Tartan News

Minnie in the gardens at PLC in 1923 or 1924

Ms Shannon Lovelady, PLC Archivist and Historian

Our Archives is exactly what it’s supposed to be: a busy, working Archives as well as a thriving environment for everything to do with the history of our College and the people who’ve come here - either as staff, students, Founders, Council Members, or other benefactors, throughout the past 107 years.

This year it also became a centre for family history research as a few requests came from people researching their family history. One request was from Dr David Carlin, who is a Professor of Writing at RMIT University in Melbourne. David is the son of Joan Carlin (Stewart 1948), brother of our only Rhodes Scholar Dr Wendy Carlin (1974), and John Stewart’s great grandson. In July 2022, David and his wife Linda came to WA on a research trip looking into David’s Stewart family history. We welcomed David and Linda in to our Archives to view what we had in the collection relating to John Stewart, and the more than 20 Stewart girls who’ve come through PLC; the most recent being Rieley Stewart (2017) who graduated as Head Prefect. First we showed David the Stewart House Honour Boards before moving onto photographs, biographies, newspaper articles, places where his great grandfather is mentioned in our Council Minutes, and in Kookaburras, as well as a comprehensive family tree as it relates to PLC. Before he came, we put him in touch with his Perth cousins, who kindly lent him several precious family photo albums (some we’d had the pleasure of seeing before, others we hadn’t); Margaret Stewart’s (1922) autograph book; and the diary she kept on the 1926-1927 voyage to England, on the return from which her father died.

We are very grateful David brought all of these items to us, which resulted in a very long and satisfying day carefully digitising everything - for him, for the rest of the family, and for our own Archival Collection. These are such wonderful treasures to work with, and share! Then, in mid-October, we received another significant donation from the WA Medical Museum in Subiaco (detailed in Recent Accessions). It was an album full of photographs and documents relating to Sister Minnie Hodgson (1925) who survived the bombing and sinking of the SS Vyner Brooke on 14 February 1942, but was killed two days later on Banka Island, Indonesia (see Blackwatch 2022 Edition 1). Among the items donated are Minnie’s baptismal and confirmation certificates, her Junior Certificate, Mothercraft and Invalid Cookery certificates, her passport, letters, and a 1940 telegram from her brother, Bill. There is also a wealth of photos of Minnie – while at PLC in 1923 and 1924, and MLC in 1925, the Yealering family farm, of nursing at the Children’s Hospital in Subiaco, and in the country, and lots of candid, casual, and beautiful studio shots. These extremely significant items, all of which have now been digitised, will become the Minnie Hodgson Collection. It wasn’t long before our first visitor came to view the Collection; in early November Minnie’s grand niece Anthea Hodgson (1988) came and spent an hour in the Archives carefully looking at her great aunt’s photos and documents. She is writing a book about Minnie’s life, and we were able to give her a digital copy of everything for that, and to share amongst her family - and that’s what it’s all about.

Minnie as a young woman in the early 1930s.

Minnie with her graduating class of nurses at the Children’s Hospital. She is in the second row, third from the left.

Minnie’s passport. Minnie as a young nurse at the Children’s Hospital, Subiaco, early 1930s.

Dr David and Linda Carlin in front of the Stewart House Honour Boards, visited our Archives in July 2022 as part of a journey of family history discovery! Minnie in the late 1930s.

John Stewart is a name well known to most at PLC but, for other readers, he was a successful business and family man, and one of our generous benefactors who, in early 1917, gave us a £1,000 debenture (around $100,000 today) to facilite our move from Palmerston Street, North Perth, to View Street, Peppermint Grove. John’s daughter Margaret Stewart (1922, PLC Council 19451968) then became one of our first new students when we opened the new campus in August 1917. John was on PLC Council from March 1917 until his death in August 1927 and, when the House system was established with three Houses in 1934, one of them was proudly named in his honour.