Photo from Ronita Ireland-Barratt
Not an insignificant life
Michael Henry “Harry” Barrett was born on the wrong side of the blanket as our forebears would have said. His mother Esther was barely 21 years old with two small sons and no husband. Esther never married but family legend is that she had a long-term de-facto relationship with the boys’ father. It is well known within the family that the father was Michael Cornelius Torpy, but there is no documentary evidence. It would also seem that the boys were raised by their maternal grandparents and that there was little or no interaction with their father, even though she was his live-in housekeeper at Snug.
Stories of Harry have always implied that he was different and a little odd, crazy even and that he simply disappeared. These remarks were cruel and all I ever heard for many years. Some even suggested that he had been a mercenary in the Spanish Civil War.
Indeed, Harry is an elusive character with a complex story. I have been researching or should I say ‘searching’ for Harry for many years. I have his birth certificate which is incomplete with his father unnamed. He did not marry and he did not have any children. He had left home, sometime during in the 1920’s, by the time Esther had returned to the family home to care for her disabled brother and elderly parents.
When I started researching Harry, those who would have known him were all deceased and those relating the anecdotal stories were born after his disappearance.
So what did happen to Harry Barrett?
Fortuitously, for the purpose of family history, Harry enlisted in the First World War and once the war records were digitised I could finally gained some insight into the life of our long lost cousin.
Harry enlisted on the 10th January 1916 as Henry Barrett fourteen days before his 18th birthday. His next of kin was his maternal grandmother who, so I am told, begrudgingly gave her consent. “I the undersigned give my consent for my grandson Henry Barrett to go and do his duty for his country, signed Sarah Barrett”.
Harry’s service number (5045) became the linchpin for piecing together the many parts of Harry’s post war life. He served his country well for 4 years and 131 days. His time abroad of 3 years and 34 days was spent mostly in hospitals and being taken back on strength only to be returned to hospital again. In 1917, he spent some time at Hardcott Camp in Salisbury, England and there is a photograph of Harry, in a group of Tasmanian diggers, taken whilst there.
Taken at Hardcott Camp 1918. Harry is front row, left hand side.
Photo from Tasmanian Mail
Harry was shell shocked very early on and this condition plagued him for life. My father recounts stories of many returned soldiers ducking for cover at the sound of a car back firing and Harry was one of them.
Life must have been difficult for Harry after his repatriation and discharge in 1919. His physical condition at the time of discharge is described as ‘shell concussion 100%’. For this he received a full war service pension for six months which was later reduced to a part pension and then he was on his own.
He must have gained employment after his war pension ceased but I am not sure what. He was a hardworking bushman, an axeman; skills no doubt learned from his uncles and grandfather who worked together gathering wood from the well forested hills of the Channel district. Harry’s grandfather Ted cut and carried logs from North West Bay to the Hobart Town steamers for 34 years. Ted’s sons Edward (Teddy) and William (Bill) both worked with him, and I imagine so did Harry and his older brother, William Michael who was also known as Bill.
Harry is listed in the 1922 Electoral Rolls as a bushman and living at Margate but this is more likely to have been Barretta, the little hamlet nestled between Margate and Electrona which was the Barrett family strong hold and safe haven.
His life gets a little sketchy from here. His Repatriation Records suggest that he moved to the mainland about 1925, possibly Victoria. Harry wrote of letter from Port Kembla in 1938 asking for a copy of discharge papers which surely refutes the belief that he was a mercenary in the Spain Civil War (1936-39).
In 1942 he re-enlisted in the army at Paddington, Sydney and his next of kin was a friend, Mrs Kennedy. His address was 20 Cooper Street, Surry Hills. He was discharged after only six weeks due to nervous instability – shell shock!
From 1942-1963 he is listed at the Cooper Street address as an axeman or labourer. The Cooper Street address is likely to have been a boarding house or hotel. Harry disappears again.
In 2015, I stumbled across the death of a Henry Michael Barrett in Queensland in 1977, aged 79. After nearly 25 years I had found Harry Barrett. The death certificate confirmed that Henry Michael Barrett was born in Tasmania, parents unknown, and had died from acute myocardial infarction and neurosis (shell shock).
He had been admitted into the St John’s Church of England Home for Men in Toowong, Brisbane in 1975 with senile dementia and other acute conditions. He had moved to Brisbane in the 1960’s and is last listed there as a waterside worker in 1968.
On admission, his next of kin was a friend, Mr P Archibald, who is also named as the informant on the death certificate. Harry was awarded a war service funeral benefit and cremated. His ashes were scattered at Mount Thompson Cemetery.
I pray he did not die alone.
Mercifully, he was one of the lucky ones whose condition was acknowledged by the Repatriation Board and although his pension was for only a short time, medical assistance was available to him for life. Harry was too young for war, as so many were. His natural disposition had left him open to neurosis from shell shock. Not many of our returned soldiers came home unscathed and Harry certainly wasn’t one of them.
Lest we forget.