Historical information

Reverend Weller succeeded the senior chaplain role after Rev Gurney Goldsmith in the mid 1920s until the end of the decade. He was a keen photographer himself.

Freda Kathleen Oxley (1882-1969) pictured here holding a camera took pictures during a voyage to Melbourne on S.S. Persic via Cape Town in 1925. An album of 126 photographs is now held at the National Library of Australia in Canberra., containing views of the Mission to Seamen, Melbourne, with visiting sailors and clergy; family groups, gardens, ships, church picnics, a wedding, some views of Portsea.
She seems to have been a childhood friend of Mrs Weller as she was like her born in Windsor, UK. She lived in the chaplaincy for 3 years and became a volunteer; she can be seen in a few photographs of picnics. She left in 1929 shortly after the Wellers (see Jottings Easter 1929) and went back to the UK.

Significance

Provides early 20th C. records of MTS senior personnel and images of LHLG supporters and members.

Physical description

small black and white photograph mounted on an album page depicting clerically dressed male figure flanked by two females in 1920s dress posed in front of a large palm tree. on page 12

Inscriptions & markings

On album page handwritten: "Reverend JR Weller, Mrs Weller, Mrs Orley (holding a Kodak Brownie camera)"