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and Jane, had married her husband, James Martin Lawless, at Durban in South Africa in May
1911. Jim Lawless served with the Rand Light Infantry in the First World War, after which he
was employed by South African Railways. Born in London in November 1882, he had earlier
served with the First Royal Dublin Fusiliers, enlisting in London in January 1897, when he was
14 years old and two months. He was a bugle boy and kept his silver bugle in its case for many
years. In time he became a drum major. Young Jim went with the Fusiliers to South Africa to
take part in the Boer War, and, according to the medals and decorations mentioned in his
discharge certificate, the teenage Private Lawless was involved in the relief of Ladysmith in
Natal in February 1900 and in General Buller's assault on the Boers at Laings Nek, also in
Natal, in June. He was with the Fusiliers for five and a half years (nearly three abroad), buying
himself out of the army (for £18) at Krugersdorp in October 1902, when he was nearly 20. His
'Description on Final Discharge' reveals him to have been 57", with a fair complexion, blue eyes
and brown hair; his trade was that of a gardener. He had scars on his forehead and had lost
most of his left little finger - perhaps in a battle. When he married Jack and Jane's eldest
daughter in Durban in 1911, he was 28 and she was 27.
Olive Lawless had been 19 or so when she was summoned from Melbourne with her mother,
sister and two brothers to join her father Jack in Johannesburg after the Boer War. Presumably
it was in Johannesburg that she met her ex-Fusilier, Jim Lawless, when he was employed there
on the railways. Presumably she also kept in touch with the Honeycombes and a friend or two
in Footscray. For after an absence of nearly 20 years she decided to make a sentimental
journey, by sea, and revisit the people and places she had known in her childhood and teen-age
years. And she took her small son Ernie with her and her husband, Jim.
I only knew about this most interesting encounter between Jack's South African descendants
and his Melbourne relations from a letter Ernie Lawless wrote to me in 1982.
He said: 'Yes, my mother was a Honeycombe, and when I was young we went to Australia and
I met my great-grandfather who was 92 years of age then, and I have a photo of him and his
wife.'
At the time I was not aware of the connections between the South African and Australian
Honeycombes, nor who Ernie's great-grandfather was. And I didn't follow it up. But the great-
grandfather was of course Dirty Dick, and if he was 92 when Ernie met him, then the trip must
have been made after old
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Richard's 92nd birthday in September 1921 and after Jack's marriage to Lil, his niece - ie, in
1922.
Olive met her father, Jack, in Melbourne. But it seems that she never met Jack's second wife,
Lil, and she probably kept the scandalous union to herself on her return to Johannesburg. For
her two brothers' offspring apparently never knew the actual facts - only that Jack's second wife
was 'a very young girl'.
If only Olive Lawless had left some record of that visit! What useful things it would have told us
about the Footscray Honeycombes then - of Jack and Lil; of old Richard and his daughter,
Jane; and possibly Fanny and Louie and Jessie, and young Dick's marriage to Addie Thompson
a year or two ago.
But her son, Ernie, who had been a welder and boilermaker, did tell me something about that
visit - although in 1982 I didn't realise its full and historic significance, and failed to question
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