The Painter of Gowrie Street
William Stanley Baldock & Jessie Frances Brooks
1867–1936
The third child — a coach painter who lived and worked on the same short stretch of Gowrie Street, Newtown, for over thirty years; father to nine children, two lost as toddlers, a third who never came home from the war, and six who saw him buried at Rookwood in 1936.
- Born
- 1867 · registered Bathurst
- Died
- 15 April 1936 · Stanmore · buried Rookwood, Church of England section
- Married
- Jessie Frances Brooks, of Mudgee and Armidale, daughter of William Charles Brooks, tanner — married 21 November 1890, Church of St Stephen, Newtown
- Trade
- Carriage/coach painter, Gowrie Street, Newtown — the trade recorded against him from his marriage in 1890 to his death in 1936
- Lived
- 69 years
William Stanley was the third of Alfred and Frances’s twelve children, registered at Bathurst in 1867.1 Unlike his father and eldest brother, who built and sold carriages, William Stanley painted them — “carriage painter” is the trade recorded against him at his own marriage in 1890, and “painter” or “coach painter” is what every later record, down to his death, continued to call him.2 In October 1902 he stood witness, alongside his brother Alfred, at their sister Alice Lilla May’s wedding at Summer Hill,3 and he was among the four sons his father’s obituary named as still living in 1916.4
He married on 21 November 1890, at the Church of St Stephen, Newtown, by the Rev. A. E. Bellingham — Jessie Frances Brooks, the fourth daughter of William Charles Brooks, a tanner, and Janet (née McCloy), of Armidale and, before that, Mudgee, where Jessie herself had been born in 1869. His brother Alfred and a Brooks relative, also confusingly named Jessie Brooks, signed the register as witnesses.2 A notice in the Australian Star a month later gave the date as 20 November rather than the register’s 21st — a small discrepancy this branch has not troubled to resolve.2
The couple set up house on Gowrie Street, Newtown, and stayed there for the rest of both their lives: at No. 114 by 1904, at No. 116 from at least 1907 to 1916, and at No. 110 — the address on his own death notice twenty years later — by 1930.578 It was a single working life spent within a few doors of itself.
Nine children were born to them between 1891 and 1911, all registered in the Newtown district.5 The eldest, a son always called after his father, was born in 1891 and died in 1894, not yet three years old; the second, a daughter, was born in 1895 and died in 1897, not yet two.517 Both are remembered on the family headstone only by their pet names, “Stanley” and “Winnie” — the “infant children” of the inscription, though each had in fact lived long enough to be walking and talking before they were lost.
The third-registered child, Harold Roy, was killed at Bullecourt on 3 May 1917, aged twenty, and the family headstone remembers him — under his familiar name, not his baptismal one — as “Roy,” alongside the brother and sister who had died young twenty years before.1114 He is missing from among the six children named in his father’s death notice twenty years later. His own page, above, tells the fuller story: a photo-engraver who added two years to his age to enlist, and his mother Jessie’s long and increasingly anguished correspondence trying to learn his fate.
Six children did outlive their father — Gertrude Eileen (b. 1898), Alfred Charles (b. 1901), the twins Frances Jessie and Janet C. (b. 1905), Queenie (b. 1907), and the youngest, David Keith (b. 1911) — each with a page of their own, above.
William Stanley died at Stanmore on 15 April 1936, aged sixty-nine. His death notice named Jessie as his widow and Eileen, Alfred, Jessie, Janet, Queenie and Keith as his surviving children;11 his funeral, two days later, left the family home on Gowrie Street for the Church of England section of Rookwood, and drew his own surviving siblings — George, the unmarried Maud, and his sisters Violet Funnell, Ada Robens and Alice Healy — alongside his children and their spouses.12 Probate was granted that June, his occupation recorded on the file simply as “old coach painter.”15 Jessie outlived him by eighteen years, dying at Enmore on 11 February 1954 and returning to lie beside him.16 Their shared headstone at Rookwood — “my husb[and] & father” — carries, in the end, a full accounting of the family: the couple themselves, the son taken by the war, and the two young children lost in the family’s first years on Gowrie Street.14
The Next Generation
The Children
Nine children in all, born at Newtown between 1891 and 1911 — two lost as toddlers within the family’s first years on Gowrie Street, a third killed in the war, and six who grew up, married, and eventually saw their father buried at Rookwood in 1936.
William Stanley Baldock jr 1891–1894
The eldest child, born within a year of his parents’ marriage — died not yet three years old, and remembered on the family headstone only by his pet name, “Stanley.”
Read their storyWinifred Grace Baldock 1895–1897
The second child — died not yet two years old, the same year her brother Harold was born, and remembered on the family headstone only by her pet name, “Winnie.”
Read their storyHarold Roy Baldock 1897–1917
The third of William Stanley and Jessie Baldock’s nine children — a photo-engraver who added two years to his age to enlist, and was killed on a fatigue party at Bullecourt the following year. What survives instead of a grave is his mother’s own four-year correspondence, asking a distant government office what had become of her son.
Read their storyGertrude Eileen Baldock 1898–1981
Married a Cremorne bricklayer in 1921 and stayed in the same house on Young Street for the rest of both their lives — sixty years, into her own final electoral roll.
Read their storyAlfred Charles Baldock 1901–1976
A carter still living at his parents’ home into his thirties — twice married, the second time exactly eight years to the day after the first, and the marriage that held.
Read their storyFrances Jessie Baldock 1905–1958
Married first — if only by four days before her twin, Janet — and ended her life a long way from Newtown, at Wagga Wagga, where both she and her husband are buried.
Read their storyJanet Christina Baldock 1905–1994
One of the 1905 twins — an electrical fitter, a striking trade for a young woman of the period, who married four days after her sister and eventually settled on the Central Coast.
Read their storyQueenie Baldock 1907–1985
Married a labourer known to the family as "Jack" in 1930 — six children followed, and two of them died within a month of each other in 1939, of diphtheria, a disease their baby sister survived only because she, unlike them, had been immunised.
Read their storyDavid Keith Baldock 1911–1958
The ninth and last child — twice married, a Second A.I.F. soldier, and dead suddenly at forty-six, leaving behind two families from two marriages.
Read their storyApril 15, 1936, at Stanmore, William Stanley Baldock, beloved husband of Jessie, and loving father of Eileen, Alfred, Jessie, Janet, Queenie, and Keith, aged 69 years.
The 1939 In Memoriam column
Three years to the day after his death, seven separate notices ran together in the Sydney Morning Herald’s In Memoriam column — one from Jessie herself, and one each from six of his children and their partners: “his loving son and daughter-in-law, Alf and Sylvia”; “Eileen and Don, and grandchildren”; “his loving son, Keith, daughter-in-law, Marge”; “his loving daughter, Janet, Albert, and children”; “his loving daughter, Queenie, Jack and children”; and “his loving daughter, Jessie, son-in-law, Henry, and grandchildren.” Between them, the six notices confirm every spouse named only by first name in his 1936 funeral notice — Sylvia, Don, Marge, Albert, Jack and Henry — and show a family, by 1939, well into its next generation.
The Record
Sources & References
- 1
Birth registration, 1867
NSW BDM birth registration 5784/1867, Bathurst — William S. Baldock, father Alfred, mother Frances E. (Bawn). See the chapter reference list above for the full set of twelve registrations.
- 2
Marriage, 1890
NSW Register of Marriages, District of Newtown, 1890, entry No. 494: William Stanley Baldock, carriage painter, of Newtown, born Bathurst, son of Alfred Baldock (coach body maker) and Frances "Bawn," married Jessie Brooks, of Newtown, born Mudgee, daughter of William Charles Brooks (tanner) and Janet McCloy; married 21 November 1890 at the Church of St Stephen, Newtown, according to the rites of the Church of England, by A. E. Bellingham; witnesses Alfred Baldock and Jessie Brooks. NSW BDM marriage registration 5687/1890. "Baldock—Brooks," Australian Star, 24 December 1890, p. 1: "November 20, at St. Stephen’s Church, Newtown, by the Rev. A. E. Bellingham, W. Stanley Baldock, third son of Alfred Baldock, of Hordern-street, Newtown (late of Bathurst), to Jessie, fourth daughter of Charles W. Brooks, of Armidale, late of Mudgee."
- 3
Marriage of Alice Lilla May Baldock, 1902
NSW Register of Marriages, 1902: Henry Percival Healey married Alice Lilla May Baldock at St Andrew’s Church, Summer Hill, 2 October 1902; witnesses Alfred Baldock and William Baldock.
- 4
Death, obituary and burial of Alfred Baldock, 1916
National Advocate (Bathurst), 28 July 1916, p. 4: obituary naming William among the four surviving sons, Alfred, William, George and Clarence. See the chapter reference list above for the full obituary.
- 5
Birth registrations of the children
NSW BDM birth index, Newtown district, father William S., mother Jessie: William S., 26135/1891; Winifred G., 5884/1895; Harold R., 14803/1897; Gertrude E., 5415/1899; Alfred C., 15305/1901; Janet C., 35958/1905; Frances J., 35957/1905; Queenie, 6076/1907; David K., 43589/1911.
- 7
Trade directory listing, Gowrie Street
Undated trade/street directory (family collection): "Baldock, William Stanley, 116 Gowrie-street, Newtown, carriage painter," listed alphabetically among the Bal- surnames.
- 8
Electoral rolls, 1904–1934
Commonwealth Electoral Roll, Division of Newtown: 1903–04, entry 121, William Stanley Baldock, 114 Gowrie-street, painter. 1913, entries 102–103, Jessie Baldock and William Stanley Baldock, both 116 Gowrie-street, home duties/painter. 1930, entries 231–232, Queenie Baldock (machinist) and William Stanley Baldock (painter), both 110 Gowrie-street. 1933, entries 252–255, and 1934, entries 237–240: Alfred Charles Baldock (carter), David Keith Baldock (labourer), Jessie Baldock (home duties) and William Stanley Baldock (painter), all of 110 Gowrie-street, Newtown.
- 11
Death notice, 1936
"Baldock," Sydney Morning Herald, 16 April 1936, p. 10: "April 15, 1936, at Stanmore, William Stanley Baldock, beloved husband of Jessie, and loving father of Eileen, Alfred, Jessie, Janet, Queenie, and Keith, aged 69 years."
- 12
Funeral notice, 1936
"Baldock," Sydney Morning Herald, 16 April 1936, p. 9: funeral to leave his late residence, 110 Gowrie-street, Newtown, for the Church of England Cemetery, Rookwood, Section CCC; mourners named as Mrs Jessie Baldock and Mr and Mrs D. Elliott, Mr and Mrs A. Baldock, Mr and Mrs H. Elder, Mr and Mrs A. Doherty, Mr and Mrs J. Loggan, Mr K. Baldock, Mr G. Baldock, Miss M. Baldock, Mr and Mrs E. Funnell, Mr and Mrs A. Robens, and Mrs L. Healy — the last five being William Stanley’s own surviving siblings.
- 13
In Memoriam notices, 1939
"Baldock," Sydney Morning Herald, 15 April 1939, p. 10: seven separate third-anniversary notices — from his widow Jessie; "his loving son and daughter-in-law, Alf and Sylvia"; "Eileen and Don, and grandchildren"; "his loving son, Keith, daughter-in-law, Marge"; "his loving daughter, Janet, Albert, and children"; "his loving daughter, Queenie, Jack and children"; and "his loving daughter, Jessie, son-in-law, Henry, and grandchildren."
- 14
Headstone, Rookwood
Cemetery transcription and photograph (family collection), Rookwood General Cemetery, Church of England (Old), Row 15: "In loving remembrance of my dear husband and our father, William S. Baldock, died 15th April 1936, aged 69 years; also Roy Baldock, [inscription partly illegible], aged 20 years; also infant children Stanley & Winnie." Denomination recorded as Old Church of England; inscription "my husb[and] & father."
- 15
Probate / death duty index card
NSW probate index / death duty card, No. 502403: Baldock, William Stanley, of Newtown, occupation "old coach painter"; date of death 15 April 1936; date of grant [of probate/administration] 10 June 1936.
- 16
Death of Jessie Frances Baldock, 1954
Jessie Baldock, née Brooks, born 1869, died 11 February 1954, Enmore; buried Rookwood General Cemetery, Cumberland City Council.
- 17
Death registrations of William S. and Winifred G. Baldock
NSW BDM death index, Newtown district, father William S., mother Jessie: William S., 9430/1894 (born 1891, ref. 5 above — died aged about three); Winifred G., 12841/1897 (born 1895, ref. 5 above — died aged about two).