Summary

Foolscap, hard-covered accounting notebook, papered with blue and white organic pattern. 80 pages. Contents are dated 1922-1930. Inside cover labelled 'Book No 1'. Extensive hand-writing in ink.

First page is headed 'Property Brockwood Street Elsternwick'. Information on purchase of house follows, including 'Decided to buy it on the 18th August 1922. Paid for on 4th September 1922' - Allotment 24, Section 7, Town of Elsternwick; vol. 4608, fol. 921538. The details of the solicitor and architect follow. Following pairs of pages are laid out by date, and headed 'Cost' and 'Account'. Later pages include 'Trial Balance' (several), 'House and Land', 'Provision for Interest, etc', 'State Land Tax', 'House Insurance', 'Water Rates' and 'Incidental'.

The notebook was written by the donor's father, James Charles Smith, who trained as an accountant. He went blind temporarily during the training, but used his skills to keep the family's accounts for years to come. Several of the notebooks were donated to Museum Victoria, the latest dating to 1966. They relate to life at 12 Brickwood Street, Elsternwick (now demolished).

Physical Description

Foolscap, hard-covered accounting notebook, papered with blue and white organic pattern. 80 pages, numbered 1-40 on odd pages. Black spine, with losses revealing string binding. Hand-wiritten in ink. Lined horizontally in blue and vertically in red for accounting.

Significance

Statement of Significance:

This collection of accounting notebooks provide a rare insight into daily life in Melbourne in the early- to mid-20th century, set within a comprehensive family story at a known location. The listing of daily staples purchased provide a significant document of what was being eaten, how much coal, electricity and other resources were needed to run the house, and expenses such as clothing, a mortgage, insurance and school fees. The author includes rare gems such as what an ideal home would contain in 1922 (including number of rooms and furnishings), how many clothes a woman would need, and what was done to the home when it was renovated in 1954, 32 years after the family moved in.

The notebooks also provide an insight into their author, recalled by his daughter as a ' very black and white' person, a strict teatotaller and Presbyterian, who clearly organized and controlled his family's circumstances carefully. He became a justice (self-taught) in the Children's Court, within the Children's Welfare Department.

Further research will test the extent to which this family might be considered broadly representative of middle-class Melbourne experience.

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