School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Theses
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ItemA history of the Royal Melbourne Hospital( 1954-11)This thesis covers the following: the hospital movement in Port Philip, the care of patients, the hospital and the University, the hospital and the community and the hospital at Parkville.
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ItemA history of the Australian paper making industry 1818-1951( 1953)The most outstanding feature of the Australian paper industry is the rapid expansion which has taken place since 1936. Before the First World War, Australia’s population totalled about 4,000,000. By 1939 the population had risen to about 7,000,000. This increase in population, coupled with a rise in the per capita consumption of paper and boards, led to a considerably enlarged domestic market. At the same time new fields for the use of paper and board opened up, particularly in the packaging field. (From introduction)
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ItemThe overseas mail service of the colony of South Australia 1836-1901( 1951)Introduction: Before the first contract was made with a steamship company for the carriage of mails between England and Australia in 1852, no attempt was made by the British Government to provide a regular mail service to each of the Australian colonies. A contract was signed in 1843 for a monthly service of sailing ships to carry the mails to Sydney and back, but no provision was made for the other colonies, and the official packet service was usually slower than the service given by private vessels carrying mails. The colonies were therefore dependent upon the traders and transport sailing vessels calling at their ports, and forwarded their mails by them direct, or else to neighbouring colonies for onward transmission. Their mails were received in a similar manner. Opportunities were not very frequent in South Australia during the first few years after its settlement, but they increased during the forties, and by the turn of the half century opportunities were most frequent. Arrangements were made in 1842 for mails to be forwarded from and to England from South Australia via India and Suez by the P. and O. Company, or between Bombay and Suez by the East India Company, various persons in India acting as forwarding agents. This route, which was subsequently improved by the mails being forwarded across France between Marseilles and Calais, took longer that the direct all-sea route. The Sydney packet service, after a three year trial, also proved unsatisfactory for South Australian mails. So that the carriage of mails between Adelaide and England and the continent was entirely subject to the vagaries of the shipping traffic of traders and transports, all of which were compelled by law to accept and deliver mails, but whose movements were uncontrolled and unreliable. The average time taken for transporting mails to or from England between 1840 and 1850 was about 158 days; towards the end of the forties the usual time taken was from 120 to 130 days. The voyage out was on average quicker than the voyage home. During the forties, agitation, both in Australia and England, for the inception of a steamship mail service, grew with increasing vigour until the British Government was finally induced to contract with the Australian Royal Mail Steam Navigation Company in 1852 for the carriage of mails to the Australian colonies. The discovery of gold in Australia, and the repeal of the Navigation Laws in 1850, doubtless influence the decision of the authorities, but in any case it would not have been possible for them to have withstood the demands voiced both in England and Australia for what was obviously a most essential requisite for England’s relationship, social, economic, and administrative, with Australia, viz. a regular steamship mail service.
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ItemThe Queensland Labour governments, 1915-1929( 1954)This thesis is a study of the first long period of Queensland Labour Governments. It does not attempt, except in brief outline, to review the work of the Governments as a whole. Its purpose is much narrower: to explain why by 1929 Queensland Labour had become so “stale” that it lost even the electoral support of sections of its traditional supporters. It suggests that this may have been due primarily to inability to maintain the distinctive Labour character and the aggressive social-reformism of the earlier years, and that light is thrown on the reasons for this inability by three episodes — failure to secure a London loan i 1920, controversy from 1922 to 1926 over the demand for legislative action to increase the basic wage and shorten the working week, and the railway lockout of 1927. Parts III-V, the main body of the thesis, are devoted to an examination of these episodes and their significance. Parts I and II are by way of introduction. Part IV attempts to relate this Queensland experience to some general problems of social-democracy.
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ItemThe economic and political development of Victoria 1877-1881( 1951)Alfred Deakin wrote in a short (unpublished) memoir on the period surveyed in this thesis, “Whatever the relative importance or interest of the years 1875 – 1882 may be, it is certain that the tide of political life ran then much more fiercely than at any subsequent period.” It was to see why political life was so bitter and ran ‘so fiercely’ that this work was undertaken. Letter books and other MS material belonging to members of the Victorian Legislature in the period have been made available by several Victorian families and the access given to this material has been of great assistance to the writer. The division into sections – Part I Economic Development and its relation to Politics, Part II, Political Development – has been made necessary by the pioneering character of the work. Although the whole theme of the thesis centres in the complex interaction of economic and political development, the division was found necessary in order to deal more completely with topics on which there has been no detailed study.