Australian Birdwood connections
The Australian War Memorial is currently undertaking a project to create a comprehensive digital archive of the Anzacs and their deeds, and of the wider Australian experience of war. The collections are selected from our extensive archives and reflect the experiences of Australian servicemen, nurses and civilians during the First World War. This project will digitally preserve the Memorial’s collections as well as provide full copies for research on the Memorial’s website.
As part of this project the Memorial is seeking contact with relatives of the persons listed below in connection with the large correspondence within the Field Marshal William Riddell Birdwood collection 3DRL/3376.
Other blogs relating to Birdwood correspondence can be found here : Australian military Birdwood connections and Unidentified Birdwood connections
This blog contain the names of Australian civilians who wrote to Birdwood. The general theme of the correspondence was to thank him for his commitment and leadership of the Anzacs. If you have any further information about these people, or their descendants, the Memorial would love to talk to you. Please contact Charis May via Published.Collections@awm.gov.au
William Henry Leighton Bailey
After migrating from England, Mr Bailey was an Australian journalist who moved back to the UK after working with newspapers in Rockhampton, Cooktown and Temora. Had appears to have had a large family, some of which stayed in Australia. He died 14 September 1929. For more details, see http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/21457859
Douglas John Byard
Mr Byard wrote to Birdwood from Hahndorf South Australia. He was the father of Gunner Frank Liddell Byard 34318 – Field Artillery, also of Hahndorf. The letter mentions a cousin, Colonel W Liddell.
Sir Walter Edward Davidson KCMG
Sir Walter Davidson (1859-1923) was the Governor of the Dominion of Newfoundland when war broke out. He held this position until 1917 when he was appointed Governor of New South Wales. He died while in office and is buried at the South Head Cemetery. He had one son to his first wife Lillie Harriet Baber, and two daughters to his second wife Margaret Agnes Fielding.
Mrs Sarah Goers
Mrs Goers wrote to Birdwood on the 16th May 1916 using the address Church Terrace, Walkerville South Australia. She was the mother of Private Stanley Gustave Goers 3500 of the 10th Battalion who passed away in 1967 in Adelaide.
Mr C J S Harding
There is little to identify Mr Harding other than his letter dated 16 May 1916 was from Belair South Australia. There is a death notice in the Adelaide Advertiser regarding his eldest son Charles dying 21 March 1925 at the age of 26.
Anthony Hendry
Mr Hendry wrote a letter in 1916 to Birdwood using two postcards from Mosman. The address on the cards simply state ‘Craigmore’, Mosman. His death notice in the Sydney Morning Herald in September 1934 mentions brothers, but gives no names.
Sir Henry Carr Maudsley
Sir Henry Maudsley (1859-1944), a physician, was born 25 April 1859 at Stainforth, Settle, Yorkshire. His father Thomas Maudsley was a farmer, who was married to Ann Annistead. Maudsley married Grace in 1890 and they had one daughter and one son, Henry Fitzgerald, who was awarded the Military Cross in the First World War and later became a prominent neurologist. The family migrated to Australia in 1888 where Maudsley took up a position at the Alfred Hospital and lectured at the University of Melbourne. He was an honorary major in the Australian Army Medical Corps Reserves 1909 when war broke out, and was subsequently appointed to the 1st Australian General Hospital as senior physician with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He passed away 5 March 1944 at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.
Archbishop Charles Owen Leaver Riley
Archbishop Riley (1854-1929) was born in Birmingham, the eldest child of the Rev. Lawrence Riley and his wife Emma. He married Elizabeth Merriman in 1886, and together they had three daughters and three sons. One son, Charles Lawrence became the Chaplain General of the Australian Military Forces in the Second World War. Another son Basil, was assassinated in China in 1927 while working as a correspondent for The Times.
Riley and his family came to Australia in February 1895 to take up the role of bishopric of Perth – a role he held for thirty four years. Among his many achievements, he was made Anglican Chaplain General of the AIF in 1916. This took him to the Western Front and was on the Ivernia when it was torpedoed. He was instrumental in securing more chaplains to support members of the AIF, and was the patron of the State branch of the Returned Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Imperial League of Australia.