Florence Ethel Bayley (1890-1983)

Florence Ethel Bayley (1890-1983) Assistant Secretary, Historical Society of Victoria, 1912-1914

Born on 18 November 1890 at Collingwood, Florence Ethel Bayley was the tenth and youngest surviving child of State School teacher Charles Henry Bayley and his wife Elizabeth Woodbridge Elliot. She was born twenty years after her parents’ marriage, when they were both in their early forties and her oldest sibling Lizzie was eighteen.

Believed to be the first paid employee of the Historical Society of Victoria, Florence began work as assistant to Honorary Secretary A.W. Greig on 2 September 1912.

It is not known how she came to apply for the position, but perhaps it was through connections of her late father, a dedicated freemason who taught at State School 1360 Gold Street, Clifton Hill from 1875 until his death in July 1909 when Florence was nineteen.

This was a part-time position and Florence was employed for three days a week for a total of 7.5 hours at a salary £15 in her first year, rising to £20 in 1914. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday afternoon between two and four thirty she could be found in the rooms the Society shared with the Royal Geographical Society on the 7th floor of the Colonial Mutual Building, 421 Collins Street in the block between Queen and Market Streets.

The Historical Society was just three years old in September 1912 and had moved from place to place in search of a suitable home. The Royal Geographical Society was well established (almost thirty years old) and was able to share its rooms in a secure, modern building in a central location in the CBD with space for the Society’s library and office as well as a suitable meeting room. When Florence took up her position there was plenty of work to be done.

In contrast to most of the Society’s organising committee and the general membership, the on-the-ground team, who dealt with the day-to-day running of the Society, was young. (Florence was twenty-two and Greig was thirty-nine.) In addition to assisting Greig, Florence worked with the Honorary Librarian, Cecil Harper, and helped compile a card index to the Society’s collection.

In September 1914, after two years in the role, Florence resigned. The reasons for her resignation were not recorded. Electoral rolls indicate that from then until the end of the decade she worked as a milliner so it is possible that this was also her trade during her employment with the Historical Society. Given that her commitment to the Society involved only three afternoons a week she had plenty of time to undertake other paid work.

The Bayley family had a long connection to the Collingwood/Abbotsford area, but after her father’s death in 1909 they moved to Clifton Hill then Northcote. By the early 1930s Florence, who did not marry, returned to Abbotsford. After her mother’s death in 1939 aged 90, she, like many single women of the time, with limited incomes and living lives independent of their families, moved from place to place until the 1960s when she took up residence at the Judge Book Memorial Village at Eltham, her home until her death in 1983 aged 92.

She is buried in the Church of England section of Boroondara Cemetery, Kew, with her father.

Cheryl Griffin, January 2021

Image : The first entries Florence Bayley made in the 1912 index to RHSV inward correspondence. (RHSV Archives)

Sources:

RHSV Archives – Council Minutes, 10 July 1912, 10 September 1914; Annual Reports, year ending 30 June 1913 and year ending 30 June 1915

Victorian electoral rolls, 1903-1980

Victorian birth, death, marriage indexes

Marriage certificate of Charles Henry Bayley and Elizabeth Woodbridge Elliott, 29 December 1870. (106/1871)

Sands and McDougall street directories

Ancestry family trees

Cemetery records – Boroondara, Melbourne General Cemetery

Education Department of Victoria career records for Charles Henry Bayley, teacher number 183 and Elizabeth Woodbridge Elliott (later Bayley), teacher number 742. Teacher records, VPRS 13579/P2, Public Record Office of Victoria

Age, 11 May 1901, 16 March 1938, 26 October 1939

Argus, 16 February 1872, 7 July 1877, 10 December 1885, 3 November 1900, 1 July 1905, 12 July 1909, 19 February 1916, 5 September 1936

Hamilton Spectator, 13 March 1879

Portland Guardian, 17 March 1890

And thanks to fellow volunteer John Rose who provided much of the information on this early period of the RHSV’s history from material he gathered from the Society’s archives.