Annie Fawcett Story, 1888

 

Annie Fawcett Story, from The New Idea, 6 July 1903, p. 52.

Annie Fawcett Story arrived in Sydney with her husband, Wilson, and eight children in January 1882.[i] The details of Annie’s life before she came to Sydney are sketchy. From her own account she was both a trained and experienced cook, although not trained as a teacher. She was a graduate of the National Training School at South Kensington and had worked in a large catering firm in London under the guidance of ‘one of the best cooks in London at the time’.[ii]

Why the family should decide to travel to Australia is not recorded but it seems it was not necessarily her intention to become a teacher. Wilson took up employment as a hired broker and in October 1883 the Storys’ commenced a catering business.[iii] In March 1884 they filed for voluntary sequestration with debts of £1220.7.0. The business ran into trouble almost immediately so that by January 1884 the Story’s had ceased trading while they endeavoured to arrange finance and entered into negotiations to form a company and/or sell the business. In the interim Wilson also lost his position as a broker. It was the collapse of this enterprise, and possibly the breakdown of her marriage to Wilson, which prompted Annie to apply for the position of teacher of domestic economy and cookery at the Sydney Technical College when it was advertised in May 1884.[iv]

Annie was subsequently appointed to teach domestic economy at the Hurlstone College in 1886 and in 1888 she resigned from her position at the Technical College. [v] From now on she focused on the future of cookery and domestic economy in the public school system, but overall, 1888 was not a good year for Annie.

 

At the Exhibition of Women’s Industries

The Exhibition of Women’s Industries was the initiative of the wife of the governor of New South Wales, Lady Carrington. Held in the old exhibition buildings in Prince Alfred Park, Sydney, in October 1888, the event was intended as both a vehicle to raise money for the Queen’s Jubilee Fund for Distressed Women and an opportunity to display the variety of work performed by women. The aim of the display was to demonstrate ‘the standard of excellence to which [women] have attained in the several useful and ornamental arts to which they have devoted their attention’ with the object of also illustrating the ‘various methods by which women can earn their livelihood’.[vi] The Exhibition set out to both idealise and legitimise women’s work, which was divided across seven departments, needlework and lace, knitting, domestic industries (which included cookery and laundry work), mechanical work, educational, horticulture and floriculture and fine arts. Each division had its own committee who organised the display and set the rules for the competitions associated with their department. Each department was also represented by a delegate on the main organising committee.

Such an exhibition which set out to respect the often invisible work performed by women and highlight the contribution women could make to the paid workforce would appear to have offered an ideal platform for women such as Annie. As someone who was promoting domestic work as a worthy discipline, who was a champion of the legitimacy of domestic industry, and was committed to the education of women in domestic duties, Mrs Story might seem a logical inclusion in the team tasked with running the department of Domestic Industries. As a working woman, earning her own living and supporting a family, Annie might also welcome an initiative that represented paid work for women as an honourable endeavour which could act to diminish the ‘reproach which at present attaches to an educated woman who earns her bread’.vii]

As it happened however the Exhibition committees were not comprised of working women. Although intended to be representative of all women, the principal organisers were genteel ladies, wives of prominent men such as politicians, judges, merchants, and aldermen. The delegate for Domestic Industries was Mrs Carl Fischer, socialite, wife of a prominent businessman, and music and drama critic writing for the Sydney Morning Herald and Sydney Mail, who would later also edit the ladies’ page of the Sydney Mail.[viii] Mrs Fischer was supported by her daughter, Gertrude, who was appointed secretary to the division.

Mrs Fischer’s committee was also tasked with staging two demonstrations of cookery each week and with the running a working kitchen which supplied the refreshment rooms at the Exhibition, providing luncheons, tea, and both private and public dinners. Miss Ramsay Whiteside, who had been teacher at the first government school of cookery and was now giving private cooking lessons, was engaged to provide the demonstrations and Annie Fawcett Story was appointed to be the cookery superintendent in charge of the kitchen, with a Mrs Toohey as head cook. In this role, Annie was to coordinate a ‘staff of enthusiastic workers, who while thoroughly enjoying the bright side of life feel that pleasure in the ordinary acceptation of the word is not their chief good, and who are glad to contribute their share to the exhibition in a branch of work which many most erroneously consider beneath the attention of a gentlewoman.’[ix] Many of the women involved with manning the refreshment rooms were also involved in the cookery competitions and the ‘good things’ they produced there were ‘afterwards dispensed to parties in the dining room’.[x] The opening ceremony of the Exhibition was held on Wednesday, 3 October.[xi] Before the end of the first week Annie had resigned from her position.

For various reasons the structure of the Exhibition of Women’s Industries (combining displays, the sale of goods and competition) had been criticised from the very beginning.[xii] Once it was underway the fault finding continued. In a report published the day after the opening, the Evening News claimed that the enterprise as a whole ‘seems to be less an exhibition of women’s industry than of women’s vanity and snobbery’ and went on to elaborate:

It is evident from the moment the project–in itself a laudable one–was mooted, it was fastened on to by society hangers-on as a medium for the exercise of cheap benevolence; and accordingly we have a whole troop of Darling Point and other fashionable dames and damsels masquerading as philanthropists in the character of amateur shopkeepers.[xiii]

The paper scoffed that whole undertaking ‘has been selfishly monopolised by society butterflies of the most pronounced jingo breed’ and derided it as ‘a movement not so much for the benefit of deserving poor women as for the glorification of undeserving rich ones.’

The following Tuesday a letter to the editor, from an anonymous writer complained of disorder, discord and discontent, concerts without programmes, a lack of chairs, a bewildering catalogue and ‘dinners that are uneatable’.[xiv] The next day, Wednesday 10 October, the Evening News reported a rumour concerning a dinner held in conjunction with the Exhibition under the headline:

AMATEUR COOKS AND COOKERY 
FAILURE OF A DINNER
MISMANAGEMENT AND RESIGNATIONS[xv]

The article claimed the cook and her assistants were all ‘distinguished members of society’, as were the guests, but the dinner was ‘so badly cooked that the guests could not eat it, and went to their homes hungry’. The writer supported the veracity of this gossip by publishing a copy of Annie’s letter, dated October 9, announcing and justifying her resignation, which was also printed in full in the Daily Telegraph: 

Sir, Will you allow me as a public servant to explain to the public my reasons for withdrawing from the superintendence of the Cookery Department at the Women’s Industrial Exhibition. Under the system in force I saw no chance of giving satisfaction to customers, justice to competitors, advantage to the fund, or of furthering and elevating the art of cookery. The probable reverse of these pleasant results of very arduous labor was, however, plainly visible, and still more patent was the fact that I could not retain my position together with a shred of dignity or self-respect. To an amateur playing at work these things matter nothing once the exhibition is over, but to a worker of my professional status they become of serious importance and their effect remains.
Having foolishly allowed myself to be placed in a false position under amateur managers, I abandoned it when it became untenable and intolerable.[xvi]

That Annie felt it was necessary to emphatically and publicly explain her actions is testament to how invidious she felt her position to be. 

Aside from openly reproving the organising committee for their amateurism and incompetence and accusing them of injustice to the competitors, by specifically drawing attention to the gulf between women playing at being workers and women who regarded themselves as professionals, she undermined the whole premise of the Exhibition.[xvii] As someone who, by her own admission, never expected to have to earn her own living and was reputedly ‘contemptuous of colonial ways’ it is easy to imagine that Annie found dealing with the untrained society ladies of Sydney’s ‘uppertendum’ galling and ‘intolerable’.[xviii] There is no record of how this very public condemnation of the Exhibition by someone who had been directly involved was received by the organising committee, although it can hardly have been welcome.

 

While publicly Annie was defending her professional status, in private she faced the challenge of caring and providing for her still young family. Perhaps anxiety over her financial situation helped to make her especially sensitive to any tarnishing of her public reputation. While weathering the turmoil of the Exhibition she was also being chased around Sydney by collectors trying to serve her with a bankruptcy notice for debts of £386.6.2.[xix] Annie owed money to a number of businesses as well as to friends and colleagues, including Mr S. H. Martin, her soon to be son-in-law, Edward Betts, the superintendent of the Gladesville asylum, L. Henry, of the Technical College Pitt Street, and Mr H. D. Portus, of the Newcastle Steam Ship Company, father of her protégés Mabel and Eva Portus whom she had trained at the Technical College.[xx] To have been extended so much credit, Annie was either very well regarded or very persuasive. Nonetheless she was not keen to take responsibility for her debts and although the bankruptcy notice was issued on 13 October it was not served until sometime in November. 

 

Annie continued with the Department of Public Instruction in New South Wales for another seven years, establishing the curriculum for cookery education in the public school system, training teachers of cookery and battling with the male dominated bureaucracy, which is a whole other saga. Finally retiring due to ill health at the end of 1895, she then took her vision for cookery education to Victoria where she was engaged by the Department of Education from 1898 until 1903. In December of that year, she sailed for South Africa to join other members of her family.[xxi] Annie Fawcett Story died in Cape Town on 11 February 1911.[xxii]

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[i] Sheila Tilse, 'Story, Ann Fawcett (1846–1911)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/story-ann-fawcett-8688. The manifest for the Forfarshire (http://marinersandships.com.au/1882/01/061for.htm) lists Wilson F. Storey, 40, farrier and cleaner; Annie 35; Fanny 11; Philip 8; Edith 7; Harold 6; Cecil 5; Mark 4; Dorothea 2; and Magdaline 13. The family surname is regularly spelt both Storey and Story. Annie herself spelt her surname without the ‘e’.

[ii] Daily Telegraph, 10 January 1891, p. 5, ‘Practical Cookery. A chat with Mrs Fawcett Storey’; Argus (Melb.), 23 March 1899, p. 7, ‘A National System of Cookery. An interview with Mrs Fawcett Story’.

[iii] Museums of History NSW-State Archives (hereafter MHNSW-St. Ac.) NRS-13654-1-[2/10053]-18651. STORY, WILSON FAUCETT (Insolvency Index).

[iv] Sydney Morning Herald (hereafter, SMH) 9 May 1884, p. 10. The fate of Wilson Story is unclear.

[v] MHNSW-St. Ac., NRS 4073: Teacher’s Rolls, 1869-1908, Storey, A. H., reel 1993, roll 3, p. 44.

[vi] SMH, 1 October 1888, p. 8. ‘Exhibition of Women’s Industries’; Sydney Mail and NSW Advertiser, 6 October 1888, p. 713. 

[vii] SMH, 25 August 1888, p. 2, ‘The Exhibition of Women’s Industries’. 

[viii] Patricia Clarke, Pen Portraits: women writers and journalists in nineteenth century Australia (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1988) pp. 116-118. 

[ix] Daily Telegraph (Syd.), 15 September 1888, p. 5 ‘Exhibition of Women’s Industries’.

 

[x] Daily Telegraph, 5 October 1888, p. 5 ‘The Women’s Exhibition’. SMH 23 October 1888, p. 2, advertising meals at the exhibition, table d’hote served 1 to 2.30 pm; high tea from 5.30 to 7 pm, private dinners by special arrangement at 24 hours notice.

[xi] Daily Telegraph, 3 October 1888, p. 5. ‘The Women’s Exhibition. Opening Day.’ 

[xii] For a thorough scholarly discussion of the Exhibition of Women’s Industries see Martha Sear, ‘Unworded Proclamations: Exhibitions of Women’s Work in Colonial Australia’, PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 2000.

[xiii] Evening News (Syd.), 4 October 1888, p. 4. ‘The Women’s Industrial Exhibition’.

 

[xiv] Daily Telegraph, 9 October 1888, p. 6. 

[xv] Evening News, 10 October 1888, p. 5 ‘Women’s Industrial Exhibition’. 

[xvi] Daily Telegraph, 10 October 1888, p. 6.

 

[xvii] See Lady Darley’s opening address, SMH, 3 October 1888, p. 6.

[xviii] Never intended to earn own living, MHNSW-St. Ac., NRS 3230, Education Department Files, 20/12605, Cookery 1882-1892, Annie Fawcett Story to Undersecretary, 18 August 1892; contemptuous of colonial ways, NRS 3230, 20/12605, report by Mrs Edgeworth David, examiner in domestic economy, March 1888; ‘Uppertendum’ Evening News, 11 October 1888, p. 4 ‘The Failure in the Park’.

[xix] MHNSW-St. Ac., NRS -13655-1-[10/22553]-961 (Bankruptcy Index), Storey, Annie Fawcett. File no. 961, date of sequestration 28.02.1889. Place Neutral Bay.

[xx] Sam H. Martin married Magdalene Story, SMH, 9 February 1889, p. 1. 

[xxi] Arena-Sun (Melb.), 19 December 1903, p. 3. Her daughter Fanny and Dorothea had already left for South Africa, SMH, 9 April 1903, p. 9. It is likely other members of her family were also already in Africa, Annie’s son Mark drowned in the Zambesi River, SMH, 23 January 1912, p. 8.

[xxii] Died of tuberculosis 11 February 1911, SMH, 28 March 1911, p. 8.