We publish quality short stories, poetry, extracts from forthcoming novels, and articles and essays on topics of social, environmental and cultural significance.ISSUE NO. 110
SPRING 2007
REVIEWS
Non Fiction
Robyn Mathison
Quaker Life in Tasmania: the first hundred years – Michael Bennett
University of Tasmania Library, 2007This beautifully designed and produced sixty-four page book was developed from an exhibition held in the Morris Miller Library of the University of Tasmania in April 2006.
This library holds a large amount of Quaker historical material in its Special and Rare Materials Collection. The Quaker Collection was formerly held in the Religious Society of Friends’ own library in North Hobart, but in 1971 the then University Librarian Dan Sprod arranged for the transfer of the Quaker historical library to the care of the University.
Also included in the April 2006 exhibition were items of clothing and other articles still held in North Hobart in the Society of Friends’ Meeting House Collection, as well as material from the Friends’ School Archives.
The main text of the book was written by Michael Bennett from the University’s School of History and Classics. The design, photography and picture research was done by Gillian Ward, who curated the exhibition with Zoë McKay.
Quaker Life in Tasmania is lavishly illustrated: in fact, it’s primarily a photo compilation of the 2006 exhibition, with photographs on almost every page. These include extracts of documents and publications; portraits and group photographs of early members of the Quaker and Friends’ School communities; and of other material, including clothing and household artefacts. Most are black-and-white or sepia-toned, but there are five full-colour photos, four of which are reproductions of delicate paintings by Alfred May. All the photographs are clearly identified with informative captions that complement the text considerably.
The book begins with a foreword by University Librarian, Linda Luther, and is then divided into eight sections. The first of these, ‘A World Turned Upside Down’, outlines how the present Religious Society of Friends evolved from a group of ‘free spirits and seekers after the truth’ who gathered around George Fox in England in the seventeenth century. They called themselves The Friends in the Truth and were first dubbed Quakers in 1650 by Justice Gervase Bennet when Fox and his friends, arrested for ‘uttering blasphemous opinions’ bade the bench ‘to tremble at the word of the Lord’. This section also explains religious persecution in England following The Conventicle Act of 1664, which led to William Penn and a group of Quakers setting up their own colony of Pennsylvania in the New World.
‘Practical Religion’ explains how Quakers ‘focused on doing good in the world... with the emphasis on witness and example’ and describes the continuing development of their values of honesty, thrift, modesty and ‘plain dressing’, willingness to work and respect for literacy. The last of these was expressed in individual members’ journals and letters documenting their spiritual lives and the detailed minutes that were kept of meetings, as well as in printed tracts and expositions, such as Robert Barclay’s Apology for the True Christian Divinity (1678), a copy of which, Bennett tells us, Robert Mather brought with him to Tasmania in 1821. This publication explains the ‘doctrine of the Inward Light, the in-dwelling spirit of God in each person’s soul’. It’s this belief that has underpinned generations of Quakers’ support for pacifist and humanitarian causes, from the campaigns against the slave trade and for prison reform in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to the many campaigns they’ve supported, up to the present day.
‘The Conscience of the Colony’ documents the arrival in Tasmania of James Backhouse and George Washington Walker in February 1832 and their travels around the colony, including Flinders Island, and to NSW and Victoria, working wherever they went towards improving conditions for convicts, and for the protection of Aborigines.
‘Friends and Families’ tells of the growth of the Quaker community in Tasmania through the links of marriage and the resulting growth of families, as well as by the admission of converts. The first Meeting in Hobart was held in September 1833. In 1836 Backhouse bought a weatherboard cottage in lower Murray Street, which was the first Quaker Meeting House in Tasmania. The ‘second centre of Tasmanian Quakerism’ was Francis Cotton’s house at Kelvedon near Swansea. From these centres, Friends ‘cultivated networks in Australia and throughout the English-speaking world’ and forged further links when marriage partners were found in other Quaker communities, such as South Australia.
‘Quiet Accomplishments’ records the achievements of individual Friends and their families, from establishment of JB Mather & Son’s and George Washington Walker’s retail clothing stores, to the forming of the first temperance society in Hobart and the setting up of the Hobart Savings Bank (later to become the Savings Bank of Tasmania) in Walker’s draper’s shop in Liverpool Street. George Washington Walker also helped establish Hobart Town High School in 1850. Dr George Story, as well as practising medicine in Swansea, was a geologist and botanist and, as a member of the Royal Society, was in charge of their Hobart gardens, later to become the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens.
‘Questions of Survival’ outlines difficulties Quakers encountered when some members left the colony for the goldfields; and in educating their children in state schools. It tells of the attempts to set up Quaker schools in Hobart and Melbourne and how eventually JF Mather, William May and Francis Cotton were instrumental in setting up The Friends’ School in Warwick Street in January 1887, with Samuel Clemes as the first headmaster. The school moved to North Hobart in 1889 and, though Clemes resigned in 1900, the school continued to flourish.
‘Bearing Witness’ briefly outlines further growth of the Quaker community and its continuing example and influence, from the first Australian General Meeting in 1905, up until the centenary in 1932. In an earlier section, Bennett mentions that JB Mather had refused contracts to supply military uniforms. In this section he tells how Friends continued to uphold their pacifist beliefs by bearing witness during the Boer War; by opposing conscription in World War I; and by undertaking humanitarian work in Germany immediately after that war. The first ‘rest home’ for old people in Hobart was established by the Friend Barbara Barnett in 1922; and the ‘model’ garden suburb of Claremont was built by the Cadbury family to house workers at their factory, which began production in Hobart in the same year.
The book concludes with the brief section ‘The Quaker Collection − A History’, written by Graeme E Rayner, Librarian of the Special and Rare Materials Collection, University of Tasmania Library. This is followed by notes and references and a listing of the four biographical sources.
I was pleased to see in the preliminary pages of Quaker Life in Tasmania that profit from sales of the book will be used to finance a prize or scholarship to enable more historical research using the Quaker Collection. I hope that everyone interested in history will buy this book, so that further work will appear well before the celebration of the Tasmanian Friends’ second centenary in 2032, so that I have the chance to read it. All the fascinating information already researched and produced for us by Michael Bennett and Gillian Ward in this fine little publication has whetted my appetite. I hunger to know more of the Tasmanian Quakers’ story that this book has begun to tell.
ROBYN MATHISON was born in Narrandera, NSW, in 1938. She has lived in Hobart since 1975. She writes poetry, stories and occasional reviews.
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