By Liz Pidgeon
For many young men, especially early in the war, enlistment was seen as the opportunity for a grand adventure. For Arthur Meekcoms, his journey of a lifetime came when he had earlier decided to migrate to Australia. Arthur was among 150,000 state assisted settlers who arrived in Australia between 1906 and the outbreak of World War I in August 1914. A short-lived immigration boom occurred between 1910 and 1913 and it was on this tail end that Arthur arrived in Melbourne aboard the ship S. S. Geelong on 17 October 1913.
The aims of policy-makers were to people the country’s ’empty spaces’ for reasons of defence and to boost the population for the purpose of national growth and development and in particular settlement of the land.
After weather delayed its arrival by four days the ship arrived from London with 149 assisted persons, including 134 single young men. Arthur was 20 years old with his occupation listed as “attendant”. At age 18 he had worked as a porter in a warehouse. Born in Clapton Park, Central Hackney, London, Arthur was the eldest son of nine children. He would later list his mother Lydia in Clapton Park, as his next of kin on his attestation papers.
There are no records known of Arthur’s activities once he arrived but it is likely that he travelled to rural Victoria and picked up readily available work working on the land in his nearly two and half years in Victoria before he enlisted. In 1919 he is registered on the Wimmera electoral roll at Kerang as a labourer. Arthur was in Warrnambool where he was working as a farm hand when he enlisted at the local enlistment depot for the AIF on the 24th March 1916. He was 22 years and 8 months old. As part of the 20th reinforcements of the 6th Battalion, he was sent to Broadmeadows camp for training. Over five months later, on the 11 September 1916 he set sail from Melbourne on board the HMAT A14 Euripides. They arrived at Plymouth on 26 October and were then taken on strength two months later on December 14 1916 to France. According to the Australian War Memorial: “In 1917, the battalion participated in the operations that followed-up the German withdrawal to the Hindenburg Line, and then returned to Belgium to join the great offensive launched to the east of Ypres France”. It is during this time in action he may have been affected by chemical gas poisoning.
His service record is minimal for the next nearly twelve months, except for an incident or two, when in November 16 1917 he contracted bronchitis. From here it seems his health took a bad turn and he is in and out of the hospital in England now through the following year when he is finally returned to Australia with tuberculosis of the lung. Despite agreeing to being immunised against small pox and enteric fever, these other illnesses were to be his “war wounds”. The war saw a great increase in the cases of tuberculosis, a symptom of which is exhaustion often caused by inadequate diet. Some soldiers succumbed to it.
While in England Arthur married widow Mary Ann Henderbourk aged 26 in Homerton, on the 6 June 1918.
By 29 October 1918 he is returned to Australia with tuberculosis of the lung via H.M.A.T.S. Borda arriving Melbourne 15 December 1918. The war is over.
The treatment for TB at that time entailed a lot of resting and intake of fresh air. Arthur’s connection to our local area commences probably soon after embarkation where because of his illness he was probably admitted to the Austin Hospital’s tuberculosis division or Mont Park. His name first came to light in the original minute books of the Heidelberg Library now in custody of the Heidelberg Historical Society.
On December 31, 1921 Arthur’s application to the library for the position of Librarian and Secretary is accepted for an appointment of three months.
Heidelberg Public Library Committee was first formed in 1899. Heidelberg Council had recommitted to the value of the library to the community and had doubled its funding contributions. The Council offices were at that time located next door to the Austin Hospital. The employment is on one front surprising as he appeared to not have any academic, scholarly or even administrative experience to this date, let alone experience working in a library. Unsurprising though, as perhaps there was an effort being made by the medical establishment – and indeed by the state and local soldiers repatriation committees set up to assist returned soldiers, to provide TB patients with employment as their illnesses improved. Perhaps working in a library was seen as a sedentary job! Evidently he was still too sick to maintain the position. Due to his ongoing illness Arthur was soon replaced.
Arthur and Maryann had a son Kenneth Parker Meekcoms who on his attestation papers when enlisting in World War 2 claimed he was born on 13 August 1918 in Heidelberg, Victoria. I have not found a birth registration for Kenneth around this time. A second child Alice was born in Melbourne in 1923.
An application held at the National Archives of Australia in 1919 cites Arthur applying for the arrival of his wife and two children to travel to Australia. As Mary Ann was a widow when they were married, these may have been his step children.
But Arthur was not to settle locally. In 1924 he was in Clapton, near Preston working as a traveller. By the Second World War he had settled in Sandringham and was working as an agent.
His service record indicates that he stayed in touch with the Australian Military Forces signing for both his British War Medal in 1921 and the Victory medal in 1923.
By 1972 Arthur was residing in Glenhuntly. As a veteran he was assessed for the totally and Permanently Incapacitated pension.
Arthur returned to Heidelberg in early 1973 and passed away on January 13 most likely at the Repatriation Hospital. He was aged 89. He was laid to rest in the Springvale Cemetery on the 16th of January.
I like to think that Arthur’s time in the library encouraged a life time love of libraries and reading. His life encompassed migrating to a new country as a young man, war service, managing and surviving tuberculosis and bringing up a family. He played a brief but early role in the long history of Yarra Plenty Regional Library and has contributed to the legacy that is Anzac. Lest we forget.
