Mrs Ethel Maude Thomas was a former resident of 100 Keightley Rd Subiaco, who formed the Subiaco Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment No 503 in 1933. Mrs Thomas was a nurse in the First World War and founded the WA division of the VAD before the outbreak of the Second World War. She received an MBE in 1961 for services to charitable and social welfare organisations in the State of Western Australia. Mrs Thomas was invited to travel on Subiaco’s last tram in 1958. She was known around the City as Nurse Thomas.
Images
1. Mrs Thomas In Red Cross Summer Uniform 1941
The original black and white photograph shows Mrs E M Thomas in the Red Cross summer uniform. She is wearing a shirt and tie and is hatless. Mrs Thomas sits at a table holding an open book with her left hand, pen poised in the right hand.
Handwritten on the back are the words: "To wish you a lucky year as come too late for birthday wishes, love Ma Thomas".
2. Subiaco Voluntary Aid Detachment Division, Drill Hall, Nicholson Road
Mrs E.M. Thomas, the founder of the detachment, sits in the middle of the front row.
Adelaide Ilya Chugg was born in Subiaco to Simon and Louisa Chugg. The Chuggs lived at 168 Townsend Road, Subiaco and established a business S Chugg & Co. Importers in Railway Road Subiaco, 1897. Adelaide received her teachers diploma from the Trinity College of London in 1937.
In 1979 Miss Chugg donated an outdoor chess table for use in Council Gardens in memory of her father. Miss Chugg and Miss Daglish were invited to open Subiaco Historical Society's Museum in November 1975 by turning a golden key in the door. They were the first people to enter and sign the visitor's book.
Known affectionately as ‘Queenie’, Miss Chugg was the founding Vice-President and later Patron of the Subiaco Historical Society. She gave generously during her life to the museum and her bequest at her death in 1981 to the Museum made the interior refurbishment and new displays possible. Her donations included furniture made from Australian timbers, such as a Tasmanian cedar chest of drawers, a jarrah book shelf, documents, photographs and a set of lace-making bobbins. At the end of the Museum's entrance hall is a glass fronted display case marked by a plaque acknowledging the bequest made by Miss Chugg. The bequest provided for the construction of the display case and also allowed for significant improvements to and refurbishment of, the interior of the Museum, including the restoration of its magnificent jarrah floors.
Images
1. Portrait of the Chugg Family 1923
2. Pair of closed silver grey leather shoes
Shoes worn by Miss Chugg during a visit to Buckingham Palace.
3. Certificate presented to Miss Chugg at opening of Subiaco Historical Museum
4. Tree Society Exhibition, tree planting and Miss Chugg donating chess table for Council Gardens
5. S Chugg Imports Store front
The original sepia photograph has handwritten on the back: 'Addition to the original building, 1908. Simon Chugg in the doorway, Neta & Queenie Chugg in the sulky used for business purposes'.
Alexandra married Mr William Burns in the late 1880’s in Melbourne and moved to Subiaco in 1897 were they lived at 25 Catherine Street. Shortly after, the Burns family entered into a partnership with Mr. S. Mc. Brown and established the bakery of Brown and Burns. After Mr. Brown entered Parliament, the partnership was dissolved and Mrs Burns purchased all interests in the business. Mrs Burns directed the business for many years before taking her sons and daughter into partnership. She remained governing director until her death.
Alexandra was a familiar presence around Subiaco and ardent supporter and worker for the Young Australia League. She was well admired and her funeral well attended according to the West Australian 1938.
Images
1. Portrait Of Mrs Alexandra Burns
2. Mrs Burns On Her Horse
The photograph was taken at Mrs Alexandra MacKinnon Burns' home at 25 Catherine Street, Subiaco, next to the verandah.
3. Cash book - Brown & Burns bakery
Cash book from Brown & Burns Bakery, Subiaco. The entries start off with bread prices from February 1897 and sets out assets and liabilities, revenue and expenditure. The last entry is a balance sheet on May 29th, 1920.
4. Burns Bakery Delivery Carts And Family
Dame Cardell-Oliver was born in Stawell, Victoria, the firth child of an Irish-born storekeeper. Florence met and married her second husband Arthur Cardell-Oliver, a British Army veteran and doctor by whom she had two sons, in London. They migrated to Western Australia in 1912 where they settled at York and then at Albany.
Florence was President of the Western Australian Nationalist Women's Movement and travelled across Australian during World War I addressing the recruitment meetings. On her husband’s death she returned to Western Australia and became vice-president of the State branch of the Nationalist Party. Florence travelled widely as a spokesperson against the spread of communism including the 1935 congress in Istanbul of the International Suffrage Alliance of Women as a delegate from the Australian Federation of Women Voters.
Cardell-Oliver returned to the Western Australian Legislative Assembly's in February 1936 as the Nationalist member for Subiaco. She was appointed honorary minister in 1947, minister for supply and shipping in 1948 and then minister for health in 1949, when she became the first woman in Australia and the oldest person in WA to obtain full cabinet rank. In office she sponsored the Free Milk and Nutritional Council, and introduced a free-milk scheme for Western Australian schoolchildren. She brought the State to the forefront of anti-tuberculosis campaigns by legislating for compulsory chest X-ray examinations.
She was a member of the Victoria League, the Royal Institute of Great Britain, and the Karrakatta and Perth clubs, was president of the Women Painters' Society of Western Australia and of the Western Australian Women's Hockey Association, and represented her Subiaco parish on the Anglican diocesan synod. In 1951 she was appointed D.B.E.
Dame Cardell-Oliver died on 12 January 1965 in Subiaco.
Miss Minna Maria Lipfert (1902 – 1959), Miss Olga Gertrude Lipfert (1906 - 1989) And Miss Thekla Elsa Lipfert (1912 - 1989)
Minna, Elsa and Gertrude were the three daughters of the WA Museums famed taxidermist, Otto Lipfert* and his wife Anna. The family lived at 270 York Street, Subiaco and the daughters attended the Subiaco Infants School and Subiaco State School.
Minna was a teacher at Rosalie Primary School for 31 years. A memorial plaque to Miss Lipfert was unveiled in August 1959 at the school in the centre of a grove of trees.
Gertrude attended the School of Domestic Arts and became a dressmaker and professional embroiderer. Many of her samplers and embroidery work are currently on display in the museum’s ‘A Woman's Work; Dressmaking and Handcrafts in Subiaco’ exhibition.
Elsa attended Perth Technical School and received her Commercial Junior Certificate in 1927 from UWA. She went on to work as a private secretary to the Crown Law department.
All three daughters never married and much of their remaining household goods were donated to the museum and form the Lipfert collection.
*Did you know the blue whale skeleton was named Otto after the man who transported the carcass from Albany and prepared it for the Museum?
Images
1. Minna, Bernhard, Elsa And Gertrude Lipfert
The black and white photograph was taken in a garden and shows Minna Lipfert in a floral dress, Bernhard in an open neck shirt and jacket and Elsa in a light coloured frock. They are standing in front of an ivy creeper. Gertrude Lipfert wearing a lacy dress is seated on a chair in front of them. The three ladies are wearing dark coloured shoes with straps across the insteps. On the back of the photograph is pencilled 'We Four'. From the Lipfert home at 270 York Street, Subiaco.
2. Diary of Gertrude Lipfert
3. Certificate: Commercial Junior Certificate, Elsa Lipfert
4. and 5. Certificates: School Of Domestic Art, Gertrude Lipfert