Eliza Hodge (nee Evans; 1846 - 1932)


Eliza Evans was born on the 10th June, 1846, in Lancashire, England. We are not sure why Eliza stayed in England when her mother and baby brother came to Australia, but believe that she left London on the 15th July, via Plymouth on the 26th July 1861. Eliza arrived in South Australia on the "Blackwall" on the 24th October, 1861, with Mr. & Mrs. Carrington Smedley, and their family of Harriet, Ann, Maria and Samuel.

Eliza married Francis Daniel Hodge, second son of Matthew Henry Hodge and Eleanor Honeyman Payne, on the 10th June 1866 at the residence of her grandfather, Rev. Henry Cheetham.

Children born to Eliza and Francis were:

Francis Hodge was connected with the Bank of South Australia so Eliza and Francis were moved around the State of S.A. He was manager of the branches of Robe and Gawler.  Three of their sons were born at Robe. After leaving Robe in 1880 they lived at Gawler where their last 2 sons were born. Their last home was at what was then the North East Road, Medindie, now Northcote Terrace.

Francis died 19th November 1894 at Medindie.   Ellie died 18th July 1932 at Millswood, SA.   They are both buried at the North Road Cemetery, Medindie.

Parents




Uncle Lloyd Reminisces

Home life was ordered, easy and pleasant. Father was a senior officer in the Bank of Adelaide (Bank of Australia M.H.) He had been a branch manager in various country centres and now was in some administrative position in the Head Office. What that position was exactly I never knew, but on reflection, he must have received a pretty good salary to maintain the menage that I remember, and to keep at least seven children at expensive schools.

He was a kindly man, wearing the full square beard of the period, together with the belltopper and frock coat upon which no doubt bank etiquette insisted. He was reserved and rather distant towards his numerous progeny. We did not fear him so much as respect him - awe rather than love perhaps. I never saw him with dirty hands and never heard him utter an oath and I never remember him other than dignified. On the other hand he would frequently unbend and enjoy jokes quite freely at the meal-table.

To me, the youngest, he would very occasionally become suddenly demonstrative - rather as one might to a family pet - and while I received this gratefully I would feel a little uncertain about its permanence.

It has become a sort of fashion nowadays to speak of the Victorians as hypocrites, wearing out the knees of their pants on Sundays and the seats on the other six days - backsliding. I cannot from experience agree with this. Father and mother were average middle class people who came on both sides from parsonages, father's father was a Congregational Minister, and mother's grandfather also. So it was not surprising that at home the day commenced with family prayers. The cook preparing breakfast, the maids doing whatever maids did at that time of the morning, the man, possibly cleaning boots; all dropping the job - however inconvenient it may have been - to attend family prayers, and listen to father's grave tones - "... the life everlasting, Amen".

These people had implicit faith. They believed in Heaven and Hell, and they lived better lives than we do today. Nothing much had occurred at that time to shake their faith. world wars were unknown. Socialism in the guise of "Jack's as good as his master" had not reared its ugly head to any extent. Science had not seriously challenged. Material values were, in the main, secondary to spiritual values and the solid virtues were strenuously upheld by public opinion. A man's work was assessed more by his integrity than by his bank balance.

Mother was past 45 when I first became conscious of her as a person. A pleasant fresh-complexioned woman with iron-grey hair that had a natural kink to it, and invariably topped by one of those caps they always wore in the house. Those caps, a fashion now gone, may be recalled if one remembers certain old pictures of Queen Victoria. Mother was probably attractive as a young girl. To me, she represented benevolent authority and the court of final appeal. I was dressed, washed, and fed by a bustling little woman known in those times as a "lady help", who by the way, afterwards married my brother Bert. Her function appears to have been a mixture of housekeeping and looking after the younger children.

As a consequence, mother was not as intimately close as she otherwise might have been. I think that mothers who are obliged to delegate the care of their young children to paid help, inevitably lose something thereby. Meanwhile she directed a large household very efficiently without have to roll up her own sleeves or to scrub floors. No doubt she had a pretty busy life with nine surviving children, five servants, and a husband whose hands were always immaculate, to say nothing of social obligations which were considerable.

Speaking of these social activities, I remember being fascinated to watch while mother dressed to go calling as it was called. Woollens ankle to neck, starched slips, bodices and drawers, the latter elaborately frilled. Stays that required outside help to lace up. Black cashmere stockings kept up by garters, followed several petticoats, the top one being of heavy black silk. And then over these many layers, a most elaborate black silk gown fastened with innumerable hooks and eyes and rows of small buttons. So many buttons! All of these was but the foundation however, the Christmas tree without candles or tinsel. There were button-up boots that required a tool called a button hook, and then came the appurtenances, jewellery, gloves, bonnet and veil, bag, and over all a black velvet mantle, heavy with jet beads.

The whole business, disregarding baths, manicure and hairdo, was a big job - two hours perhaps. Cosmetics were not used except by prostitutes, actresses and barmaids.

This calling deserves a special note. It was the custom then to have cards printed with name and address and in the corner "At home Wednesdays, 2 p.m." These cards were received upon a salver by the maid who opened the door. The salver was kept otherwise on the hall table. Visits were usually quite brief, a cup of tea, a little conventional chitchat and a graceful adieu. Then on to the next, and if a lady arranged her calling afternoon by suburbs she might manage half a dozen, before closing time.

There was a snag in the system however for it was obligatory to return a call. All of the cards that accumulated on your hall table meant so many calls that must be returned in due course. So the silly business became a treadmill, and finally reached the absurdity of just ringing the front door bell and handing in cards to the maid.

Father died suddenly in 1894, when I was ten. He had his teeth out and that probably lowered his resistance. Influenza was prevalent and he contracted it a few days afterwards. Pneumonia followed and for a day or two the house reeked of linseed poultices. Then came a night when I lay awake listening to his terrible breathing and the doctor's midnight visit, and then incredibly fell asleep. I knew, before they told me next morning that he was dead.

That was my first experience of death. The sheltered sense of security was over. Who is going to die next?

We left the town house and the comfortable, ordered life, and went to live in a beachside house we had at Brighton.

So far as mother knew, we all had to be very careful. She had three boys of school age and two single daughters who were not earning. It is strange how ill-luck seems to come in waves. In a few weeks three of us were down with typhoid fever, Bill, Lew and myself, contracted they said from tank water contaminated by sparrows nesting in the roof.

We all pulled through however, and then quite suddenly at breakfast one day mother announced that we were going back to Adelaide to live. It appeared that amongst father's papers, the executors found mining securities that had skyrocketed in value. It was the time of the West Australian gold boom, and father had been in on the ground floor; so mother, almost overnight, found herself a comparatively wealthy woman. She had bought a dear old home in Norwood, surrounded by an acre of grown up garden, and it was there that I spent my impressionable years.

But luck had not finished with the family yet. Fortunately the family had married and scattered when a few years later mother lost a quarter of a million in the course of one week, just a boom, some wild buying for a further rise and a disastrous slump. I had come to Queensland by then (1905) so was not particularly concerned. I had taken up an 800 acre selection on the old Degilbo run in the Burnett district.

20 Jun 1955 (part of letter to John Lewis Hodge)