Even before the first world war, a high mortality rate from disease, accident and death during infancy meant that Australians were familiar with mourning black.
During a period of mourning, for example after the death of a public figure or after a disaster, it was customary for public buildings to be draped in black and purple, and for both personal and public notepaper and letters to be bordered in black. People would wear black to observe the deaths of family and friends, as well as at the funerals of public figures.
Department stores and drapers expected mourning black would be worn after the outbreak of the war. In October 1914, the trade journal Draper of Australasia reported shops were stocking up on black cloth, “anticipating a scarcity later on when mourning and half-mourning may, unhappily, be more commonwear”.
After the deaths at Gallipoli, commentators began to notice the increasing presence of mourning black. In Spring 1915, Vesta (journalist Stella Allen), the women’s columnist with the Melbourne Argus, confirmed:
We have grown familiar, too, with the sight of sad-faced, black-robed women going about their ordinary tasks.
These women were often anonymous but enough detail was given to convey a sense of individual circumstance. One was spotted by Vesta at a Red Cross centre, a baby clinging to her side. She was a “young mother all in black with a heavy veil hanging down behind”.
It was in this context that mourners dressed in black would be conspicuous on the first Anzac Day in 1916.
Collective mourning
The first public, and most widely reported, collective expression of mourning after Gallipoli was the funeral of Major-General Sir William Bridges, who was shot by a sniper at Gallipoli, held in Melbourne in September 1915.
At the time of Bridges’ funeral, the British and Australian governments had decided against the repatriation of bodies. But Bridges was repatriated because of his status as the Australian commander at Gallipoli. His repatriation was highly symbolic and a unique opportunity to participate in an actual funeral of a soldier who had died overseas.
State Library Victoria
According to the Argus, Melbourne became a “city of mourning people”. Among the khaki there were “banks of black – the people”.
The first Anzac Day
In early 1916, government and military authorities around Australia began exchanging ideas about commemorating the Gallipoli landing. The proposals included military parades, church and open-air services, recruiting and fundraising activities and school observances (the dawn service was not introduced until the mid-1920s).
At the same time, organising committees faced a groundswell of feeling from the bereaved, who wished Anzac Day to be an occasion for mourning.
Newspaper reports of Anzac Day described the military parade and recorded the speeches. They noted the solemn women carrying wreaths, men with heads bared holding hats against their chests, and children clutching the skirts of women in mourning black.
Trove
At St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne, women wore “the deep black of mourning”; St Mary’s Cathedral, Sydney, was notable for the “black-robed figures”; in Singleton, country NSW, buildings were draped in black and purple.
During the Sydney march some women cheered, others were more subdued. One journalist observed,
one old woman in deep mourning let her handkerchief flutter for a minute before wiping her eyes with it.
In Hobart, the weather was inclement but not inappropriate, commented the Mercury: while it was a day to celebrate military achievements, it was “also one of the most mournful”. Following a military parade, there was a laying of wreaths by bereaved women at a temporary broken column in the city’s Domain.
The ubiquity of death in war
Beneath the wartime newspaper headlines trumpeting the military parades and the speeches extolling brave deeds of the Anzacs, we find mourning black.
We know civilian men attended Anzac Day (during the war, they wore battalion pins and brooches in addition to black arm and hat bands), though their emotional impact was minimal. Women in mourning were the focus in newspaper reports. Was this an example of those age-old assumptions that women are naturally disposed towards nurturing and grieving?
In 1917, the Sydney Morning Herald observed:
more women wore mourning than on last Anzac Day, as more will wear it before another Anzac Day comes around.
The Sydney Morning Herald was perceptive, women did continue to wear mourning black on Anzac Day. Yet over the next decade, the jingoistic rhetoric of masculine sacrifice would ultimately prevail, marginalising the bereaved.
While mourning black has never been considered a natural part of Anzac Day history and tradition, 110 years ago it was a stark reminder death in war was more than a heroic concept.
Tanja Luckins, Historian, Department of Archeology and History, La Trobe University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
