The Milliner of Walcott Street
Christina Annie ‘Chrissie’ Cadden
1899–1984
A Victoria Park milliner, married by her cousin’s husband at Perth’s Congregational church to an Adelaide-born commercial traveller — and then fifty years in one house on Walcott Street.
- Born
- 1899 · Victoria Park, Western Australia
- Died
- 26 February 1984 · Perth, Western Australia
- Married
- Clarence Richard Butterfield Lamb (m. Perth, 1927)
- Trade
- Milliner
- Lived
- ~84 years
Christina Annie Cadden — Chrissie, or ‘Chriss’ — was born at Victoria Park in 1899, the first of the children born in the suburb that would be the family’s home for half a century, and sharing her name with her father’s mother and sister, both Christina.1 By her twenties she was a milliner, still living at home at 29 King George Street.2
The wedding
On Saturday 17 September 1927 Chrissie, twenty-seven, married Clarence Richard Butterfield Lamb, thirty, a commercial traveller, at Trinity Church in St George’s Terrace — the city’s principal Congregational church. The minister who took their declarations the day before and married them was the Rev. Ernest Bryant, husband of Chrissie’s cousin Faith Poole, and the family’s minister in all but name: nine years later he would bury her mother. One of the two witnesses was ‘E. M. Cadden’ — her younger sister May.2
The certificate also gives her father’s occupation, unexpectedly, as ‘carpenter’ — the last of John Mitchell Cadden’s trades, after tinsmith, miner, policeman, cabman and orchardist, and the reason his death certificate would call him a retired builder.2
Clarence Lamb
Clarence was born on 4 September 1896 at Parkside, Adelaide, the son of Richard Butterfield Lamb and Hannah Gleadon Young; ‘Butterfield’ was his father’s middle name before it was his, and he would pass it on.3 By 1915 his father was dead and his mother had brought the family to Perth. In May that year, eighteen and a warehouseman’s assistant at Mount Hawthorn supporting his widowed mother, he signed an AIF attestation that was never proceeded with; two years later, on 20 May 1917, he attested again at the Blackboy Hill recruiting tent as No. 7259, for the 51st Battalion reinforcements and later the AIF Pay Corps.4 In 1925 he was living with his mother and Myrtle Alma Lamb, a State school teacher, at 194 Stirling Street, East Perth, already a commercial traveller.5
Walcott Street
Their only child, Mervyn Butterfield Lamb, was born in 1929.6 By 1936 the family was settled on Walcott Street, on the Maylands–Mount Lawley boundary, at the house the rolls number 280 and then, for the rest of its life, 288; Clarence was a traveller all his working life, and Mervyn grew up there to become a bank officer.5 In 1936 Chrissie stood among the chief mourners at her mother’s funeral, ‘Mrs. C. R. B. Lamb, Mt. Lawley’.7
Clarence died on 16 June 1963. In December 1964 Mervyn, thirty-five, married Janet Diane Hoskins, a stenographer from Mount Hawthorn, at Joondanna.56 Chrissie stayed on at 288 Walcott Street — still there on the roll of about 1980, now under the suburb name Menora — more than fifty years in one house, as her father had been forty at King George Street. She died on 26 February 1984 and is buried with Clarence at Karrakatta.58 Mervyn died in 2015 and Janet in 2018; both are at Pinnaroo Valley Memorial Park.6
The Record
Sources & References
- 1
Birth
WA BDM birth index, reg. 3720/1899: Christina Annie Cadden, born Victoria Park, father John Mitchell Cadden, mother Annie Pearce.
- 2
Marriage, 1927
WA certificate of marriage (R.G. 1), with declarations before the minister, 16 September 1927: married 17 September 1927, Trinity Church, St George’s Terrace, Perth, Congregational rites, after banns, by E. Bryant; Clarence Richard Butterfield Lamb, 30, bachelor, commercial traveller, born Parkside, South Aust., of 14 Victoria Avenue, Perth, father Richard Butterfield Lamb (deceased), mother Hannah Young; Christina Annie Cadden, 27, spinster, milliner, born Victoria Park, of 29 King George St, Victoria Park, father John Mitchell Cadden, carpenter, mother Annie Pearce; witnesses L. L. Huntley [?] and E. M. Cadden.
- 3
Clarence’s birth
South Australian birth index, vol. 591, p. 159: Clarence Richard Butterfield Lamb, born 4 September 1896, Parkside (reg. Adelaide), father Richard Butterfield Lamb, mother Hannah Gleadon Young.
- 4
Two attestations
AIF attestation papers: (1) 19 May 1915, unnumbered — Clarence Richard Butterfield Lamb, born Parkside, 18, warehouseman assistant, next of kin mother Hannah Lamb, Fairfield St, Mt Hawthorn; pay allotted to his widowed mother. (2) NAA: B2455, LAMB C R B, No. 7259, 20 May 1917, Recruiting Tent, Blackboy Hill — born Parkside, Adelaide; warehouseman; next of kin mother Hannah Lamb, North Perth; citizen forces; unit annotations 51st Bn and AA Pay Corps (page 1 only seen).
- 5
Electoral rolls, 1925 – c. 1980
Commonwealth electoral rolls, Western Australia:
- East Perth, 1925: Lamb, Clarence Richard Butterfield, 194 Stirling street, traveller; Lamb, Hannah, home duties; Lamb, Myrtle Alma, State teacher.
- Maylands, 1936: Lamb, Christina Annie, and Clarence Richard Butterfield (traveller), 280 Walcott street.
- North Perth (undated, c. 1940s and c. 1950s): Christina Annie, Clarence Richard B. (traveller) and Mervyn Butterfield (bank officer), 288 Walcott street, Mt Lawley.
- North Perth (c. 1975–85): Lamb, Christina Annie, 288 Walcott St, Menora, home duties.
- Mt Hawthorn (c. 1960–64): Hoskins, John Albert (joiner), Janet Diane (stenographer) and Nora Edna, 61 Sasse Avenue.
- 6
Mervyn and Janet
Family records: Mervyn Butterfield Lamb married Janet Diane Hoskins, 5 December 1964, Joondanna, WA. Pinnaroo Valley Memorial Park, Padbury: Mervyn Butterfield Lamb, 1929 – 7 August 2015; Janet Lamb, 1940 – 2 November 2018.
- 7
Her mother’s funeral, 1936
The West Australian, 18 June 1936, p. 1: ‘Chriss (Mrs. C. R. B. Lamb, Mt. Lawley)’; funeral report: chief mourners include ‘Mesdames James, Lamb and Meatchem (daughters)’.
- 8
Deaths
Karrakatta Cemetery and Crematorium: Clarence Richard B. Lamb, died 16 June 1963; Christine [sic] Annie Lamb, died 26 February 1984.