Glenora Clara Love

War widow, mother

On 27 April 1915, two days after the landing, Glenora Clara Love’s husband, Corporal Alfred Herbert Love, 14th Battalion AIF, was killed in action at Gallipoli. Glenora had had a troubled marriage but when she eventually received her husband’s diary, she read his last words to his ‘Dear Wife’. He wanted her to know, he wrote, that his ‘last thoughts were of her and of Essie my darling daughter’. Glenora’s marriage had been marked by two episodes when her husband had deserted her but once he began his diary on the day that he sailed from Australia he wrote only loving words of their relationship. The couple had a daughter, Esther, aged 8, and in 1912 had lost a son soon after birth. Glenora remarried two years after his death but the concerned letters she wrote to the Repatriation Department testify to her devotion to furthering her daughter Esther Love’s future.

Clara Glenora (her Christian names were reversed more often than not), who was born on 8 March 1887 at Fitzroy, Victoria, to Robert Guymer and Clara Glenora (nee Armstrong), married Alfred Herbert Love, in Melbourne on 4 April 1907. Both were aged 20. They had a daughter, Esther Glenora Ivy, in 1908 and a son, Linden Alf, who died soon after his birth in 1912. Alfred Love, a plumber by trade, worked in Melbourne and in Canberra where he was employed by the Commonwealth Department of Home Affairs at Duntroon Military College. The family accommodation in Canberra was in a camp set up for workers near Duntroon.

On 13 November 1914 Alfred Herbert Love, who was born at Allandale near Ballarat on 11 February 1887, enlisted in Melbourne in the 14th Battalion AIF and served as a corporal in A Company. When he left Melbourne on a troopship on 22 December 1914, sailing via Albany for the Middle East, he began keeping a diary in which he often referred to his wife Glenora and his daughter Essie. On board ship on New Year’s Eve he wrote: ‘Thinking of my dear ones at home. May God bless them.’ On 5 March 1915 in Egypt, after a 28-mile route march, Love wrote: ‘Thinking of home and Glenora and Essie. Wish I was home with them tonight.’ The following day’s entry read: ‘8 years married today—Glenora –God bless her and keep her true to me until I can return to her.’

On 25 April 1915, Love landed on Gallipoli with the first troops. His unit was held in reserve until 27 April when they were marched up to Monash Valley to what became known as Quinn’s Post. Two days after the landing he wrote in his diary:

Arrived at firing line at 10 o’clock this morning. Having a very bad time of it so far. Machine guns played havoc on our men for a start, they are getting hit and killed all around me, but I escaped so far.

This was the final entry in his diary before he was killed, aged 27, on 27 April 1915. At the back of his diary he had written: ‘In the event of my death I wish this book to be sent to my Dear Wife to let her know that my last thoughts were of her and of Essie my darling daughter.’

At the time he enlisted Alfred Herbert Love was a reformed husband. During the previous few years he had been charged with deserting his wife on two occasions. The first occurred on 9 November 1911 when he was charged with deserting and leaving his wife without means of support in Coburg, Victoria. Two weeks later he was apprehended at Gepp’s Cross, Dry Creek, South Australia. In 1912 their second child, a son, Linden Alf, was born in Victoria and died a short time later. Following this tragic event, the Love family moved to Canberra where Love was employed as a plumber with the Department of Home Affairs at Duntroon Military College. The family lived in a camp near the College and are recorded taking part in community events. At the beginning of July 1913, Love was secretary of the Royal Federal Lodge of the Grand United Order of Oddfellows when it celebrated its anniversary in Canberra. The following month, however, described as having worked at Duntroon, he was charged in Melbourne with deserting his wife. Later that year he was back with his wife and daughter in Canberra and was Santa Claus at the 1913 Christmas Party for local children at Duntroon Amusement Hall. The event was attended by the Commandant of the Royal Military College, William Throsby Bridges, and his wife Edith. Sergeant Major Yates thanked both Alfred and Glenora Love for their part in organising the event.

When her husband was killed on 27 April 1915, Glenora Love and her daughter were living in Coburg. In 1917 Glenora Love married Joseph Bolch, a builder, and after an adjustment period, her pension as a war widow ceased but Esther’s child allowance continued. From 1923, when Esther was 15, Glenora wrote frequently to the Repatriation Department regarding arrangements for her daughter’s apprenticeship as a ladies’ tailor. Esther began work at Buckley and Nunn’s department store in Melbourne and was paid 10/- a week, but Glenora was unhappy that her daughter’s main work was running messages. She arranged an apprenticeship with Mr Carr’s Ladies Tailoring, which was quicker and easier for Esther to travel to from the Bolch home in the eastern suburbs as it was near Camberwell railway station.

Letter from Glenora Love Bolch about her daughter's apprenticeship. NAA: B73, R20962

Once Esther turned 16 on 4 March 1924, her dependant child’s allowance ceased, and she came under the Education and Training of Children of Deceased and Totally and Permanently Incapacitated Australian Soldiers Scheme. A Repatriation officer inspected Mr Carr’s business and approved a living allowance of 20/- per week which, added to her apprentice wage, brought Esther’s income to 30/-. The living allowance was subject to twice yearly reports from Mr Carr who had to answer a long list of specific questions on Esther’s regularity and punctuality, industry, application and progress. This arrangement continued as Esther progressed to second year when her wage increased to 15/- a week, in third year to 17/6 and to £1/9/6 when she turned 18 in March 1926.

A few months later her mother told the Department that Esther would cancel her indenture at the beginning of August as she was going to get married. There was a hitch when the young man she was to marry became ill and out of work, but in November 1926 Esther married Edward Walter Mitchell. The Repatriation file ceased when Esther left her apprenticeship. Electoral rolls indicate that the Mitchell family lived in outer eastern Melbourne suburbs for many years. Glenora Bolch died on 3 July 1963, aged 76.

DR PATRICIA CLARKE OAM FAHA

Archival resources

  • NAA B2455 First AIF Personnel Dossiers 1914-1920, Love, Alfred Herbert, 1375, barcode 8205282.
  • NAA B73 Assistance to Esther Love (daughter) Education and Training Scheme, 1923-1926, Love, Alfred Herbert, 1375, R20962, barcode 21334998.

Published sources

  • Patsy Adam-Smith, The Anzacs, Sphere Books, 1981, pp. 83-7.
  • Victoria Police Gazette, 11 December 1911, p. 624; 56; 14 August 1913, p. 400.
  • South Australian Police Gazette, 22 December 1911, p. 310.
  • Queanbeyan Age, 4 July 1913, p. 2; 2 January 1914, p. 2.
  • Victoria BDM 1887/11017 (birth); 1907/5726 (marriage); 1908/5236 (birth); 1912/13748 (birth); 1913/105587 (death); 1917/922 (marriage); 1926/13022 (marriage).

Online sources