The Archive Detective: beginnings…
Alma Street, Darlington © State Library of NSW, BCP06955.
I love archives. I love detective stories. I have ever since I was a child. I think it’s the main reason I became a historian: at the age of eleven, scrolling through microfiche with my aunt the history teacher at the State Library of New South Wales, imagining the stories behind the endless names rolling down the screen.
Over the years it has never ceased to amaze me just how much you can learn about those who are no longer here. Not everyone leaves traces: more often than not, the poorer you are, the more invisible you are. No change there, I guess. But sometimes a random piece of ephemera remains: some small clue that can open up an entirely new understanding of our ancestors. A photograph, a signed document, an old letter or school report, give us a sense of intimacy that the old births, deaths and marriages records can’t replace. Likewise, returning to the site of an old house can help us to feel closer to those long gone.
I'm a historian based in Sydney, and I love my work. As a researcher, it's so easy to get sidetracked. So many amazing stories, so many haunting images of anonymous people inhabiting an old city that’s all but gone. I spend so much time in archives for a specific purpose, and I’m constantly forced to cast aside these tantalising images that threaten to pull me away from the job at hand. But then something about these images started to niggle away at me: I found it hard to just walk away and leave them unlabelled, unknown.
I started keeping some of the images aside, determined to return when I had the time and find out more about them. Soon I was heading back to the archives in a deliberate search for more of these ephemeral traces of people and places long gone. I found, surprisingly, that many of the houses photographed still exist, and form a continuous link between past and present, with the photograph providing a substantial bond to their previous occupants.
I’ve noticed in my journeys, both physical and increasingly digital, that many of these traces remain a mystery. So I’ve set myself a challenge: to name and place some of those anonymous faces in our archives. In doing so, I have discovered fascinating stories about everyday people. The ones who are usually invisible to history. Hopefully you will find them interesting, too.
Often when undertaking historical research you find yourself having to make assumptions, leaps in logic, in order to take your investigations to the next step. Now don’t get me wrong: false leaps in logic have no place in the telling of history, and I won’t be making any of them here. Nevertheless, sometimes conjecture is the next stepping stone, and sensible leaps of faith can often be supported by evidence in retrospect. If I’m wandering into wild conjecture, I’ll let you know.
There are a seemingly endless number of blogs and pages dedicated to republishing these images for their beauty and history alone: I'm a fan of all of them. As an archival researcher I know there are more unlabelled images than labelled; more people unidentified than not. The vast majority will unfortunately stay that way, but some images grab the imagination, offering tantilising clues as to the identities of their subjects.
The aim of this blog is to explore these images of houses which still exist, peopled by figures long gone: to find out who they were, what they did, how they lived and died. I'm not related to these people, nor do I know their descendants. Hopefully, though, I can shed some light on the often anonymous images which fill archives throughout the city, add a little knowledge to the collective stores, and add some pieces to other's family history, if and when they decide to go looking for themselves.
