The World War ends but a personal battle lost
Despite his illness he returned to work at the Correspondence School in 1945 and was pleased to enrol three members of the RAAF in Darwin and Victoria in his courses. He was now being treated by Dr Muir and the radio-therapy pioneer Dr Holman and had grown a beard to ease the irritation to his lip. Holman’s view was that there was now no sign of the growth but there was bad scarring. Jim was cheered to be told to come back for a check in six months. He and Clara took Tony and Jenny to Harefield for Easter and a couple of weeks later returned for Torie and Charlie Madsen’s Golden Wedding anniversary. The whole family arrived en masse; Viv and Dora were escorted by two daughters with their husbands and two grandchildren. Ev and Stuart had their two daughters, and Clara and Bob were accompanied by two of their three. For the second generation in a row female offspring vastly outnumbered the males. Stanley and Erica had their two boys, Linda was with Ross and Colin and Beattie with their son Ian. Hilmer Jessen, and Betty, both ill, were the only absentees. A more modest party was held to celebrate Jim’s birthday three weeks later. It opened with a bottle of burgundy ‘damn sour stuff’ and finished with champagne donated by Minnie Jessen. ‘It was very disappointing too, I had never tasted it before and now I would just as soon drink cider. The port was better.’
The diary recorded Hitler’s death and Jean’s appointment to a school in Victoria; the former was underlined. The surrender of Germany a week later warranted large writing in red ink! Jim was excited and impressed to make his first flight, going to Melbourne with Jean on 11 May. ‘Plane looks like some mythical monster but efficiency everywhere’. Gerty took them home. Jim was happily surprised by a visit from his aunt Sarah Whitehead – ‘hale and hearty at 79’. This short visit gave him the opportunity to see old friends and lost relations. He spent an evening with Ralph and Dorothy Gibson, visited Bob and Mary Stephenson and Beat Linton. ‘Pat wants to leave the Police and they are expecting to move to Tasmania’. Hilda Holmes called on them and he went to see the ailing Walter Whitehead. Later Aunt Sarah, Alice and her family welcomed him. On his first Saturday he went to the Western Oval to see his team play Footscray. It was so exciting he had to leave before the end and heard on the railway station that North had won. The next Saturday Nell took him to see North Melbourne and Fitzroy. Before leaving for the ground he got a telegram from the Club Secretary inviting him to the dressing rooms before the game. There he met all the players and was royally treated. North beat the reigning premiers to complete his day. As he and Jean were at the Melbourne airways office to fly home Keith appeared.
Jean had finally confided her marital problems to her father and this was a further source of worry. She decided to follow Keith to Melbourne in an attempt to save the marriage. She was offered a teaching post at Camberwell Grammar until the War was over so she and the two children moved to Melbourne. By June Jim’s health deteriorated again, he needed pain-killers for the ache in his jaw and in July was admitted to hospital with heart problems. This time he spent six weeks there and during this time Hilmer Jessen died after an operation in Launceston; although his family knew the doctors were apparently unaware that he had a blood clotting problem. Dr Holman saw Jim in the RHH and told him that whilst there was some continuing problem any further radium treatment would be dangerous. ‘Doctors know the case is hopeless but don’t want to tell me straight’. Stan was now at Balikpapan in Borneo and although ‘the war I am fighting isn’t exactly dangerous .. fighting goes on men are killed.’ Fortunately the conflict was now really ending.
Jim came home from hospital on the same day that Japan sought terms to end the War. The celebrations for the end of the war were muted by Jim’s poor health. After his release from hospital his jaw deteriorated further and when Dr Muir saw it a month later he sent him back to hospital for some surgery. Now the family was really worried. Greta was pregnant and Jean flew back from Melbourne but Stan was not able to leave Borneo until the end of September. Due to his father’s condition he was able to fly home and arrived back in Sydney on 10 October. For the next few days there were concerted efforts to get Jane a seat on a plane to Hobart but to no avail and Stan arrived in Hobart alone ten days after his father was discharged. Nevertheless his stay of three weeks was an emotional reunion. Neither realised that they would not meet again. The day after Stan left Jim returned to work after four months away. At the end of the year he was pleasantly surprised to receive a note from the Director of Education –‘well done good and faithful servant’.
Jim was in continuous pain and was not able to celebrate the arrival of his fourth grandson David Archibald Bessell. Back in Sydney Stan was able to spend time with his new family – ‘in a few weeks I will feel like a fully fledged father, eventually I suppose I will even get quite patient.’ He was expecting his discharge in early December but due to a shortage of jobs in Hobart elected to stay in Sydney and resume work with his old firm CFP.Pty Ltd. After a few weeks work in the city and a holiday at Young he was transferred to the Grafton District. Unable to find a house they decided to buy a block of land and have a house built. Keith had been posted back to Tasmania and Jean’s teaching post in Melbourne expired at the end of the year. Christmas 1945 was the hottest weather for many years but it was quiet at Albuera St. Family friends were able to secure Jean a position at Friends School with free schooling for the children and early in the new year she moved back into Albuera St. After the usual summer visit to Harefield Jim struggled along to school when the new year began at the end of January. Tony was readied to go off to Friends as a boarder but first he had to have his tonsils out. He was not a happy boy in 1946. Jim was also depressed ‘the best I can hope for now is be in hospital until my jaw rots away. Delightful prospect.’ Aspirin and the occasional gin and whisky provided little relief. Yet he maintained his diary with its regular reports on world affairs, sport and family affairs. Peace, the formation of the United Nations and Labor Governments in power buoyed his spirit. In mid March his brother Joe, now aged 77, ‘resolved to write regularly’ but he received no more letters. He saw Dr. Muir at the end of the month and as he feared ‘the sword is on the move’ and he must return to hospital.
On Easter Saturday 1946 Jim remembered 40 years of marriage ‘the last we shall spend together. They have been 40 very happy years. Clara has been a good wife and a good mother and a loving companion.’ Jim died in the Royal Hobart Hospital just after Easter in 1946. He reached ‘his allotted span, three score years and ten’ there and on Easter Saturday had a visit from two nuns.
‘They pointed out the beauties of the soul and the glories of the afterlife etc. I had to admit however that I did not believe in the after-life. They took it in good part – in fact assured me that even I had a beautiful soul. This seemed a big concession to make to an acknowledged unbeliever. But I think they are well used to making concessions. Anyhow they were sweet women. But what a pity to waste such lives.’
He wrote the last entry in his diary the night he died.
‘Letter from Gerty and one from Jack Whitehead (a cousin). Can’t answer them now.
Fine. (the daily reference to the weather)
Only a fair night. Usual dope must have been light. Pain nearly constant. My stuff coming through tomorrow. (reference to a new batch of radium.) The beginning of another bout of torture. Afraid I can’t hope for any definite relief – but if the new treatment brings the end nearer so much the better – I can’t go on existing under present conditions. Applied for postal voting papers for City Council and Legislative Council elections. May not need them but must have my last shot.’
[He declined a shave by the male nurse with a razor ‘used by everyone for everything’ and elected to see the barber in the morning.]
My Dear Gertie,
We mourn together – There is only the two of us.
My heart stopped a beat or two when I got the wire – altho’ Jim in his last two letters, one 10 days ago told me he would not survive it, owing to endless pain and other things. He said goodbye in both – I hoped against hope and was quite stunned when they bounced me out of bed to take your wire about 9pm – I have not got the original yet but the Maffra girl got Dargo – I listened to your message – I felt very queer yesterday – no sleep to speak of and general upset. I know how you feel Jim was a hero to both of us – the nearest approach to a good Christian I have met in a long life.
I shall miss him terribly for I used to write when I wanted some light thrown on things or just very often humorously inclined (my idea of humour of course). I have many of his letters here to keep his memory green until I join him, which in the natural order of things shan’t be too long now. I am well quite well but yet not too well. [JWW , Black Snake Creek,1 May 1946.]
Joe Wright in hisgarden at Black Snake Creek and outside his hand made home. The Smallest Post Office in the World.
Joe died in Sale Hospital in February 1949 aged 79. His widow Annie lived on in her hospital room in Melbourne for another 14 years visited only bey her daughter Mary. She had been confined by her illness for almost 50 years.
In 1916 Gerty has a daughter, Nellie, A year after Gerty married Arthur Shipperlee in 1919 she had a son Bill. Nell maried Clyde Sankey in Melbourne 1942 . Gerty outlived her daughter and all he siblings by many years and died in October 1971 aged 88.
Bill Shipperlee, Clyde Sankey and Nell
Bill Shipperlee died in 2001.
Requiem
James followed his father's interests in community affairs and was a leading figure in the Teachers Association, Workers Education Association and country cricket. In his youth he was a very keen cricketer making 100 for Forcett against Cherry Tree in 1905 another century for Forcett the next year in the semi final against Sorell and 127 for Huonville against Franklin in 1925. Whilst in the Huon he established WEA classes. He was Secretary of the Huon Cricket Association from 1914 to 1929, sole selector for the Huon representative teams and the first Secretary of the Country Week Cricket Association. He was President of the Tasmanian Teachers Federation in 1931 and an active member of the New Education Fellowship and it was appropriate that the NEF Conference of 1937 led to the end of the dictatorial powers of the Teaching Inspectors. A fortnight before he died he learnt that the Tasmanian Teachers Union were to make him a life member. Living in Hobart for his last years gave him the opportunity to resume his interest in football and he initiated a family outing on Saturdays that continued for many years after his death.
Jim took an interest in all sports and he was a lifetime supporter of North Melbourne in the VFL. On one weekend in the summer of 1945 he watched cricket at the TCA Ground and stayed on to see the greyhound races and went to the horse races at Elwick the next. Tatts tickets and occasional bets on the Melbourne Cup etc. were the usual extent of his gambling. On one occasion he bet on every race on course and also in Melbourne. It was typical of his methodical approach to life that he placed a place bet on the third pick of ‘the professional prophets in the Argus’. He was very pleased to wind up with a profit of 13/6 from an investment of £3.5.0, and to have had much greater success than Jean, Greta or Cecil. He was an avid bridge player but his prime pastimes were politics, civic affairs, conversation and letter writing and despite his illness, most were accompanied by a smoke.
Jim was an avid reader and keen student of politics; his diaries covering the years from 1939 to his death in 1946 reveal a deep understanding of the world scene. He was a Fabian socialist – ‘socialism is the only cure for all our economic troubles and economic troubles are at the root of all our social inequalities and most of our social evils’. By the end of his life he was sorely disappointed by the failure of Labor to carry out social reform. ‘The communists are the only progressive Laborites’. He numbered amongst his close friends men such as Ken Dallas, Ray Harvey and Ralph Gibson who would later fall under suspicion during the anti communist fever that sprang up with the Cold War in the late 1940s. The politician Sir Henry Baker, the fellow teacher Ben Whitham and the eminent economist Prof. Lyndhurst Giblin were others with whom he maintained a close friendship. Giblin and Wright were both great supporters of the Workers Educational Association (WEA) and Giblin would stay with Jim when he came to the Huon to lecture. Giblin took a particular interest in Stan Wright and the young boy stayed with the Giblins for holidays after 1926 before the Professor went to Melbourne University in 1928. In the later years of his life he subscribed to the Left Book Club with volumes arriving monthly in discreet brown paper wrapping. Clara and Greta were so alarmed they burnt most of his library soon after his death. He contracted cancer of the lip in 1937 and although he suffered through a painful progression of the disease he maintained his interest in civic affairs. When he visited Dr Sprent in 1939 he was told that only 5% of people with his condition survived for 3 years but here he was still alive six and a half years later. As well as his diary he was a prolific letter writer and this correspondence did much to keep the house in Albuera St. at the centre of family life.
Clara continued to live at Albuera St. with Greta and Cecil Bessell and the two boys Michael and David until her death in 1959 aged 82. The house was always busy for Greta had not only three large and boisterous men to care for but she also took in bed and breakfast tourists for a few years and later boarded a succession of university students. She would conjure meals for six or seven without a moments hesitation. Tragically Cecil died suddenly five years later but Greta continued to live there until 1998 when she needed to move to Mary’s Grange. The house was sold in 2001.