Historical information
Dr Michele Matthews has been a local and social historian for nearly three decades since she first used correspondence held by the then Bendigo City Council for her Honours thesis. She is an ardent advocate for the use of local history records to tell Victorian and Australian history from a grassroots perspective. Michele’s MA thesis, ‘A forgotten “Father” of Federation: Sir John Quick 1852‑1911’ (2003), and her PhD thesis, ‘Survivors, schemes, Samaritans and shareholders: the impact of the Great Depression on Bendigo and District 1925‑1935’ (2007), both drew heavily on Bendigo and district records.
Physical description
Michele Matthews Collection: PHD Research - Relief during the great depression
This item includes the following documents:
8672.46a The document is a letter dated 16 March 1933 from the Town Clerk to the Minister for Sustenance in Melbourne. Its subject is "Work in Return for Sustenance" and concerns proposed changes to the administration of work requirements for people receiving government sustenance payments.
The Town Clerk explains that the Council has begun requiring men who receive sustenance payments to undertake work in return for this assistance. Under existing regulations, however, if recipients are required to complete work equivalent to more than two weeks of sustenance in advance, the Council must first obtain special permission from the Minister. In Bendigo, approximately 550 men are eligible for this work scheme, with weekly sustenance payments ranging from 6 shillings to 14 shillings.
The letter requests permission to require recipients to complete work equivalent to three weeks of sustenance rather than two. The Town Clerk argues that this arrangement would make the scheme much easier to administer. Instead of repeatedly organising workers every two weeks, the Council could schedule work over a period of approximately two and a quarter days, allowing the engineering staff to process the entire group before the first workers again became eligible for payments. Although some individuals might need to work more than 24 hours in a single week, the writer considers this a practical administrative solution.
The letter concludes by emphasising that the proposed change is intended solely to simplify local administration rather than alter the principles of the sustenance scheme. It also argues that concentrating the required work into a shorter period would benefit recipients by giving them a longer interval between work obligations, enabling them to accept casual employment opportunities that might arise. The letter closes with the Town Clerk's formal signature and request for the Minister's approval.
