In the centre foreground is believed to lie Raymond William Phelan (Springvale Cemetery)
Raymond however had me stumped. The only obvious record in the death index of a Raymond Phelan was from 1951, but the information provided stated his age at 70 (ten years too old) with parents named Robert and Agnes Phelan. Naturally I kept looking - perhaps Raymond had left the country, maybe even changed his name. What else could I discover about him? Well in 1899, sadly he lost his mother Caroline, and therefore William was left with four children aged 10 and under, including a newborn daughter. I believe that the children were taken to Macedon, where William's parents Jeremiah and Mary Phelan lived (not to mention various uncles and aunts), to be looked after by them. The records of Macedon State School have 8 year-old Raymond and 7 year-old Kathleen starting school there in 1899.
Fast-forward a few years and the only other record I could find of Raymond was a service record from the First World War. On the form he lists his father as William, residing in Ascot Vale. But strangely he listed his own birthplace as Hamilton. Hamilton is a long way from Ascot Vale, though William had worked there in the mid-1880s on the Casterton railway - in fact this is how he had met his wife, as she was a native of nearby Branxholme; perhaps Raymond had got it in his head that he had been born there.
And so it was that I left Raymond as a bit of a loose end, moved on and continued to build the remaining branches of my family tree. Now, having embarked on this project to go over my original work, I decided to take the opportunity to put on my detective cap once again, to delve a bit deeper and see if I could resolve what happened to Raymond. It's fair to say that what I uncovered painted a fairly sad picture.
With Police Gazette records now appearing on Ancestry, this gave me my first new clue. On 2 March 1909 Raymond Phelan is 'charged, on warrant, issued at the instance of William Phelan, 84 Francis-street, Ascot Vale, with vagrancy'. He was described as having a 'boyish appearance' with a 'defect in one eyelid', and wore a 'dark tweed suit, straw hat, and leather lace-up boots'. He must have run away from home again in August, as in November newspapers reported Raymond in court charged with stealing a 'turn-out' (pony, cart and harness) from outside the Victoria Market. He was described as 'harmless' and just a 'boyish freak', and had never been in trouble before, and the charge downgraded to 'illegal use' of the turn-out. Having been away from home for three months, 'working at different places', the accused was willing to return home. His father couldn't give a reason as to why he would have left home, and said that he had plans to send his son upcountry, to the care of 'some friends'.
What could have caused Raymond's desire to run away? While we will never know what his home life was like, we must remember that he was only 8 when his mother died. Who knows how the grief and then the disruption this caused affected him? Worse was to come, when in 1912 he lost his sister Kathleen. Born only a year or so apart, they could have been quite close. Now in his 20s, we start to see Raymond appear in electoral roll records. Firstly, in 1914, he is residing at the South Yarra Club Hotel, and his occupation there is listed as 'useful'. Presumably this means he is getting by doing odd jobs here and there. By 14 August 1917, when he enlisted in the AIF to serve in the war, he was living in Coburg and working as a groom (stable hand).
I can imagine Raymond enlisting to fight thinking it might give him the chance to achieve something, that it might give him a purpose and some direction, not to mention regular pay. However it was not to be so grand as ill health dominated his stint of service. Appointed to the 23rd Battalion, and after a period of training at Broadmeadows, on 21 November 1917 Raymond shipped out on the Nestor. After spending Christmas in Egypt, he moved on to England, arriving 25 January 1918. After further preparation he was off to France, arriving 24 April, the day before the famous battle of Villers-Bretonneux: this battle was the turning point in the war where the Australians helped the British halt the Germans advance. But within a few days of arriving, Raymond was sick with pleurisy. He did manage to join his battalion on 3 June, possibly seeing a few days of combat before falling ill once again late in the month. He was back again when on 4 July the battalion took part in the emphatic victory at Hamel, famously led by General Monash. The Germans were now on the back foot, but once again Raymond fell ill and was out of action for almost a month.
Rejoining the battalion on 5 August, he likely played some part in the success at Amiens and subsequent battles which continued to force the German retreat from the Somme, including the important capture of Mont St-Quentin on 1 September. After this the battalion got some rest, enjoying sporting competitions and concerts among the training. From 27 September until 5 October the battalion saw their last stretch of action, as part of the effort to take the Beaurevoir line. With this last obstacle overcome, and the German morale completely sapped, the end of the war was imminent. Unfortunately Raymond would not get to enjoy much of it, because on the very day the Armistice was signed (11 November), he was struck down again. He suffered from appendicitis throughout November and December, and was hospitalised in England through Christmas and January. After some respite in February, there were further stints in hospital in late March and late April, before finally Raymond boarded a ship to come home on 5 June 1919. Unsurprisingly he was listed as sick at one point on the ship as well, before arriving home on 17 July and receiving his discharge on 9 August.
The next we know of Raymond is that in 1925 he is back working as a groom and living in Kew, at the same address as a Margaret Ainley. On 20 June of that year, the two were married at St Joseph's Church in Malvern. On the marriage certificate Raymond again lists his birthplace as Hamilton, and interestingly both list their age as 38: in fact Raymond would have only been 34 - and when I looked into Margaret's past, she had been born in 1884, making her actually 41! In cases where a woman married a younger man back then, it wasn't unknown for ages to be 'adjusted' on wedding certificates. From 1926 to 1931, the couple lived at Tarwin Lower in South Gippsland (Ray was still a groom), before returning closer to Melbourne settling in Dandenong.
In Dandenong Raymond found employment working for a local doctor. He also found himself in trouble again, this time in court as the defendant in a licensing case. On Sunday 11 October he had been caught purchasing a bottle of whisky from the Royal Hotel, which he said was for 'medicinal purposes', as required by the doctor. He was fined £2, as was the licensee who served him (I believe the sale of alcohol was illegal on Sundays at this time). Margaret and Raymond lived, according to the electoral roll, at the 'Rear Depot' on Hammond Road. While it doesn't sound in any way salubrious, it appears from probate documents that Margaret owned over three acres of vacant land there, and a share in six further acres on which there was a weatherboard home. However a period of relative stability came to an end when Margaret passed away in 1946. Those same probate documents reveal that Raymond, who by law was entitled to obtain administration of her estate, renounced such rights and consented to them being granted to Margaret's sister Emily Barry of Geelong. One wonders whether he was happy to do this or whether there was any advantage being taken by Margaret's family.
After Margaret's death, Raymond returned to a somewhat nomadic existence, as over the next years the electoral roll records his address as Boundary Rd, Carrum Downs (c/o 'Penny'), and then back to Dandenong, at which time he has returned to his occupation of a 'useful'. This included work at the Club Hotel. He resided in Walker St and then Cleeland Rd, and it was at this latter address that the story comes to a very sad end.
But how did I eventually discover the elusive death of Raymond William Phelan? Given that Raymond's age had been altered for his marriage certificate, I began to think about the death record from 1951 that I had discounted at the very start. Maybe the fact that his age was wrong didn't mean so much. There was still the issue of the wildly erroneous parents' names, but given no other death record could be found that looked anything like his, and that his electoral roll records all seemed to end by that point I began to feel that it must have been correct. So I purchased it. Bingo! The death certificate listed his wife's name so I knew I had the right man (it also confirmed that there had been no children from the marriage). It is understandable that whoever filled out the death record might not have known Ray's parents' names, though how they could have imagined such different names I'm not sure (I checked and they were not his in-laws' names). Yet for birthplace, those who provided the information got it right - Ascot Vale!
The cause of death also confirmed the sad end that I had suspected - from a newspaper article I had found online only days before. It described how on 27 August 1951 Raymond (known locally as 'Old Doc') had been reported missing by a neighbour, whose suspicion was aroused by seeing Ray's new hat on the ground but no sign of him for several days. Upon arrival the police found a newspaper from the 25th floating in a waterhole in the paddock behind the hut in which Raymond was living. Using grappling hooks, they recovered Raymond's fully-dressed body. An inquest was held during which deponents stated that Raymond had never expressed a desire to take his own life, but that he was known to have suffered from epileptic fits. Whether this had contributed to his death is unknown, but drowning was the official finding of the inquest. The inquest also remarked that Raymond had no relatives, when in fact we know that his sisters Irene and Caroline were still alive. This suggests to me that after all these years he had become estranged from his family.
All in all quite a sad story. Raymond and Margaret are both buried at Fawkner Cemetery in unmarked graves. I visited the locations a few weeks ago and it gave me some heart to know that I was paying some small amount of of respect to them both, as I'm not sure that too many others would have over the years.
Article from the Dandenong Journal, 29 August 1951
Other Sources:
Forward Undeterred: the History of the 23rd Battalion, 1915-1919. Rosebud, Vic: Slouch Hat Publications, 1998.
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