Ida May Charlotte Robens

1880–1956

Alice’s closest companion through four households across a quarter of a century — and, on the evidence of one signed postcard, a woman who also went to Queensland on her own.

Sepia postcard portrait of a woman in wire-rimmed spectacles and a pale high-necked blouse, signed across the lower right in ink. — Ida May Charlotte Robens — the postcard portrait sent to her brother Archibald and his wife Ada from Toowoomba, signed across the front

Born: 1880 · Newtown
Died: 10 April 1956
Trade: Home duties
Lived: 75 years

Born at Newtown in 1880, the fifth of the twelve. Her birth registration, 5441/1880, records the name as “Ida Mary C.” — not the Ida May Charlotte she is known by everywhere else.¹ Whether that is a transcription variant, Mary and May being near-identical in a period hand, or something more, no certificate has been ordered to say.

The rolls and directories that follow her spell her Ida May Charlotte consistently, across two decades and four subdivisions, and that is some weight against the registration.² Weight is not proof, and the point stands open.

1930

Two Rolls That Cannot Both Be Right

The earliest confirmed address for Ida as an adult is not with Alice at all. The Bathurst roll of 1930 — dated on its own face — places her at 196 Keppel Street with her widowed mother and her sister Stella, with their brother William Wesley round the corner at 191 Lort Street, saddler.²

A second roll puts her at 8 O’Connell Street, Parramatta, with Alice. The copy held carries no year. It has been read as 1930, and on that reading the two records collide: she cannot have been enrolled at Bathurst and at Parramatta in the same year.³

The Bathurst entry is preferred here for a plain reason. Its year is printed on the roll itself, and the entry sits immediately beside her mother’s and Stella’s, in the sequence 5302 to 5305. The Parramatta household is real, but it is undated, and most likely belongs somewhere between 1930 and 1936. Alice’s own account has carried it as 1930; that should now be read as unconfirmed.²³

Queensland

A Postcard to Archie and Ada

A postcard-format portrait of Ida survives, sent while she was — in her own words — on holidays in Toowoomba, Queensland. She signed it across the front, over her own shoulder. On the reverse she wrote to her eldest brother and his wife.

To Archie and Ada, with all good wishes from their loving sister Ida.

Postcard portrait, undated — private family collection

The card is not dated and the journey is otherwise unrecorded, but it is worth more than its silence suggests.⁴ Every other document that fixes Ida in a place fixes her beside a sister; this one shows her a thousand kilometres from any of them, having her likeness taken, and thinking of Archibald’s household. Her youngest sister Ivy was living in Queensland, and it is possible the two things were one journey — but nothing on the card says so, and it should not be assumed.

1936–1946

Railway Street, and Brookvale

By 1936 Ida was at Railway Street, Baulkham Hills, with their mother, and Alice at Cross Street nearby.⁵ By 1943 their mother was a year dead and Ida was sharing Railway Street with Rhoda instead.⁶ By 1946 she and Alice had moved together again, to 338 Pittwater Road, Brookvale.⁷

Brookvale is worth a moment. Twenty years earlier, in 1926, Ida and Alice had bought two adjoining roods of land at Narrabeen — Ida holding Lot 30, Section 5 of Deposited Plan 1818, in the Parish of Manly Cove.⁸ Brookvale is a few miles down the same road. It is the closest either sister is ever recorded living to the land they had owned for two decades, and there is still no evidence that either of them ever lived on it.

1954–1956

The Roll She Is Not On

When Alice and Rhoda moved into Vera’s house at 28 Sheffield Street, Merrylands, in 1954, Ida did not go with them — or if she did, the roll does not say so. She is simply absent from it.⁹

She was alive; she had two years left. Whether she was living somewhere else, whether she was already ill, or whether she was missed from that one roll, nothing yet found will say. After twenty-five years in which almost every record of Ida is a record of Ida and Alice together, the last of them is a record of Alice without her.

Ida died on 10 April 1956, and was buried at Rookwood.¹⁰¹¹

The Record

Sources & References

1
Birth registration

NSW BDM index, Ida Mary C. Robens, 1880, Newtown, reg. no. 5441; father Thomas Robens, mother Mary Rebecca J. Robens. The registered forenames differ from the “Ida May Charlotte” used in every later record; not yet checked against a certificate.
2
Bathurst, 1930

Commonwealth Electoral Roll, 1930, Division of Macquarie, Subdivision of Bathurst, p. 89, entries 5302–5305 — 196 Keppel Street: Ida Mary Charlotte, Mary Rebecca Jane and Stella Eva Robens; 191 Lort Street: William Wesley Robens, saddler. The year is printed on the roll.
3
O’Connell Street, Parramatta

Commonwealth Electoral Roll, Subdivision of Parramatta, entries 2253–2254 — 8 O’Connell Street, with Martha Alice. The copy held is undated; the household cannot be 1930 if the dated Bathurst roll is correct, and is left unplaced between 1930 and 1936.
4
The Toowoomba postcard

Postcard-format photographic portrait of Ida May Charlotte Robens, signed on the face, with a handwritten message on the reverse to Archibald Thomas Robens and Ada Ellen Baldock. Undated; private family collection.
5
Castle Hill, 1936

Commonwealth Electoral Roll, 1936, Subdivision of Castle Hill, entries 2690–2692 — Railway Street with Mary Rebecca Jane Robens; Martha Alice at Cross Street.
6
Castle Hill, 1943

Commonwealth Electoral Roll, 1943, Subdivision of Castle Hill, entries 2822–2824 — Railway Street with Rhoda Blanche; their mother absent, consistent with her death in 1942.
7
Brookvale, 1946

Commonwealth Electoral Roll, 1946, Division of Warringah, Subdivision of Manly, entries 7659–7660 — 338 Pittwater Road, Brookvale, with Martha Alice.
8
The Narrabeen land, 1926

NSW Land Registry Services, Historical Land Records Viewer — Ida May Charlotte Robens, 1 rood, Lot 30, Section 5, DP 1818, Parish of Manly Cove (Vol./Fol. 510,359, 1926, 126), adjoining her sister’s Lot 29.
9
Absent from Merrylands, 1954

Commonwealth Electoral Roll, 1954, Subdivision of Merrylands, entries 6230–6231 — 28 Sheffield Street records Martha Alice and Rhoda Blanche only. Ida was living, and her absence is not explained.
10
Death

Summary record for Ida May Charlotte Robens, date of death 10 April 1956. An earlier working note gave 9 April; neither is taken from a certificate, and the registration has not been cited directly.
11
Burial

Cemetery records, Rookwood General Cemetery.