Adventures in Word Processing

Back in the day…

I learned to type on a clackety old manual typewriter in an after-school class at Seaforth Tech. At the time, my parents told me that, all else failing, I ‘could always get a job as a typist’. It was impossible to foresee that, within the next two decades, we’d all be multi-skilled and tapping away at keyboards that were connected to word processing technology with more memory than we could possibly fill.

Not much had changed by the 70s. (Queensland State Archives, Digital Image ID 2855, public domain)

However, the trouble with learning to light fires by rubbing sticks together is that you can wilfully ignore the many automated features of new developments such as butane lighters, declaring that ‘it’s quicker if I just do it the way I usually do’.  Recently, I hit this internal wall with a thud during my preparations of a manuscript for self-publication (more about that elsewhere!).

Yes, it needed a list of footnotes and a bibliography.

Yes, it needed a list of illustrations with page numbers that automatically updated when other changes were made in the manuscript.

Yes, it needed an index that similarly updated itself. I was fortunate enough to have my references and bibliography already formatted using 21st century technology (software Endnote), through having to use it in my work.

It was the list of illustrations and the index that I had persevered ‘doing it my way’: i.e., the very, very, very SLOW way. One week later, I am a born-again aficionado of the capacity of Word to create these. Dr Google threw up a lot of fellow-searchers, many of whom were asking questions about things a little to the side my exact needs, so I ended up at the Microsoft Office Support pages more often than not.*

Of course, many people are across this stuff and are technologically expert but, just in case you find you have similar blind-spot, I’ve done some other posts to that provide a potted summary.

(*I’m using Word 2016, Windows 10, on a PC, so my apologies to MAC users for any PC-centricism)

The Letters of Rachel Henning

 

Cover of Henning, R. The Letters of Rachel Henning (Edited by David Adams, with a Foreword and Pen Drawings by Norman Lindsay). Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1969. First published by the Bulletin 1951-2.

Years ago, I was fortunate to find amongst my mother’s many books a copy of “The Letters of Rachel Henning”. Rachel Henning wrote the letters during the period between 1853 and 1882 as she came to terms with life in colonial Australia. As a teenage reader, I was struck in particular by her letter to her sister Annie describing her trip by coach across the Blue Mountains in 1856.

“I should have enjoyed it more, also, though I am no great coward, if we had not been going at a hard trot down that steep hill with an unguarded precipice on the left down which a coach was upset some time ago, and eleven passengers either killed or maimed.” (April 7th, 1856)

The picture she painted of the descent down Mt Victoria Pass still resonates each time I travel the same route with my foot wearing out my brake pads.

Apparently, the editing for the original publication of the letters in the Bulletin (1850-52) was rather free and loose (here’s a link to a quick summary ‘Have we been conned?’).  However, the original letters are available to the public in the State Library of New South Wales (catalogue MLMSS 342/ Volumes 1-3, Folder 4X).  Even more exciting is the free online availability of the letters via a number of sources, including Project Gutenberg, the Trove collection of the National Library of Australia, and as in ebook from the library of the University of Adelaide.

Corruption in high places

For those of us who live in New South Wales, it often seems that barely a week goes by without some scandal erupting in the press revealing government corruption (see the highlights of the last ten years summarised by the Independent Commission against Corruption).  Corruption has been with us from the inception of the colony, of course. Back in the early days of the colony, the exposure of such dealings could threaten the interrelationships that supported a very fragile social order. When researching something else entirely, I was side-tracked by the astonishing example of the defalcation (misappropriation of funds) by John Edye Manning.

His background

John Edye Manning (1783-1870) had been practising law in England in early 1800s, but due to insolvency moved to live on the Continent in 1814-1823, returning to England in 1824 to sell his property. He and his wife Matilda Jordan Manning (nee Cooke, 1788-1860) moved to Australia in 1829, and he took up the position of Registrar of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. Following his complaints of insufficient income associated with that position, he was given the responsibility of Curator of Intestate Estates, although he had to provide a deposit of £2,000 (provided by his family in England) to take it on. He and his wife had a large family (11 births, 7 of whom lived to adulthood and had their own families). He took an active role in the Colony and was involved in many societies and business/land investments.

The problem

By 1838 it appears that people were worrying about his expenditure being in excess of his presumed legitimate income, and there were provisions made requiring him to deposit the £10,000 funds related to the intestate estates in the Savings Bank and make them available for quarterly audit. He contested this provision and although directed to return the monies, he did not comply. By 1841-42 he was in debt to the tune of £30,000 and he sought to resign.

At first the Judges of the Supreme Court refused to allow him to resign, fearing they would be unable to pursue him for the money, but Governor Gipps seems to have forced the issue and insisted they suspend him and instigate legal action against him. By 1846, the matters were only starting to be sorted out. His sons in Australia offered to pay the compensation, but it’s not clear if or when this occurred. He ended up going back to England (without prosecution), but his family remained in Australia.

John Edye Manning’s reputation does not seem to have tarnished his family’s prospects (after all, most of the inhabitants of the colony bore the ghosts of ne’er-do-well relatives). For example, his son William Montagu Manning came to the colony in 1837, became magistrate and chairman of the Quarter Sessions, commissioner of the Courts of Requests in 1841-43, then in 1844 became Solicitor-General (i.e., he reached that position after his father’s fraud was known). He went on to become Solicitor-General and was eventually knighted.

‘The Birdman’s Wife’ by Melissa Ashley

Bringing history alive takes something very special and it is clear that Melissa Ashley has that skill. In ‘The Birdman’s Wife‘, she has blended her thorough enquiry into the life of the artist, Elizabeth Gould, with a creative realisation of how the main events in her life unfolded.

Until this work, far more people have heard about John Gould, Elizabeth’s husband for his art and science as a zoologist, mainly through his well-known book, ‘The Birds of Australia’, originally published in 1848. However, Elizabeth’s life was to change on being introduced to him by her brother:

“I still found it hard to believe that on the strength of my brother’s mention of my passion for sketching and painting, Mr Gould had insisted we meet, inviting me to his rooms to make him a drawing.” (quoted from Ashley, chapter 1)

Six children and hours of painstaking contribution as a natural history artist to her husband’s work later, Elizabeth’s short life was over, aged 37 years.

As you can see from the short quote from ‘The Birdman’s Wife’ above, Ashley has captured both the social stance of the nineteenth century woman and her use of language is pitch-perfect for the historical period.

 

Ashley, M. The Birdman’s Wife.  Melbourne: Affirm Press, 2016.

‘The Convict’s Daughter’ by Kiera Lindsey

Cover of ‘The Convict’s Daughter’ by Kiera Lindsey

This book is worth a read if you’re interested in a lively account of life in Sydney, NSW in 1848. Kiera Lindsey presents the story of Mary Ann Gill whose failed elopement with James Butler Kinchela was a public scandal of the times.  Her research into the case is presented in a deft combination of factual biography and dramatic action.

Lindsey, K. The Convict’s Daughter: The Scandal That Shocked a Colony. Allen and Unwin, 2016.

Harriet’s life in brief

Harriet Blaxland was the eldest child of John Blaxland, who arrived as one of the first free settlers of substance in the colony of Sydney in 1806. On a whim, she accepted the invitation to live with her aunt in Calcutta. By sixteen, she was married to Alexander Macdonald Ritchie, partner in one of the richest mercantile agencies in India, and living in Agra with views of the ruins of the Taj Mahal from her veranda.  Bankruptcy and the death of her husband brought Harriet back to Sydney in 1827. Eight years later, she married Sir James Dowling, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. His death prompted her to return to England at the age of forty-seven. Prompted by reading her unpublished memoir, I’ve been exploring her life further with a view to writing both a fictional account and a short biography.

Dowling, H. Memoir of the Early Life of Harriott Mary Dowling Nee Blaxland: Or Sketches of India and Australia in Old Times. Typescript copy, held with Dowling family papers 1767-1905, held at State Library of New South Wales (Mitchell Library), Sydney,  DLMSQ 305, Item 5, 1875.