A small collection of family papers associated with newspaper proprietor David Syme (1827-1908), publisher and editor-in-chief of The Age from 1859-1908, has recently been re-housed by the Preservation team. The collection includes correspondence, newspaper clippings, documents, diaries and notebooks, and largely relates to David Syme and his son Geoffrey Syme, who was successor to his father at The Age. Several notebooks feature autobiographical writings, by both David and his son reflecting on their professional lives as editorial managers of the The Age.

While re-housing a series of letters found carefully stored within a small writing box, a touching exchange was encountered between Geoffrey’s wife Violet and one of her daughters. Violet Newstead Syme was the second daughter of Geoffrey and Violet, and was called by her nickname Hilaire. Many of the letters were written while Hilaire was living in England, where she had relocated upon meeting her future husband during her first voyage to the continent after she left school. She had been married in England, and was expecting her first child. The letters provide updates on family news and day-to-day life. Violet was always keen to hear of Hilaire’s social engagements and activities in England, at times lamenting that her daughter does not write her often enough.

The last of Hilaire’s letters are dated only weeks before she died soon after giving birth in 1926, at age 21. A detailed letter from Hilaire’s husband, Kenneth Peacock, to Violet Syme, recounts the period after Hilaire gave birth and how her condition deteriorated over several days. His sense of devastation and loss is deeply felt as he tries to make sense of what happened. He notes in his letter that Hilaire seemed tired but well after the birth; yet in the days that followed she became distressed and feverish and in her final hours no longer recognised him. Kenneth writes, ‘They told me it was puerperal mania which sometimes occurs after childbirth but that it was only a temporary condition and she would be all right again’.

In the second half of the 19^th century it was thought that childbirth could induce a form of mental collapse in women that was often manic and occasionally fatal; a belief that gained momentum in the Victorian medical profession, both in obstetrics and the newly growing field of psychiatry (Louden 1988, p. 76, Marland 2004, p. 20-21). The terms ‘puerperal insanity’, ‘puerperal mania’ and ‘puerperal melancholia’ were variously employed to describe the condition (Louden 1988, p. 76), and reflect the way in which medical practitioners understood and diagnosed the complications of childbirth at the time, as well as the associated view of women as fragile and unstable, subject to the unpredictability of their bodies and the reproductive process (Marland 2004, p. 20).

The letters Hilaire wrote to her mother and also her father and her siblings become more poignant upon learning of her premature death, and convey the thoughts of a young woman who was looking forward to returning to recreational activities and social commitments after the birth of her first child. In a letter to her father she teasingly writes of her baby: ‘I am sure it’s going to have flaming red hair which upsets Ken very much and he insists that if so he won’t be the father’. The correspondence gives a small personal insight into Geoffrey Syme’s life, outside of his better known professional career as managing editor at The Age, and the perhaps less visible experiences of women at this period of time.

Written by Jessye Wdowin-McGregor, Preservation Technician

References:

Louden, I 1988, Puerperal insanity in the 19^th century, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Volume 81, February 1988, p. 76

Marland, H 2004, Dangerous Motherhood: Insanity and Childbirth in Victorian Britain, Palgrave MacMillan, 2004, p. 20-21