Modern living was for sale in Second World War Melbourne – but only in the right streets

Patrick Gigacz

‘Paid £120 extra for H.W.S. [hot water service], electric stove and extras … W.C. [water closet – toilet] will be inside when sewerage put in.’ These comments to an interviewer for the University of Melbourne Social Survey in 1941 provide a glimpse of the decisions, frustrations and complexities that accompanied the expansion of modern infrastructure in the city in the mid-twentieth century.

Using a sample of the digitised Social Survey forms from houses in Sunshine, Braybrook and Maribyrnong, this blog post explores how enhancing the rudimentary geographical metadata of this archive can provoke interesting questions about the social and physical geography of the city, and facilitate further research.

Mapping the Data

To create this interactive Google map, each of the forms in the sample used for this blog post was geocoded using the Time Layered Cultural Map toolset. Alongside the geodata, a selection of structured information about the bathing, toilet, cooking and food storage facilities was manually extracted from the forms.

Geolocating archival datasets can require further research, paying attention to unstructured data in the archive, and cross-referencing information from multiple archival sources. For example, the address of the house in the introduction to this blog post was given as 6 Gordon St, Maribyrnong. On a modern map, this address is between Monash and Mitchell streets – but a Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works (MMBW) map shows that this block already had a sewer installed in 1926. A 1945 Sands & McDougall directory shows that, at this time, 6 Gordon St referred instead to a block further north, between Macedon and River streets. An MMBW plan for this block confirms that it was unsewered as of 1940.

This demonstrates one challenge of adding structured metadata to archival sources. Indeed, for many of the forms in this sample, no street number was recorded, and so geocoding required a ‘best guess’ position based on known features. To reflect this, the metadata includes a field for ‘location certainty’: ‘N’ for number- or lot-level, and ‘S’ for street-level.

Urban Networks

What further questions can this geodata raise about the Social Survey archive? The sewerage status and toilet location of houses in this sample provides interesting context to the Gordon St household’s comments (Figure 1). Unsewered blocks were widespread in this sample. As suburbia stretched rapidly, the MMBW felt that ‘people could do without sewers but not without water’ (Dingle 1991, 210). Of the known sewered properties, none had an inside toilet – so 6 Gordon Street’s readiness was unusual, and suggests the possibility of research into how household affluence affected homeowners’ ability to take advantage of hygienic infrastructure.

Far more residents were able to have a bath inside (Figure 2). For hot water, many depended on the chip heaters or coppers used by their neighbours with outhouses, even when gas or electricity was available nearby. The map shows a nuanced picture: even as baths moved inside and reticulated energy became available, residents continued to use labour-intensive water heating. It offers the potential for new conclusions about how social ideals of ‘modern’ living changed housing conditions.

Many of the houses with solid-fuel hot water had a gas or electric stove – but often, they operated a wood stove as well (Figure 3). Gas companies had struggled to capture the market from fire stoves, because the latter provided a source of warmth (Clendinning 2004, 40-1). This map shows that ‘modern’ houses connected to gas and electricity were clustered around town centres, but it also shows a reluctance to let go of older ways of cooking, which further research might explore.

Cold food storage, finally, complicates the picture of ‘modernisation’ (Figure 4). Only one house had electric refrigeration – because the residents lived behind the general store they owned! Other houses marked as ‘modern’ by their cooking or hot water arrangements remained dependent on older networks: regular deliveries of ice, close access to suppliers of perishables like the general store, or both. Further research might explore how these networks changed and eventually disappeared.

The most striking impression offered by mapping this data is its diversity. Every house in the sample depended on multiple, overlapping networks of urban services, many competing directly against each other. Expanding the digital archive, reveals a rich tapestry of visual insights into how Melbourne functions as a city, and the exciting possibilities of future research.

Patrick Gigacz is a PhD candidate in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, researching the cultural history of electricity in Melbourne in the early 20th century.

References

Dingle, Tony. (1991). Vital Connections: Melbourne and Its Board of Works, 1891-1991. Ringwood, Vic: McPhee Gribble.

Clendinning, Anne. (2004). Demons of Domesticity: Women and the English Gas Industry, 1889-1939. Aldershot; Burlington, VT: Ashgate.