The three dolls’ houses in this story were raffled to support the Red Cross in sending comfort parcels to Australian prisoners of war.
The first mentioned was constructed and designed by the Apex Club of Tasmania. The name ‘Young Bill’ was used in publicity material to represent every interned man.
I was touched to read about this, as two of my Tasmanian uncles were in prison camps at the time. My mother’s brother Reg Larcombe, worked on the Burma Railway, and my father’s younger brother Laurie died while a prisoner of the Japanese in Malaya.
The plan was to display the doll’s house around the State, selling raffle tickets at events in various towns.
I love the fact that it was built in a modern, 1940’s design;
Tiny carpets, bedsteads, blankets and pictures among other elaborate furnishings, are a feature of the Apex ‘Doll’s Dream House’…..This beautiful modern miniature home displays a most unexpected charm, with its large windows, colourful curtains, and off-white walls, touched with reds, greens and blues. A sun deck over the garage has a bright striped umbrella, and a colourful sun lounge, with a small tree growing in a green tub. Green lawns and trees surround the house.
There were even cars in the garage.
Electrically lit throughout, the house at night is very realistic, and when looking at it one finds it hard to realize that one has not become a giant and is looking at a full-sized house. (Advocate, Nov. 5 1942)
The majority of the furnishings were made by Peter Eldershaw, a talented young man who lived in Wingfield House, a residential home for disabled children. Other items were donated as word of the project spread, including a miniature tea-set made in Paris.
The house was quite large, standing four ft. six in. high.
Another, equally magnificent doll’s house had been raffled for the Red Cross earlier that year, again to assist prisoners’ of war. It was built by Nettlefold Bodyworks, in Macquarie Street. The house was designed by Mr Bernard Walker and furnished by the artist Miss. L.M. Poynter, who included a tiny, hand-made pottery dinner set and several dressed dolls as residents. Young Margaret Neave was the deserving winner. She was a lonely only child, whose mother had died when she was an infant.
Margaret Neave married in 1953. Let’s hope the ‘dream doll’s house’ was treasured, and passed down through her family.
A DOLL’S HOUSE FROM A BYGONE ERA
What an act of generosity this involved! In 1943 a Georgian doll’s house was donated to the Battery Point Red Cross by Mrs. C.W. Baldwin. It too was in support of the Young Bill prisoner of war appeal. It had been in Mrs Baldwin’s family for over 100 years, sent out from England to her grandfather Mr William Knight as a gift for his first daughter, Mrs Baldwin’s mother. One of its special pieces of furniture was a miniature writing desk, complete with candlesticks. By the way, you can just make out the ‘owners’ of the home, standing on the right.
Eighty years later it’s possible that someone still has this Georgian gem. All three dolls’ houses I have described would be wonderful pieces of social history.
400,000 Red Cross parcels were sent to Australian servicemen and prisoners of war during WWII and dolls’ houses were used as fundraisers around the country. Unfortunately, those posted to internment camps were not always delivered to the suffering inmates as they should have been, but the Red Cross never stopped trying.
FOR MORE ON THE WORK OF THE RED CROSS, CLICK HERE.
