72 Crown street, Woolloomooloo - part one
Image © City of Sydney Archives, Demolition books 1906-1949, NSCA CRS 51/1623.
My usual method of researching these photographs is to take the date given by the archive and start to search for any evidence, slowly narrowing down references until I can (hopefully) identify the figures in the image. As we saw last week this didn’t work, as can happen when inhabitants are just a little too anonymous. For this post, I started with my usual method, but instead of homing in on pertinent clues I found my research rapidly expanding, as it became apparent that one large family had each taken turns inhabiting this house from the date of its construction until at least 1958.
This photo of 72-74 Crown street was taken in 1939. What is extraordinary about this house, and this family, is that among the constantly shifting population of Woolloomooloo, the renters and drifters, the rising desperation, the gangs and crimewaves, the Kelleys were homeowners who maintained their hold on 72 Crown street for decades, raising generations of children in their family home at the heart of the city. As their fortunes shifted, their ownership of this house no doubt saved them from the penury and hardships experienced by thousands of families in the same neighbourhood.
The family originally spelled their name as Kelly however it appears to have shifted over the years to Kelley, possibly as a means of differentiating themselves from the plethora of other Kellys in Sydney. The original patriarch, Robert Kelley, was born in West Ham in 1835. His mother died when he was only nine years old, and as a young man he decided to emigrate to the colonies, arriving in Sydney in 1855. He met and married Louisa Jane Williams in Sydney in 1867.
Louisa was born in Sydney in 1845, the eldest child of John and Mary. Her ancestors were some of the earliest colonial inhabitants of Sydney, with her father and his siblings being born at the old Sydney ‘Rum’ Hospital, now the old Mint building and State Parliament House on Macquarie street. Robert and Louisa had ten children, who all survived to adulthood, forming the basis for a mighty clan of descendants. Their story is so expansive that I have divided it into two parts, and my next post will explore the stories of the children and grandchildren of the Kelley clan.
Image © State Library of NSW, SPF / 572, IE1231307.
Robert Kelley worked in the furniture trade, and by the early 1870s was running a successful business in the centre of Sydney. Kelley’s upholstery shop stood on Market street near Pitt, and the original building has long since disappeared under department store buildings. Amazingly, I was also able to find an image of Kelley’s shop in the State Library of NSW archives. In the background you can see the new Farmers building on Pitt street rising above the smaller, older terrace shops – the first department store in Sydney, Farmers would have guaranteed plenty of foot traffic to the area. Kelley was already working from these premises by at least 1873, when he advertised for a “young woman, quick at the needle; constant employment. R. Kelly, upholsterer, 78 Market st.” Listed as a “bedding manufacturer” from 1875, Kelley’s business continued successfully until his sudden death twenty years later.
The Kelleys lived at 238 Palmer street from at least 1870, in an elegant 1860s terrace which also survives to this day. In May of 1877 Robert Kelley advertised in the Sydney Morning Herald that he wished to buy a house or cottage of four rooms and a kitchen, preferably in the suburbs. His business was obviously doing well, as he offered cash terms and asked that any interested parties contact him at his shop in Market street. Robert’s plan to establish his family in the newer, wealthier enclaves of the suburbs obviously proved unsuccessful as they stayed in the Palmer street house for many years.
All their children were born in this first home, before the family moved to the newer and presumably grander residence at 72 Crown St. Their eldest daughter, Ada Elizabeth was born in 1867, and their eldest son, John Edward, in 1869, followed by Annie Ellen (1871), Robert Henry (1873), William Alfred (1875), Louise Florence (1878), Harold Percival Sidney (1880), Albert Leslie Williams (1882), Norman Oswald Millington (1884), and Elsie Irene Millicent in 1889.
The earliest reference to the Kelley’s residence at 72 Crown street is in the Sands directory of 1895. Robert Kelley died the same year aged 59 in his new home, and was buried in the Church of England cemetery at the Rookwood Necropolis on Sunday 15 September 1895. Described as an “upholsterer, late of Market Street, Sydney,” friends were invited to congregate at his Crown street residence prior to the funeral procession.
The widowed Louisa was still resident at number 72 several years later in 1908, when her son William Alfred died in her home on February 17 at the age of 33. William, a storeman, had married Stella Elizabeth Whitehorn in 1897, and moved to 17 Charlotte Place before returning to number 72 at some point before he passed away. His young wife Stella doesn’t appear in NSW records after this and may have remarried. Louisa was still living there in 1914 when she announced the death of her “dearly beloved eldest daughter” Ada Elizabeth, in Wellington, NSW. The Wellington Times also announced Ada’s death “after a painful illness of some years duration.” The Times notes that she had been “associated with and in the employ of Mrs Attwood for many years,” Mrs Attwood being the leading purveyor of ladies’ dresses and accessories in the region for many years.
Louisa saw much personal sadness in her life – with such a large family, she outlived not only three of her own children and at least two grandchildren, but also lost both of her parents before the turn of the century and outlived three sisters and a brother, as well as losing her husband in middle age.
The Sands Directory lists Louisa as a resident of number 72 until 1930. Although the Sands stops at this point, she was still living there when her daughter Louisa Florence died in May 1932. Mrs Louisa Jane Kelley passed away in her home in Crown street in January 1938, and she was finally laid to rest at Rookwood with her husband Robert. The end of Louisa’s time at 72 Crown street did not end the family’s tenure there however, and many more of her children and grandchildren continued their association with the old house for at least another twenty years.
