Florence Josephine Mayo

War widow, single mother

During World War I, Queanbeyan citizens, at a public meeting held soon after news that her husband, Private John Charles Mayo, had been killed in action at Bullecourt in 1917, decided to provide a home for Florence Mayo and her two young daughters. Raising money proved more difficult than expected and Florence, described as ‘a plucky woman’, partly financed her land and weatherboard cottage by taking out a mortgage. She lived in Queanbeyan for the rest of her life.

Florence Josephine Roberts, born on 14 August 1886 at Carlton, Victoria, was working at Duntroon pastoral station when she met and married farm hand, John Charles Mayo (known as Charlie) on 15 February 1905. Her husband had been born in Canberra on 28 January 1881, a grandson of early pioneers, Alfred Mayo and his wife Mary Ann (nee Smith), who married in 1846 at St John the Baptist Church, Canberra, after Alfred had received a ticket of leave. John Charles was a son of one of their children, John Mayo, and his wife formerly Wilhelmina Ellen O’Donnell. Charlie Mayo lived and worked on stations at Duntroon, Jerrabomberra and Tharwa. At her marriage, Florence Roberts was given away by E.E. Hudson, manager of Duntroon station, and Mr and Mrs Hudson gave her a gold chain as a gift and held the wedding breakfast at their residence.

Florence and Charlie Mayo had two daughters, Ada Florence, born in 1905 and Mabel May (Peg) born in 1907. In 1908 the family moved to Cuppacumbalong station at Tharwa, where Charlie was employed by George Circuitt, the farm manager. When Circuitt and other part owners sold Cuppacumbalong in 1912, Charlie Mayo and his family moved with Circuitt to Uabba station, between Lake Cargelligo and Hillston in western New South Wales, where he was working as a station hand when he enlisted in the AIF at Cootamundra on 2 December 1915.

After her husband enlisted, Florence Mayo and her children moved back to Queanbeyan where her mother-in-law and other Mayo relatives lived. Private John Charles Mayo trained in Australia and the Middle East. On 4 August 1916, he was posted to the 54th Battalion and served in the trenches near Gueudecourt on the Somme during the winter months. After a spell in hospital with scabies, he rejoined his unit on 6 April 1917. On 10 May 1917, after Florence heard that Charlie’s youngest brother, Sergeant Ernest Frederick Mayo, had been killed in action during the First Battle of Bullecourt on 11 April 1917, aged 29, she wrote to Victoria Barracks seeking news of her husband whom she had last heard from in a letter dated 6 January. Just five days after she wrote this letter, Private John Charles Mayo, aged 36, was killed in action on 15 May 1917 during the Second Battle of Bullecourt.

During the following year, Florence wrote several times to the Army authorities seeking the return of her husband’s personal possessions, particularly his ring and wristlet watch. On 8 April 1918, she received a parcel of her ‘poor husband’s things’ containing his Bible, prayer book, cigarette holder and interpreter but she reminded the Army once again that there was still his ring and wristlet watch to come. Florence heard later from a soldier friend of Mayo’s that her husband had been killed while bandaging a wounded fellow soldier when a bomb landed in the trench killing both men. According to the friend, both men were buried in a military cemetery and a cross placed over the grave with their names and military numbers. This must have been destroyed in later battles as, like many other soldiers lost at Bullecourt, the body of John Charles Mayo was not recovered, and he has no known grave. He is commemorated at the Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux, France and the ACT and Queanbeyan Memorials. Florence was granted a war widow’s pension of £2 per fortnight to begin on 4 August 1917, £1 a fortnight for her elder daughter, Ada, and 10 shillings a fortnight for her younger daughter Mabel.

The deaths of the two Mayo brothers in just over a month shocked the town of Queanbeyan, where their widowed mother, Mrs Wilhelmina Mayo, and her children, and John Charles Mayo’s widow, Florence and her children, were members of a long-established family. Less than a month after John Charles Mayo’s death, a public meeting was held at the Council Chambers to ‘devise means of providing or erecting a home for the widow and family of Private Charles Mayo’. After a long discussion the meeting decided to pledge to provide a home for Mrs Mayo and any other widows of fallen soldiers and to check what assistance was available from the Repatriation Fund. The Queanbeyan community was already financing and building a home for the widow of Private George Thomas Ford, a drover, who enlisted in the 6th Light Horse AIF but just two months later, before he had left Australia, died of bronchial pneumonia in Liverpool Hospital on 26 December 1915. His widow, Florence Catherine Ford, and his five children moved into their house, named Anzac Cottage, in January 1918.

Letter from Florence Mayo about her husband's things. NAA: B2455 MAYO JOHN CHARLES

Fundraising for Mrs Ford’s cottage may have largely exhausted the charity of Queanbeyan residents, as only small amounts totalling £53 were raised in Queanbeyan towards a house for the Mayo family. More than double that amount, £109, was raised by residents of Lake Cargelligo where the Mayos had lived for only about two years. Florence Mayo declined a gift of land in what she regarded as a lonely spot outside the town of Queanbeyan as she would have felt unsafe. She also regarded the distance to town as too far to travel to work. There is no evidence that Florence Mayo worked but she probably expected that her daughters would when they were old enough. Instead she bought a block of land herself and took out a mortgage of £150 from a Sydney philanthropic organisation, the Voluntary Workers’ Association, which she undertook to repay plus interest in five years.

A complication arose with assistance from the Voluntary Workers’ Association when the Repatriation Department withdrew approval for building the cottage on land which was owned by Mrs Mayo as she wished to retain possession of the Crown grant. The Association requested the Department to waiver its objection and allow the erection of the cottage to proceed ‘to safeguard the interests of the children as well as the widow’, as arrangements had been well in hand before the Department took control of such matters. The Department raised further objections and it is unclear from the Mayo Repatriation file how the matter was resolved. However, erection of the cottage went ahead.

The keys of the weatherboard, four-room house with verandahs running the length of the building at the front and the back were handed to Florence Mayo in a ceremony in October 1919. A Queanbeyan Councillor, Alderman E.F. O’Rourke, one of the speakers at the ceremony, pointed out that Cargelligo had ‘put Queanbeyan in the shade’ and in honour of her Cargelligo friends, Mrs Mayo named her cottage ‘Cargelligo’. O’Rourke added:

Here is a poor widow, with no brothers and no father to assist her, struggling through life’s battles and although her task is hard she is a plucky woman and one in a thousand who would undertake such a task.

A further very long Repatriation file detailed medical treatment provided for Mrs Mayo until her death more than four decades later. It appears from this that Mrs Mayo often found the bureaucratic requirements in obtaining approval for appropriate treatment oppressive. On one occasion the Department queried paying for glasses prescribed by a local optometrist. Some years later when she required a new prescription and asked the Department what she should do, she was told to make an appointment with an eye specialist in Canberra, then get two quotes from Queanbeyan opticians for glasses made in frames of a specified brand. The file indicates the increasing level of bureaucratic action in the Repatriation Department particularly after World War II; for example, when Mrs Mayo was a patient in hospital the Department received detailed medical reports, including hour by hour, day by day, medical observations.

Florence Josephine Mayo died in Queanbeyan on 8 June 1965, aged 79. The descendants of Florence and Charlie Mayo continue to contribute to the life of Queanbeyan and the Formula I racing-car driver, Mark Webber, is one of their great-great grandsons.

DR PATRICIA CLARKE OAM FAHA

Archival resources

  • NAA B2455 First AIF Personnel Dossiers 1914-1920, MAYO, John Charles, 5402, barcode 8030503.
  • NAA C138, Personal Case Files, single member series 1914-1918 War, MAYO, John Charles, 5402, R25274, barcode 14082081.
  • NAA MB25274, MAYO, Florence Josephine, beneficiary of MAYO, John Charles, 5402, barcode 14082082.
  • NAA B2455 First AIF Personnel Dossiers 1914-1920, FORD, George Thomas, barcode 4024111.

Published sources

  • Wendy and Roger McLennan, The Mayo Connection: A tribute to the pioneer families of the Canberra region, priv. printed, Canberra ACT, 1996.
  • Queanbeyan Age, 17 February 1905, p. 2.
  • Queanbeyan Age and Queanbeyan Observer, ‘Public Meeting. Homes for Soldiers’ Widows’, 12 June 1917, p. 2; ‘Private J.C. Mayo’, 24 July 1917, p. 2; ‘Soldiers’ Homes Fund’, 31 August 1917, p. 2; ‘The late Pte J.C. Mayo’, 15 January 1918, p. 2; ‘Opening of Soldier’s Cottage’, 31 October 1919, p.2.
  • Research by Michael Hall for the ACT Memorial and Canberra & District Historical Society.

Online sources