3/52 My Favourite Photo. Mary Godlee and YWCA friends.

 3/52

My Favourite photograph

Hazel Mary Godlee 1897 - 1982

My grandmother saved letters and I am in the process of transcribing them. I became obsessed with finding out about the people who appear in the letters, close and distant family and friends. This photo was amongst files of photos and is referenced by a 1925 July letter and it was exciting to see these women, who I had met in the letters. My great aunt, Aunty Mary, (Hazel Mary Godlee,) is the third from the left. 

Charlotte Godlee, my great grandmother, writing to Mary, says: 

‘The girls brought home a good snap of Miss Kentish, also the one of you four in aprons. Do you remember Misses Kentish, Bignall, Amy and you? ‘  

The women in this photo are all characters who appear frequently in Charlotte’s letters are as follows: on the far left is Amy Carver, the Physical Director of Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) in Adelaide and then, in 1926, in Queensland. She would have organised activities like dancing, bush walks and tennis games. Amy and Mary were close friends, Amy frequently visiting and staying with the Godlee family. Next is Dorothy Kentish who was appointed YWCA Senior Club Secretary in Adelaide in 1924. Mary is next, Girls’ Work Secretary. And on the far right is Ann Bignall. She went to work in the YWCA in Singapore in 1927, taking a job that Mary decided not to apply for, much to her mother’s relief. These were the women Mary bonded with in her early twenties and I guess they remained life long friends. 

I remember Aunty Mary arriving in Adelaide on an ocean liner, coming home from abroad, an exotic visitor. As well as being funny, she scared me into learning my tables.

Hazel Mary Godlee - always called Mary - was born in November 1897, the fourth child. Her father was the head accountant at Birks and Sons, a big department shop in Adelaide, where David Jones is now, and her mother wrote prolifically to all her daughters. When Mary was born her oldest sisters were 8 and 2, her brother was 6. Two more girls and a boy were born after Mary but her father, Theodore, died of pneumonia when Mary was 10. Another brother was born after Theodore died but the new baby died a year later. It must have been a very hard time, both emotionally and financially, especially for their mother. The oldest sister was nineteen when her father died and she would have been called upon to look after the younger children.The other person in the household who took on this responsibility was Aunty Lottie, Theodore's unmarried older sister. She had lived with the family since her mother died when Mary was a baby. 

The Godlees were deeply enmeshed in the Kent Town Methodist Church. Charlotte came from Primitive Methodist roots which strongly advocated for Sunday Schools so Mary and all her sisters, brothers and friends were regular attenders. In 1909 Mary won the First Class Sunday School Certificate. She went on to the Christian Endeavour movement and from there to the YWCA which became central to her adult life. 

When Mary was 19, in 1915, she got engaged to Jack Glasson. No doubt they had been to Sunday School together.  He probably went to school with her older brother. Jack signed up to the War in the same year. In 1916 Mary’s brother John was killed flying over France.  In April 1918, aged only 22, Jack Glasson was killed in France. Mary also lost three cousins in the War. It was a tragic time for Australian families.

Mary became increasingly involved in the YWCA, first as a youth leader and then in 1920 in Adelaide she was employed as the Girls’ Work Secretary. She was sent to a YWCA secretary’s training course in Sydney in 1921. 

By 1925 Mary was working for the YWCA in Melbourne where Charlotte understood she was lonely. It was the first time Mary had lived away from her close family, but it would not be the last. Of all the sisters, Mary adventured furthest from home. In 1926 Charlotte wrote : 

I had a note from Mary on Friday. She has decided to stay in Melbourne for another year. I do not know if she told you she had almost decided to come home and do an arts course at the University. I do think that she cannot have the energy to go on for many years as Girls Department Sec and she thinks a course might fit her for something else. They did not want her to leave next year and I think her work will be more effective after two years of preparation.

Mary returned to Adelaide in 1927, was appointed to the YWCA Board of Directors and was busy organising activities for girls. She did not go to University but continued as Girls Department Secretary. Charlotte died in 1928 and  Mary left Adelaide in 1932, this time to become Girls’ Work Secretary in Perth. Here she worked with unemployed single women and girls, providing welfare, training, focusing on building suburban groups to make the YWCA more accessible. She became the General Secretary of Perth YWCA in 1935.

After five years in Perth Mary worked in Sydney and Brisbane YWCA. She was in Brisbane at the start of the War and became the YWCA worker with the Women’s Auxiliary Australian Airforce in Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth until she went to the Middle East in 1943.  

She worked for the next four years with the British YWCA, attached to the British army, providing welfare to service women. She was stationed in Jerusalem for 18 months, followed by 6 months in Bagdad. She had a short time in Rome and at the end of the war, in 1946, was posted in  Vienna.  In a letter published in The West Australian Mary says Vienna is ‘a sad city of insufficient food and warmth.’ They employed 25 staff, each entitled to one meal a day, plus porridge in the morning when they arrived to work. 

Mary had always been passionate about music, She was on the committee of the Adelaide Municipal Singing Association and she is often reported as a soloist singing at various events. In Vienna she appreciated  the Viennese, ‘cold, hungry and shabby’ flocking to concerts and opera. ‘200 Viennese people once stood through an entire concert because there was no seating left.’  In Milan Mary heard Toscanini conduct his first concert on returning to Italy.  One of my treasures is Mary’s score of The Messiah. 

By 1947 Mary was home in Australia, enjoying Xmas with her sisters at Tumby Bay. She returned to Perth to take up the position of General YWCA Secretary. 

In a few short years though in 1951, she took on a job in London as chief warden of  Helen Graham House, a YWCA hostel providing support and accomodation to 350 young women, students and working women,  more than half being under 21.  It was just near the British Museum and my sister and I went and saw it when we were in London in 2019. She was there for ten years and it  was during those years that I remember her short visits to Adelaide, and my mother sending her Christmas cakes because London was still experiencing war time shortages. 

Mary eventually returned to Australia and I knew her as a strong minded independent woman.It was always interesting and exciting when Aunty Mary came to visit. She is listed in the 1963 Australian census as the YWCA Secretary in Sydney. I remember being taken to the YWCA in Sydney as a teenager suffering from menstrual  faintness after going to the Wax Work museum in Kings Cross. They administered ginger tea, but Mary wasn’t there then. 

In 1966 she was awarded the Medal of the British Empire for her services to young women. 

After she retired she lived with her two younger sisters and with my mother in Adelaide. She died there in 1982, two days after her eighty fifth birthday. I was away on my own adventures in Japan when she died and it was always odd to go back to Adelaide and find she wasn’t there.  

References 

Godlee, Charlotte Louisa, The Dear Old Letters. Transcribed and edited by Sally O’Wheel.  2020, Devonport. 

"Interview." Critic (Adelaide, SA : 1897-1924) 13 July 1921

WORK AMONG GIRLS (1924, April 16). News (Adelaide, SA : 1923 - 1954), p. 5

"FOR THE SAKE OF YOUNG WOMEN" The Mail (Adelaide, SA : 1912 - 1954) 4 August 1923: 

South Australian Births, Index of Registrations 1842 to 1906

"Mr. Theodore Godlee." Observer (Adelaide, SA : 1905 - 1931) 11 July 1908:

South Australia-Deaths 1842-1915

OUR SUNDAY-SCHOOLS AND THE UNION EXAMINATIONS. (1909, August 27). Australian Christian Commonwealth (SA : 1901 - 1940), p. 5. 

C.E. UNION (1912, October 7). Daily Herald (Adelaide, SA : 1910 - 1924), p. 8.

Vale Jack Glasson (1951, July 12). The Kadina and Wallaroo Times (SA : 1888 - 1954), p. 1. 

"PERSONAL." The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1889 - 1931) 22 May 1920:

"Y.W.C.A. SECRETARIES." The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954) 19 September 1921

"BEFORE THE PUBLIC" News (Adelaide, SA : 1923 - 1954) 5 February 1925:

"YOUNG WOMEN MEET" News (Adelaide, SA : 1923 - 1954) 22 May 1928: 16 (HOME EDITION). 

"GIRLS OF TO-DAY." Western Mail (Perth, WA : 1885 - 1954) 10 March 1932: 36 (Edition 2)

"UNEMPLOYED GIRLS." The West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879 - 1954) 24 October 1933:

"PERSONALITIES AMONG WOMEN" The Daily News (Perth, WA : 1882 - 1955) 21 June 1935:

"New Activity Secretary Miss Mary Godlee" The Courier-Mail (Brisbane, Qld. : 1933 - 1954) 13 March 1941:

"WELFARE WORK IN W.A.A.A.F." The Sydney Morning Herald (NSW : 1842 - 1954) 1 April 1942

"Y W C A NEWS FROM MIDDLE EAST" The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957) 12 January 1944:

"WOMAN'S REALM." The West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879 - 1954) 9 April 1946

"MISS MARY GODLEE" The Advertiser (Adelaide, SA : 1931 - 1954) 4 June 1947:

"Tumby Bay Social Notes" Port Lincoln Times (SA : 1927 - 1954) 25 December 1947

"New Post In London" The West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879 - 1954) 2 May 1951

Australian Electoral Commission; Canberra, Australia; Electoral Rolls

"Government Gazette Notices" Commonwealth of Australia Gazette (National : 1901 - 1973) 23 June 1966:

1921 'ADELAIDE MUNICIPAL COMMUNITY SINGING.', The Register (Adelaide, SA : 1901 - 1929), 5 October