The Kidd Family A Family History
Chapter Two · Thomas & Mary Rebecca Robens

The House at Sheffield Street

Vera Annie Robens

1894–1969

Forty-one years in one suburb, and a house that eventually held three of the sisters. She married a man who had cut cane at Mossman and served in the New Zealand Medical Corps under two-thirds of his own name.

Vera Annie Robens and Malcolm Douglas Grieve on their wedding day
Born
1894 · Marrickville
Died
3 October 1969 · Merrylands
Married
Malcolm Douglas Grieve (1887–1954)
Trade
Home duties
Lived
75 years

Born at Marrickville in 1894, registration 20415, the eleventh of the twelve — the registration naming both parents, Thomas Robens and Mary R. J. Robens.1 In 1921 she married Malcolm Douglas Grieve at Manly, registration 13696.2

The wedding photograph carries its own date. Her skirt stops at mid-calf, a hemline that belongs to the first half of the 1920s and to no decade before it — so the picture corroborates the year the index gives, without recourse to the index. She was twenty-seven. He was thirty-four, and had already lived a life she may not have known the whole of.3

The next generation

Children

  • Elva Nell (1923–2013) — married Arthur George Pittard, 1942
  • Kenneth Douglas (1927–2024) — builder; died at Taree at ninety-seven
1887–1905

The Man She Married

Malcolm Douglas Grieve was born in Sydney on 16 January 1887, the registration naming his parents as Robert Grieve and Eva A. Grieve.4

The family’s own working account — not yet checked against a primary record, and carried here as their account rather than as fact — has his father a professional cook who contracted tuberculosis and died in 1894 at the Thirlmere Home for Consumptives, the charity institution south-west of Sydney that took working men in for country air and free palliative care. His mother is said to have taken the children to Harris Park and to have died there in 1905, when Malcolm was eighteen.5

What can be documented is that by his own attestation in 1915 both parents were gone, and the person he named as next of kin was his landlady.

1913

Saltwater Creek

The first record of him as a grown man puts him a long way from Sydney. The Commonwealth roll of 1913, Division of Herbert, Subdivision of Douglas, entry 308: “Grieve, Malcolm Douglas, Saltwater Creek, Mosman, labourer.”6

That is Mossman, the sugar town north of Port Douglas in far north Queensland. The entries around his on the page are canecutters, cane farmers, sugar planters, a mill overseer. He was twenty-six, and he was in the canefields, under his own name.

Between his mother’s death in 1905 and this page there are eight years for which nothing at all has been found.

Malcolm Douglas Grieve as a young man — dressed for somebody’s wedding, on the evidence of the buttonhole. He looks to be in his early twenties, which would place it before Queensland
23 August 1915

Douglas, Malcolm

At some point after 1913 he crossed to New Zealand. On 23 August 1915, at Trentham camp outside Wellington, he signed an attestation paper for the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. The service number is 3/1012; the prefix marks the New Zealand Medical Corps, and the unit is given as Field Ambulance.7

The form asks eighteen questions. Four of his answers are worth setting down exactly as he gave them.

1. What is your name? — Douglas Malcolm. 4. What is the date of your birth? — 30th Jan’y 1890. 5. What is your trade or calling? — Driver. 13. Have you ever served in any military or naval force? — N.S.W. Scottish Rifles.
NZEF attestation paper, No. 3/1012, signed “Malcolm Douglas” at Trentham, 23 August 1915

His surname is not on the paper. His birth date is wrong by three years. The regiment he claims has no record of him. He signed it “Malcolm Douglas”, swore the oath in that name before Lieutenant Kellaway, and gave as next of kin Mrs A. Beere of 158 Tinakori Road — his landlady, at his own address, under the relationship “friend”. The alphabetical roll of the force carries him the same way.78

The family’s working account explains this by saying he was an orphan under the legal age of twenty-one. That cannot be right, and the arithmetic is not close. Born in January 1887, he attested in August 1915 at twenty-eight years and seven months. The date he gave made him twenty-five. He was years above any minimum and decades below the ceiling; nothing stopped him enlisting under his own name.9

So the reason is not known, and this account does not supply one. A man habitually called Malcolm Douglas might write that name and sign it without meaning to deceive anybody. The false birth date and the Scottish Rifles cannot be explained that way, and they were written by the same hand on the same afternoon.

One thing can be said in his favour on the point that looks worst. Naming a landlady as next of kin under “friend” reads coldly, and it was probably just true: his father had been dead twenty-one years, his mother ten, and every brother and sister he had was on the other side of the Tasman.

1919

Fifty-Four Sandyford Street

He came out of the war and stayed on in New Zealand, and the roll that finds him next is the one that settles the shape of the whole story. The Christchurch South Supplementary Roll of 1919: 54 Sandyford Street, Sydenham, occupation cook.10

Two things follow from that date. The first is a correction: the family’s account has him emigrating to Christchurch as an eighteen-year-old in 1905 and settling there, and it rests this on the very roll that turns out to be 1919. There is no evidence he saw New Zealand before the war at all. Queensland came first, and the Tasman crossing belongs somewhere in the eighteen months between the Mossman canefields and Trentham camp.6710

The second is quieter and better. On that roll he is entered in full and correctly — Grieve, Malcolm Douglas. He had enlisted as Douglas. He came back as Grieve.

The trade is worth a moment too. He gave “Driver” to the recruiting officer; the civil roll says cook, which was his father’s trade before him. He served in the medical corps, which is where a hospital-adjacent man would land.

1921–1932

Manly, Then Merrylands

He was back in Sydney by 1921, and in that year he and Vera married at Manly.2 Their children date the moves after it. Elva Nell was born in 1923 and registered in the district of Canterbury; Kenneth Douglas was born on 3 September 1927 at Merrylands.2021 So the household was at Merrylands more than a year before her father died in November 1928 and his obituary placed her there.11

The rolls take it from him. In 1930, Subdivision of Merrylands, entries 991 and 992: Malcolm Douglas Grieve, Sheffield street, Merrylands, steward; Vera Annie Grieve, Sheffield street, Merrylands, home duties. In 1932, at entries 1064 and 1065, the same two lines word for word.1213

Neither page gives a number, and the number does not matter much. What matters is that she is in Sheffield Street in 1930 and at Merrylands from 1928, and she died at Merrylands in 1969. Forty-one years in one suburb — the longest single residence of any of the twelve except her sister Stella’s thirteen years at Keppel Street and her brother William Wesley’s thirty at Lort Street, and longer than either.

Malcolm Douglas Grieve in uniform, in a Sydney street. The hat dates it: it is an Australian slouch hat, and in the New Zealand force he would have worn a lemon-squeezer — so this is not the first war but the second, when he was fifty-three
19 September 1940

Enlisting at Fifty-Three

In September 1940 he enlisted again — this time at Paddington, in the Australian Army’s Citizen Military Forces, service number N78883, giving Vera as next of kin. This time he used his own name.14

It did not last. The family’s account, again unverified against the papers, has him diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis at a medical board at Liverpool camp and discharged medically unfit within a month — the same disease that is said to have killed his father at Thirlmere in 1894.514

He lived another fourteen years. He died on 30 March 1954, the record giving the place as Auburn rather than the Sheffield Street house.15

Malcolm, Elva, Vera and Ken Grieve at Elva’s wedding, 1942 — the bride with her father, her mother and her brother. The groom is not in the frame
Elva Nell and Kenneth Douglas Grieve — Earlscourt Studio. Undated; on their apparent ages, about 1938 or 1939
1923–2024

The Two Children

Born four years apart, one in the Canterbury district and one at Merrylands. Between them they span a century and a year.

Elva Nell Grieve, later Pittard

1923–2013

Of Downing Street, Epping

Born
1923, registered Canterbury, reg. 14615
Married
Arthur George Pittard, Granville, 1942, reg. 29931
Lived
Downing Street, Epping

Her birth registration names both parents outright — father Malcolm D., mother Vera A. — and registers her in the district of Canterbury, which is the only record placing the household there.20

She married Arthur George Pittard in the Granville district in 1942; the family’s working account puts the ceremony at the Merrylands Methodist Church.22 The electoral roll finds the couple afterwards at Downing Street, Epping, in the Subdivision of Dundas, he a refrigeration engineer — and enters her as “Pittard, Elva Dell”.23 Her own birth registration says Elva N. It is one more variant in a family that has already produced Robens for Robins and Douglas for Grieve.

Their son Richard was Malcolm and Vera’s first grandchild.19 She outlived her mother by forty-four years and died in 2013, at about ninety.25

Kenneth Douglas Grieve

1927–2024

Builder, of Merrylands

Born
3 September 1927, Merrylands
Trade
Builder — on the 1949 roll at the family address
Died
26 September 2024, Taree, aged ninety-seven

His birth at Merrylands in September 1927 is what pushes the family’s arrival in that suburb back past his grandfather’s obituary.21

On Saturday 11 November 1950 he married Elaine Winifred Gleeson at the Merrylands Baptist Church, Pastor R. Burls officiating. The Broadcaster gave it a full column under “Wedding Bells”, and describes him as the only son of Mr and Mrs M. Grieve of Sheffield Street, Merrylands — which is his parents’ address, and confirms he was the only boy. The church was decorated with November lilies; the bride wore chantilly lace and a three-tiered veil; the three-tier cake was made by a friend and iced by the bride herself. Their future home, the report says, would be at Smithfield.26

They did not stay at Smithfield. By 1968 the roll has them back in the district at 8 Addlestone Road, Merrylands — Elaine Winifred at home duties, Kenneth Douglas an electrician.27 The family’s working account gives his trade in 1949 as builder; if both are right he changed trades in the twenty years between, and the 1968 entry is the one that has been sighted.2427

He and Elaine kept that marriage sixty-five years and more. In November 2015 the Manning River Times carried their blue sapphire anniversary — “Ken & Elaine Grieve of Old Bar will celebrate 65 years since they were married at Merrylands Baptist Church” — with congratulations from their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.28

He died at Taree on 26 September 2024, three weeks past his ninety-seventh birthday. He is the most recently living person anywhere in this history.21

Kenneth Douglas Grieve, probably in the 1960s. The surviving scan carries a heavy magenta cast; it is reproduced here in greyscale
Elva Nell Pittard, née Grieve, in later life — at a family gathering, name badge and all
Malcolm and Vera with their first grandson, Richard Pittard — Elva Nell’s son. Undated; probably the later 1940s

Grandfather

The only photograph of the two of them together after their wedding is this one, taken in a garden: Malcolm seated in a hat and a good suit, looking at the child; Vera standing over him with the baby across her arms in a christening gown that reaches the grass. The first grandson, Richard Pittard, Elva Nell’s boy.19

It is worth putting beside the funeral notice below, which calls Malcolm “Grandfather” in the ordinary way of such notices. This is where that word starts.

1 April 1954

The Funeral Notice

The notice in the Herald two days later is the only document in this whole file that shows the household as a household.16

The Relatives and Friends of Mrs. Vera Grieve, of 28 Sheffield Street, Merrylands, Mr. and Mrs. A. Pittard, Mr. and Mrs. Ken Grieve, and their Families are invited to attend the Funeral of her late beloved Husband, their dear Father, Father-in-law and Grandfather, MALCOLM DOUGLAS GRIEVE; to leave A. F. Anderson’s Funeral Home, corner South Street and Diamond Avenue, Granville, This Day at 3.30 p.m. for Rookwood Crematorium.
Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday 1 April 1954, p. 20

There is the number at last — 28 Sheffield Street. There is the daughter, married to a Pittard; the son, Ken; and the word Grandfather, which is how we know there were children in the next generation by 1954. The account that calls this a private cremation is wrong: it is a public invitation, and half of Granville could have come.16

One small warning for anyone who works from the transcribed text rather than the page. The optical reading of this notice renders the time as “310”. The scan says 3.30 p.m., plainly.

1954–1969

The Sisters Arrive

Malcolm died in the March of 1954. In that same year the electoral roll enters Vera’s two unmarried sisters, Martha Alice and Rhoda Blanche, at 28 Sheffield Street.17

It is usually told as Vera taking her ageing sisters in, and it may be that. But she had just been widowed after thirty-three years, and the roll cannot be dated within the year. Two sisters coming to a woman on her own reads at least as well. The house had been hers since 1930 either way, and by the end of that year it held three of Thomas and Mary Rebecca Jane’s daughters under one roof.1217

Alice died there in 1962 and Rhoda in 1966. Vera outlived them both, and died at Merrylands on 3 October 1969, aged seventy-five. She was buried at Rookwood — where her father lies, and her mother, and more of her brothers and sisters than can be listed in a sentence.18

What Is Missing

This page has more documents behind it than most in this chapter, and almost none of them are hers. Her father’s obituary places her. Her husband’s attestation, roll entries, enlistment and funeral notice carry the narrative. Her sisters’ addresses give the house its meaning. Her own appearances are four lines on two electoral rolls, three index entries, and a photograph taken on her wedding day.

That is not unusual for a woman of her generation who kept house and did not go to court, to war, or to the newspapers. It is worth saying plainly all the same, because the shape of this page is the shape of the record and not the shape of her life.

One passage comes closer than anything else in the file. At her son’s wedding in November 1950 the local paper worked its way through the reception in the manner of the time, and reached her:

She was assisted by the bridegroom’s mother, who chose a frock of navy moss crepe with navy and white lace sprays and a shoulder spray of red roses.
The Broadcaster, 6 December 1950 — the reception at Merrylands Baptist Hall

She is not named. She is “the bridegroom’s mother”, which is how the newspapers of 1950 named the women at a wedding who were not the bride. But somebody looked at her that afternoon and wrote down what she had chosen to wear, and it is the only sentence in this whole account that describes Vera Annie Grieve as a person in a room.26

One further photograph is held and remains unidentified: an undated snapshot of an older woman in wing-tipped spectacles and a floral blouse, seated at a table with a cup. The frames put it in the 1950s or 1960s, and she looks to be in her sixties or seventies — which rules out her daughter Elva, who was in her thirties then. Among the women of this family that leaves Vera. It is an argument from elimination and not an identification, and it is offered as no more than that.

The Record

Sources & References

  1. 1

    Birth registration

    NSW BDM index — Vera A. Robens, 1894, Marrickville, reg. no. 20415; father Thomas Robens, mother Mary R. J. Robens.

  2. 2

    Marriage, 1921

    NSW BDM index — Vera A. Robens and Malcolm D. Grieve, 1921, Manly, reg. no. 13696.

  3. 3

    The wedding photograph

    Full-length studio portrait, private family collection, identified by JK. Undated on the print; the bride’s mid-calf hemline belongs to c. 1920–25 and independently corroborates the registered year.

  4. 4

    Malcolm’s birth

    NSW BDM index — Malcolm D. Grieve, 1887, Sydney, reg. no. 584; father Robert Grieve, mother Eva A. Grieve. Summary record gives 16 January 1887.

  5. 5

    The family’s working account of the Grieves

    Unpublished drafts of July 2026 (“Grieve 14072026”, “GrieveDraft 2”, “Malcolm Douglas Grieve1”). These are working documents, not finished research. They supply Robert Grieve’s death from tuberculosis at the Thirlmere Home for Consumptives in 1894, Adeline Eva Grieve’s death at Harris Park on 10 December 1905, the 1940 tuberculosis diagnosis at Liverpool camp and the discharge of 15 October 1940. None of these has been checked against a primary record, and each is carried here as their account rather than as established fact.

  6. 6

    Mossman, 1913

    Commonwealth Electoral Roll 1913 (Second Print), Division of Herbert, Subdivision of Douglas, entry 308 — Grieve, Malcolm Douglas, Saltwater Creek, Mosman, labourer, M. The surrounding entries are canecutters, cane farmers, sugar planters and a mill overseer.

  7. 7

    NZEF attestation, No. 3/1012

    New Zealand Expeditionary Force, Attestation Form No. 2 — name given as “Douglas Malcolm”; born Sydney; date of birth 30 January 1890; trade Driver; last address 158 Tinakori Road; last employer A. Raven, Hopper St; single; prior service “N.S.W. Scottish Rifles”; question 14 (“Have you truly stated the whole of your previous service?”) answered Yes. Signed “Malcolm Douglas”; attested at Trentham, N.Z., 23 August 1915, before G. Kellaway, Lt., N.Z.E.F. The 3/ prefix denotes the New Zealand Medical Corps.

  8. 8

    Alphabetical Roll of the NZEF

    Entry for Douglas, Malcolm, 3/1012, Private — last New Zealand address 158 Tinakori Rd., Wellington; next of kin Mrs A. Beere (friend), same address. The scanned columns run a row out of register against the names; the Tinakori Road address matching the attestation, and the corps prefix, are what tie the entry to him.

  9. 9

    The age arithmetic

    Born 16 January 1887, he attested on 23 August 1915 aged twenty-eight years and seven months; the declared birth of 30 January 1890 made him twenty-five. The working account’s explanation — that he was an orphan under twenty-one — is impossible on these dates, and no substitute explanation is offered here.

  10. 10

    Christchurch South Supplementary Roll, 1919

    Entry 11046 — Grieve, Malcolm Douglas, 54 Sandyford Street, Sydenham, cook. Under his own name and in full. The year is what displaces the working account’s claim that he settled in Christchurch in 1905; the roll it relies on is post-war. Note also that the occupation is “cook” alone — the words “hospital attend’t” on the page belong to the next entry, 11047, Griffiths, of 44 Carlyle Street.

  11. 11

    Thomas Robens’s obituary, 1928

    Press obituary, November 1928, listing the twelve children and their residences — the earliest record placing Vera at Merrylands.

  12. 12

    Merrylands, 1930

    Commonwealth Electoral Roll 1930, Division of Reid, State District of Granville, Subdivision of Merrylands, p. 17, entries 991–992 — Malcolm Douglas Grieve, Sheffield street, Merrylands, steward; Vera Annie Grieve, Sheffield street, Merrylands, home duties. No house number is given.

  13. 13

    Merrylands, 1932

    Same subdivision, p. 19, entries 1064–1065 — the two entries repeated word for word, occupations unchanged.

  14. 14

    Second World War enlistment

    NAA series B884, Army Citizen Military Forces — Malcolm Douglas Grieve, born 16 January 1887, Sydney; enlisted at Paddington, New South Wales; service no. N78883; next of kin Vera Grieve. The working account dates the enlistment 19 September 1940 and the discharge 15 October 1940; the discharge papers have not been sighted.

  15. 15

    Malcolm’s death

    Summary record — died 30 March 1954 at Auburn; Rookwood. The working account places the death at the Sheffield Street house, which the record does not support.

  16. 16

    Funeral notice

    Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday 1 April 1954, p. 20, over the name of A. F. Anderson Pty Ltd, Granville, YU1533. “This Day” fixes the funeral to 1 April, two days after the death. The optical transcription of this notice reads the time as “310”; the page image reads 3.30 p.m. The working account’s description of a private cremation is contradicted by the notice itself.

  17. 17

    Merrylands, 1954

    Commonwealth Electoral Roll 1954, Subdivision of Merrylands, entries 6230–6231 — Martha Alice and Rhoda Blanche Robens at 28 Sheffield Street. The roll cannot be dated within the year, so its relation to Malcolm’s death in the March of the same year is not established.

  18. 18

    Vera’s death and burial

    Died 3 October 1969, aged seventy-five; buried Rookwood General Cemetery.

  19. 20

    Elva Nell’s birth

    NSW BDM index — Grieve, Elva N., reg. no. 14615/1923, district Canterbury; father Malcolm D., mother Vera A. The only record placing the household in the Canterbury district.

  20. 21

    Kenneth Douglas

    Born 3 September 1927 at Merrylands; died 26 September 2024 at Taree, aged ninety-seven. His birthplace puts the family at Merrylands more than a year before Thomas Robens’s obituary of November 1928.

  21. 22

    Elva Nell’s marriage

    NSW BDM index — Elva Nell Grieve and Arthur George Pittard, 1942, Granville, reg. no. 29931. The family’s working account places the ceremony at the Merrylands Methodist Church on 3 October 1942; the church and day are theirs, the year and district are the register’s.

  22. 23

    The Pittards at Epping

    Commonwealth Electoral Roll, Division of Parramatta, Subdivision of Dundas, entries 4460–4461 — Pittard, Arthur George, Downing street, Epping, refrigeration engineer; Pittard, Elva Dell, Downing street, Epping, home duties. The roll sets her middle name as Dell against the Elva N. of her birth registration.

  23. 24

    Kenneth at Sheffield Street, 1949

    Per the family’s working account, the 1949 Commonwealth roll records Kenneth Grieve at the 28 Sheffield Street property as a builder, with his wife Elaine, alongside his parents. Not independently sighted.

  24. 25

    Elva in later life

    Colour photograph at a family gathering, wearing a name badge, identified by JK. She died in 2013.

  25. 26

    “Wedding Bells — Grieve–Gleeson”

    The Broadcaster, 6 December 1950 — the marriage of Kenneth Douglas Grieve, “only son of Mr and Mrs M. Grieve of Sheffield Street, Merrylands”, to Elaine Winifred Gleeson, daughter of Mr and Mrs A. Gleeson of Mary Street, Guildford, at the Merrylands Baptist Church on Saturday 11 November 1950; Pastor R. Burls officiating. Bridesmaids Phyllis Rogers and Maureen Gleeson; flower girl Coral Johns; best man Trevor Nott. Reception at the Merrylands Baptist Hall. The report’s description of the bridegroom’s mother is the only physical description of Vera Annie Grieve in any source held.

  26. 27

    Merrylands Central, 1968

    Commonwealth Electoral Roll, Division of Reid, Subdivision of Merrylands Central, entries 541–542 — Grieve, Elaine Winifred, 8 Addlestone road, home duties; Grieve, Kenneth Douglas, 8 Addlestone road, electrician.

  27. 28

    Blue sapphire anniversary

    Manning River Times, 11 November 2015 — “Ken & Elaine Grieve of Old Bar will celebrate 65 years since they were married at Merrylands Baptist Church,” with congratulations from their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

  28. 19

    The photographs

    Eight identified by JK: the 1921 wedding portrait; Malcolm as a young man, studio half-length with a buttonhole; Malcolm in uniform in a Sydney street; Malcolm and Vera in a garden with their first grandson, Richard Pittard; Malcolm, Elva, Vera and Ken at Elva’s wedding in 1942 — the clearest likeness of Vera at any age, and the only one in which she plainly wears spectacles; Elva and Ken as children, by the Earlscourt Studio; a studio portrait of Kenneth Douglas Grieve, probably 1960s, whose scan carries a heavy magenta cast and is shown here in greyscale; and Elva in later life at a family gathering. The last is dated here by the Australian slouch hat, which rules out his New Zealand service and leaves 1940. The building behind him — a large classical stone public building with paired columns, a pedimented porch and a sculptural panel set high in a recess — has not been identified. A fourth photograph, of an older woman in wing-tipped spectacles, remains unidentified.