Martha Ann Jeffries & James Schoe

1857–1937

The saddler’s third daughter, and the one who left. She married the Congregational printer James Schoe, followed his trade clear across the continent to Perth, and came home with him at the last to a Katoomba cottage — where her widowed sister Alice kept house beside her.

Born: Bathurst, New South Wales · 1857
Died: 14 March 1937 · “Manning Mills,” Lurline Street, Katoomba
Married: James Schoe (1858–1932) — compositor; married at Bathurst, 1887
Lived: about 79 years

Martha Ann Jeffries was born at Bathurst in 1857, the third of Archibald Joseph Jeffries’ eight children and his third daughter, registered there as Martha A. Jeffries, daughter of Archibald J. and Mary J.¹ In 1887 she married James Schoe, a young compositor on the Bathurst Times, and they set up house in Keppel Street.²³ It was to the Schoe house that her mother, Mary Jane, came on the visit during which she was taken ill and died, in February 1894, and from which she was buried — the same week the papers reported that Martha’s father was by then almost totally blind.⁴

James Schoe had been born at Glebe, in Sydney, in 1858, a son of Abel Schoe, but he was a Bathurst man by upbringing; his brother Robert spent most of a working life on the staff of Bathurst Gaol.⁵ James set type at the Bathurst Times in the days of Dowse and Macdougall, kept the books of the Bathurst Occidental Bicycle Club as its honorary secretary, and stood among the nominators at a Bathurst election.⁶ His deepest attachment was to the Congregational Church, where he was deacon, Sunday-school teacher and financial secretary; when he left the town in May 1896 the congregation presented him with an illuminated address, and the Sunday-school children gave him a bound Tennyson.⁷

He left because a large Perth printing office had made him an offer, and the connection it began lasted thirty-two years.⁸ The electoral rolls follow the Schoes across Perth — Bulwer Street, then Raglan Road in North Perth, then Lincoln Street, and by the war years the house they called “Prospect” on First Avenue, Maylands — James always entered as a compositor, Martha as home duties.⁹ He was, an obituary said, “a force in the social and religious life” of the city. He wrote to the West Australian papers through 1898 and 1899 pressing that the Commonwealth Bill be put to a vote of the people, and within the printers’ union he made himself “leader of the opposition,” resisting the union’s political spending year after year.¹⁰ In 1922, after a Perth compositors’ strike, he took his own union to the Supreme Court to stop it voting £250 to the Trades Hall — and won.¹¹ He retired about 1928 with a small pension the firm was under no obligation to give, “a most unusual act of grace.”⁸

At the end of 1928 the Bathurst papers noted that “Mr and Mrs James Schoe … are on their way back to the land of their birth,” a Jeffries sister travelling home with them.¹² On medical advice they settled at Katoomba, in a Lurline Street cottage called “Manning Mills.” James threw himself into the local United Australia Party committee and the Katoomba Congregational Church, and was out working for the party on the very day he died — a paralytic stroke on the evening of 29 April 1932.¹³ Martha kept the cottage for five more years, her widowed sister Alice Green living under the same roof.¹⁴ She died there on 14 March 1937, aged seventy-nine, and was buried beside James in the Congregational ground at Katoomba; the notice styled her “relict of the late James Schoe” and sister of the Robens and Green families.¹⁴

The Church members, officers, and congregation cannot permit you to depart without expressing their deep sense of the service you have rendered by the efficient discharge of your duties as deacon, Sunday-school teacher, and financial secretary … Wishing you and your esteemed wife every prosperity here and hereafter.

Illuminated address presented to James Schoe, Congregational Church, Bathurst, May 1896

Bathurst

A compositor at the Times

The Schoes were a Bathurst printing-and-gaol family. James learned his trade as a “jobbing” hand at the Bathurst Times under the proprietors Dowse and Macdougall; his brother Robert — “Bob” — was remembered by the older residents as having “spent a greater part of his life in gaol,” meaning on the warders’ staff.⁵ James’s public life in the town ran through the Congregational chapel and its societies: the deaconship, the Sunday school, the financial secretary’s ledger, and — on the secular side — the honorary secretaryship of the Occidental Bicycle Club, whose annual report he read to the members in 1890.⁶⁷

Martha’s part of the record is quieter, and mostly her family’s: the Keppel Street house that received her dying mother in 1894, and the wedding of her sister Alice, sixteen years later, held at the Bathurst house of a Miss Schoe.⁴

Perth, 1898–1899

Let the people vote

Once in Perth, James Schoe put his name to a run of letters in the West Australian and the Western Mail arguing that Western Australia’s Premier should stop temporising and let the electors themselves decide on federation. “I think the time has fully arrived,” one begins, “when the Premier should make a pronouncement of the stand he intends to take on the federation question.” The colony had been represented at every Convention, he wrote, and still no one knew whether its government meant to recommend the Commonwealth Bill or bury it.¹⁰

He carried the same combative frugality into the Typographical Society. By 1904 a hostile correspondent was calling him “leader of the opposition in the Union,” a man who “has consistently opposed any matter … involving any expenditure of money” — the union buying shares in a Labor paper, subscribing to a senator’s libel action, funding the Australian Labour Federation. Schoe lost those votes, and kept making the argument.¹⁰

The Supreme Court, 1922

Schoe v. his own union

In August and September 1922 the machine compositors on several Perth newspapers went on strike. A meeting of the Printing Industry Employees’ Union afterwards resolved to vote up to £250 to the Trades Hall disputes committee, to recoup money it had advanced to the strikers. Schoe moved instead that the question go to the Arbitration Court under the union’s own rules; the chairman ruled him out of order; and Schoe warned the meeting he would go to law.¹¹

He did. Suing on behalf of himself and other members against the West Australian branch of the union and its officers, he asked the Supreme Court for a declaration and an injunction. Mr Justice Northmore reserved his decision and delivered it two days before Christmas: Schoe “was entitled to invoke the assistance of the court,” had “a right to the declaration and injunction for which he asked,” and on the evidence no part of the union’s funds had in fact been paid out under the resolution.¹¹

Katoomba

Home to the mountains

The Schoes came east again in the summer of 1928–29, “back to the land of their birth,” and took a Lurline Street cottage at Katoomba on the advice of James’s doctors.¹² Sick as he was, he joined the local United Australia Party committee and worked for it “most enthusiastically … even up to the day of his passing.” He had been about the town all day on 29 April 1932; he had his tea, was taken suddenly ill, and died that evening. The Katoomba Congregational Church was filled for the funeral, and he was buried in the Katoomba cemetery.¹³

Martha lived on at “Manning Mills” another five years. Her sister Alice Emmaline Green — widowed since 1912 — was at the same Lurline Street address on the rolls of 1933 to 1936, so that the two Jeffries sisters, both of Bathurst, both widows, kept the last house together.¹⁴ Martha died there on 14 March 1937. She was buried from the Congregational Church for the Congregational cemetery at Katoomba, next to James.¹⁴

The Record

Sources & References

1
Birth registration, 1857

NSW BDM birth index — Martha A. Jeffries, 1857, registration district Bathurst, reg. no. 4731; father Archibald J. Jeffries, mother Mary J. The third of the eight children; see the Jeffries entry above, reference 7, for the full sibling set.
2
Marriage, 1887

NSW BDM marriage index — Martha Jeffries and James Schoe, 1887, registration district Bathurst, reg. no. 3874.
3
James Schoe at the Bathurst Times

National Advocate (Bathurst), 8 April 1931, “Personal” — “Mr. Schoe — ‘Jim’ — will be remembered by the older residents as the ‘jobbing’ hand at the Bathurst ‘Times’ in the days of Messrs. Dowse and Macdougall.” Blue Mountains Times (Katoomba), 6 May 1932, obituary — “Mr. Schoe served on the local paper there for some years and then joined the staff of the ‘Sydney Morning Herald.’”
4
The Schoe house, Keppel Street

National Advocate (Bathurst), 8 February 1894, “Death of Mrs. Jeffries” — Mary Jane Jeffries “was taken ill when on a visit to her daughter, Mrs. James Schoe, of Keppel-street”; funeral notice, Bathurst Free Press and Mining Journal, 7 February 1894 — the funeral to move from the residence of Mr Jas. Schoe, Keppel Street. See the Jeffries entry, reference 16. The 1910 marriage of Alice Emmaline Jeffries was held “at the residence of Miss Schoe, Bathurst” (see the Green entry, reference 5); James and Martha were by then long settled in Perth and appear on every roll from 1903 to 1936 as a household of two, and neither of the 1937 notices names a child, so that “Miss Schoe” was most probably a Bathurst niece of James’s rather than a daughter.
5
James Schoe — origins and family

NSW BDM birth index — James Schoe, 1858, registration district Glebe, reg. no. 263; father Abel Schoe, mother Margaret. The obituaries treat him as a Bathurst man (Blue Mountains Times, 6 May 1932, “Born at Bathurst 75 years ago”; Katoomba Daily, 5 May 1932, age 74). National Advocate (Bathurst), 8 April 1931 — “Mr. and Mrs. Robert Schoe, also one time residents of Bathurst, where ‘Bob’ spent a greater part of his life in gaol — attached to the gaol” — a brother on the prison staff.
6
Occidental Bicycle Club and a Bathurst nomination

Sydney Morning Herald, 26 February 1890 — annual meeting of the Bathurst Occidental Bicycle Club, “the hon. secretary, Mr. James Schoe, read the report,” with a unanimous vote of thanks to him for special services; Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser, 16 November 1889 — the club’s sports. Bathurst Free Press and Mining Journal, 14 July 1894 — “James Schoe” among the nominators of Mr Sydney Smith at the Bathurst nominations.
7
The Congregational Church and the 1896 farewell

National Advocate (Bathurst), 18 May 1896, “To be Presented” — an illuminated address, prepared by Mr J. J. Copeman, on exhibition in J. R. & A. Jones’ window, to be presented to Mr James Schoe by the members of the Congregational Church “on the occasion of his departure from Bathurst.” National Advocate, 28 May 1896, “Presentation to Mr. James Schoe” — made after the Sunday-evening service by the minister, the Rev. R. F. Becher, B.A., naming his duties “as deacon, Sunday-school teacher, and financial secretary”; Mr W. J. O. Ross spoke for the Sunday school, and the children gave him “a handsomely bound copy of Tennyson’s poems.”
8
The Perth printing house and retirement

Blue Mountains Times (Katoomba), 6 May 1932, obituary — an offer “from a big printing firm in West Australia,” beginning “a connection which lasted for 32 years,” severed only when ill health forced him to retire; “the firm esteemed his service and character so highly that on retiring he was granted a small pension — a most unusual act of grace, we understand.”
9
Perth electoral rolls, 1903–1925

Commonwealth electoral rolls, James Schoe (compositor) and Martha Ann Schoe (home duties): 1903, 284 Bulwer Street, Perth; 1906, Raglan Road, North Perth; 1910, 121 Lincoln Street, Perth; 1917 and 1925, “Prospect,” First Avenue, Maylands (Subdivision of Maylands, Division of Fremantle then Perth).
10
Federation letters and the Typographical Society

Letters over the signature “James Schoe, Perth”: The West Australian, 15 April 1898 and 16 May 1898; Western Mail, 20 May 1898 and 19 May 1899 — urging that the Commonwealth Bill be submitted to a vote of the people. The West Australian, 23 June 1904, correspondence on “Political Blacklegs” — a fellow member describing Schoe as occupying “the proud position of leader of the opposition in the Union,” one who “has consistently opposed any matter that came before the Society involving any expenditure of money,” instancing shares in the Democrat, a contribution to Senator Croft’s libel action, and assistance to the Australian Labour Federation.
11
Schoe v. West Australian branch, Printing Industry Employees’ Union, 1922

Observer (Adelaide), 23 December 1922, “Echo of Printers’ Strike”; Western Argus (Kalgoorlie), 26 December 1922; Kalgoorlie Miner, 25 December 1922 — arising from the Perth machine-compositors’ strike of 22 August to 22 September 1922 and a union meeting’s resolution to vote up to £250 to the disputes committee. James Schoe, “on behalf of himself and others,” sought an injunction and declaration against the union and its officers; Mr Justice Northmore, Supreme Court of Western Australia, gave his reserved decision on 22 December 1922 that Schoe “was entitled to invoke the assistance of the court” and “had a right to the declaration and injunction for which he asked,” finding also that no union funds had in fact been paid out under the resolution.
12
The return to New South Wales, 1928

National Advocate (Bathurst), 24 December 1928, “Personal” — “Mr and Mrs James Schoe, who left Bathurst about twenty years ago for West Australia, are on their way back to the land of their birth. Miss Jeffries (Mrs Schoe’s sister) who went with them, is also returning.”
13
James Schoe’s death, 1932

Katoomba Daily, 5 May 1932, “Sudden Death — Mr. James Schoe” — died aged 74 at his residence “Manning Mills,” Lurline Street, Katoomba, on the night of Friday 29 April 1932; had been about town all day, was taken suddenly ill after his tea; funeral service the following Sunday at the Katoomba Congregational Church, the Rev. C. J. Leese officiating, burial in the Katoomba cemetery, arrangements by T. J. Andrews of Katoomba. Blue Mountains Times, 6 May 1932, “Obituary” — the paralytic stroke; his work for the United Australia Party “even up to the day of his passing”; a memorial service set for Sunday 15 May. NSW BDM death index — James Schoe, 1932, registration district Katoomba.
14
Katoomba rolls, the two sisters, and Martha’s death, 1930–1937

Commonwealth electoral rolls, Subdivision of Katoomba: 1930 — James Schoe (compositor) and Martha Ann Schoe (home duties), 138 Lurline Street; 1935 and 1936 — Martha Ann Schoe alone, 138 Lurline Street, home duties. Alice Emmaline Green is at the same address on the rolls of 1933–1936 (see the Green entry, reference 9). NSW BDM death index — Martha Schoe, née Jeffries, 1937, registration district Katoomba, buried Katoomba cemetery. Sydney Morning Herald, 15 March 1937 — funeral notice for “Mrs. Martha Ann Schoe, of ‘Manning Mills,’ Lurline-street, Katoomba,” to leave the Congregational Church, Katoomba, for the Congregational cemetery, T. J. Andrews funeral director; and the death notice, “relict of the late James Schoe,” sister of the Robens and Green families, aged 79.