a’Beckett was elected to Collingwood council in the second year of the municipality’s existence, and was chairman or mayor of Collingwood Council from 1856 until 1859. He had practised as a solicitor in London, was interested in law reform, and had published a number of pamphlets before deciding to move to Victoria in 1850. 

Edouard Adet was born in Bordeaux and arrived in Melbourne in the 1850s. He was a partner in the firm of Curcier and Adet, wine merchants and was appointed acting French consul at the end of 1858 on the death of the Conte de Chabrillon, the incumbent. From around 1860 until the 1870s he made his home near the Yarra River at Greenford Cottage in Victoria Street Abbotsford, and here most of his seven children were born.

Joe Aiello’s ‘Flower of Sorrento’ Continental Supermarket, at 58 Spensley Street, has provided a central meeting place and convenience shopping for residents of east Clifton Hill since its establishment in 1968. For many years shopping at ‘Joe’s’ has been part of the local culture, although for more recent residents this has become shopping at ‘Albert’s’ since Joe handed over running the shop to his son and daughter in 2000. Nonetheless Joe remained an important figure in the shop.

Prior to the development of amateur photography brought about by the Box Brownie after 1889, and more recently by compact cameras and the explosion of digital photography, the photographer’s studio was an important locale for those who wanted to record themselves for posterity. It remained so when a good quality photograph, copy, or mount was wanted. One of Collingwood’s longest-lasting photography studios was initiated in the 1880s by Mark Joseph Allan and continued under the name of the Allan Studio after his departure.

Josephine Anderson (nee Graham) was the licensee of the Royal Hotel, Spensley Street, Clifton Hill from 1889 for many years, and family members continued to reside there after her death. Hotel keeping was an attractive vocation for women in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, a fact that has been obscured by the common view of the pub as a male bastion, home as its antithesis, and women as proponents of the temperance movement. In Collingwood in 1906, as many as 58% of hotels had a female publican.