would have
been the last involving this many of the Honeycombes, and especially those who had sailed to
Australia in the early 1850's. The infirmities of age, distance and death would separate them the
more in ten years' time, when the ageing Footscray couple's diamond wedding anniversary
would safely come and go.
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Footscray still smelt in 1897, as the tanneries, fertiliser factories, ropeworks and abattoirs
continued to be the mainstay of local industries. Engineering works and foundries were on the
increase, and in 1897 an explosion in an ammunition factory, where machinery and working
practices were both deficient, resulted in the deaths of three girls. The top girls in this factory
were earning 18 shillings for a 53 hour week, the lowest eight shillings (between one or two
pennies an hour). The Factories and Shops Act of 1896 had reduced the weekly working hours
of female shop assistants and boys younger than 16 to 52, and the half-holiday, on a
Wednesday, had become compulsory. But it was not until 1909 that the half day was moved to
Saturday, and became fixed as such.
By 1899 Victoria's economy had fully recovered from the depression, and employment figures
were the same as those of 1893. Footscray was on the way to becoming the most highly
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