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:

8672.60a The document is a letter dated 14 February 1934 from the Town Clerk to Mr. G. H. Jennings, Assistant Secretary of the Trades Hall Unemployed Association in Bendigo. It responds to Jennings' earlier letter of 30 January concerning the payment of unemployed men whose working hours exceeded one full week.

The Town Clerk proposes a revised payment arrangement for those affected. Instead of unemployed workers receiving one week's sustenance orders at a time, the letter recommends that the Sustenance Officer (Mr. Ryan) issue two weeks' worth of sustenance orders. This change is intended to simplify the payment process for workers who had completed more than one week's work.

Under the proposed system, after receiving two weeks of sustenance orders, the workers would then be paid in cash for the balance of the month, with the amount calculated according to the time they had worked for sustenance. The letter closes formally with "Yours faithfully" and is signed by the Town Clerk, indicating that this recommendation represents the official response of the municipal authority.