33/52 Service: Charlotte Lucy Godlee, 1854 -1935

 

   This picture from 1916 shows Lottie on the left. At the back, from left to right are” Charlotte, Dots,  and the other Godlee children at the College Park home.

    

33/52 Service: Charlotte Lucy Godlee, 1854 - 1935

The first time Lottie is mentioned in a letter is in 1867, from Mary Anne Godlee to her sister-in-law, Mary Amelia née Guy.

 I am pleased to to avail myself of this opportunity to send thee, thy sister Charlotte, and dear little Charlotte Lucy, each a print dress, as it will probably be warm weather when it arrives.

Charlotte Lucy was 13 years old when that print dress was made for her, not so little. At the start of that year her father had been declared insolvent.  This trouble is referred to in the letter when Mary Anne says :   

I long to hear more about you,  and if the past troubles are succeeded by happier times…….. I think very very often of you and aspirations are frequently raised to the throne of grace that through this much tribulation we may all reach the pearly gates and enter the celestial city, for truly this is a vale of tears, and nothing can afford true and abiding peace but this prospect.

Lottie was the sixth child of John and Mary Godlee who had migrated to Adelaide from Lewes, Sussex, in the late 1830s. She was called Lottie to distinguish her from her aunt, Charlotte Guy, who had migrated with Mary. By the time Lottie was born John had finally settled into regular employment. This had followed a rather unsettled period during the hard 1840s, when he had worked in various locations and in various jobs, and suffered periods of insolvency. During the 1850 he ran hotels in the mining town of Tungkillo, and became employed as a clerk for the local council. He was active in the community, helping to raise funds for the school, chairing community meetings and seemed to be an upstanding member of the community. He invented a threshing machine for Australian conditions but it never seemed to make him any money or fame. But Lottie’s early years had been happy, it would seem. Her older brothers, Arthur, Charles, Frederick and Alfred looked out for her and her older sister, Polly, twelve years older than her, would have been a role model and probably did a lot of the parenting. Lottie had a little brother, Theo, who tagged along and was a probably both a joy and a bother. Big sisters looked after their little brothers. 

In the 1860s as Lottie approached her teenage years the security of her life cracked. First Polly was involved in a  serious boating accident in which three young women drowned. Polly and another woman survived. To six year old Lottie, it could have been traumatic. Then, when Lottie was 11, Polly left and married Charles Burnett. They went up north to live on a station and soon had three children. Lottie was now the only girl at home with her parents and her brothers. She would have had to look after Theo. 

At the end of the decade John Godlee accepted work as manager of a foundry in Clare and the family moved there. I don’t know if the boys were living with them there or if they had left home and were working up the country. Theo went to school but probably Lottie didn’t and helped out at home. 

The 1870s brought another move, this time to Adelaide and John got work as an engineer in the SA Railways, a job he held until he retired. Soon after the move to Adelaide tragedy struck Polly, now a mother of four children. Her husband Charles was killed in a workplace accident. She moved to town and lived near her parents in Norwood. The children were Charlotte, 7, Lucy, 5, Fred, 3 and baby Maud. I imagine Lottie, now eighteen, and her mother did a lot of childcare and supporting Polly during what must have been a very hard few years. Lottie stayed home and never married. Perhaps as the only girl at home she felt she couldn’t leave her parents. 

John retired from the Railways in 1883, at 69. By that time all the older boys had married and moved up the country. Theo and Lottie still lived at home. Theo was employed by Birks and Son, an important department store in Adelaide where he did accounts. He would eventually become the head accountant there. After he had saved up enough money he married Charlotte Hobbs in 1887 and they established themselves in College Park, not far away.  

This photo shows Mary and John Godlee outside their house in St Peters. Lottie is over to the side. John and Mary seem old in this photo, but they were probably in their 70s. . The child is Theo’s first child, Dots, born in 1889 and could have been two in this picture. So that dates this photo to 1891, the year of John Godlee’s death. 

Lottie continued to live with her mother. Frederick died on the Overland Telegraph in 1893 but I don’t know what killed him. Charles was in Streaky Bay and Arthur at Beltana in the southern Flinders Ranges. But Mary and  Lottie would have had regular contact with the other Godlee families living close, Polly, Alfred and Elizabeth, and Theo and Charlotte and all their growing families. 

In 1896 Mary died.  Lottie was 41. The following year she set off to visit England, specifically to meet her aunt Lizzie in Lewes. What an adventure! She was accompanied by Charlotte Hobbs' father, Jonah, and sister, Mabel. He was an orange grower and he accompanied an experimental refrigerated shipment of oranges to English markets. Mabel and Lottie were described by Theo as ‘poor sailors’ and he tried to ‘picture you and Mabel enjoying the sights of London.’ The letters are full of family news of the health of Pollie, and her now adult children, Aunt Charlotte Guy, Alf, and Theo and Charlotte’s children. Charlotte says: “How pleased Aunt Lizzie will be to have you. She won’t want to part with you but we can’t spare you too long, you know.’  Aunt Lizzie had been a child when her sisters Mary and Charlotte Guy had left England in 1839 and they had never seen each other again. Now Lizzie was the last remaining Guy in England and I can well imagine what joy it gave her to meet her Australian niece. Similarly Lottie had lost her mother and it would have been very meaningful to connect with her English Aunt and see legendary Lewes and the Sussex Downs. 

I don’t know when Lottie returned to Adelaide but when she did I assume she lived with Theo and Charlotte. I guess she was closest to him in age and he was also better off perhaps than the other siblings. He was the first one to have a white collar job and they lived in a big house. They could support her and she could be a home help for her sister-in-law. 

In 1908 Theo died from pneumonia. I know Lottie was living there then. The children ranged in age from 18 to two and Charlotte was pregnant. All the family had to pitch in to look after Charlotte: the oldest girl, Dots, the aunts, Lottie and also Charlotte’s sisters, brothers and sisters-in-law. After the child was born he died in the first year of his life, adding further sadness to the already sad situation. Charlotte was sent to recuperate in the country and then she and Dots took a trip to New Zealand where Charlotte had a close friend. Lottie held the fort at home.

Lottie continued as one of the family in College Park as her Godlee nieces and nephews grew up. She continued to play a role in the lives of Pollie’s children too who she had cared for after their father died, thirty years ago. She also visited her brothers’s families, sometimes staying with them for weeks. 

In 1928 Charlotte died from cancer. She died at the home of her oldest daughter, Dots, in Kadina. Lottie moved to live with Dots and stayed there until she too died in 1935. 

Lottie’s was a life of service to her family. Families needed extra female hands especially to care for aged parents and when tragedy struck, as it did in this family, with the deaths of Charles Burnett and then Theo. In a time before social services it was down to the family to look after one another. Often this fell to single women like Lottie. Who knows what she might have done with her life had she had the opportunity.