ANCESTORS 9– GRANDFATHER’S SCHEMES SCAMS AND SHOWBIZ

HOW THE ANCESTORS ARRIVED IN OZ

Wartime Sydney – no shortage of clothing coupons for small me

AN EARLY MEMORY

I guess by now you’ve realised my Grandfather, Charles Nelson Brown-Parker had quite an influence on my life.  I knew him for barely five of those years but despite my young age I loved him fiercely.  My earliest ever memory relates to Grandfather.

We lived in the Sydney beach side suburb of Bondi, grandparents, mother, father, aunt and uncle and two grown up cousins. The flat, unit, apartment was, as real estate today would describe it, compact, 2 bedrooms, sleep out, one bathroom. 

But this was war time and accommodation was scarce, hence the slight overcrowding.   Grandpa loved playing the gee gees.  Horse racing and the placing of wagers for those of you in other countries. 

Saturdays it was my job to toddle along from the apartment where we lived past perhaps no more than a dozen houses to the one where the illegal SP bookmaker conducted his business.  There a very small me would hand over Grandpa’s bets written on a piece of paper while sucking happily on the black and white humbug or peppermint lolly we were both addicted to.  

 Knowing now our family’s track record regarding horse racing I rather think my American grandfather’s gee gees have yet to pass the post.

oOo

Looking back on the many chapters relating to this particular ancestor’s arrival in the land of Oz, I realise his journey is taking one hell of a long time to get to the point.  I do apologise,  but Grandfather Chas, or Bert - whichever you prefer, managed to dangle in this limbo of double life for so long I really had no choice.  So far I've covered his home country, the USA,  his time in Fiji, a brief early flirtation with Australia and now New Zealand.

You have to admire his perseverance if not at times his methods....

 

 UPS AND DOWNS OF SHOW BIZ

1902 -  Grandfather arrives back in New Zealand to  the accompaniment of gushing publicity. No longer the would be boxing champ ChasBert is now a lead performer with Dix’s Gaiety Company at Auckland’s Theatre Royal.  

New Zealand Free Lance, 15 November 1902

Only the Irish comedians Callahan and Mack precede him on the billboard. In publicity lead-ups Grandfather is described as the young gentleman athlete and expert ball-puncher.

 Journalists write about his surprising ambidexterity... Brown Parker is a clean, wholesome, handsome young fellow;  well set up and as active as a cat.  His personal attractions not less than his excellent turn have made his ten minute appearance very popular...

Grandfather’s show biz career has taken off, his big show stopper is the popular ball punching routine.  But before long he branches out into comedy and theatre teaming up with a fellow performer Sam Rowley in burlesque boxing acts.  The week before the pantomime he had shared the bill with the Merlin Illusionists appearing at the Exchange Hall with the Fraser Shaw Company. He even takes a lead role in the Dix’s pantomime production ‘Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves’.

His publicity interviews with various reporters show an increasing tendency to Walter Mitty type bragging.  To one reporter he speaks of a... rough time with a rifle during the Samoan trouble and fighting with American troops in the Spanish American War...  The reporter goes on to comment that Brown Parker ...is a useful man to have around during elections or any other kind of national disturbance... When I first read that item I took it at face value never suspecting the words had a hidden meaning.

Later though I will have serious cause to stop and ponder on some parts of  ChasBert’s life and that last comment by the columnist will chill me to the bone... a useful man to have around...

While all this glitter and hoo ha is going on you have to wonder how Maggie is coping.  Two small children, the vagaries of New Zealand’s climate, no permanent abode and a husband who has become addicted to the bright lights of showbiz and fame, and rarely seems to be home;  something obviously had to give.  A return to a normal life perhaps.

And it did, more or less.  February 1903 sees Grandfather forming a partnership with two New Zealand gentlemen, no doubt of similar mind and ambition, to form yet another school of boxing, this time the Wellington Athletic Academy.  Percy Brady and W.Von Keisenberg Jnr feature in the publicity surrounding the opening.  But who was the mastermind behind this latest scam; I simply couldn’t describe this new venture in any other way.

 

Wellington Athletic Academy- Papers Past Feb 1903

In the newspaper interview Grandfather claims he was ...for years instructor of several large athletic clubs in America prior to joining the Rickard's Tivoli Company...a special feature of the Academy will be boxing and ball punching and the Sandow system of physical culture will be taught in all its details...so reads the blurb.

The Great Sandow, internationally renowned, had just completed a tour of New Zealand,  Charles had met him and his entourage when both toured Australia with the Rickard's Theatre Company.  To ChasBert and his mates the very name leant legitimacy to their own venture.

German born Sandow began his career as a sideshow strongman before moving to England. Later in America, impresario Florenz Ziegfeld designed a series of popular stage shows around Sandow’s strong man attributes. The strongman soon became a household name attracting publicity wherever he went. 

Back in England Sandow developed a successful mail order business and was one of the first to advocate free school lunches for children. A friend of royalty and famous figures of the time including the author Arthur Conan Doyle, he gave generously to charity and to the early London Olympics.

Sandow sold his fitness regime to the world, Grandfather and others like him merely piggy backed on the great man’s fame.

THE GREAT SANDOW

Within a month the failing Academy attempts to drum up business by advertising weightlifting demonstrations and vaudeville style comedy acts courtesy of the visiting Fitzgerald Circus and Menagerie, a touring circus group Grandfather had met when he was performing in Sydney.

Then a month later the Wellington City Council condemns the Academy’s premises and the trio is forced to move to new premises at Carlton Hall.  The business venture limps on for a while at its new location but the much touted Academy is not a success, especially with profits shared three ways.

The academy partnership, like his previous venture, is short lived.  Percy Brady goes on to manage touring shows for the Dix Brothers before finally settling for the hum drum of the retail trade. Von Keisenberg will turn his hand to writing short stories before, oddly enough, ending up in 1930 as the New Zealand Government’s Assistant Censor.

About now Grandfather, with his glib tongue, attempts to legitimise his boxing endeavours by hosting a highly publicised meeting with the top men of the New Zealand Boxing Association at the newly named Olympic Club in the Carlton Hall.  This meeting takes place in May of 1903, with the purpose of instigating a boxing tournament.

Within a day another par in the same newspaper announces that Mr C. Brown Parker has removed his boxing classes in connection with the Wellington Athletic Academy to new rooms at the Exchange Building.  He also announces he is no longer connected with the Olympic Club classes.  There has been a split, a separation of some sort.

oOo

 

THE NOTORIOUS OLYMPIC CLUB

When the Wellington Athletic Academy first folds, it changes its name and becomes known as the Olympic Club.  For a short while Grandfather was associated with this new club before publicly breaking away.  But was all this just a case of pretence, sleight of hand, a smoke screen?

Located as it was in the upstairs portion of the Carlton Hall the Olympic Club retained much of its sporting affiliations and was taken over and managed by old friends, Frank ‘Snowy’ Sturgeon (remember him from the Sydney boxing bouts) and a dubious gentleman who answered on this occasion to the name William Eagar.  Not so much a gentleman’s club it was nonetheless run on the lines of a home well away from home:  A place where a man could relax, sip a few ales, play a game of cards, bet on a boxing match or if they felt the need utilise its punching ball and exercise facilities:  and on perhaps many occasions even enjoy the popular but illegal game of two-up.

It was indeed a gambling house and one has to wonder whether ChasBert did completely sever his connections with the Club or whether he continued to pay the occasional visit.  I would be surprised if he didn’t.  But keep in mind his growing family and a some time showbiz career that was paying a bit more than any of his previous athletic schools had. 

Advertisements for the club began appearing in Wellington newspapers around August  1903.  I imagine one of the Club’s most popular attractions was the Wednesday night ‘Smoke Concerts’. In fact these may have in reality been a smoke screen for what actually took place.

N.Z. Free Lance August 8^th 1903

But by October events at the Olympic Club are coming to a head.  Police surveillance of the club’s premises indicates some dodgy goings on.

The headlines read...

ALLEGED “TWO-UP” SCHOOL

POLICE RAID AT WELLINGTON

The raid was sensationalised in newspapers throughout New Zealand.  The principals charged with keeping a common gaming house were named, Frank Sturgeon and William Eager who was also known as Richard Oxenham.  Thirty three others described as labourers, clerks and theatrical men were charged with being found without lawful excuse on premises used as a gaming house.

Subsequent trials, failure by juries to reach a decision, retrials and public condemnation went down in the annals of New Zealand’s legal history. Charles Nelson Brown Parker was called to give evidence and escaped prosecution only when the newspaper item was presented referring to his split from the club.   A narrow escape for Grandfather, but he wouldn’t be so lucky in the future.

oOo

 

LIFE LIMPS ON

It’s obvious Grandfather is struggling financially.  He has been forced to find other ways to earn a crust, first by opening his own academy, then working for others in a more legitimate  enterprise. His mind must have been wound to fever pitch searching for new ways to make an easy dollar. 

Finally with debts mounting he sets up a fight with the successful Australian boxer, Tim Tracey in Wellington’s Exchange Hall billing himself as a prominent titleholder from the States.  ChasBert was many things but he wasn’t a fool, he knew his limitations as a professional boxer, but recognized his ability to fudge a match.  He also knew it was just about impossible to check his boxing credentials in far away USA.

Grandfather was the opponent you lined up when you didn’t want your boy to lose, the opponent who acknowledged he didn’t have a hope in hell of winning, but knew enough to look convincing when he lost.  And lose he did, on just about every occasion he entered the ring.

True to form he loses the match with Tracey.  In the boxing world at least it seems ChasBert is a born loser.  Keep in mind though even the losers received  payment.

Two items in the New Zealand Free Lance around this time give us an enlightening description of an aging Chas as a ‘chunky little man with a hard face and hard muscles’. Whatever happened to the ‘clean wholesome young athlete’ of earlier years?

PAPERS PAST - New Zealand Free Lance 2 January 1904

Grandfather is still spinning tall stories yet somewhere in the interview he mentions his original trade; the first time I’ve seen him admitting to being a compositor or newspaper print setter – picking up stamps.  Again the reference to being able to look after  anyone requiring to be ‘dealt with’.

Marshall ‘Major’ Taylor – World Champion Cyclist

By 1904 Grandfather really is thirty years of age and maybe finding it difficult to match his youthful dexterity with the punch ball.  A visiting sportsman, the world champion American cyclist Marshall ‘Major’ Taylor arrives in town and who does he choose as his local trainer cum manager, cum bodyguard? The affable athletic instructor, and fellow countryman, Charles Brown Parker of course.  

I suspect the choice was made though with a lot of help from ChasBert’s gift of the gab the cyclist having no real choice in the matter. ‘Major’ Taylor was a quiet religious man of strong principals.  Though Kentucky born he had been raised in Indiana and perhaps there lay another link to Grandfather.

His success in the world of competitive cycling had been marred by constant racial taunts and physical threats and there was a real need for a resident minder or bodyguard; hence the presence of ChasBert.  I have to wonder though is this the first time Chas has been hired for his hard hitting fists because it certainly won’t be the last.

But in light of future revelations yet to surface in Australia the partnership between Grandfather and the cyclist, though brief, was a puzzling one.

oOo

Ahead, in his final years in New Zealand Grandfather forms his own theatrical company, an ambitious move involving chorus girls and large sums of other people's money.  As his family grows and Maggie seeks refuge in Fiji, Chas makes a sympathy seeking announcement to the press, but is he telling the truth?

oOo

Next –   Grandfather – Death of a Son - True or False...

 

Robyn Mortimer ©2011

ANCESTORS 6– FIJI...MAGGIE AND THE MAN FROM INDIANA

A MARRIAGE IN FIJI

Undated - Maggie in the years before her marriage

The year is 1900, my Grandmother, Maggie Maud McGowan is about to marry her American sweetheart.  The bride is twenty three, the groom claims to be thirty.  The ceremony, presided over by a Wesleyan Minister, takes place in a small timber church in Levuka.  The bride is Fiji born, well known and liked by all, and the church is swamped with exotic orchids and tropical flowers. 

There is much excitement leading up to the ceremony. Maggie recalls the steady stream of gifts carried up the steep footpath to the Foreman home. The stone stairway of 199 steps is the only access from the esplanade below to the top of Mission Hill, above.  The setting is lush and verdant, fragrant with the heady perfume of flowering shrubs and tropical fruit. 

Levuka was as my grandmother described her childhood home. I last visited this sleepy little outpost in the late 1960’s when I explored up and down the stone stairway.  I still remember the expansion of sky and ocean sweeping beyond the small sleepy town to surrounding reef and ocean; the same breathtaking view Maggie and her mother Geraldine would have enjoyed all those years ago. 

It was on this visit I met a twelve year old who vividly remembered my grandparents 1900 wedding reception in the loft of the McGowan chandlers shop down on the esplanade, the dancing to music played on the groom’s wind-up gramophone; an added source of excitement and a first for Levuka.

Mind you when I met this man, Reg Patterson, he was well into his eighties and lived in a house at the top of that same 199 step walkway.

Reg Patterson -his garden and the view.  Levuka 1969-70

It’s significant that not everyone at the party viewed the wedding with delight.  Maggie’s brothers hadn’t warmed to the groom; their distrust was to last a lifetime. Was this simply because he was an American, a foreigner, to them a brash Yankee?

Or did the brothers, William, Alfred, Gordon and Andrew have more serious cause.  But Maggie had turned down various local suitors including one who became a future governor of Fiji and without a doubt had fallen deeply in love with the man with whom she would share the next forty four years. 

At that point, had Maggie looked into a crystal ball  she may well have had a change of heart, because there was much about the groom that neither she nor the McGowan boys knew about. 

For a start his real name was Bert Everett Brown, he was actually four years younger than the thirty years he stated on the marriage certificate, and on that same certificate he clearly claims his father, John William Brown is deceased when he is not.

Chas, as he prefers to be called, is perhaps a little nervous during the ceremony, he appears to have started forming a B for Bert on his signature, before realising his mistake and heavily embellishing over it a flamboyant C for Charles.  Their marriage launches Mr and Mrs Charles Nelson Brown on their new life together, but on the very next day a small, very small notice in the Fiji Times announces the wedding of Madge Maud McGowan to Charles Nelson Brown-Parker.

 

 The McGowan brothers couldn’t have known Chas was using a false name but surely they were disturbed by the surprising addition of Parker immediately after the wedding.  Was this just one added reason to feel anxious about Maggie’s new husband?

Bert or Charles, which was it to be? We in this modern world know his real name was Bert, though it took nearly a century to find that out.  And only because my observant cousin Barbara, while cleaning out her deceased father’s papers, uncovered a letter from a sister in Indiana to her brother, Bert Brown, in Sydney written in the 1930’s.

Maggie told me the first time Grandfather saw her was from the deck of a boat riding at anchor in Levuka harbour.  She was with a group of children setting off on a Sunday school picnic. There was a great deal of laughter; the children were looking forward to the excursion; play time with Miss McGowan was always fun.

Charles told her he knew then they would marry.  All very romantic and maybe it did happen that way.  It would have been handy if Gran told me where he had sailed from, the name of the ship and what he was doing in Fiji.  But she didn’t and now there is no one left to ask.

___

And so the scene is set for my grandparents life together and eventually their arrival in Australia.  But before that can happen there is a lot more to reveal. Theirs will not be a glossy happy ever after saga, though their marriage will last forty-four years.  

But those years will see some surprising developments in New Zealand, several brushes with the law in Australia, and a lifetime of endless travel, tears and lies...and I’m quite sure despite sometimes evolving evidence to the contrary, eternal love.

Faced with a transient life style first in New Zealand and later along the east coast of Australia it is amazing that my little Maggie managed to stay the essentially sweet natured person she was. Nor can I fully understand how, even now, faced with the absolute truth about my Grandfather, ChasBert, I could still look back and remember him fondly with the love and trust of a small child.

But then again isn’t that what life is all about?

oOo

Next FIJI  Part 7  GRANDFATHER –TWO NAMES MANY FACES

Robyn Mortimer  Secrets and Lies ©2011

SHOES, SLUMBER AND SUICIDE IN NEW ZEALAND

I am ashamed to admit that over the years I had continually avoided New Zealand, instead visiting exotic countries like Turkey or Uzbekistan, Jordan or Macau.  New Zealand is our closest neighbour, our next door neighbour to be exact.  Apart from a few language oddities I always thought of it as an extension of us, of Australia;  a country so conveniently close  I could always take a gander some time in the future...but not right now.  There were other agendas I considered far more enticing.

How wrong I was. 

The reluctant traveller, my husband,  had agreed to take another trip and we soon found ourselves in New Zealand’s South Island where we instantly fell in love with its people, its breath taking beauty and even, though I suspect we were lucky that particular year, with the climate.

Neither rain, hail, shine nor snow will stop him wearing those shorts.

We soon realised New Zealand was to some extent a clone of our homeland, a time warp as we had been some years before; a country that moved slowly, comfortable in itself, yet to taste the influence of foreign television and the excesses of American culture, a country of Kiwi entrepreneurs with a sense of humour.

We hired a car, bought an esky, frying pan, cutlery and a few plates at a second hand store and set off from Christchurch with the vague idea we would just saunter around as the will took us finding accommodation wherever we chose to rest our heads, picnicking along the way.

With a map in hand but no intention of slavishly following it we chose roads at random our progress slowed by a constant need to stop and gape at a landscape so beautiful and startling we could only stare in amazement.  Snow capped mountains, vistas of rolling hills and rushing streams and small towns with not a fast food shop in sight.

We bought fresh smoked salmon from roadside stalls, Chardonnay to die for from vineyards dotted along the way.  Crusty bread fresh baked in local bakeries; even the milk tasted different to home, somehow more like real milk should taste.

At one point we stopped in a desolate area on a simple country road to puzzle over a barbed wire fence.  An ordinary fence used here for an unusual if not extraordinary purpose.

Unheralded and anonymous the Shoe Fence was the only way I could describe it. Strung along a good 200 yards or so were shoes and boots of all description and size; elegant ladies court shoes,  leather boots, aging sand shoes, adults and children’s, all in pairs and some very desirable. 

I eyed off a pair of imported shoes I would gladly have exchanged for the pair I was wearing but they really weren’t suitable for rugged touring.  Besides it didn’t seem right to interfere with this ingenious display.

My only regret as we drove away was our inability to add to this anonymous collection.

A few days later we had cause to remember the vagaries of sleep deprivation and instant slumber we had witnessed  in Japan some years earlier.

During our New Zealand meandering we chanced upon a small airfield offering light aircraft flights over Mt Cook and the snow fields.  A plane was due to leave within minutes with one solitary passenger. There was room enough for us, so we clambered aboard.

The other gentleman was an elderly Japanese tourist, his daughter had declined to accompany him but he was obviously looking forward to the experience and we all shook hands and exchanged smiles with the pilot.

The oriental gentleman had taken his seat behind the pilot, my husband won the toss to sit up front at the controls, and I was snug against the window behind Stan.  The engine roared to life, the props turned and we were off.

 

But we hadn’t even taxied down the runway before I realised the Japanese gentleman beside me was fast asleep.

The flight over snow bound Mt Cook was incredible,  one we would never forget, but all the time the foreign passenger continued to sleep.  I considered shaking him gently awake but he really looked so peaceful I found I simply couldn’t disturb him.

All too soon the flight was over and we made a perfect landing taxiing to a stop by the ticket office.  As the engines gradually shut down I glanced across to see the old fellow blinking, his eyes now open, his expression inscrutable.

We alighted and the old man’s daughter rushed up, excited and voluble, chatting to him no doubt about the flight, how he enjoyed it.  They wandered off to their car leaving me shaking my head in disbelief.

The cost had not been all that much, certainly well worth it from our point of view.  But simply to accommodate a comfy seat and an afternoon nap? I don’t think so.

__________

DEFYING DEATH

My husband can be deviously surprising.  One of New Zealand’s claims to fame is the invention of the Bungy Jump.  A suicidal leap from a high platform separated from certain death by a long rope attached to ones ankles.

Detouring through Arrowtown, we came across a local bridge, a huge crowd, a rushing river beneath and a queue of what I termed were idiots waiting to launch themselves voluntarily into oblivion.  We spent perhaps three quarters of an hour watching this steady stream of jumpers with me looking on in horror and finally relieved when we drove off to find that night’s accommodation.

Usually Stan holds off the search until it is almost dark, he is always loath to waste a moment of driving time.  Entreaties by me as we pass delightful little establishments in broad daylight are met by a look at his watch and the comment “Too early to turn in yet”. So I should have smelt a rat when he drove back to Arrowtown pulled in to the first motel we saw and promptly broke open one of our gorgeous bottles of New Zealand wine.

Next morning we headed off on what I thought would be the direction of Milford Sound when I realised he was pulling into the Bungy Jump office.

Honestly, is there any need to explain further.  He filled in his particulars, signed the responsibility clause, paid over his money and joined a small queue of much younger volunteers all waiting to defy gravity and death.

 

We are talking here of a man then well in his seventies, supposedly of sane mind. 

His turn came, he made a joke about being the oldest bungy jumper, then with a wave to me and the adoring crowd, he took a deep breath and with a perfect swallow dive leapt into the air.

The jump was successful and more to the point I survived the whole nerve wracking affair;  but Stan’s boast about being the oldest jumper was dashed, a 90 year old had well and truly gazumped him the year before.  One consolation though, he could now jump at any bungy post in New Zealand for half price...

Again, I don’t think so.

_________

The bridge...

THE BRIDGE

THE WAVE GOODBYE

THE LEAP

_________________

Robyn Mortimer ©2011