The Poole Family · William & Frances Poole

William Francis Poole

1882–

A tram conductor turned butcher who enlisted for the war in 1916, was divorced by his wife for adultery in 1921, and had resettled in Queensland by old age — almost certainly the brother who wrote, in 1954, to explain Joel John’s wartime disappearance.

Born: 1882 · Glen Innes registration district (Dalmorton)
Married: Isabella Marion Macmillan

William Francis Poole was born in 1882, his birth registered in the Glen Innes district — like his younger brothers Boyd and Henry after him — while the family was still settled at Dalmorton, on the Clarence goldfields.¹ He was the eldest of William and Frances Poole’s four sons who lived to adulthood.

On 11 March 1908, William — a tram conductor, twenty-five years old, of Ross Street, Forest Lodge — married Isabella Marion Macmillan, a thirty-year-old of the same address, at a private house on Rosemont Street, Hornsby, according to Presbyterian rites.² The certificate also records William’s late father’s occupation as "mining manager" — a rather grander description of the office William Frederick Poole had actually held and lost at Dalmorton fifteen years earlier, Warden’s Clerk and Mining Registrar, than the family had ever used for him at the time.

Isabella had been born at South Casino on 8 February 1878 — registered, in fact, back to front, as "Marion Isabella" — the daughter of James Macmillan, a Scottish-born farmer already forty-seven years old, and his wife Isabella, née McLennan, thirty-seven, who had been born on the far side of the world again, at Cape Breton, in Nova Scotia. The couple had married at Casino in 1864, and by the time their daughter arrived they already had six sons and three daughters living — so Isabella Marion grew up the youngest of at least ten children in a large Richmond River farming family.³

William had, in fact, already come forward three months before he was actually taken on: on 25 July 1916 he signed an Application to Enlist at Victoria Barracks, giving his occupation rather grandly as "provision merchant," of 143 St John's Road, Forest Lodge — matching a published list of Sydney men who had "submitted themselves for enlistment" that same week, in the Evening News of 26 July.¹¹ Passed fit at once, he was not actually attested until 24 October 1916, at Liverpool camp, this time giving the plainer trade of butcher — apprenticed five years to a J. Rees Lawson — and naming his wife, Isabella Marion Poole, as next of kin; he was posted to C Company, 17th Battalion.⁴ He embarked from Sydney on 11 November 1916 aboard the transport Suevic with the battalion's 18th Reinforcements, disembarked at Devonport on 30 January 1917, and spent the English winter training with the 5th Training Battalion at Rollestone, on Salisbury Plain.¹² A Base Records letter the following year, October 1917, signed by Isabella herself, tracked the couple through two changes of address in his absence — from 143 St John's Road, Forest Lodge, and 52 Corunna Road, Stanmore, to a new address at 57 Ross Street, Forest Lodge, the same street the couple had given as home at their wedding nine years before.⁵

He proceeded to France on 30 July 1917 and joined the 17th Battalion in the field on 18 August — in time for its part in the autumn fighting around Ypres, and for the German spring offensive the following year. His war ended not with a wound but an illness: admitted to hospital with tonsillitis in June 1918, he spent the rest of the war shuttling between hospitals, base depots and convalescent camps in France, mostly around Rouen and Le Havre, and was still at the Le Havre depot — briefly promoted, in the last months of the war, to temporary sergeant cook — when it began closing down in early 1919.¹² Reverted to private, he finally sailed for home from Liverpool, England, on 1 August 1919, aboard the troopship Argyllshire, and very nearly missed its own schedule: at the ship's stopover in Durban, South Africa, on 30 August, he went ashore without leave for thirteen hours and failed to report for picquet duty, forfeiting three days' pay for his trouble.¹³ He disembarked at Melbourne on 22 September 1919 and was formally discharged, back in Sydney, on 7 November — the holder, by then, of the 1914–15 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.¹²

A pre-printed will form, signed "William Poole" and made only days after his October 1916 attestation, bequeaths his personal estate entirely to "Wife[,] Isabella Marion Poole, 52 Corunna Road, Stanmore, Sydney, N.S.W." — its own clause devising real estate struck through and replaced with a note that a separate will had already been made and "lodged with" some unnamed party.⁶ The family's own copy of the will appears, at a glance, to read the street number as "51"; a second, official copy kept with his AIF file gives it plainly as "52," matching every other record of the address, so the family copy is very likely just a slip of an old pen. It was never dated beyond its own pre-printed prefix, "A.D. 191...", but a soldier making a will within days of attesting fits October 1916 exactly. It was witnessed by "B. E. Shedden, Lieut.," of Gloucester, N.S.W., and by a second man, apparently a commercial traveller from around Caringbah, whose name is not clearly legible. Since it still names Isabella as his living wife, the will can be no later than 1925.

The marriage did not survive his return from the war. Isabella Marion Poole petitioned the Sydney Divorce Court, and on 4 December 1920, before Mr Justice Gordon, was granted a decree nisi dissolving her marriage to William on the ground of his adultery with a woman who was never identified or joined to the suit — recorded elsewhere, more plainly, as "misconduct with a woman unknown." Mr Toose, instructed by Mr J. W. Abigail, appeared for her.¹⁴ The decree was made absolute on 10 August 1921, the marriage — twelve years and five months after the Hornsby wedding — formally at an end.¹⁵ It was Isabella, not William, who brought the suit, and divorcing him less than four years before her own death very plausibly explains why, in 1925, it was her brother rather than her former husband who stepped in as informant and administrator (below).

Isabella Marion Poole died suddenly on 4 May 1925 at Sydney Hospital, then living at 3 Jarocin Avenue, Forest Lodge — the cause given as cerebral haemorrhage, sudden enough that the City Coroner was involved and an inquest only dispensed with after a surgeon, recorded in the coroner’s own register as a Dr Goldman, examined the case.⁷ Her own brother, A. (Alexander?) H. McMillan, of the same street, was the informant, and it was he, not her former husband, who was granted letters of administration of her small estate, valued at £215, three weeks later.⁸ She was buried on 6 May 1925 in the Presbyterian section of Rookwood Cemetery, section 5E, row 18 — arranged through Wood Coffill, the well-known Sydney undertakers — the same cemetery, though a different section, in which William’s own mother Frances would be laid to rest three years later. The certificate records plainly what the record elsewhere only implied: "no issue." It still lists her marriage to William, exactly as any death certificate records a person's marital history regardless of a later divorce.

By 1969, a William Francis Poole — eighty-seven years old, if this is the same man — was living at 57 Barron Street, Kedron, in Brisbane, still enrolled to vote and still describing himself, in old age, as a "meat worker" — a trade that lines up neatly with the butcher he had told the AIF he was, more than fifty years before.⁹ The move to Queensland fits neatly with a detail recorded elsewhere in this family’s story: in 1954, a Sydney newspaper published a letter from a brother, "W. Poole," of Currumbin, Queensland, explaining that Joel John Poole had vanished in 1913 after enlisting for the war under the false name "Jack Smith" (see the entry for Joel John, above). Of William and Frances Poole’s four surviving sons, only William Francis is known to have settled in Queensland at all — making him, very likely, the "W. Poole" who wrote that letter, and the one brother who seems to have known, or guessed, what had really become of Joel.¹⁰ No death has yet been found for William Francis Poole himself.

Wife[,] Isabella Marion Poole, 52 Corunna Road, Stanmore, Sydney, N.S.W.

Will of William Francis Poole, undated (A.D. 191...)

The Record

Sources & References

1
Birth, 1882

NSW BDM birth index: Poole, William F., reg. district Glen Innes, 1882, reg. no. 16144, father William Poole, mother Frances Poole.
2
Marriage, 1908

NSW BDM marriage certificate no. 2755/1908 (certified copy issued 1 November 2022): William Poole, tram conductor, of Ross Street, Forest Lodge, bachelor, aged 25, born Dalmorton, N.S.W., married Isabella Marion Macmillan, domestic duties, of Ross Street, Forest Lodge, spinster, aged 30, born Casino, N.S.W., 11 March 1908, married at Rosemont Street, Hornsby, according to Presbyterian rites, the Rev. William McDonald officiating. Groom’s parents: William Frederick Poole (deceased), occupation given as "mining manager," and Frances Cadden. Bride’s parents: James MacMillan (deceased), a contractor, and his wife Isabella, née "McLennan" (confirmed by reference 3, below). Witnessed, as best read from the certificate, by an Arthur Cecil [surname uncertain] and a Christina Ann McDonald.
3
Isabella Marion Macmillan’s birth and family

NSW BDM birth certificate no. 1878/021351: born 8 February 1878, South Casino, registered "Marion Isabella" McMullan [Macmillan], daughter of James McMullan [Macmillan], farmer, aged 47, born Scotland, and Isabella McMullan, née McLennan, aged 37 (or 34 — the figure is hard to read), born Cape Breton, Nova Scotia; parents married 1864, Casino, with six sons and three daughters then living. Witness to the birth registration: Kate Cameron. Registered 29 March 1878 at Casino. This resolves an apparent discrepancy over the mother’s given name: a separate, unrelated NSW BDM birth index entry for an Elizabeth Macmillan (reg. district Sydney, 1876, reg. no. 1193, parents James Neal Macmillan and Elizabeth Macmillan) was earlier and wrongly suspected to be a sister of Isabella’s — this birth certificate, together with Isabella’s own death certificate (reference 7, below), independently confirms her mother’s name as Isabella, née McLennan, so the Elizabeth Macmillan record is very likely an unconnected family.
4
AIF attestation, 1916

National Archives of Australia attestation paper, Australian Imperial Force: William Poole, service nos. 6354 and 37346, 18th Reinforcements, 17th Battalion, joined 26 October 1916; born in the parish of Dalmorton, near Grafton, N.S.W., natural-born British subject, aged 34 years 3 months, trade "butcher," apprenticed five years to "J. Rees Lawson"; married, wife Isabella Marion Poole recorded as next of kin at Ross Street, Forest Lodge (with 52 Corunna Road also noted); no previous military service; signed and dated 24 October 1916.
5
Change-of-address letter, 1917

Base Records correspondence, 29 October 1917, addressed to the Officer in Charge, Base Records, Melbourne, and signed "Isabella Marion Poole": "Please note change of address of the wife of 6354 Private William Poole, 18th Reinforcements, 17th Battalion, 5th Brigade, from 143 St John's Road, Forest Lodge, also 52 Corunna Rd, Stanmore, to the present address, 57 Ross Street, Forest Lodge, Sydney." Stamped received by Base Records, 30 October 1917.
6
The will

Two copies of the same undated pre-printed AIF will form, "AM 16" (the printed date line reading only "A.D. 191..."), signed "William Poole": the real-estate clause struck through and replaced with a note that a separate will was already made and lodged elsewhere; personal estate bequeathed entirely to "Wife[,] Isabella Marion Poole, [51 or 52] Corunna Road, Stanmore, Sydney, N.S.W." One copy, kept among the family's own papers, appears to read "51"; the other, an official duplicate kept with his AIF file (National Archives of Australia, series B2455), clearly reads "52" — matching references 4 and 5, so "52" is preferred here. Witnessed by "B. E. Shedden, Lieut.," of Gloucester, N.S.W., and by a second witness, apparently a commercial traveller of the Caringbah district, whose signature is not clearly legible. Because Isabella is named as his living wife, the document is no later than 1925.
7
Isabella’s death, 1925

NSW BDM death certificate no. 4765/1925: died 4 May 1925, Sydney Hospital, late of 3 Jarocin Avenue, Forest Lodge; female, aged 47; cause of death cerebral haemorrhage, sudden, "inquest unnecessary," a medical attendant's cursive signature (not confidently read) noting he last saw the deceased on the 5th, and the City Coroner's involvement noted alongside; father James Macmillan, contractor; mother Isabella, née McLennan; informant A. [H.] McMillan, brother, of Jarocin Avenue, Forest Lodge, Sydney; buried 6 May 1925, Presbyterian Cemetery, Rookwood, undertaker Woodcoffill (Wood Coffill) Ltd, minister and witnesses of burial recorded as Rev. A. McDonald, George Broomfield and George Eldridge [surnames partly uncertain]; born Casino, N.S.W., about 47 years in the Australian colonies; married at Hornsby, N.S.W., about 31 years, to William Poole; children of the marriage: "no issue." NSW register of deaths reported and, after due inquiry, inquest dispensed with, 1925: "Poole, Isabella Marion," 5 May 1925, surgeon "Goldman," register no. 128 — very likely the same examination the death certificate refers to, and the clearer source for the examining surgeon's name.
8
Deceased estate, 1925

NSW deceased estates index card no. 11666: "Poole, Isabella M.," of Forest Lodge, date of death 4 May 1925, date of grant 26 May 1925, estate value £215, administrator "A. H. McMillan," returned to the Probate Office 30 May 1925.
9
1969 electoral roll

Commonwealth electoral roll, Kedron, Brisbane, Queensland, 1969: William Francis Poole, 57 Barron Street, Kedron, occupation "meat worker," elector registration no. 6864.
10
The 1954 letter about Joel John Poole — an inference, not a proven identification

See the entry for Joel John Poole, above, for the 1954 letter from a brother, "W. Poole," of Currumbin, Queensland. No source yet found names this "W. Poole" outright as William Francis; the identification rests on his being the only one of William and Frances Poole’s four surviving sons known to have lived in Queensland, and on the matching butcher/"meat worker" trade recorded fifty-three years apart (references 4 and 9). The 1954 letter itself has not been found on Trove (its coverage of full digitised newspaper text mostly stops around 1954–55, and a targeted search under several word combinations found nothing) and may survive only as a family clipping.
11
Application to enlist, and a recruiting notice, both 1916

National Archives of Australia, series B2455, "Poole William": Application to Enlist in the Australian Imperial Force, signed by William Poole at Victoria Barracks, N.S.W., 25 July 1916, giving his postal address as 143 St John's Road, Forest Lodge, his occupation as "provision merchant," his age as 34, married; passed fit for active service the same day, provisionally accepted by the recruiting officer. Independently corroborated by "Answer the Call. Recruiting in Sydney. Men Who Have Offered," Evening News (Sydney), 26 July 1916, p. 4: a published list of men who "submitted themselves for enlistment on Monday night and Tuesday at Victoria Barracks," including "William Poole, provision merchant, John's [St John's] rd, Forest Lodge" (the OCR renders the street name imperfectly).
12
AIF service, 1916–1919

National Archives of Australia, series B2455, "Poole William" — Statement of Service, Casualty Form (Army Form B.103, Parts I and II), and AIF transfer/discharge card: enlisted 26 October 1916; embarked Sydney per HMAT A29 Suevic, 11 November 1916, with the 18th Reinforcements, 17th Battalion; disembarked Devonport, 30 January 1917; marched in to the 5th Training Battalion, Rollestone, 30 January 1917; proceeded overseas to France ex Southampton, 30 July 1917; marched in to the 2nd Australian Divisional Base Depot, Le Havre, 31 July 1917; joined the 17th Battalion in the field, France, 18 August 1917 (reported to the battalion 25 August); to hospital sick (tonsillitis) 16–21 June 1918, thereafter shuttling between the 5th Casualty Clearing Station, No. 2 General Hospital (Rouen) and the Australian Infantry Base Depot, Le Havre, through August 1918; transferred to the Australian Concentration Depot, 18 December 1918; attached to the Australian Base Reception Camp, Le Havre, from 1 March 1919; promoted lance-sergeant (cook), 1 March 1919, and temporary sergeant (cook), by April 1919; brief leave to the United Kingdom, late January 1919; reverted to private, 4 June 1919; embarked Liverpool, England, per HT Argyllshire, 1 August 1919; disembarked 3rd Military District (Melbourne), 22 September 1919; discharged 2nd Military District (Sydney), 7 November 1919; awarded the 1914–15 Star, the British War Medal (no. 64259) and the Victory Medal (no. 62030).
13
Absent without leave at Durban, 1919

National Archives of Australia, series B2455, "Poole William" — Service and Casualty Form Part II, entry dated 5 September 1919, reported by the Officer Commanding Troops aboard the transport, recording two offences at Durban, South Africa, on 30 August 1919: "1. A.W.L. from 9 a.m. till 10 p.m. 2. Neglect to the prejudice of good order and military discipline in that he failed to report for outlying picquet after being duly warned." Awarded forfeiture of two days' pay; total forfeiture three days' pay, recorded "at sea," 2 September 1919.
14
Decree nisi, 1920

"Divorce" (before Mr Justice Gordon), Sydney Morning Herald, 4 December 1920, p. 11: "POOLE v POOLE. Isabella Marion Poole (formerly McMillan) sought dissolution of her marriage with William Poole, on the ground of the latter's adultery. The marriage took place at Sydney on March 11, 1908, according to the rites of the Presbyterian Church. Mr. Toose (instructed by Mr. J. W. Abigail) appeared for the petitioner. His Honor granted a decree nisi, returnable in six months." A separate newspaper clipping (masthead not stated) of what is evidently the same case gives the ground more fully as "misconduct with a woman unknown" — consistent with the Herald's account, in which no co-respondent is named or joined, unlike other cases reported the same day.
15
Decree absolute, 1921

"In Divorce. Decrees Absolute" (before Mr Justice Gordon), Sydney Morning Herald, 10 August 1921, p. 8: "Decrees absolute were pronounced and the marriages declared dissolved in the following suits:— ... Isabella Marion Poole v William Poole ..."