William Trewin: 'Rhoda Mountjoy is my niece. She has been staying with me on a visit for about three weeks

It seems that George knew her father through work and then met and wooed the daughter. Her 'Rank or Profession' is described in the marriage certificate as 'Home Duties', and there was probably something sedate and non-sensual about their courtship as well as their marriage, for they had only one child, a son, another Thomas - named after George's brother and father and, no doubt, to please his widowed mother. This Thomas, or Tom as he was also known, was born ten months after the wedding, which was solemnized 'according to the Rites of the Church of England' in St Stephen's, Richmond on 1 May, with as witnesses two relatives of the bride.

George's mother apparently lived with him and his wife for several years and moved with them to 247 Scotchmer Street in North Fitzroy in 1918, where George, the Town Clerk of Fitzroy, would remain for the next 30 years, until his death. For Catherine Honeycombe is not listed as the head of a household between 1912 and 1921, when she was living, presumably on her own, in Clifton Hill.

She died in 1938, two years before George and Bertha's only child, Tom, married Robina (Bena) Morrish in December 1940 in Ivanhoe. George died there in June 1947, aged 65. His widow, Bertha Honeycombe, lived thereafter with her older unmarried sister, Rose Madden, at 10 Holden Street, North Fitzroy.

Meanwhile, Dirty Dick, his wife and unmarried daughter, Jane, continued to wear away their lives at 76 Albert Street, in a villa or bungalow on the corner of Walter Street. The widows of his two eldest sons (George William and Dick) lived with their children in South Yarra and Footscray: Eliza Honeycombe with her four children in 40 Albion Street, and Fanny Honeycombe with her remaining three in Ballarat Road. Dirty Dick's fourth and only surviving son, Jack, was still in Johannesburg with his wife and four children, all of whom had married by the end of the First World War.

The war, meanwhile, had entered its bloodiest phase in France. In July 1916, on the Somme, 60,000 British soldiers were killed in one day. In seven weeks the Australian casualties would soar to 27,000 there. Reinforcements were required, and the new Labour Prime Minister, WM Hughes, resolved to introduce conscription. But his own party and the unions were generally opposed to this - although the churches and the press were generally not. God was said to be on the side of the Allies and conscription was 'morally necessary'. The Melbourne Age denounced 'muddy-mettied wastrels who disgrace the country in which they skulk.' How, one wonders, did young Richard Thomas Honeycombe react to remarks and comments like this?

In a base attempt to increase enlistment, the government began discharging some of their employees, those in public service and in the railways and elsewhere. This added bitter fuel to anti-war speakers and pacifists, whose aims and opinions were countered by crude government propaganda and such pro-conscription organisations like the ANA (Australian Natives' Association), which campaigned vigorously in picture houses, factories and pubs. The ANA branch in Footscray was one of the most active in Victoria. Yet anti-conscription meetings, their arguments reinforced by casualty lists and cinema newsreels showing actual scenes of the war, won the day. In a national referendum held on 28 October 1916, those opposed to conscription won by a narrow margin of 51 per cent. In Footscray about 73 per cent of the voters were opposed.

Were the three Honeycombes in Albert Street among the voters? What did they think of this issue and others involving the war? Or did the infirmities of age make Richard and Elizabeth indifferent to the warring political, social and sectarian factions at home - let alone those so hideously out of control so far away? Their main concerns must have centred on food and warmth and health, and the daily battle of dealing easefully with each new day.

What did the revolution in Russia in March 1917 mean to them, in the month that Elizabeth Honeycombe, Richard's wife, reached the age of 95? Surely she was no longer pretending to be younger than she was? Richard himself was now 88. And when America declared war on Germany on 6 April and the battles of Arras and Vimy Ridge were fought in France, what did they care? For Elizabeth was dying, and would never live to celebrate the 70th anniversary in September of that daring wedding at Gretna Green. They would never be the oldest married couple in Australia, as their grandson, Charles Regelsen, would one day claim. But they weren't far off it when Elizabeth died on 30 April 1917.

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Perhaps the tiny, gaunt old man, with his sharp blue eyes and his tousled white beard, wearing a bowler hat and clutching a stick, thought of his wife for a while with fondness and missed her more than he would ever say.

Thousands continued to die in Europe as thousands in Australia became the victims of a series of local and national strikes, caused by workers' fears of modernisation and mechanisation, by demands for better wages, for better living standards and better hours. Workers were also unsettled by the military casualties, by the conscription dispute, by class envy, by anti-German and anti Irish-Catholic sectarianism, and by a split in the Labour Party - one section, led by WM Hughes, amalgamating with the Liberals to form the Nationalist Party, which seized power in May after campaigning under the slogan "Win the War".

In Footscray quarrymen and bottle workers walked out and were sacked; other unions pledged their support. In Sydney, a dispute over a new card system led to a national strike by rail and tramway workers, that also brought out seamen, dockers, miners and others protesting at the use of scab labour - in effect, a general strike, though one poorly organised and without popular support. By September 1917 some 95,000 workers were out and the war effort was paralysed.

But even then some workers were drifting back to work, and after a few more weeks, the unions succumbed. As a result, their power and that of the labour movement was for some time tarnished and reduced, and many workers, unable to regain their former jobs, had no option but to enlist. WM Hughes, in another empty display of loyalty to the idea of Empire and 'good old England' and aiming to 'win the war' held another referendum on conscription in December. But even more people, nationally, said 'No'.

The war was not won for another year, and although an Armistice was declared on 11 November 1918, peace did not become official until June the following year.

There was much cheering in public when the war came to an end: in Footscray bells rang, factory whistles blew, bands played, speeches were made and 'God Save the King1 sung and played again and again. But this was not so much a celebration of victory as an expression of relief that the killing had stopped. For little had been gained and much had been lost. The world was not a better place: if anything, it was worse. Millions of lives, cities, towns and villages had been ruined, wrecked and destroyed; the ordered Ottoman and

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About 350 of Footsoray's young men had died in the war. Most of those who returned were mentally and physically maimed and scarred, unable to adapt to the routines of work and family life.

They sat silently at home, remembering what they had seen and done, and their wives and children suffered. Repatriation hospitals, retraining and resettlement schemes that tried to integrate returning soldiers in suburban and country life for the most part failed. They came back to a land not fit for heroes, and fit themselves for little if anything other than existing from day to day, as they had done in the war. Much as ageing Richard Honeyoombe did in Albert Street, cared for by his 70-year-old daughter Jane. His memories were of other, ancient times. But most if not all of his friends were dead, as were his wife and three of his sons.

Some returning soldiers brought venereal diseases back with them, and this spread among women like a plague, as it had in Europe. Others brought another European plague that became an epidemic - so-called Spanish flu. Identified in Melbourne in January 1919, it spread throughout Australia, killing over 11,500 people before the end of the year.

Strict precautions were taken to combat the invader, pneumonic influenza. Cinemas, theatres, racecourses and schools were closed; church-goers and people on public transport wore white gauze masks, as did office-workers and those in stores. No one was supposed to stay in a pub for more than five minutes, and when together people were required to sit or stand one metre apart. Ships from overseas were quarantined, and travel between the states curtailed.

No Honeycombes died in the epidemic, although some must have fallen ill. But their acquaintances would have included two or more of those who now suffered further family casualties at home after the military casualties inflicted on their sons and husbands overseas. 83 people died of pneumonic influenza in Footscray, almost as many as in Bendigo (87) and Ballarat (91). Overall, about 3,500 people would die of influenza in Victoria that year.

Another disaster overwhelmed Footscray in March, soon after the flu epidemic began - a flood. And this time the old man in Albert Street, who would be 90 in September that year, was very much affected. Torrents of rain had fallen on the plains northwest of Melbourne, and before the rainy dawn of a Wednesday, floodwaters spreading widely along the course of the Maribyrnong poured into Footscray, surging through houses and bringing down fences, trees and telegraph poles, and anything else battered loose by the water's weight, including rocks and sewage and acres of mud. People awoke to find water swirling around their beds; some climbed onto their roofs; a house in Swan Street was shifted by floodwater across the street, and the cellars of stores and businesses were filled and overflowed in Garden Street, Barkly Street, Hopkins Street, Hyde and Nichalson Streets. Geelong Road became a river, and balked by the railway embankment, the stormwaters piled up in culverts and crashed

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A local footballer rescued his horse from a stable in Albert Street. But a Mr Firth, also of Albert Street, lost his dog: chained to its kennel, it drowned.

Who rescued old Richard and Jane? Or did they remain stoically or stubbornly in their home, shivering damply in their nightclothes until the cold autumnal dawn? And still it rained.

In A History of Footscray, John Lack says: 'The disaster brought out the best in people. Friends and neighbours took in the flood victims, and hotel-keepers at the Plough and Royal offered rooms, soup and stimulants. On Wednesday morning J Ward Symons and A Sayer gathered clothing, bedding and groceries from local businessmen and distributed them. Special gangs of council-workers assisted in the clean-up... On the weekend, thousands of sightseers descended on Footscray to see the damage done by five to eight inches of rain in a confined area: over 200 houses had been washed through, and £2000 damage done to bridges and roads.'

A national seamen's strike that began in May and lasted until August added to the general misery, as food and coal supplies ran short and factories laid off men or shut down. 1919 was not a happy year. But at the end of the year, when the flu, and floods and the seamen's strike had faded away, Jack Honeycombe sailed from South Africa and returned to his native land.

He crossed the Indian Ocean a few months after Aloock and Brown had traversed the Atlantic, for the first time by air. And soon after Jack's arrival in Australia, two brothers, Ross and Keith Smith, made a landing at Darwin -having flown thither from southern England in just under 28 days. On the way they made 24 stops, and as a reward they won a £10,000 prize.

One day, in August 1989, a Quantas 747, unladen apart from a few special passengers, would fly from London to Sydney, non-stop in just over 20 hours.

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Jack was 58 in November 1919, and a widower, his wife Jane having died in April the previous year. She had left him and their children about £175 each, and this bounty, along with any savings and a nostalgic desire to revisit the land where he was born may have prompted his return. His four children had all married, and although he had several grandchildren, including three grandsons who bore the Honeycombe name, he may not have been that interested in them. Not a few Honeycombe men have led fairly independent lives; it was the women who usually maintained family ties and kept in touch.

Perhaps Jack returned to Melbourne for his father's 90th birthday in September, and to see him before the old man died. Perhaps his oldest sister Jane suggested the trip as a birthday surprise. Perhaps Jack never intended to remain. But he did, staying with his father and his sister Jane in the house in Albert St. He would have been a welcome guest if he was able to supplement the elderly twosome's income, and he probably did, obtaining some work as a carpenter in Footscray.

His three older brothers were dead, but he probably called on their widows and his nephews and nieces; on Eliza in South Yarra; on Catherine in North Fitzroy; and on Fanny in Footscray. He also probably visited his three married sisters: Mary Ann Regelsen; Harriet Steel; and Louisa Allen. The youngest of them, Louisa, was 54 in November 1919; Mary Ann was 68.

Jack is said to have been a great talker. Not unlike his father in appearance, he was perky and positive, short and slim (5'3"), and as he was now clean-shaven he probably, being a lively man, looked younger than he was. A keen football and cricket fan, he smoked a pipe and always wore a waistcoat, collar and tie. In his youth he had played football and cricket for local teams. He now enjoyed playing cribbage; he also enjoyed his food. Aunt Lil said of him: 'He'd eat anything put in front of him.'

He must have been an engaging character and an entertaining guest, especially in the home of Dick's widow in Ballarat Road.

It was a house of women, for apart from young Dick (Richard Thomas), who was 23 in 1919, it was occupied by Fanny, and ultimately by all three of her daughters, Louie (Louisa), Jessie, and Lily (as she was known then). For in 1920 Louie was abandoned by her husband, Harold Mudd, and returned to the family home.

Harold's father, Christopher Mudd, is said to have been a botanist and a professor as well as a Methodist evangelist. As a botanist he is also said to have accompanied the Prince of Wales (later Edward VII) to India in 1875 and to have received a present from the Prince - a gold tie-pin which is in the possession of Alan Honeycombe today. Clearly, Professor Mudd was an

educated and intelligent man. His son, Harold, who was born in November 1890, was, it seems, a feckless youth, and something of a disappointment to his father. He was tall (5'11") with fair hair and blue eyes, and married Louie in May 1913, when he was 22. They lived in Auburg^n eastern suburb of Melbourne, where Harold pursued his occupation of 'engirteer' or mechanic; they had no children. He didn't rush to volunteer for war service in August 1914, and it was not until February 1916, when he was 25, that he joined the 3rd Pioneer Battalion, and served as a private in France. He was overseas for three and a half years (1204 days) and was discharged on 6 November 1919. A tattoo of a woman's bust on his upper left arm was probably acquired in peacetime France.

Harold's experiences in the war and his natural instability probably increased the returning soldier's indifference to his wife and to marital bliss.

Soon after his return he took off with the money from their joint savings account, ostensibly to use it as the deposit on a house. He never returned. Louie was left, aged 29, without any money or a husband, although he left behind the pay given to him on his discharge. Understandably, Louie's character changed: she became quite bitter and dogmatic. She wore glasses and her hair turned grey, and she refused to consider any possibility of a divorce. Although she acquired a suitor, she couldn't, and wouldn't marry him. For the rest of her life her name was Mudd, Mrs Mudd. And so was Harold's of course.

Louie was a tailoress. So was 27-year-old Jessie, still unmarried, although she was being cautiously courted by a gas-fitter called Oscar from Moonnee Ponds. Both sisters, slim and small, worked away from home, for a firm of men's tailors called Scovell & Spurling at 27 Barkly Street.

The apprentice's printed and written agreement that was signed by the firm, by Jessie and her parents, in May 1906 still exists. Jessie was then 14% years old. For four years, from 8.30am to 6.0pm every day except Sunday, she contracted to serve her employer 'well and diligently'. In return the employer would pay her 2/6 a week in the first year, 5/- in the second; 7/6 in the third; and 10/- in the fourth, and she would be taught how to make vests - 'in so far as the said apprentice is capable of learning such trade or business and is willing to apply herself and actually so applies herself to learn the same'. If she was absent for any reason she would not be paid and could be sacked on one week's notice.

How harsh and dreary this seems now, and how ill-paid. But it was regular, useful work, and would not have been without its lighter and brighter side, girls being girls and liking to gossip and chat. Or was Jessie a dreamer, and ever aware of the manly chests that her vests in Footscray would enclose?

It seems that the youngest of the three sisters, Lily, stayed at home, helping her mother, who was widowed in December 1914 when Lily was 20 years old. If so, Lily had every opportunity of getting to know her Uncle Jack, to hear his tales of the Boer War and of gold-mining in South Africa, to be entertained and even captivated by him.

Jack was 32'/4 years older than Lily: he was 59 in November 1920; she was 26 in March that year. Her mother, Fanny, was 60, almost the same age as Jack, and maybe when Jack called at 168 Ballarat Road Fanny believed he was calling to visit her.

Towards the end of 1920, Louie moved in, having been abandoned by Harold, and young Dick married, although he didn't move out. Other moves then were the formation of the Communist Party, and of an air service in Queensland called Qantas.

Dick was working then as a fitter and turner for a manufacturer of farm implements called T Robertson down in Spotswood, a suburb south of Footscray and on the rail route to Williamstown. His future bride, Eliza Adelaide Thompson (known as Addie), was employed in an ammunition factory, and they first met at the Spotswood Station during the war, presumably after work. Addie was two years younger than Dick, and being 'church-minded' used to go to Spotswood Methodist Church. Her father, Henry Thompson, was a bottle-blower at the glassworks in Spotswood, and she was the only daughter: she had six brothers. Her home was in Spotswood, at 19 Forrest Street.

Theirs was a simple courtship, although carried out against the dark confusion of war and growing casualty lists, and local dramas like the flu epidemic, strikes and floods. There were more strikes in 1920 as living standards failed to improve, and few in Footscray were interested when the 26-year-old Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII and the Duke of Windsor) laid the foundation stone of Canberra's Parliament House. Of greater interest was the first film featuring Dad and Dave - On Our Selection.

But despite much social unrest and the pressures of being the only man in the Honeycombes' house in Ballarat Road, Dick proposed to Addie and was accepted. They married in St Mark's Church, Spotswood (C of E), on 27 November 1920, two days before the unhappy Louie's 31st birthday. He was 24, and she, now employed on home duties, was 22. The witnesses were, 'GA Thompson', a sister or brother of the bride, and 'J Honeycombe', who must have been Jack, as the signature is not that of Jessie. Jack presumably stood in for Dick's dead father. Was Richard also there? And Jane? Perhaps. Would that we had a photograph of the event.

Soon after the marriage, in 1921, Dick and his bride moved with his mother and all three sisters to a larger house in Ballarat Road, number 236. And there Dick and Addie and Fanny and Louie remained for 20 years.

Jessie was also there until 1933, when she wed her Oscar. Lily had escaped in 1921 when she married her Uncle Jack.

It was of course a scandal, and would have been if known about. But very few people outside the family were probably aware of the true situation, or of the couple's consanguinity. Jack had been away for many years and 'Uncle' need not have meant a blood relationship, the title being accorded male adults, usually single, who visited frequently and were close friends of the parents. As

the Anglican and Catholic churches would never have condoned such a marriage - of a man marrying his brother's daughter - the marriage of Jack and Lily, on 3 May 1921, took place not in a church but in a house (or manse), and was solemnized 'according to Free Christian Church rites'.

The house was at 48 Davis Avenue, South Yarra and the minister was Alexander Clarey. The witnesses were his wife, Clarice Clarey, and a woman called Mina Walshe. None of the Honeycombes was apparently present. No doubt Lily's mother, Fanny Honeycombe, who was vehemently opposed to the marriage and had done all she could to prevent it taking place, had forbidden her other children from having anything to do with the ungodly pair. It is even possible that Lily was thrown out of the 236 Ballarat Road before the wedding -or that she ran away. For in the marriage certificate her 'present' residence is given as 23 Argyie St, West Footscray - the same as Jack's. Perhaps 23 Argyie St was a boarding-house, a temporary residence for both, Jack having left 76 Albert Street some days or weeks before. It was temporary, as in 1922 the Melbourne street directories show that Jack (and Lily) were living at 6 Argyie St, off Essex St, where they would remain for 15 years.

The marriage certificate bears the unusual signatures of a bride and groom with the same surname - 'John Honeycombe' and 'Lily Honeycombe'. And the fathers of both bride and groom are both called 'Richard Honeycombe, stonemason' and come from Footscray. One, Jack's father, is differentiated by being called 'senior1 and 'living'. Lily's father was, of course, 'deceased'.

This was not the first time a Miss Honeyoombe had become Mrs Honeycombe. In 1864, in Plymouth, England, Annie Strong Honeycombe had married a distant cousin, Samuel Honeycombe. A marble mason, he became a newspaper seller and town crier in Jersey in the Channel Islands. He and Annie had 14 children, from whom the Jersey and Harwich and some London Honeycombes are descended. It was their great-great-grandson, Peter, who married Cheryl Walker at the Honeycombe Gathering in Calstock, Cornwall in September 1984.

The age difference between the Melbourne couple was in fact greater than the marriage certificate shows. Jack, said to be 57, was in fact 59. Lily's age was correctly given as 27. She was marrying not only her father's younger brother but also a man more than 32 years older than herself.