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GODDEN MACKAY More than two decades earlier, the Byrne's daughter Catherine married a mariner named John Winch in 1827. The Winchs bought one of the two-roomed houses on Cumberland Street, No.122, which was built in as part of the Nicholas development of the old Cribb land in 1834. Catherine remained here, close to her parents and childhood home, until her death in 1841, and John stayed on until 1861, about the same time that the old Byrne house was pulled down. This proximity thus infuses the small, speculatively built house with meaning: the importance of family ties, and of locality. Among the things retrieved from a refuse pit at this house, too, was a bone 'convict' kit issue knife handle with '23' incised on one side. It was found in deposits dating to the 1830s or 1840s, that is, the early years of Catherine and John Winch's occupation. The knife dates from no earlier than the 1830s, and was of the sort typically issued to convicts under sentence. It may have been purchased from the Commissariat by the Winchs and seems to have been used until it was broken and then thrown out. While the 1840s marked the end of transportation and a groundswell of passionate public opposition to its reintroduction, the association of this article with convictism apparently had no negative connotations for the nativeborn Catherine and John. After all, their own parents had been convicts. 35 We have seen that the women of the site came to one anothers' assistance when their many babies were born, and to help lay out the bodies of their dead. There were spiritual as well as practical dimensions to the rituals following death, in particular. Spiritual belief was also materially expressed in the numerous and varied religious medals, jewellery and rosaries which seem to be particularly associated with women. The religious medals would appear to be the later nineteenth century equivalents of the ceramic religious plaques found in the earlier contexts. Iacono observes their talisman function as 'household protectors', their inscriptions denoting humility and resignation, yet a belief that the Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph or guardian angels would intercede pleading for protection and mercy: and of course their peculiarly Catholic character. That such meaning could be attached to commodities which were mass-produced in their millions is a good example of the way people used modern manufactured objects in traditional, very personal ways. The fact that they were found across the site, and at other sites such as Lilyvale, suggests that such religious beliefs were also communally shared and we have parallel evidence for this communality in the documentary record. The Registers of St Patrick's and St Michael's churches on the Rocks show that when the babies were brought to be baptised, for their spiritual redemption and protection, the sponsors, or godparents, who promised to watch over the child's spiritual welfare were frequently neighbours from the site, fellow Catholics and evidently trusted friends. Andrew Fennelly, the son of Patrick and Catherine, was sponsored by Sarah Murphy, who lived nearby in Gloucester Street, in 1865. Butcher William Mitchell who had lived close to the Hoseman family for twenty years sponsored the son of Alfred and Rosetta Hoseman in 1887; he had also been Karskens, Report 136
GODDEN MACKAY a witness at their wedding. Thomas and Mary Conwell's son Thomas Denys was sponsored by the midwife Mary Ann Meddows in 1893; Thomas and Jane Cotter were the godparents of Lily Sarah White, the daughter of the corner grocers Thomas and Mary White in 1887. The Whites in turn sponsored the son of Joseph and Mary Awlsbury in 1889. The Awlsburys lived at 4 Carahers Lane in the following year and later ran a lodging house at the old Whaler's Arms hotel. 36 The site, then speaks of people drawn together by family relations, by the day-today transactions in the shops, by the rituals of birth and death, by Catholicism, by friendship. All of these were expressed, reinforced or even created by the simple fact of living close by one another. 2.3.4 Clean, Comfortable ... and Respectable? 'Clean, comfortable and respectable' were the key working class values and aspirations identified by Kerreen Reiger in her review of the 1920 Royal Commission on the Basic Wage. 37 It seems from the material record that these were values handed down from the nineteenth century generations of working people, particularly those of the closing decades. We have seen the unmistakable evidence for domesticity, comfort, pleasantness and cleanliness, and for the care of personal appearance through clothing, jewellery and grooming, often against considerable odds. The 'moralising china' designed to guide and educate children in moral behaviour, temperance, frugality, industriousness, and 'good humour' (which 'makes them happy' and 'gives them power to bless') is a startling contrast to notions of steadfast 'working class' rejection to such 'middle class' cultural values. We could add a handsome bowl printed with the head of John Wesley to this collection. It was found at 128 Cumberland Street and was very likely the possession of Elizabeth Lipscombe and her husband W J Lipscombe, a clerk and accountant, who lived there between 1861 and 1870. Although tracing these individuals has been difficult, a check on the religion of other Lipscombe families revealed that they were all Wesleyans. Wesleyanism attracted the humbler folk of the working and lower middle classes and was characterised partly by sabbatarianism, strict morals and the prohibition of drinking and dancing, as well a belief that God rewarded those who worked hard. Material success was therefore a sign of God's grace. This bowl, like the presence of the Lipscombes themselves, reflects the continued blurring of middling and working people, and hence overlapping culture, which had been a feature of the early Rocks, was still occurring well into the 1860s. 38 Karskens, Report 137
Page 1: Figure 2.23 Women and children, who
Page 5 and 6: GODDEN MACKAY A considerable number
Page 8 and 9: Figure 2.25: Rising literacy: writi
Page 10 and 11: GODDEN MACKAY The culture of later
Page 12 and 13: Figure 2.27 Dental hygiene? Two of
Page 14 and 15: Figure 2.28 Babes in the wood: two
Page 16 and 17: GODDEN MACKAY finger and afterwards
Page 18: 2.3.6 Endnotes GODDEN MACKAY 1 For
Page 21 and 22: GODDEN MACKAY 38 Waterhouse, Privat
Page 25: GODDEN MACKAY tasty sauces and cond
Page 29 and 30: GODDEN MACKAY and severe poverty, f
Page 31: GODDEN MACKAY also examines the way

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