Summary

Game type: autograph album rhymes
Alternative types: vows, rhymes, verses, language play

Typed transcriptions of autograph album inscriptions copied from an album presumably loaned to Dr Dorothy Howard by Margaret Wingrove, a student at East Camberwell Girls Secondary School, in 1954. The document features 18 rhymes, verses and vows written by different authors between 1949 and 1952. In addition to Wingrove's father, grandfather, Uncle Bill and Aunt Mollie, the authors include the following: Dawn West, Alison Lowe, Barbara Felschur, J. Philpott, Ann Kempton, P. Littlefield, Helga Einhorn, Pauline Giblett, Janice Murphy, P. Browne, Pat, Wingrove, Judy Cuthbert, Yvonne Arnott and Jennifer Haywood. The inscriptions include advice, requests of remembrance, vows of love, jokes and nonsensical rhymes.

Autograph albums are the small diary-sized notebooks popular with Australian children in the first half of the 20th century. According to Dr Howard, autograph albums represent a private, secretive space in the world of children. Dr Howard states that the albums are characterised by a variety of inscriptions annotated by the owners and their peers.

One of a collection of letters describing a children's game written to children's Folklorist Dorothy Howard between 1954 and 1955. Dr Howard came to Australia in 1954-55 as an American Fulbright scholar to study Australian children's folklore. She travelled across Australia for 10 months collecting children's playground rhymes, games, play artefacts, etc. This letter, together with the other original fieldwork collected by Dr Howard during this period, is preserved in the Dorothy Howard Collection manuscript files, part of the Australian Children's Folklore Collection (ACFC), Archive Series 3. The ACFC is an extensive collection documenting children's folklore and related research.

Physical Description

Typed annotations in black ink on paper. Text printed on one side only. Annotations in blue ink overall.

Significance

This collection documents the background of an unaccompanied British child migrant who was relocated to Australia under the flawed UK child migration programmes of the post War period and to whom an apology was formally made in 2010 and payment made under the UK Child Migrants Fund in 2019. The documents are enriched by an oral history interview of the former child migrant, now in her '80s. The material covers the period before her migration as well as the lengthy period in Australia when she suffered from the ongoing impact of that migration programme. It documents her later return as an adult to England to find her family and her mental struggle with identity. The material includes items showing the part played by local Australian social welfare organisations and their relationship to the after-care efforts of the UK National Children's Home. The proposed material also adds to scarce material in the Collection that relates directly to children's stories. The proposed items are supported by an extensive proposed Research File of 113 document copies.

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