The last items I unpacked after the move from Byron were the family photos, some of which I knew had broken glass. It was no surprise, I suppose, that I didn’t get around to themuntil now. The glass in a couple had been broken for years, but I’d lacked the motivation to open the bag, let alone do anything about it.
Having unpacked everything else and feeling particularly strong one day, I tackled the family photos. Only two had glass that needed replacing — the large oval one of my grandmother, my mother’s mother, Claire (Donovan) Doyle, and the small A4-sized one of the wedding of Uncle Frank my mother’s younger brother (there were 12 children in that big Irish family) to a lady called Daphne.
Doyle wedding c. 1937
L to R: George Donovan, Mag Doyle, Frank Doyle, Daphne Doyle, Joe Doyle
Looking at the wedding photo of Frank and Daphne Doyle, it suddenly hit me that I had no wedding photo of my parents. There was nothing. Now why was that?
Part of the reason for this was probably because my mother who was, of course, Roman Catholic, was marrying my father, who was not. In 1936, this meant no church wedding. Indeed, it was something of a scandal in which even Archbishop Duhig became involved. Having been heavily involved in the education of Great Uncle Con’s two children after Con dropped dead in the cow yard at the age of 35, Duhig must’ve felt he had the right to a say in my mother’s life as well. And so he sent a special emissary to Toowoomba to state the case against.
Imagine it. My mother had left school at thirteen. She was a young uneducated woman working as a housemaid in a hotel in Toowoomba. But she resisted the pressure.
And so they were married. On Christmas Eve 1936 without a church service, without a proper wedding, just a tiny affair to which my mother, I’m told wore a blue street length dress she could use later. Both were poor and had few if any savings. My father worked on the foundry floor at the Toowoomba Foundry.
In those days, getting your photograph taken was a Big Deal. One booked a session at a photographic studio and that photo would be the only one you had of yourself for that year. When I was a child we knew of rich families (well, we thought they were rich) who could afford to have a family photograph taken every year. Amazing, we thought; we could only manage such a thing for very special occasions. Still, there were street photographers who roamed the city carrying their heavy portable cameras “Take your photo, sir?” and for the poor, these impromptu shots were often the only photographs they possessed.
But my parents were married on Christmas Eve. I imagine there would’ve been plenty of people for the street photographers to capture, and they didn’t hang around the Registry Office as they usually did. And so there are no photos of my parents’ wedding. Nothing. Zilch.
FOOTNOTE: Frank and Daphne lasted only a few years before she took off with someone else. My parents stayed together until my father died in 1972.
Danielle de Valera 
Wow! That’s quite a story! On at least two counts. Being able to explain the reason for not having a wedding photo of your parents; which prompts thoughts about how many other people were in the same boat; which in turn maybe leads to the realisation that wedding photos are actually quite rare in relation to the number of people who got married between the invention of photography and, say, the end of the Second World War – and, of course, back beyond the invention of photography, NO wedding photos… and probably almost no wedding paintings, if any. I say if any because recalling pictures of great houses, I don’t think I ever saw a painting of a bride and groom in the one frame. Individual portraits but no wedding paintings. Family portraits, yes, but only of royalty and aristocracy.
The other reason that it is quite a story is that it underlines how close you came to never having existed. Had your mother allowed herself to be bullied by the Archbastard ………….. which makes you think…… how many non-histories are there?
I can now recite the Greek alphabet and sound out the words of the first line of the Iliad. Pity I haven’t got a clue what the words mean, but. Eh?
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Thanks for that great comment, Paul, which i attempted to answer days ago on my mobile, but couldn’t. Yes, as Susan Geason says, Duhig was a tyrant. I saw him at least once or twice a year until I went to Townsville when he came to our St Patrick’s Day concert.
I didn’t realise you had such strong connections to Toowoomba. What a shame not to have a photo of your parents wedding, but apparently not unusual for the times it seems.
Dughig was a tyrant. He humiliated me at my confirmation by knocking back my choice of name – Jacinta (she apparently wasn’t a complete saint yet) and naming me Maria. I think that’s the day I left the Catholic Church. However, he regarded my little Catholic school as underprivileged, and used to turn up occasionally with one of those big green canvas bags full of ice creams for us.
Yeah, he was good at handing out the goodies – of which he had many, no doubt. I don’t know how he got his hands on my grandfather’s brother’s children, but he did. The girl ended up entering the convent and eventually became head serang at All Hallows. The boy, I think, escaped, but I don’t know what happened to him.
My mother’s people came from the Darling Downs. Oakey, in particular, I remember. Mag ran the Railway Refreshment Rooms there for many years.
Interesting read Danielle. I like to hear about ancestral stories. Glad you got them out of the box finally 😉
It was hard, Odette. I really did it for the grandchildren. I knew they’d be interested someday.
Someday ….