This two-storey freestanding building was erected when there was still vacant land on that stretch of Glebe Point Road. Directly opposite was a Wesleyan chapel, seven years old, adjacent to Glebe Public School. (The chapel was bought by the school in 1923. It was subsequently demolished and the site is now part of the playground.)
John Bardsley 1871–1880
In October 1871 draper and grocer John Bardsley moved his business and family from 55 Glebe Street into his new building. The premises were larger, with stables at the rear. Long-term neighbours were newsagent James Joseph Cooper to the west and poulterer William Hodges on the other side. Bardsley’s Glebe Stores sold everything from fly spray, ginger beer and canary seed to tinned oysters and tinned prawns. The proprietor acted occasionally as a real estate agent, and regularly advertised for ‘smart young boys’ to milk his cows, sell and repair boots, and drive delivery carts. As nearby land filled up in the 1870s, there were fewer local paddocks to graze his horses.
Six children were born to John Bardsley and Janet née Buchanan after they married in 1858. Alexander (1859-60) and John junior (1865-5) died at Glebe Street. Their siblings were Robina Munro (1860-1936), John Edward (1869-1955), Ernest Alexander (1871-1960) and James Munro (1873-5). ‘Munro’ was perhaps a compliment to local architect William Munro. Robina married John Hindle, a merchant and MLA for Newtown. Ernest gave piano recitals in Glebe Town Hall and conducted concerts for the Methodist Mission in Balmain. He and John Edward became business partners with their father.
49 Glebe Point Road in 1991 (Source: Bechervaise & Associates, 1991, Glebe Point Road Main Street Study, Stage 2, Volume 1)
In September 1880 John Bardsley & Co. put the Glebe retail grocery, drapery and ironmongery business on the market to concentrate on their growing city-based. wholesale and importing enterprise. Joseph Stimson, one of their employees, took over ‘Glebe Stores’, by now a local landmark.
Joseph Stimson 1880–1890
Joseph Stimson (1851-1935) was the oldest of 13 children born to English immigrants Eliza and William Stimson who prospered at Fairfield and were friendly with Henry Parkes. Owners of multiple vineyards and prominent in civic affairs, the family are commemorated today by Stimson Street and William Stimson Public School.
After Joseph took over the Glebe store he traded from 9 in the morning until 10 or 11 at night, gained a liquor licence to sell colonial wine, added crockery to the stock of general provisions, and advertised for boys ‘to make themselves useful’.
Like the Bardsleys, the Stimsons lived on the premises. After their marriage at Glebe in 1875 Joseph and Barbara Stuart née Reid had 12 children: William Paminter (1876-1948), James Cuthbertson (1877-1947), Stuart Reid (1878-1958 died Perth), Jessie Josephine (1880-2), Arthur Robert Bruce (1881-9), Muriel Estelle (1883-1975), Joseph Leslie (1884-1956), Ernest Gordon (1886-1965), Stanley Ferrier (1888-94), Doris Pearl (1890-1975), Maggie Reid Gladys (1892-1983) and Eric Clive (1896-8).
Typical nineteenth century families were large and infant mortality was high. Deaths of older children were usually the result of accident or epidemic. In the 1880s-90s there were outbreaks of measles, whooping cough, diphtheria and typhoid. Doctors disputed the cause of the last, the most serious disease. Some argued that it was exposure to dirt, discounting the theory of Dr Edson, an American practitioner, that the most common cause was contaminated water. Glebe Public School pupils drank out of the same mugs used to clear the drains.
It is likely all the Stimson children attended Glebe Public. Youngest daughter (known as Gladys) was the school’s swimming champion in 1907. The same year, Doris was a winner at Fort Street Girls’ Carnival. Both events were held at Elkington Baths, Balmain. James (known as Jimmy) was one of Glebe Rowing Club’s most talented oarsmen. He became a house agent and after his father’s death took over his real estate business. Ernest qualified as a surveyor. Stuart moved to Perth where he became director of a company importing pianos.
It was while Joseph Stimson was still running the grocery that he made his first substantial investment in real estate: a terrace of six houses in Smithers Street Chippendale, bought in May 1887. Among his later purchases in Glebe were three lots fronting Avona Avenue, part of the Avon Estate (Land Titles Office vol. 1590 fol. 33).
In 1895 Stimson opened a house and land agency at what is now 47 Glebe Point Road, next door to the grocery. With locals such as baker J G Purves, he was a director of the North Coast Pastoral and Dairying Company at Port Stephens. He was also a director of Hackshall & Co. who made Milk Arrowroot and Diabetes biscuits at their factory on Parramatta Road, Forest Lodge.
Like his Fairfield relatives, Stimson was active in community affairs. He lobbied for a bridge to be built connecting Glebe Point with Balmain; was a Glebe alderman 1895-8 and 1908-19; Treasurer of the Glebe Benevolent Society which gave clothing and blankets to the poor; Secretary of the Starr Bowkett Building Society; and a temperance worker for the Campbell Street Church of Christ with which he was involved for 60 years.
Joseph Stimson retired from J Stimson and Sons in 1928. He left an estate of £30,390 when he died in September 1935, four months after the passing of his wife. His then address was Venetia at Clifton Gardens. Before moving there in 1913, he and his family lived at 55 Leichhardt Street Glebe – an earlier Venetia.
Everard Richard Betts 1890–1895
Stimson’s successor advertised his services as grocer, tea merchant and ironmonger with a warehouse of china. Everard Betts, whose business survived in a period of economic depression, looked for honesty in his employees (‘lad who can drive, must have good refs.’) after George Lacey, one of his carters, pocketed a customer’s 15 shillings and was sentenced to one month’s hard labour for embezzlement.
Betts and his wife Elizabeth Emmerton née Barratt were migrants from Northampton, England, where they had married in 1870. In February 1887 Everard, ‘a gentleman’, lent the considerable sum of £350 to William Henry Humphries, a builder who had purchased land at Willoughby. Five months later Humphries was declared insolvent. Whether Betts retrieved any of his money is unknown. In 1900 jewellery valued at £20 was stolen from his Marrickville home.
Everard Richard Betts died aged 93 at the Mosman home of his daughter Winifred on 23 March 1932. His widow died at the age of 87 in a Mosman nursing home on 9 August 1936. Both were cremated. They were survived by Winifred and sons Harry and Everard Henry, a Devonport accountant. Before her 1924 marriage to William Raybould Rhodes, Winifred Betts was Secretary of the Society of Women Painters.
Thomas Frederick Thornton 1895–1914
By now the numbering along this stretch of Glebe Road was fixed. Thomas Frederick (1861- 1935) and Frederick John (1865 -1946) were the sons of Rosanna Thornton who ran a general store on Crown Street Surry Hills. By 1898 Thornton Bros grocers were trading at both Surry Hills and 49 Glebe Road – where they advertised for ‘a smart junior, quick wrapper, strictly honest’. In 1902 the shop was licensed to sell colonial wine.
Thomas and Ada Jane Thornton and their young son Reginald Milton (1892-1929) lived on the premises. In 1901 they were burgled of a gold watch and lady’s gold chain. More dramatic was a fire which broke out six years later in straw stored in a rear brick-and-iron structure and quickly spread. A horse in a nearby stable was pulled out as flames licked his stall and firemen arrived just in time to prevent drums of oil exploding near the back door of the shop.
In 1910 Thornton was given a heavy fine for selling tins of condensed milk as ‘evaporated cream’ labelled ‘good for babies’. A Health Department witness said there was no such thing as evaporated cream and the Glebe magistrate said it was a swindle and a menace to infant life.
There was another burglary in 1913 when the shop was broke into and money, a pipe, a book and a roulette table were stolen. Teenagers Horace Alfred Longshaw, a dentist’s mechanic, and Sydney Wheatley and 23-year-old Percy Samuel McIntosh were brought before magistrate Wilkinson in Glebe Court. Habitual thieves, they were sentenced by Judge Docker to two years’ hard labour in Goulburn Gaol for breaking, entering, stealing and receiving.
The next year Thornton moved his grocery a few doors away — trading as Heywood and Thornton at 55 Glebe Road — and auctioned drapery, haberdashery, lamps, and a cedar counter and showcase. He seems to have used no. 49 as a storehouse for a few more years, holding further auctions of groceries, furniture and show windows.
The Thorntons’ only child was educated at Sydney Grammar. A footballer and rower, Reg played cricket with locals Tibby Cotter and Warren Bardsley, and was a featherweight boxing champion before turning from sport to burlesque. As the drolly comic ‘Kangaroosta’ he toured Australia on the Tivoli circuit and played vaudeville with Harry Clay and Fuller’s Theatres and in South Africa. Estranged from his wife Mary Ellen Dorothea née O’Shea, Reg died of heart failure after refusing medical treatment as a Christian Scientist.
Thomas Thornton of Greenwich died suddenly while travelling on a Sydney suburban train in February 1935. His widow died in hospital in September 1941. They were buried Church of England at Rookwood.
Ern Levy 1920–1930
Raphael Ernest Levy (1897-1956), known as Ern, was one of 12 children born to auctioneer Henry Levy and his wife Esther in the period 1885-1903. Esther Levy, who had been selling new and secondhand furniture for over two decades, registered Ern Levy furniture manufacturer at 49 Glebe Road in September 1920. In the same month, Ern married Pearl Hannah Lentz in the Great Synagogue. The couple set up house at 109 Derwent Street with their daughters Anita Beryl and Norma Daphne.
Ern Levy’s factory specialised in wooden office furniture such as filing cabinets, flat top desks, roll-top desks and typists’ desks based on US designs. The last featured a sunken space concealing the typewriter beneath a flap; the machine was raised only when needed. A team of carpenters worked a 48-hour-week, fashioning imported oak as surface timber and cheaper Tasmanian oak where the wood was hidden from view. Ernest Newman’s thumb was amputated by a circular saw when he was handling maple. In October 1923 fire damaged part of the roof.
In 1928 Ern Levy Ltd was listed as a company, its directors Ern and his parents. Two years later there was a slump in sales of new furniture. Despite an appeal to office managers to spruce up their workplaces and to handymen to make their own articles from Ern’s timber, the firm went into liquidation and was officially wound up in 1935. The name resurfaced as Ern Levy Furnishing Manufacturers at St Peters.
Ern Levy died in 1956; his widow in 1983. They were buried near family members in the Jewish section of Rookwood Cemetery.
RSL Labor Club 1934–1950s
In September 1934, Glebe’s mayor Matthew Fitzpatrick (who lived at 50 Broughton Street) officially opened new club rooms at number 49. These catered for members of the Glebe branch of the Returned Sailors and Soldiers Labor Club, a movement founded at Paddington two years earlier and distinct from the more conservative Returned Sailors and Soldiers Imperial League of Australia – the RSL.
The Diggers Hall was used mostly for political meetings, presided over by trade unionists strongly aligned with the Jack Lang faction of the Labor Party. The first President of Glebe’s RSL Labor Club was returned soldier William Joseph Carlton MLA. His campaign director Robert John McKinney, a Wentworth Park trustee and a later President of the club, in 1938 won a £5,000 libel suit brought against him by local doctor and political aspirant Horace Foley. Other supporters of the club were federal politicians John Albert Beasley and John Solomon Rosevear.
Bill Carlton, a Catholic, enlisted as a 22-year-old in 1916 and fought as a machine gunner in France. After returning to Australia in 1919, he resumed work as a boilermaker’s assistant at the Eveleigh workshops and an organiser for the Railway Workers’ Union. During the 1929 timber strike at Glebe, Carlton observed police protecting ‘scabs who are taking the bread and butter out of the mouths of the timber workers and their dependants’.
Carlton was a Glebe alderman 1929-35, MLA for Glebe 1935-41 and, after that seat was abolished, MLA for Concord. He was Labor Party Whip 1941-7. He died at Concord in 1949, survived by Catherine née Taylor whom he had married in 1925, daughters Kathleen and Noeline and a son Walter. Their first-born Mary Lillian had died in 1926 at the family home 61 Lombard Street. Bill Carlton is commemorated by the William Carlton Gardens near Palmerston Avenue.
Glebe was in the federal electorate of West Sydney. Jack Beasley, who lived at 27 Allen Street, won the seat in 1928 and was re-elected six times. In 1935 he was a guest speaker in the Drill Hall, his topic the ongoing Abyssinian crisis involving a territorial dispute with Italy. In 1936 he spoke about the 40-hour week, and was given a motion of support for his allegiance to Jack Lang and the ALP Central Executive. In later years, Beasley was more nuanced in his political views.
Beasley grew up on a farm in Victoria and worked in various trades before settling in Sydney in 1918. In 1926 he attended an International Labour Conference in Geneva, an experience which convinced him of the dangers of extremism, whether communism or fascism. Before entering federal parliament he was President of both the Sydney Trades and Labor Council and the Electrical Trades Employees’ Union.
In 1929 Beasley was appointed Assistant Minister for Industry in the Scullin government. During the Second World War he was the minister in charge of supplies and shipping; his workload increased dramatically after Japan entered the conflict. Beasley retired from politics prior to the 1946 general election and was Australian High Commissioner to the UK at the time of his death in 1949. He was buried in Frenchs Forest Cemetery following Mass in St Mary’s Cathedral. He was survived by Alma Matilda née Creighton whom he had married in 1927, sons John and James, and daughters June and Jill. His widow died in 1961.
Small and dapper, Beasley was popular with his colleagues, despite being a non-smoking teetotaller and bringing down the Scullin government in 1931 when he crossed the floor in a vote of no confidence, an action which earned him the nickname ‘Stabber Jack’.
Like West Sydney, Dalley was a safe Labor seat. It included the inner-city suburbs Balmain, Annandale, Leichhardt and Forest Lodge. Sol Rosevear (1892-1953) was first elected MHR for Dalley in 1931 and was returned to office four times. Born in Pyrmont, he worked in a timber mill and at the age of 17 became a shop steward. Rosevear attended small ALP functions in the Drill Hall and larger gatherings in Glebe Town Hall. In 1935 he addressed 2KY listeners on ‘The Abyssinian situation and its menace to Australia’. He was Speaker in the Curtin, Forde and Chifley governments and died in office in 1953.
The Drill Hall was the venue for educational activities such as economics classes run by Stephen Gould, meetings of the ALP women’s auxiliary, and social gatherings such as smokos, old-time and modern dances, and reunions of the 101 Army Troop Company RAE (AIF) Association. Among the locals who regularly met there were Margaret Colbourne, Ernie Pedersen, and members the Illingsworth, Peninton and Pitt families.
A tragedy occurred in 1952 when Wayne Morris of Bridge Road was taken by his parents to a Christmas party in the Diggers Hall. He was in the crowd of children who clustered around Santa Claus distributing gifts around a tree on the top floor. The two-year-old followed Santa downstairs, wandered onto the street and was struck by a taxi and a truck. He was rushed to Camperdown Children’s Hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival.
A social group for trans and homosexuals first met in the Diggers Hall in the early 1960s. They called themselves The Chameleons, a name coined by Noel (Nola) Beckett. Members included Dennis (Flo) Fuller, Dawn O’Donnell, Julia Farmer, Connie Johnson, Lennie Williams and Sonny Ash. They put on dances and staged rough-and-ready shows using scratched LPs as a soundtrack. A big challenge was hauling kegs of beer up the narrow staircase. In 1966 The Chameleons became Sydney’s first legal homosexual organisation.
Tom Laming’s Golden Gloves Gym 1979–1989
In 1948 Thomas Stephen Laming opened a boxing gym at the rear of 15 Westmoreland Street on its corner with Mitchell Street. A non-smoking teetotaller, he put up notices: ‘Swearing and drinking of liquor is prohibited’.
Tom was born in Pyrmont in 1919 to Rita Ellen née O’Keefe (1900-80) and motor driver Harold Stanley Laming (1899-1967) who had married in 1918. An older sister Rose died soon after birth; a younger sister Myra was born in 1921. After training as a boxer at Bill McConnell’s gym in Chippendale and boxing as a professional middle, light-heavy and heavyweight, Tom switched to managing young fighters. In 1939 he married Maria Sylvia Stallard at Newtown (they subsequently divorced). In the 1950s-60s the family home was 31 Foss Street; by 1975 Tom had moved to 5 Catherine Street.
Among those who regularly sparred at the Westmoreland Lane gym were Pyrmont sugar lumper Harry Hayes and welterweight champion George Kapeen. Another regular was female, Glebe local Terry Gordon, who worked out for two hours every afternoon after waiting tables in a George Street cafe. Gordon signed up with Laming after he’d seen her punching penny-in-the-slot sparring bags at Luna Park. Despite the Chief Secretary’s ban on women boxing, sports journalists promoted a contest between the brunette Terry and Sydney’s first female boxer Cath Thomas, a blonde from Parramatta, but it seems the bout didn’t happen.
Laming’s most famous prodigy was Dave Sands, a young man from the country. In his 11-year career, Sands held the Australian middle, light-heavyweight and heavyweight and the Empire middleweight titles. Sands stayed at the University Hotel when in Sydney and crowds turned up to watch him running around Victoria Park and training in the Westmoreland Lane gym. A month after successfully defending his Australian heavyweight title, Sands was killed in a truck accident. Tom Laming’s namesake son put on a benefit show at Harold Park greyhounds, and the gymnasium sponsored a granite plaque in his memory.
In 1979 Laming’s Golden Gloves Gymnasium moved to 49 Glebe Point Road. The boxing ring and training facilities on the upper level were reached by a laneway entrance from the ground floor which housed a second-hand shop called Dealatorium.
Tom Laming senior died aged 62 in 1981; after a service in St John’s Bishopthorpe, he was buried in Botany Cemetery. His son carried on the business. Taking advantage of the revival of the Australian film industry, he frequently advertised in Filmnews that his boxing ring, props and antiques were available for hire. The gym closed in 1988 and the building was purchased by David Gaunt and Roger Mackell the following year. Images of boxing gloves set in the pavement outside are reminders of the Golden Gloves days.
Gleebooks 1989+
Glebe’s iconic store was established in 1975 by Tony Gallagher and Ray Jelfs as a second-hand bookshop at 191 Glebe Point Road, one of the Galluzzo family’s shops and previously the site of Peacock’s Hollywood Lending Library and Reading Room. After Gallagher’s sudden death in 1978, Roger Mackell and David Gaunt took over Gleebooks, expanding it into an adjoining delicatessen in 1985. Four years later, 49 Glebe Point Road was purchased from the Laming family. The building then housed two businesses.
After extensive renovations including the addition of a verandah, Gleebooks opened in 1992 as a retail outlet for new books and a venue for literary events (Salman Rushdie made his first public appearance there after coming out of hiding). Number 191 Glebe Point Road was temporarily retained for the sale of secondhand books.
By 2021, number 49 needed a major structural overhaul and a Development Application was lodged with Council for refurbishment including a new cafe, new function space and the installation of a lift. Approval was granted but renovations took years of COVID-impacted planning, negotiation and construction. Gleebooks transferred to the former Glebe Post Office for 15 months before reopening in February 2024.
Notes: John and Janet Bardsley were the subjects of a Who lived in your street? article in Bulletin 10/2015. John Bardsley and Sons survived until 1990, and John Bardsley Hats wound up as recently as 2002.
Joseph Stimson’s siblings: Henry (‘Harry’) (1853–1924), George (1855–1856), George (1857–1926), Arthur (1859–1935), Eliza Ann (1862–1951), Emma Jane (1864–1941), Frederick (died 1871), Walter (1866–1939), Caroline Augusta (1868–1959), Sarah Louisa (1872–1946), Barbara (1874–1941) and Jessie (1877–84).
Sources: Gleebooks website; Michael Hogan’s 2004 Local Labor: a history of the Labor Party in Glebe, 1891–2003; NSW cemetery records; NSW electoral rolls; NSW Registry of Births, Deaths, & Marriages; NSW State Records; Pride History Group Camp as a row of tents; Sands Directories; Max Solling’s 1993 The Boatshed on Blackwattle Bay; Sydney aldermen website; wikitree.com.
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