One of Frederick Bridges’ first acts as Chief Inspector was to set out exactly how he intended Annie should run her department. In a memo dated 20 June 1894, he made it very clear what he expected in order to achieve ‘regular and systematic instruction in cookery':
I have the honor to inform you that, with the view of securing regular and systematic instruction in cookery, The following arrangements have been decided upon:
1. Three terms a year, each of 15 weeks.
2. No week’s teaching is to be broken on account of examination in cookery. All examinations are to be held at the school where the pupils are taught, and in the ordinary hours of instruction.
3. All proposed alterations in the cookery classes, such as discontinuing attendance from one school and introducing pupils from another, must be submitted for the approval of the Chief Inspector no later than the 12th week in each term.
4. Instruction must be confined to the public school course, one term only; all ‘second term’ or ‘honor’ girls must be discontinued forthwith.
5. As there are only a few cookery classes and the number is not likely to be increased in the near future, it is not necessary for the Directress to occupy the whole of her time in examining and supervising work, nor is the expense warranted. The Directress will therefore in future devote at least three days a week to actual teaching.[1]
In addition, he specified that Annie and Fanny were to be held responsible for the work at Fort Street, Hurlstone College and Parramatta Industrial School. When the Directress was absent from Fort Street examining a cookery school, someone should replace her at Fort Street if Fanny was not available.
His ‘arrangements’ imply that Bridges felt that, until now, Annie had been running her own race and organising her time pretty much as she pleased, acting in the role of an administrator rather than a teacher. Bridges was not going to allow this situation to continue. Having established the conditions, ever the stickler for procedure and efficiency, Bridges waited for Annie to contravene them.
Their first contretemps came in December when Bridges wrote to her on the 18th drawing Mrs Story’s attention to the fact that she had not submitted her diaries for the past nine weeks, despite having been reminded to do so.[2] Annie finally replied and her excuses were accepted but she was warned that any future neglect to furnish the diary of her work schedule early in each week would be brought to the minister’s attention.[3]
Next Bridges set about determining exactly how much time Annie spent teaching. He visited Fort Street Model School and found the cookery school closed. He then ascertained from the headmaster there how many days each month the cookery classes were in operation and had a summary of Annie’s diaries prepared.[4] Armed with this information he wrote to Undersecretary Maynard:
It appears from weekly diaries furnished to the Department that the Directress of Cookery does not perform any actual teaching work and has not done any since 12 October 1894.
The Directress has therefore almost entirely disregarded the directions given in paragraph 5 of the official communication dated 20 June 1894 viz: that she should ‘in future devote at least three days per week to actual teaching’. In not one week has 3 days teaching been given.[5]
Bridges also noted that the classes at Fort Street were only held on three days a week when the appointment of Fanny as assistant to her mother in September 1890 had been made on the understanding that the cookery school would be always in operation. He was of the opinion that ‘the present expense of maintaining this cookery school is far too great’ and recommended that Annie’s salary be reduced, ‘having regard to the nature and amount of the duties performed by the Directress’.
Asked to explain herself an angry Annie replied that Bridges had approved classes at Fort Street only being held on three days and invited an investigation into her conduct.[6] If Annie was angry, Bridges was enraged. In his own response to the Undersecretary, he claimed her statement that she had his approval for only three classes a week was not strictly true. He at no time approved of ‘neglecting positive instructions’. He accused Annie of presenting him with ‘a cunningly devised programme’ which resulted in him being ‘entrapped into appearing to approve of only 3 lessons a week at Fort Street’. He went on:
It is absurd for Mrs Story to say that she did not regard the fact of only 3 classes a week at Fort St as a matter to which it was necessary to call special attention. So far back as September 1890 it was expressly decided, in accordance with Mrs Story’s own suggestion, that the Fort St school should be in operation every day, and the continuance of this arrangement was safe-guarded in my letter of instructions dated 20 June 1894.
But apart from the Fort St. work, Mrs Story has neglected a positively enjoined duty – she was by my letter date 20 June 1894 directed to devote at least 3 days per week to actual teaching. The dropping of classes at Fort Street gave her more time to this duty, yet for 3 months she did absolutely nothing.
Pointing out the Annie had only performed 16 days of teaching from 1 July 1894 to 26 April 1895, he recommended that she be censured for neglect of duty and warned that if she continued to flaunt his instructions ‘her services will be dispensed with’.[7] Her Teacher’s Record card confirms that she was duly censured and warned in a memo dated 6 May 1895.
But Bridges was not mollified. He continued to seek explanations as to how Annie used her time, convinced that she spent too much time on administrative matters and adamant that she devote the required three days a week to teaching. In a memorandum to Maynard dated 1 July he accused her of wilfully violating the spirit of his instructions and pointed out that she was receiving the same salary as the Head Mistress of Fort Street School ‘for about one-third of the work, and this easy task she will not perform satisfactorily.’ His final recommendation was that Annie be reminded of the decision taken back in May and ‘informed that it is expected she will loyally carry out the instructions given’.
The feud ended abruptly. In September 1895 Annie advised Maynard that she was intending to retire on the grounds of ill health and applied for 6 months leave of absence. Still Bridges was not prepared to give ground. He advised Maynard that Annie had already had a little over 5 months leave of absence on account of illness in the last four years and in his opinion was not entitled to any more.[8] Finally she was granted 3 months leave on full pay preliminary to her retirement (which came into effect on 31 December 1895) and a retirement gratuity of £132.18.4, equivalent to one month’s pay for each year of service.[9]
Annie Fawcett Story and Frederick Bridges were on a collision course from the very beginning, but there is also some sense that Annie was her own worst enemy. Part of the reason why she could not comply with Bridges demands in the end, despite the fact that she was obviously already unwell, was that she had created a monster for herself. Responsible for the inspection and examination of all the public school cookery classes, visiting country schools, teaching, and a morass of clerical work including setting and marking examination papers, filling out diaries of daily duties, keeping accurate accounts of expenditure and receipts, furnishing reports and answering correspondence, she had taken on more than she could hope to accomplish and still meet the demands of the Department, yet she was unwilling to devolve any of her responsibilities to anyone other than her own daughter or to negotiate more achievable goals. That said, by the time Bridges became Chief Inspector any hope of the two of them negotiating or attempting to repair their relationship seems to have long evaporated.
Bridges was no doubt a hard man to please, but Annie was no shrinking violet. Her tone in correspondence with the departmental hierarchy suggests she was both haughty and wilful with little time for anyone who did not see things her way. On at least one occasion Maynard, then Chief Inspector, advised that it would be unwise to interfere with her recommendations unless very good reasons could be given.[10] Early in Annie’s career Mrs Edgeworth David had suggested that she could try to be more encouraging and politic in the classroom. [11] Annie also showed herself to be less than generous to women like Mrs Ross and Miss Campbell when they applied for jobs at the Technical College, in this case to the advantage of her daughter Fanny. Eleanor Reed resigned from her position at Blackfriars because ‘from Mrs Story’s recent conversation, and past treatment it would be impossible for me to give her satisfaction.’[12] Even Hannah Rankin’s request to be relieved of her duties as teacher of cookery at Balmain and return to an ordinary teaching position intimates that Annie was a very hard task master.[13] Rankin’s request was denied and she continued teaching cookery, eventually inheriting the position left vacant when Annie resigned.
Bridges remained with the Department until his death in 1904, becoming Undersecretary on the retirement of Maynard in 1903.[14] Annie took up the position of Directress of Cookery under the Department of Public Instruction in Victoria in 1898 and opened the first cookery centre in that state, at Queensberry Street State School in April 1899. Here she campaigned hard but ultimately unsuccessfully, for the education of cookery teachers and failed to convince the bureaucracy in Victoria of the need for a college devoted to the teaching of domestic economy.[15] Frustrated and unwell, Annie resigned in 1903 and left Australia to join her daughters in South Africa, where she died of tuberculosis on 11 February 1911.[16]
[1] Museums of History NSW-State Archives (hereafter MHNSW-St. Ac.). NRS 3830, Education Department Files, 20/12607, Cookery 1896-1897, Bridges to Story, 20 June 1894.
[2] MHNSW-St.Ac., NRS 3830, 20/12607, Bridges to Story, 18 December 1894.
[3] MHNSW-St.Ac., NRS 3830, 20/12607, Story to Bridges, 18 January 1895.
[4] MHNSW-St.Ac., NRS 3830, 20/12607, Memo dated 27 March 1895; Return of lessons taught since 4 March 1895, Story to Bridges, 28 March 1895; Headmaster Fort Street Model School to Bridges, 30 March 1895; Story to Bridges, 1 April 1895.
[5] MHNSW-St.Ac., NRS 3830, 20/12607, Bridges to Maynard, 17 April 1895.
[6] MHNSW-St.Ac., NRS 3830, 20/12607 Maynard to Story 18 April 1895; Story to Maynard, 27 April 1895.
[7] MHNSW-St.Ac., NRS 3830, 20/12607 Bridges to Maynard, 2 May 1895.
[8] MHNSW-St.Ac., NRS 3830, 20/12607 Story to Maynard, 24 September 1895.
[9] MHNSW-St.Ac., NRS 3830, 20/12607, Minute Paper to the Executive Council No. 183, 9 October 1895; Colonial Secretary’s Department to Maynard, 16 November 1895; NSW Government Gazette, 29 November 1895, p. 7755.
[10] MHNSW-St.Ac., NRS 3830, 20/12607. Note from Maynard appended to Memorandum to Chief Inspector re. cost of travelling kitchens, 28 August 1891.
[11] MHNSW-St.Ac., NRS 3830, 20/12605, Cookery 1882-1892, Mrs Edgeworth David, Report on Cookery and Domestic Economy Classes, March 1888.
[12] MHNSW-St.Ac., NRS 3830, 20/12606, Cookery 1895, Reed to Johnson, 15 February 1892.
[13] MHNSW-St.Ac., NRS 3830, 20/12606, Rankin to Johnson, 13 May 1893.
[14] For career/obituary see Daily Telegraph, 17 November 1904, p. 5; for funeral see Daily Telegraph 18 November 1904, p. 5 and SMH, 17 November 1904, p. 6.
[15] See James Docherty, The Emily Mac. The story of the Emily Mcpherson College (Melbourne: Ormond, 1981), pp. 2–5; Education Gazette and Teacher’s Aid, July 1900, pp. 12–14; New Idea, 6 July 1903, pp. 51–3, ‘Commonsense in Education’.
[16] Daughters Fanny and Dorothea left for South Africa aboard the Runic in April 1903 (SMH, 9 April 1903, p. 9). Annie left for South Africa on the Wilcannia in December 1903, (Arena-Sun, Melb., 10 December 1903, p. 3). For death see SMH, 28 March 1911, p. 8; The Sun, 4 April 1911, p. 4. Annie Fawcett Story turned 64 in September 1910.