By Lyn Collingwood, Bulletin 05/2026, July

‘Wee Davie’ died of the complications of diphtheria on 13 January 1878 in Hereford Street, Glebe, and was the first burial in the Roman Catholic section of Waverley Cemetery. The real name of the four-year-old was David Herbert Forde. His father, who paid for the burial plot and the inscription ‘Somebody’s darling lies buried here’ (a line from an American Civil War poem), was Joseph Michael Forde who became a well-known newspaper columnist. Signing off as ‘Old Chum’ and ‘Hayseed’, his gossipy histories of Australian people and places are of continuing value to researchers.

Forde’s accounts of his own family, however, were sometimes hazy. In 1917 a newspaper story stated that ‘Wee Davie’ had been run over by a butcher’s cart and that the youngster whispered his name before dying. Forde wrote a rebuttal in The Bulletin but gave his son’s age as three. He also overestimated the age at death of his mother Mary, née Leonard, in Melbourne in June 1878, by eight years.

Joseph Michael or J M Forde was born in Dublin on 9 May 1840. According to his own account, he came from Ulster farming stock, and his father was a journalist and ‘a bit of a poet’. On 12 September 1857, J M disembarked in Melbourne as a teenaged steerage passenger on the General Wyndham from Liverpool. His interest in Australian history was already developed by 1861 when he lobbied for the bodies of explorers Burke and Wills to be brought to Melbourne. He acted in amateur theatricals, recited dramatic verse (a favourite was ‘The Vagabond and his Dog’), and was Secretary of the Garrick Club.

In 1862 Forde married Dublin-born Ellen Daly Creeden. The couple lived at various addresses in Fitzroy where their first children were born: Mary Rose (1863–67), Ellen Rachel (1864–1953), Leonard Joseph (1865–1954), James Harcourt (born and died in 1866) and Blanche Adelaide Maria (1868–1956). Four-year-old Mary Rose was buried in the Roman Catholic section of Melbourne General Cemetery with James Harcourt who had died of bronchitis at the age of six weeks.

Forde was publican of Fitzroy’s Napier Hotel for a time. Soon after being declared insolvent in Victoria, he moved in March 1871 to Sydney where he described himself variously as a commercial traveller, commission agent and book agent, and where David Herbert and Joseph Michael David (1874–?) were born. The family rented various addresses (Albion and Bligh Streets in the city; Roslyn Street, Darlinghurst; Florence Villa, Woollahra; and Hereford Street, Glebe) before Forde was again declared insolvent. This prompted another move, this time to Newcastle. By now, Forde was a prominent Freemason.

The family were settled in Bathurst by 1881. Forde’s absence from home while performing in Gilbert and Sullivan with J C Williamson’s touring productions was probably a factor in his daughter Blanche resigning as a pupil-teacher at Bathurst Public ‘on account of domestic duties’. Her brother Leonard was appointed architecture lecturer at Bathurst Technical College in 1888. The same year, their father took to what he called ‘the Inky Way’, with his first contribution to The Bulletin. He was the Sydney correspondent for the Melbourne Age for 12 years; as ‘Old Chum’ a Truth columnist for nearly 40 years; and as ‘Hayseed’ he wrote about Australian theatrical history for the Sydney Sportsman. Truth’s belligerent owner, the notorious John Norton, sent him birthday congratulations.

His wife Ellen died aged 77 at her daughter Blanche’s North Sydney home, Warilda, on 23 August 1918 and was buried in Waverley Cemetery. Ten days later Forde wed Amy Anne Besley Rigney. They had already been living together for at least five years as a married couple and were parents of Elsie Josephine (1893–1981). They moved to The Gunyah, Railway Parade, Hazelbrook, where Forde stored his huge Australiana collection and where he died on 3 May 1929. He was buried a Methodist in Lawson General Cemetery. His widow Amy died in 1949 at Cremorne.

J M Forde’s brother, John Leonard Forde

John Leonard Forde, who migrated to Australia in the 1860s, was for a long time a better-known writer than his older brother. He was editor of the Melbourne Advocate, a regular contributor to The Bulletin magazine and various newspapers, and was on the Hobart Mercury staff for more than a decade. He sent back reports from London on Tasmanian exhibits in the 1908 Franco-British Exhibition. John Leonard’s major work is The Story of the Bar of Victoria from its Foundation to the Amalgamation of the two branches of the Legal Profession 1839-1891. He died in obscurity at Hawthorn, Victoria, in 1923, leaving a widow, Ellie May née Doyle, the daughter of a journalist. The couple, who married in Sydney in 1887, had no children.

J M Forde’s daughter, Blanche Wark (née Forde)

Blanche Forde resumed her pupil-teacher studies at Bathurst Public School and was promoted to Class 2 level in 1886. Two years later, she married gas engineer Alexander Wark. Their children, born in the period 1890–96 were Alexander Newlands, Nellie Anderson, Keith Newlands, Blair Anderson and Lance Bathurst. Blanche Wark was principal of Fairleigh Grammar School from 1903 to 1906. The next year she moved her family from Bathurst to Sydney’s North Shore.

When war broke out in Europe, Blair, a quantity surveyor, was the first son to enlist. He was promoted to major and was awarded the Victoria Cross for action in France. An insurance clerk, Keith enlisted in 1915. Promoted to lieutenant, he saw action in France, was awarded the DCM and mentioned in dispatches. Alex, an orchardist, enlisted in 1918 and was in England during the last stages of the war.

Blair Wark returned to active duty in the Second World War. While bivouacking at Puckapunyal Camp, Victoria, in June 1941 he suffered a fatal heart attack. His mother, who was immensely proud of her sons’ military service, died at Chatswood on 22 August 1956 and was cremated.

Sources: Australian Dictionary of Biography: Blair Wark; Births, Deaths and Marriages Victoria; J M Forde papers (ML MSS288) SLNSW; Melbourne General Cemetery online; National Archives of Australia; NSW electoral rolls; NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages; NSW Teachers’ Rolls; Sands Directories; Trove website; Waverley Council