The Mayne Inheritance

by Rosamond Siemon

  For Patrick Mayne, the zest in life came from being on the scene, in the thick of things. A number of the more affluent colonists had built substantial English-style stone, brick or timber houses set in small farms or large gardens; it was not the beauty of nature that gave him joy but action, talk and money-making. At no time did he try to change his home from the hemmed-in Queen Street shop site to one of the less central but more fashionable town boundary areas. In fact, in 1858 he advertised for rent a cottage in four acres of good garden adjoining the town boundary and the Brisbane River. It was one of an unknown number of properties he bought and sold in those years. In the same advertisement he sought a tenant for a dwelling in Edward Street.

  That year Mary had been pregnant since April. Cooler, dust-free river air away from the stinking open drains and privies of the town buildings would have been more comfortable for her during the sweltering summer before their daughter, Mary Emelia, was born on the last day of December, 1858. Another pleasant area would have been the site of ‘‘Dara’’, which Patrick snapped up a few months later. It had a most desirable location but the simple house, with its mud walls did not seem to Patrick to match his affluence and self-esteem. When the Church subsequently bought ‘‘Dara’’, the parishioners were no more enamoured of it as a desirable home than Patrick. They considered it too crude a building for their Archbishop. In 1890, with Dunne as Archbishop, they raised £8,000 to build an elegant, three-storied Italianate mansion, the second ‘‘Dara’’. Unfortunately, this architectural gem was not to remain a part of Brisbane’s colonial heritage. A later Archbishop, James Duhig, blew it up to make way for the foundations of his special project, the never-to-be-built Holy Name Cathedral. For decades the site was a sleazy haunt for the homeless. Now, as Centenary Place, it is an up-market area of high-use home units. Of this fillip to town trade Patrick would have heartily approved.

  1859 was a landmark year for the northern portion of the mother colony of New South Wales. It was an even more lively and satisfying year for politically ambitious colonials in the area. The separation movements, initially led by the squatters and taken up by J.D. Lang, a member of the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales, eventually succeeded with the hesitant Colonial Office in London. On 10 December 1859 the Colony of Queensland, with almost 30,000 inhabitants, was established. Patrick Mayne had added his name to lists at separation meetings, but of more immediate importance to him was the agitation for Brisbane to be incorporated as a municipality.

  For nine years, ever since he had become Brisbane’s new butcher at the age of twenty-five, and made his presence felt, he had been increasingly active in civic matters. He was now thirty-four, still belligerent, still handsome, and wealthy and successful. By remaining at the heart of things in Queen Street he knew everyone and they knew him. His large presence and colourful lifestyle made him ever-popular with the socially cohesive Irish community and he was known in the town as a man who worked for town improvement. If Brisbane was to become a municipality, he wanted to bring his vitality to a role on the council.

  Patrick shared this political interest with George Raff, ten years older, a highly respected and a socially prominent merchant who planned to stand for the first Queensland Parliament. Other than wealth, business, and a desire to work the levers of power, the two men appeared to have very little in common. However, the fact that Mayne made Raff an executor of his will and was associated with him in a few business ventures suggests that for some time he had seen the older man as a mentor whose standing in the community enhanced his own. At this time there was clearly a political alignment between the two. Raff counted on Mayne and his Irish following for political support, and on his cooperative financial support for politically important causes such as the National School Fund.

  In June 1859, a fund was opened to subsidise the under-funded secular Brisbane National School, and Patrick, along with many others, donated £2. W.A. Duncan, the Customs Officer, who represented the Catholic interest as a patron of the school, was leaving and another Catholic was needed as his replacement. George Raff, already a patron, and astutely aware of the uneducated Mayne’s political aspirations, was probably instrumental in ensuring a second donation, this time of £100 from Patrick. Mayne was publicly hailed as a generous donor, made one of the patrons, and, as such, was invited to replace the Catholic Duncan on the temporary Board of Education. He then took practical action to demonstrate his belief in the school. Nine-year-old Rosanna remained with her teacher, but his first-born son, Isaac, aged seven, was enrolled at the Government’s Normal School, a forerunner to that near Adelaide and Edward Streets. In that act Patrick was now seen as a supporter of the needs of all the town’s children, not just those of the Irish Catholic immigrants.

  Perhaps it was on Raff’s advice that he curbed his larrikinism and avoided trouble with the law. From June 1858 until August 1860, well after both local and Queensland Government elections had been finalised, he managed to stay out of court. But the brutish characteristics in his nature were always there; he could not suddenly become docile. The press record suggests that he still threatened people with his whip, but for that period, he apparently did not use it.

  By the time the heated debates on incorporation had resolved themselves and the municipality of Brisbane was proclaimed (7 August 1859), thirty-seven candidates were ready to contest the nine aldermanic seats. Five weeks later the town’s businessmen were runaway winners: John Petrie (builder and contractor), Patrick Mayne (butcher), T.B. Stephens (tanner and fellmonger), Joshua Jeays (architect and builder), A.J. Hockings (seedsman), George Edmonstone (butcher), Robert Cribb (baker and land agent), and two innkeepers, George Warren and William Sutton. Of the 1,519 votes cast, John Petrie, educated, able, and possibly the most respected man in the settlement, topped the poll with 325 votes. Patrick Mayne, with little respect for the law, but a wealthy patron of the school with a glib Irish tongue and boundless enthusiasm and energy, achieved 274. At last his name was high on a public list, proudly second instead of being at the tag-end, and ahead of the educated, socially accepted and wealthy T.B. Stephens, who had become part-proprietor of the Moreton Bay Courier.

  It had not been easy to find nine good men who wanted this unpaid responsibility. On election, Petrie contented himself with promising to discharge his duties faithfully. Mayne declared that he would concentrate on work rather than talk, and was sure that his election reflected the appreciation of the community for the work he had already done. Stephens implied that he had not solicited election, but would accept office as a matter of duty. ‘‘Honest Bob’’, Robert Cribb, known for his simple tastes, austere habits and personal kindness, was further down the poll. Petrie and Cribb were men for whom Patrick and the townsfolk had great respect. Petrie appears to have kept a business length away from Mayne, but Cribb, more charitable towards his fellow men, offered the Maynes neighbourly concern at several times of need.

  All nine aldermen were practical men. Most had some formal education, a few had almost none, but they had all made their own successful way in a rough, uncaring colony. Seven of them were bearded and soberly dressed and looked the epitome of city fathers; the clean-shaven, nattily dressed Sutton and Mayne both had police records. Sutton’s was related to being drunk in charge of his hotel. One wonders what dark and fearsome thoughts whispered in Mayne’s mind at meeting after meeting as he sat opposite William Sutton in Council. In 1848, those two men, with Lynch and Platt, had been post-midnight drinking companions at Sutton’s Bush Inn a short while before Patrick Mayne murdered Robert Cox, and Sutton had been arrested as a suspect.

  Patrick’s role as school patron had been worn with great success during the municipal elections. In the Council’s first meetings he showed himself to be a practical, cooperative alderman. It says something for George Raff’s political power in the community that in February the following year, the Queensland Government Gazette listed Patrick Mayne as one of the Governor’s nine appointees to the first Board of Nat
ional Education in Queensland, serving under the presidency of Sir Charles Nicholson. For the ambitious Mayne this was a real distinction in the community. He was not only sitting as an equal at the same table as educated members of the establishment, but helping to make decisions for the education of their children. He could be excused for thinking his social alienation was over: around the table were the highly respected Hon. Robert Ramsay Mackenzie, Daniel Rountree Somerset, George Raff, William Thornton, Charles Tiffin, Henry Jordan and Henry Day.

  Patrick’s success as an alderman, and now his pride in what he saw as an exalted role, became too visible and too audible. Some townsfolk were not willing to accept an upstart, almost illiterate butcher on their Board of Education. They had no difficulty in accepting a successful butcher as an alderman, but this appointment was an affront. Shock and anger turned to ridicule of the man. Rumours spread like a bushfire and the blaze was quickly out of control. It was said that ‘‘Patrick Mayne was too big for his boots; now he planned to stand for Parliament.’’ There was no objection to other aldermen who later successfully stood for the State legislature, but Mayne they did not want. The rumours grew. The smirks and derision were undisguised. Patrick was disparaged from all sides. The effect on a man of his explosive temperament must have been devastating. In three weeks the ‘‘hate’’ campaign against him reached a point where the Executive Council had to step in to protect its decision, publishing a rebuttal of the scuttlebutt in the Moreton Bay Courier of 8 March 1860. It read:

  ‘‘Some of our contemporaries have been amusing themselves by poking fun at Mr Patrick Mayne and the Executive Council on his appointment to the seat at the Education Board of Queensland and we are now in a position to state the circumstances of the appointment. When Dr Milford and Mr Duncan left it became necessary to find some person to represent the Catholic body at the National School and Mr Patrick Mayne was considered most eligible by the other patrons; and when it was thought desirable to place a master in the school, the executive appointed those who had been patrons as a temporary board. When Mr Mayne became patron he contributed the munificent sum of £100 for the purpose of forwarding the objects of the school. It will be very fortunate if as good grounds can be shown for public appointments generally as for this one; but we do not admire the taste of those who, because Mr Mayne acquired wealth by honest industry, should seize the opportunity afforded by his anxiety to forward education, to reproach him with his misfortune that he is not an educated man. If his co-religionists and co-patrons deem him fit, what right has anyone in this community which embraces principally wealth with ignorance and ignorance without wealth, to point to Mr Mayne? He is a city alderman elected with a large majority and has fully justified the choice of his fellow citizens and we believe him to possess much more common sense than most of his detractors. If any more were required to show the petty animosity displayed on this occasion, it would be the fabrication of the report that Mr Mayne is a candidate for the Legislature—it is devoid of truth.’’

  Harassment of Mayne did not vanish overnight. Open season on him lingered for several weeks but, after the Executive Council statement he immediately took his own action to regain some lost prestige. In the Moreton Bay Courier of 20 March he called for public tenders for the erection of a stable and coachhouse. The shortage of trafficable roads made the acquisition of a coach something of a trumpet flourish, but he, Mary, and the children would ride in as much style as any educated town doctor or high government official. Two weeks later he called tenders for the erection of two more imposing brick shops in Queen Street.

  The parliamentary election campaign was gearing up. Mayne’s close political association with George Raff had fuelled the false rumours that he, like Raff, would stand for parliament. He made an obvious show of being out and about and involved at all the rallies. He proposed the shipping agent, Henry Buckley, to represent East Moreton, seconded John Petrie’s nomination of Raff, and constantly and loudly down-cried D.F. Roberts, a solicitor and member of the Queensland Club, who aspired to represent Fortitude Valley. In retaliation, Roberts, who called himself ‘‘the Poor Man’s Friend’’, refuelled the anti-Mayne campaign with an advertisement in the Moreton Bay Courier of 1 May 1860:

  ELECTORS OF FORTITUDE VALLEY

  Be early at Poll and vote for Daniel Foley Roberts the Poor Man’s Friend.

  That great man with a smart whip in his hand by name Mister Paddy (I mean) Mr Patrick Mayne, says that by a wave of his magic whip he can undo all that the friends of D.F. Roberts have already done.

  ELECTORS OF THE VALLEY HAMLETS

  Don’t be gulled by what you may hear from Mister Alderman Patrick Mayne Esq. He thinks he can ride over you like he can a bullock.

  HURRAH FOR D.F. ROBERTS

  From this it is clear that Mayne had faced down some of the early ridicule in his customary manner, confronting his detractors in his rage and bitterness with the threat of his stockwhip. He also continued to display the power of his wealth by spending another £100 on two town lots at Lytton and eighteen acres of prime land at Enoggera.

  Then, abruptly, he went to Sydney. He left behind a newly pregnant Mary—she was carrying their last child, James O’Neil—and was absent from the new Council for the next five consecutive meetings, but there is no explanation of his absence. Had he been on Council business the minutes would have recorded it. In Moreton Bay this was a time of business optimism. Land prices were high and he was rich in land. He had sensibly slowed his buying during this last twelve months of a seller’s market. He was a player in the building boom and his two latest modern shops were well on the road to completion.

  One might question why a man so actively interested in politics should choose to be away at a time of great celebration to culminate their political efforts—the opening of the first Queensland Parliament on 29 May. It was also quite out of character for him to leave town when his political opponents were biting at his heels, and not to oversee the construction of his expensive buildings. Two things could have taken him on that uncomfortable lengthy trip to Sydney. A need to seek private medical attention during the anti-Mayne period of mental stress; or the need to raise a large loan from a Sydney bank for further business expansion. No other immediate business expansion took place, but by September 1860 he had accumulated a sizeable debt with the Bank of New South Wales.

  Soon after his return, his Queen Street shops were opened (July), to be hailed in the Moreton Bay Courier as an imposing feature of Queen Street’s architecture. One shop was let to Mr Kosvitz, a jeweller and watchmaker, and Mayne was congratulated on the plate-glass windows and brilliant gas lighting which enhanced the display of wares. His use of acetylene lamps, the first in Brisbane shops, was an innovation exciting to a populace accustomed to the limited illumination of oil lamps. It predated the general use of gas lighting by several years. But this show of wealth, business acumen and self-confidence was not enough. Public ridicule of him had reflected on the Executive Council. Six months after the announcement of his nomination to the temporary Board of Education, the Government Gazette published a new list: the name of Patrick Mayne was missing.

  5

  In and Out of Council

  The municipality of Brisbane under the first Council’s charge consisted of several settlements. North Brisbane was centred on Queen Street, which, with its houses, shops, and banana plantation, was a convenient thoroughfare to the eastern settlements of Fortitude Valley, Nundah and Sandgate. The area of North Brisbane also included Adelaide, George, and Elizabeth Streets and adjoining areas with residences dotted here and there. A ferry ride across the river were North Brisbane’s two rivals, South Brisbane and Kangaroo Point; but the Point, with eighty or ninety houses and some industry, was no longer a real threat to Queen Street. That hope had been picked up by Fortitude Valley, which was strengthened by J.D. Lang’s migrant scheme, and saw itself making a strong challenge.

  The mainstream religions had claimed their hallowed patches a stone’s t
hrow from some of the central hotels and a brewery. Four banks eased the earlier difficulty of circulating cash for trading, and the new hospital in George Street and the new gaol on Petrie Terrace catered to the needs of the area’s 5,000 people. Thanks to astute and civic-minded men such as Cribb and Mayne, a few substantial business premises stood out, but for the most part the public buildings were mean and unimpressive. Everything was deplorably neglected. Sanitation conditions were primitive; there were open sewers, and their effluent, dumped near houses on the river bank, was a menace to health. Depending on the weather, the rough streets could be dusty and rutted or else deep bogs interspersed with uncrossable muddy pools. In the rainy season, adroit shopkeepers were known to keep trade coming their way by spanning a street pool with a plank. It was not uncommon to hear cries for help from a pedestrian bogged in the mud. In Adelaide, Elizabeth, and Charlotte Streets, in reality only rough passages between allotments, whole areas could be isolated by deep, unbridged water-filled culverts. The so-called ‘‘reservoir’’ was an unfenced, dammed-up waterhole lying between George and Roma Streets. In drought it dried up and water had to be carted from Breakfast Creek. People bathed and swam in it and washed their clothes there and dogs and cattle drank from it. Its creek, often a chain of waterholes, meandered across the site of the present City Hall and the intersection of Adelaide and Albert Streets, then swept in a wide curve through what are now the two Queen Street blocks separated by Edward Street. It turned north to cross Creek Street at its corner with Adelaide Street, then made a wide down-curve through the next block, crossing what is now Eagle Lane, returning in a series of loops to Creek Street at its junction with Elizabeth Street. After a large, boggy circular loop at the rear of the site of St Stephen’s Cathedral, it entered the Brisbane River near the junction of Mary, Creek, and Charlotte Streets. For some it was still known as Wheat Creek and much of the surrounding area continued to be used for agriculture.