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An Anzac Tribute - The Homefront Humanitarian

by Alex Prior | 24 Apr 2015

William Henderson didn’t set out to do anything remarkable, but in 1917, he was tasked with a project that would directly affect the lives of hundreds of Australians. Here, Alex Prior shares the story of how William made an everlasting impact on the families of soldiers.

Early in 1917, William Henderson was just plain old Bill. He worked at the Newport Railway Workshop and sat on the Williamstown Council in Victoria. He had been elected in 1916 and had already risen to the dizzying heights of Chairman of the Gardens Committee.

It was a tough year for Williamstown in 1917. The thriving community port with a population of 15,000 had been torn apart when the Prime Minister, Billy Hughes, called a second referendum on conscription. The introduction of conscription divided the community along religious lines, with Catholics opposing, and Protestants supporting the PM.

With tension rising in the community, Henderson and the Williamstown council declared themselves neutral. Real life was a long way from the rosy picture of a united Australia, supporting our troops overseas.

In an era before social welfare, the only help grieving families torn apart by war were likely to receive was from the local clergy – Catholic or Protestant. But in 1917, that help came with politics and vitriol attached, when, according to the Williamstown Chronicle (30 September, 1922) Henderson was delegated by his colleagues to “collect memoranda bearing upon the enlistment statistics of local soldiers”.

We don’t know what Henderson thought of his assignment, but we do know what he did, and it went far beyond collecting facts and figures.

The human face of war

Henderson took it upon himself to visit every family in Williamstown who had lost a husband or son in the war. He sat with them for hours talking about their lost children – the men from Williamstown, who were so young that only 19 of them were married. He wrote down what they told him, collected a photograph of every one and then stayed in contact.

Because of Henderson, we know Corporal Gordon Rankin Inglis as more than just a young man who enlisted in August 1914 and died from a bullet wound to his lung on 24 January, 1915. We also know that Inglis was a talented bagpipe player who was originally in the Victorian Scottish Regiment. When he was shot, he was nursed and protected by his mate, who refused to allow him to be taken onto the deck of the hospital ship (a precursor to being buried at sea), which was how he returned to England.

According to the Williamstown City Council archives, “The people of Swansea erected a cedar cross and his grave was turfed and planted with spring plantings of which a photo would be sent to his mother.”

Honouring Henderson

By the end of the war, in just a little over 18 months, Henderson had visited 265 families. He didn’t care if they were Catholic or Protestant; he cared about preserving the memories of young men, and he cared deeply about their families.

Ironically, little is known about Henderson’s own life – not even a photo of him exists. However, in the book At The Edge of the Centre: A History of Williamstown, the “mothers of the servicemen honoured on the board presented Cr Henderson with a set of inscribed silver dishes in appreciation”.

“At a gathering of soldiers’ mothers for a presentation to Henderson, Mrs M C Gladstones spoke from the chair and her words caused considerable weeping. Henderson was emotional as well. ‘He had seen more of the domestic side of grief than he had ever done before. He had heard the private histories of these boys, so truly loved,’ [she said].”

From Henderson’s photographs and biographies, the Council commissioned a unique blackwood cabinet containing their pictures, and a book recording their lives. Three thousand people (one fifth of the population of Williamstown) gathered on a weekday afternoon to see the unveiling of “the silently stirring picture”, states the Williamstown Chronicle (24 May, 1919).

“The public surged up the narrow stairway from the ground floor to the Council chamber, congested the adjoining rooms and passages … and generally made confusion worse confounded, some ladies being on the verge of hysteria.”

Until “a solemn silence reigned amid which the Last Post was sounded by a bugler.”

They made Henderson mayor in 1919, but he didn’t seem to like the job much, and went quietly back to his beloved gardens.

Henderson died on 25 May in 1939, after a “protracted illness”.

Months later, at the outbreak of World War II, the council engineer was instructed to “provide a bomb proof receptacle” to keep Henderson’s work safe.The honour board still hangs in Williamstown Town Hall, where the City of Hobson’s Bay has restored it. Over the next year, they will track down the relatives of those servicemen and build a permanent, digital display with the honour board at its centre.

Manager of Cultural and Economic Development, Janet Dawes, says the aim is to allow people to discover the fascinating stories of the ordinary people which Henderson so carefully preserved.

The Town Hall is the perfect place for the memorial, she says, because it was “the absolute centre of that small community. They would have come here to enlist and that is the poignancy for us”.

“Back then there would have been few places to go to talk about their loss, and what Henderson did was a huge thing,” she said.