The Weiss Gene

Being the Christmas season I thought I should write about my most memorable Christmas dinner, mainly because I feel the story needs to be preserved for future generations!

After a big lunch with another branch of the family, the extended family was having dinner with my maiden great aunts. Because we generally don't eat too much at Christmas dinner, there was a reasonably small first course. I seem to recall there was some Christmas ham, some sliced and probably lavishly buttered bread stick, some canned beetroot, some tomato, and some cheese, chopped up from a block of cheese. So after that, and after lunch, we were probably full already.

And then my great aunt brought out the dessert. Desserts actually. Nine in total. I have absolutely no recollection as to what they each were, apart from a vague memory of a chocolate and mint something-or-other in a bowl - it's the green of the mint flavouring that I remember. My brother-in-law and my grandmother's cousin decided to try all of them - just because then they could say they had tried nine different desserts at Christmas dinner - which took them quite some time! They probably didn't feel so well afterwards either!

And I feel that Christmas dinner sums up my great aunt, a Weiss, very accurately. She thought it was wonderful - after all she organised it! She's always had a sweet tooth, which is known in our family as "The Weiss Gene". I'd be interested to hear from other Weiss' whether this is a trait in their branch of the family too!

Thomas Wickham

Thomas Wickham (born 23 August 1888, Newtown, NSW, died 22 Feb 1973, Waverley, NSW) was my great great uncle. He was the brother of my Great Nanna.

Thomas was an officer in the NSW Police. I looked up the Registers of Police while I was at State Records the other week. Thomas' service number was 9094. He was accepted into the foot police i.e. not mounted, he was 5'11", 12st 2lbs, blue eyes, fair hair, fair complexion. It was originally noted that he was single, later this was crossed out and "Married" entered instead. His previous calling was wool packer, 6yrs. Religion: Church of England. District: North Eastern. He was made a probationary constable on 26 Apr 1910, an ordinary constable on 28 Apr 1911. He was moved to the Metropolitan District on 6 Jan 1911.

And that was all it had. I assumed that he'd stayed an ordinary constable for the rest of his police career. I was wrong.

Yesterday I decided to delve a little further into his police career because I have a family anecdote about him that I wanted to post. I thought I'd just see if he came up in the historical newspapers on Trove. Yes he does. A lot. It turns out that Thomas ended his police career in 1947, after rising to the rank of Chief Superintendent, and retiring from the position of Chief Superintendent of Crime, Vice and Court Staffs. So he wasn't quite just an ordinary constable for the rest of his police career!

It wasn't until 1921 that Thomas Wickham turned up in the newspapers in relation to his job as a police officer. I'm not sure exactly what path his career took until this time, but by this stage he was already a detective. In 1926 he was one of two detectives appointed to the newly formed Drugs Bureau. He appears to have been promoted to Detective Sergeant later that year. He worked for a good number of years in the Drugs Bureau, and made many many arrests, including Kate Leigh, known as Sydney's "Queen of the Underworld". By 1934 he was in CIB teaching police recruits about court procedures. 1938 saw him promoted to assistant to the chief of CIB, as an Inspector. He was made Chief Metropolitan Licensing Inspector in 1939, and then took charge of the Morality Squad in 1940. He was promoted to Superintendent and became the Chief of the Western Police District, based in Parkes, in 1942. He returned to Sydney in 1942 as Chief of CIB. In 1945 he became Chief Superintendent of Crime, Vice and Court Staffs and was awarded the King's Police Medal for distinguished service in 1946. He retired in November 1947.

After finding all this information on Thomas Wickham in the historical newspapers I decided to Google his name with "police". One of the results that came up was for Underbelly: Razor - my response: "You've got to be joking..." Yes, my great great uncle is being portrayed in the latest series of Underbelly! I haven't watched any of the Underbelly series, Razor being no exception. But apparently Sergeant Tom Wickham, as he is known in the series, is represented as an incorruptible police officer. Glad to hear it! The book from which the series was written, Razor by Larry Writer, gives him a pretty good wrap too. Incidentally, I am quite sure, from the description given in the Registers of Police and knowing the family facial features, that the actor they have playing him looks absolutely nothing like him!

So, finally to the anecdote that Mum told me which first got me looking into Thomas Wickham, NSW Police officer: he shot a hole through the ceiling of my Great Nanna's house at 2 St Clair St, Belmore, when his gun accidentally went off. I'll bet that's one story that wasn't told at his retirement!

Auntie Alice

My great great aunt, Alice Mary Allen nee Merrick (born 1883, Redfern NSW, died 11 Dec 1967, Strathfield NSW), was quite superstitious. Being brought up in a Christian family didn't seem to have had any impact on this and there were a number of rituals that she would perform at times.

The one that has been passed down through family lore is about the new moon. At the time of a new moon she would go out into the backyard and say "Welcome New Moon, welcome New Moon, welcome New Moon" - I'm not sure of the reason why, presumably it ensured good luck. She also believed it was unlucky to look at the new moon through a window - I guess you'd need to keep the curtains tightly drawn! I think my grandmother and her siblings (Alice was their aunt) thought she was rather eccentric. Searching on the internet I found reference to both of these practises in "The peasant speech of Devon, and other matters connected there with" written by Sarah Hewitt, published 1892. Goodness knows how Auntie Alice came to hear about them!

Auntie Alice was a milliner who employed a number of people at her factory in Lakemba. I have tried to find advertisements in historical newspapers for the millinery business but without success. However for her to have employees it must have been reasonably successful. One advantage of having a milliner in the family was that my great aunt, Auntie Alice's niece, had a penchant for hats, and so upon her death there were a large number of once terribly stylish hats passed down for my children and their cousins to use for dress-ups!

Updated to add: I mentioned this to Dad the other day and he commented that the other strange thing Auntie Alice did was to put all the cutlery away in a thunderstorm. Mum said that had been done in her family too!

Frederick and Rosetta Weiss

This photo is the only known photo of Frederick and Rosetta Weiss. Everyone I know who has a photo of them has this one.

My Grandma was young when her grandparents died but she does have some memories of them. She says her grandfather was a little man (as is evident from the photo) and a very godly man. She remembers him sitting in a comfortable chair, with a lectern with a big bible on it. She didn't like having to give him a kiss because of his hairy beard! Grandma remembers her grandmother as quite tall with a lovely happy face (also evident from the photo).

This is the only other photo I have of them (from Rookwood Cemetery):

Uncle Les

My Uncle Les was married to Grandpa’s sister. Uncle Les died in 1977 whilst on holiday in Canada, and I was only 3 so I don’t remember much of him. However I do remember a story that he had a dog called Dopey who was particularly dim. I’ve often wondered whether they changed his name from something like “Rupert” when they discovered how dim he was. Dad thinks he was always called Dopey, so he must have just embodied his name particularly well. The story goes that whenever Uncle Les put on aviator goggles Dopey didn’t recognize him.

Uncle Les and Auntie Gen didn’t have kids. So going to visit Auntie Gen’s house meant a living room stuffed full of furniture (though with exciting exotic things like gramophones) and no toys to speak of. One particular contraption that Auntie Gen had though, which was Uncle Les’, was a small wooden coffin (about 10cm long maximum) which, as I recall, had a wind-up mechanism. When you wound it up the coffin would open and a small skeleton would sit up. Brilliant fun for small children!

Uncle Les was supposedly from New Zealand. I checked the New Zealand births, deaths and marriages records and could find no trace of him. All I knew of his parents were from his engagement notice in the paper, which gave his father as A.F. Davis, of Manly. Uncle Les’ middle name was Alfred, so I wondered if his father’s name was also Alfred. I didn’t have a NSW death record to check for Uncle Les (because he died in Canada), so I couldn’t confirm his dad’s name that way. In the end, I decided to see if there was a birth record for Uncle Les in NSW. Yep. He was born in Manly, in 1903, to Arthur F and Ida M Davis. So he clearly wasn’t from New Zealand! It turns out that his mother was born in Sydney, and his parents were married in Sydney. I haven’t yet been able to work out where his father was born. Perhaps it was New Zealand, though I haven’t found a birth record for him there either.

Supposedly Uncle Les was in the Imperial Forces and entertained the troops during the Second World War. I haven't managed to uncover any actual evidence of this yet, though we do have photos of him in a uniform.

Family legend says that Uncle Les’ dad rode a bicycle from Sydney to Melbourne when he was 80 years old - Grandma certainly remembers him as being very active. Surely something like that might score a write-up in the local newspaper... I searched the historical newspapers on Trove and found an article which stated that he had been involved in a motorcycle accident with a car and had sustained injuries which might have led to the amputation of his foot. At the time he was 76 and believed to be the oldest motorcyclist in NSW. Dad and I guess that he probably rode his motorbike to Melbourne rather than his bike, but I can only assume that his foot wasn't amputated!

Nell Brell's cookies

According to my mother, my Great Nanna, Emily Turnbull nee Wickham (Mum's nanna) loved to cook. Great Nanna's cousin on her mother's side was Alice (Nellie) Stilling. Nellie married Joseph Brell in 1923, and shared one of her biscuit recipes with Great Nanna. Great Nanna passed the recipe on to my mother, and as little kids we often had Nell Brell's cookies.

Nell Brell's cookies

• 250g margarine/butter
• 1 cup caster sugar 2 eggs
• 2 cups self raising flour
• 1 cup fruit (sultanas etc)
• ½ cup dessicated coconut
• crushed cornflakes

Cream butter and sugar, add eggs, then fruit, coconut and lastly flour, stirring to combine.

Roll tablespoons of mixture into balls and then roll them in crushed cornflakes. Place balls on a baking sheet lined with baking paper, leaving space between them for spreading.

Bake at 200°C for about 12 mins or until golden. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet.