Queenie Baldock

1907–1985

Married a labourer known to the family as "Jack" in 1930 — six children followed, and two of them died within a month of each other in 1939, of diphtheria, a disease their baby sister survived only because she, unlike them, had been immunised.

Born: 14 January 1907 · Newtown, baptised St Peter’s
Died: c. 1985 · Villawood
Married: John Pickerman Logan ("Jack," 1906–1950), a labourer — married 9 August 1930, St Stephen’s Church, Newtown
Lived: 78 years

Queenie was baptised at St Peter’s, Newtown, on 6 November 1907, her birth given as the preceding 14 January.¹ She was still living at home on Gowrie Street in June 1927, when she stood witness at her sister Janet’s wedding, and was still there three years later, working as a machinist, when the 1930 electoral roll caught her on the eve of her own marriage.

On 9 August 1930, at St Stephen’s Church, Newtown — the same church where her parents had married forty years before, and where her sisters Frances Jessie and Janet had married within four days of each other three years earlier — Queenie, twenty-three, married John Pickerman Logan, a twenty-four-year-old labourer of 24 Flora Street, Erskineville, born at Alexandria, son of William Logan and Jessie (née McKie). The register gives her father’s trade now as “railway painter,” rather than the “coach” or “carriage painter” of the family’s earlier records — the same work, on the same short stretch of Gowrie Street, simply carried into a new decade. William Stanley signed as a witness to his daughter’s marriage, alongside a Joyce Ewing; the unusual middle name his new son-in-law carried, Pickerman, is not yet traced to either side of the Logan family.²

Six children followed: Jean Noelene, born on Christmas Day 1930, not five months after the wedding; Betty, born in 1932; Ronald, born in 1933; Jessie — named, as often in this family, for a grandmother — born in 1934; Mavis, born, the family remembers, in 1940; and Leslie, born in 1941.³ The two middle children did not live to grow up, and a newspaper report turned up well away from Sydney finally explains why. In November 1939 three of the Logan children were patients together at the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children, Camperdown, all suffering from diphtheria: Ronald and Jessie seriously — neither had been immunised — and their baby sister Mavis only mildly, because she had been. A Dubbo newspaper picked up the case as a cautionary tale for parents weighing up the district’s own immunisation scheme, warning them to “remember the case of the Logan family in Sydney.”⁷ Ronald died at the Children’s Hospital, Camperdown, on 27 November 1939, aged six, and was buried at Rookwood General Cemetery; his younger sister Jessie followed him to the same cemetery barely four weeks later, on 23 December 1939, aged five.⁴ The Dubbo report gives Mavis’s age at the time as twelve months — which, if right, would put her birth in 1938, not the 1940 the family has always given her; that discrepancy is not yet resolved.

John Pickerman Logan died on 5 September 1950 — “the result of accident,” his own death notice says — aged forty-three, and still, twenty years after his wedding, living at the same address, 24 Flora Street, Erskineville, he had given as a bachelor in 1930. The notice was placed by his mother, naming him only as the “dearly loved son of Mrs Jessie Logan and the late William Logan, and dear brother of Myrtle (Mrs Barker) and Eric”; Queenie and their four surviving children appear nowhere in it.⁵ Queenie outlived him by thirty-five years, dying at Villawood about 1985; her death was reported in the Sydney Morning Herald that July.⁶ She had by then already buried two of her six children; the other four — Jean Noelene, Betty, Mavis and Leslie — all outlived her in turn.

In the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children, at Camperdown, are three children from one family. All are suffering from diphtheria. Ronald Logan (5) and Jessie Logan (4) are seriously ill, and it is feared that they will die. They had not been immunised. Mavis Logan, their 12-months-old sister, also is suffering from the disease, but her condition is not serious. She had been immunised.

"Fighting World’s Worst Infantile Disease," Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate, 28 November 1939

LOGAN, John Pickerman.—September 5, 1950 (result of accident), dearly loved son of Mrs Jessie Logan and the late William Logan and dear brother of Myrtle (Mrs Barker) and Eric, aged 43 years. At rest.

Death notice, Sydney Morning Herald, 8 September 1950

A young woman with short waved hair, seated in a studio portrait, wearing a dark dress and a long pearl necklace, holding a white rose. — Queenie Baldock, in a studio portrait from around the time of her marriage — in the family collection

Marriage register entry No. 4128 recording the marriage of John Pickerman Logan, labourer of Erskineville, and Queenie Baldock, of Gowrie Street, Newtown, on 9 August 1930, with the ages, birthplaces and parents of both parties. — Entry 4128, 9 August 1930 — Queenie’s own father, William Stanley Baldock, signed as a witness to her marriage

The Record

Sources & References

1
Baptism of Queenie Baldock, 1907

Church of England baptism register, parish of St Peter’s, Newtown, register No. 577: Queenie, born 14 January 1907, baptised 6 November 1907, parents William Stanley and Jessie Baldock, of Gowrie Street, Newtown; father’s occupation given as carriage painter.
2
Marriage of Queenie Baldock and John Pickerman Logan, 1930

NSW Register of Marriages, District of Newtown, entry No. 4128: John Pickerman Logan, labourer, of 24 Flora Street, Erskineville, bachelor, aged 24, born Alexandria, N.S.W., son of William Logan and Jessie (McKie); married Queenie Baldock, home duties, of 110 Gowrie Street, Newtown, spinster, aged 23, born Newtown, daughter of William Stanley Baldock (railway painter) and Jessie (Brooks); married 9 August 1930 at St Stephen’s Church, Newtown, according to the rites of the Church of England, by the Rev. John Sidwell (Marriage Certificate No. C297880). Witnesses: Joyce Ewing and William Stanley Baldock, the bride’s own father. NSW BDM marriage registration 12751/1930, Newtown district.
3
Birth of John Pickerman Logan, and the Logan children

NSW BDM birth registration 19265/1906, Waterloo district: John P. Logan, father William Logan, mother Jessie Logan. Family records (Jenny Kidd): children of John Pickerman Logan and Queenie (Baldock) — Jean Noelene (25 December 1930 – 10 February 2010), Betty (1932–2003), Ronald (1933–1939), Jessie (1934–1939), Mavis (1940 – 15 June 1992) and Leslie (1941–2011).
4
Deaths of Ronald and Jessie Logan, 1939

Cemetery transcription, Rookwood General Cemetery: Ronald Logan, died 27 November 1939, aged 6, at the Children’s Hospital, Camperdown. NSW BDM death registration 23999/1939, Annandale district: Jessie Logan, died 1939 — the index gives the parents’ names as “John Pickerman” and “Oueenie,” evident transcription errors for John P[ickerman] Logan and Queenie; also buried Rookwood General Cemetery, barely a month after her brother.
5
Death and funeral of John Pickerman Logan, 1950

“Logan,” Sydney Morning Herald, 8 September 1950, p. 20: “LOGAN, John Pickerman.—September 5, 1950 (result of accident), dearly loved son of Mrs Jessie Logan and the late William Logan and dear brother of Myrtle (Mrs Barker) and Eric, aged 43 years. At rest.” Funeral notice, same page: “The Relatives and Friends of the late JOHN PICKERMAN LOGAN of 24 Flora Street, Erskineville, are kindly invited to attend his Funeral to leave our Funeral Home, 24 Enmore Road, Newtown, To-morrow (Saturday) Morning at 11.15 o’clock for the Crematorium, Rookwood.” Labor Motor Funerals Limited.
6
Death of Queenie Logan, 1985

Obituary, Sydney Morning Herald, 6 July 1985: Queenie Logan, of Villawood, died about 1985.
7
Diphtheria outbreak in the Logan household, 1939

"Fighting World's Worst Infantile Disease," Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate, 28 November 1939, p. 3: a report on a diphtheria outbreak at the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children, Camperdown, used to promote a local immunisation scheme, naming Ronald (5), Jessie (4) and Mavis (12 months) Logan as the affected siblings — Ronald and Jessie unimmunised and gravely ill, Mavis immunised and only mildly affected — and closing with the exhortation that parents "should remember the case of the Logan family in Sydney." The ages given for Ronald and Jessie run a year below the birth years elsewhere recorded for them, and Mavis's stated age of twelve months conflicts with the family's own recollection of a 1940 birth date for her; neither discrepancy is yet resolved.