World War I in Collingwood
Lettitia Moreton
This World War I page of the Collingwood Historical Society focuses on research we commenced in 2014 at the time of the centenary of the start of World War I. Through our two databases of Collingwood people who enlisted in World War I, we are attempting to make it easier for you to find information about Collingwood-specific people. If you can’t find the person you are searching for, then you can move down to the end of the page and continue your research using other resources. Information about specific local people can also be found in other sections such as VC winners and where we have done or are doing analyses of the people on the Honour Boards (a work in progress).
The other information provided concerns memorials and honour rolls, large and small, that we are researching in the former City of Collingwood. Some of these remain elusive mentions in newspaper reports, while others are large and readily visible or in the case of the City of Collingwood honour roll covered and inaccessible, but at least due to our many requests to Yarra Council cleaned and with a conservation study completed. Yet others exist only in transcripts.
We have also researched local nurses who served in World War I, such as Lettitia Moreton (pictured) who appears on our City of Collingwood World War I Honour Board. You will find information on our Collingwood Women page if you want to read about them.
Finally, there are many different endings to the individual stories of Collingwood men and women who served in World War I. Some died. Some survived the battlefield only to die abroad or at home from the “Spanish” flu. Some returned hugely changed to lives they could not settle in, while others flourished and lived long and successful lives. There is much further research to be done on the lives of Collingwood people who went off to war in 1914-1918, but particularly for those who returned.
Collingwood AIF project
A great and useful project undertaken to commemorate the centenary of World War I was the AIF Project conducted by the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA). The project is an online database of the military records of men and women who served Australia during the Great War. This provides a wealth of information for starting research into anyone who enlisted and may be supplemented by resources listed in the last section of this page such as the Australian War Memorial and the Australian Archives and Ancestry. You can search the full ADFA database here: https://aif.adfa.edu.au/aif/
To facilitate searching specifically for Collingwood people, we have extracted a database of about 2,400 people who have links to the former City of Collingwood, that is to say, the suburbs of Abbotsford, Clifton Hill and Collingwood. But please be aware of the limitations of this database as the linking of people to places in this database essentially relates to place of birth and where the next of kin was living. We know, however, that many more people such as those who lived, went to school or worked there for example, were associated with Collingwood. So if you do not find your person here, you will need to expand your search.
You can search people who specifically relate to Collingwood in the following smaller database that provides links to the main ADFA database:
Collingwood Bios
Our Collingwood Bios database is a collection of one page PDF Bios of people related to Collingwood who served in World War I. We commenced the database when we started researching the Collingwood WWI Honour Roll (see below) and to date the bulk of the entries relate to people on that Honour Roll. The main focus to date has been to create bios for those who died as that was the main focus of that honour roll. However, as we identify other sources, we are adding to the database with people from those honour rolls and sources such as the Collingwood AIF Project and this will include people who returned from the war. If you have someone you have been researching who relates to Collingwood and is not included, please let us know through the Contact Us page. Our database is still under development and we are continuing to add bios.
INSERT WWI BIO Database
Collingwood WWI Honour Roll and Returned Soldiers and Sailors Hall
One in six Collingwood enlisted are said to have died in the Great War. After the end of the war, community support arose for a facility which would both honour the fallen and serve as a meeting place for survivors. Eventually, in June 1920, the City of Collingwood purchased land in Hoddle Street Abbotsford near the corner of Vere St for the Returned Soldiers & Sailors (RSS) Hall and fundraising started in earnest. On 1 December 1920, two foundation stones were laid by General R Smith and Lieutenant W Ruthven, VC, who was a local man and was to become a Collingwood Mayor and Councillor. The architect was BW Tapner, a Collingwood Mayor and Councillor whose son had died in the war. The Hall was opened by Captain Jacka VC in June 1924. In 1954, a new two-storey rear addition was added. We are not sure exactly when it stopped being used, but possibly in the 1990s.
Darragh Joseph William
However, well before the war ended and in fact soon after information about the Gallipoli casualties started to filter through, there was discussion at Collingwood Council about how the local men could be commemorated. Judging by reports in the press, from the start there was confusion about who would be commemorated on the City of Collingwood Honour Roll. A request in the Argus on 28 May 1915 in relation to “the names of all soldiers now at the war who belong to or are connected with Collingwood… desired that relatives, friends, lodges, clubs or associations will forward names and particulars”. While on 24 June The Tribune reported that Father Malone read out at Mass at St John’s, Clifton Hill, a letter from Collingwood City Council requesting information about residents who had been killed in the war. These two reports form the parameters for the compilation of the Collingwood Honour Roll which although labelled as being for local men who died certainly includes men who returned from the war, two women (with “nurse” after their names), and people who seemed to be included because they had friends, relations or some sort of connection with Collingwood. These conflicting parameters certainly form a background to the difficulties we have experienced in identifying the names mentioned in the Collingwood Honour Roll.
Eventually, once the RSS Hall was built, the City of Collingwood Honour Roll commemorating people with local connections who died (or did not) in World War I was painted on the south wall of its entry hall. The Honour Roll of the RSS Hall is thus an integral part of the structure of the hall, but for years has not been accessible. In 2017, a conservation assessment of the Honour Roll was undertaken for Council by the University of Melbourne Potter Museum and, as a result of this, cleaning was undertaken and the current covering was commissioned and installed. Proper conservation work on it awaits the restoration of the building and an ability for it to be displayed in an appropriate environment. The families of the 500 men and women represented on this roll will welcome the ability to see the roll again as currently their only access to it is via photographs online in the collection of the Collingwood Historical Society.
The City of Collingwood World War I Honour Roll is a unique and iconic memorial to the people of Collingwood who served their country in the First World War as well as their friends, relations, churches, workplaces and organizations who submitted their names to Council for inclusion on this Roll. This Roll should be accessible to the community so that the contribution of these people can continue to be honoured.
School Honour Rolls
Bolton G
Apart from the Collingwood wide databases and the Collingwood Honour Roll, other organizations in Collingwood have large Honour Rolls that are being researched, compared with other databases and honour rolls and providing individuals to be added to our Bios database. Gold Street SS in Clifton Hall has 345 names on their roll including George Bolton (pictured). If you wish to see the Honour Roll and people listed on it, you can check out our photos on Flickr here: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmtmz3Eu. Cambridge Street SS also has a large honour roll with 268 individuals included, and photos of their Honour Roll can be seen here: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmym4SLc. We are still researching memorials and honour rolls for other schools.
Church Honour Rolls
St Andrews Architect Drawing
In the early days of the war, there were reports of two Honour Rolls in Collingwood Wesleyan churches. However, despite searching the Honour Roll graveyard of the Uniting Church archives, we have not been able to identify them. Honour Rolls are also documented as having been installed at the Catholic churches of St Joseph’s in Collingwood and St John’s in Clifton Hill, but these have also not been able to be discovered.
The two church Honour Rolls that we do have records from are from the former St Andrew’s Church of England in Clifton Hill (see photo) and the Clifton Hill Presbyterian Church in North Fitzroy. In both cases, these relatively small rolls have been researched. Most people have been identified and are in the process of having their Bios written and added to the Bios database.
Workplace Honour Rolls
Tapner & Robertson
For the City of Collingwood, we have only identified two workplace memorials, despite the number of factories in Collingwood. The two workplace Honour Rolls are from the Denton Hat Mills and the Collingwood Town Hall. You can read more here about the Denton Hat Mills, a site recognized on the Victorian Heritage Register. An analysis of the Denton Hat Mills Honour Roll data was done for the Collingwood History Walk in 2016, and is currently being updated as we have identified a few mysteries. You can see the Honour Roll here. The Collingwood Town Hall Honour Roll was also looked at during our Collingwood Town Hall tours, and just recently the last remaining people have been identified. You can see the Honour Roll here. Lieutenant Benjamin Tapner, the son of a Collingwood Councillor, is commemorated on this honour roll.
Other Memorials
Spensley St State School Memorial
In addition to the honour rolls referred to above, other local memorials have been identified. Unlike the schools previously mentioned, Spensley Street SS chose to honour its former scholars who served in the Great War by a monument in the grounds. You can see the dedication in the photo attached here, look at the monument if you are passing down Spensley Street, or check out some photos of it here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/collingwoodhs/albums/72157705199863305/
The original St Philip’s Church of England, formerly in Hoddle Street Abbotsford, once had hanging a large Union Jack inscribed and “honouring the Boys of the church who fell in Battle”. This was donated by Councillor Arthur Collins, J.P., whose son Arthur William Collins died in France in 1916.
Do you remember the World War I Field gun which used to be in the Darling Gardens until a few years ago? Have you been wondering what became of it? It has now been restored and installed at the Barkly Gardens war memorial site in Richmond and was ‘unveiled’ at the Remembrance Day ceremony on 11 November 2019. Whether you think it should have stayed in Clifton Hill, been melted down for scrap metal, or installed in Richmond, you will probably find the background story of interest. Read the background story in this PDF file entitled World War 1 Field Gun and look at some photos here.
Earl of Carnarvon Lodge Honour Board
And finally, thanks to an attendee at our 2016 November History Walk we discovered that the local Earl of Carnarvon Lodge had created an honour board for their members who fought in the Great War. A photo of it showing the names of the Lodge’s fourteen members illustrates this page.
There may well be other local memorials or honour boards that were created in honour of the Collingwood people who served in the Great War. Please let us know if you are aware of any by filling in the form on the Contact Us page.
Collingwood VC winners
Maurice Buckley
We are proud that Collingwood had three men who were awarded the Victoria Cross in the course of World War I. Their names were Maurice Buckley, William Dartnell, and William Ruthven and they are honoured by plaques in the pavement outside Collingwood and Fitzroy Town Halls.
Buckley, though from Hawthorn, went to school at St Joseph’s Technical School in Abbotsford and was also associated with John Wren in relation to his participation in the St Patrick’s Day Procession in 1920. Buckley died in 1920 after his return to Melbourne, a broken man. Dartnell spent his early years in Collingwood where his father ran a confectionery shop on the corner of Langridge and Little Oxford Streets. He moved to Fitzroy as a child and later lived in North Fitzroy. He did not survive his act of bravery in 1915 in Kenya, when attacked by a German patrol. Ruthven, on the other hand, was born and bred in Collingwood. He went to school in Collingwood, married at St Philip’s and survived his feat of bravery to return to Collingwood to work as a carrier and live in Clifton Hill, with a stint as a soldier settler. And of course he barracked for Collingwood Football Club. He was a Collingwood Mayor and Councillor for several terms before he moved to Preston and was elected as MLA. He had a railway station and a street named after him and died in 1970.
These three men with their different experiences provide three typical examples of the war experiences of Collingwood men: the one who died and did not return, the one who returned discharged as medically unfit with shell-shock and never found his path again before dying a couple of years later; and the one who came back and flourished in Collingwood and later in broader fields, though he too experienced difficult times as a soldier settler, as did many of those who tried to make something of it.
After the War
For those who died at war such as William Dartnell VC, that was usually the end of the story, for the others, survivors from the battlefields, some of them became ill and died from the “Spanish” flu in the latter stages and the aftermath of the war. And it was, of course, the returning troops who brought the influenza epidemic to Australia, to Melbourne and to Collingwood. During the COVID pandemic, the 1918-1919 influenza epidemic was much discussed and compared, and we assembled a selection of newspaper articles, garnered from Trove, which refer to flu cases in Collingwood. Click here to read them.
We were fortunate that, in the early days of our research, World War One: a history in 100 stories (Viking, 2015) was published by Monash University. For these stories tell the whole story, not only for those who died at war and were honoured for it, but also for those who returned from war shattered physically and mentally and not able to cope with life, as well as those who returned to a successful life but sometimes not until after their failure coping with attempting to make something of a soldier settlement plot.
In parallel to the launch of the book, Monash offered a free online course on the MOOC platform FutureLearn and developed with Melbourne Museum an excellent but disturbing exhibition. In none of these platforms did they resile from telling the full story of the 100 people, in most cases drawing on the valuable, but nearly lost, Repatriation Department records of those who returned.
In Collingwood, we do not have 100 but potentially at least 3,000 stories to tell. We have made a start with our VC men, and are now also working on the four nurses who returned and who feature on our Collingwood Women page.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/collingwoodhs/54383389868/in/datetaken/
Resources for your own research
AUSTRALIA
Australian War Memorial
https://www.awm.gov.au/
– Search for a Person
https://www.awm.gov.au/advanced-search/people?facet_related_conflict_sort=8%3AFirst%20World%20War%2C%201914-1918
National Archives of Australia
– Anzacs in the archives
https://www.naa.gov.au/students-and-teachers/classroom-resources/history/anzacs-archives
– RecordSearch Database https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/SearchScreens/BasicSearch.aspx
– Service Records
https://www.naa.gov.au/explore-collection/defence-and-war-service-records/researching-war-service
– Repatriation Records
https://www.naa.gov.au/about-us/media-and-publications/media-releases/national-archives-world-war-i-repatriation-records-reveal-legacy-war
AIF Project
https://aif.adfa.edu.au/aif/
Trove [National Library of Australia]
https://trove.nla.gov.au/
Includes digitised full text Australian newspapers
Australian Dictionary of Biography
http://adb.anu.edu.au/
Australian Victoria Cross Recipients
https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/biographies/vc-recipients
List of Australian Victoria Cross Recipients
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_Victoria_Cross_recipients
Anzac Portal
https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au
Public Record Office Victoria [PROV]
https://prov.vic.gov.au/
– World War I in the archives
https://prov.vic.gov.au/about-us/our-blog/wwi-archives
– Battle to Farm: WWI
https://prov.vic.gov.au/explore-collection/explore-topic/researching-land-and-property/soldier-settlement-scheme
State Library of Victoria – Research Guide to WWI
https://guides.slv.vic.gov.au/wwone_soldiers
Fitzroy History Society
Fitzroy WWI Soldiers Database
https://fitzroyhistorysociety.org.au/resources/
Darebin in World War One
https://libraries.darebin.vic.gov.au/Darebinheritage/darebin-at-war/world-war-one
Richmond & Burnley Historical Society
Some information in posts about World War 1 in the Facebook page of the Richmond and Burnley Historical Society.
https://www.facebook.com/page/599118490145829/search/?q=World%20War%20I
Local History Societies in the City of Yarra [Yarra Libraries]
https://library.yarracity.vic.gov.au/research/local-history/local-history-societies
OVERSEAS
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
https://www.cwgc.org
Imperial War Museum, UK
https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections
Lives of the First World War, UK
https://livesofthefirstworldwar.iwm.org.uk/
Firstworldwar.com – a multimedia history of World War One
https://www.firstworldwar.com/about.htm
Great War Forum
https://www.greatwarforum.org/
Ancestry.com Database
https://www.ancestry.com.au/
is available by subscription, or it can be searched in most Victorian Public Libraries, or the State Library of Victoria. The “Military” category has the following sub-categories:
- Draft, Enlistment and Service
- Casualties
- Soldier, Veteran & Prisoner Roll & Lists
- Pension Records
- Histories
- Awards & Decorations of Honour
- News
- Disciplinary Actions
- Photos
(all links checked and updated where appropriate on 4 Mar 2025 AH)
World War I in Collingwood
Lettitia Moreton
This World War I page of the Collingwood Historical Society focuses on research we commenced in 2014 at the time of the centenary of the start of World War I. Through our two databases of Collingwood people who enlisted in World War I, we are attempting to make it easier for you to find information about Collingwood-specific people. If you can’t find the person you are searching for, then you can move down to the end of the page and continue your research using other resources. Information about specific local people can also be found in other sections such as VC winners and where we have done or are doing analyses of the people on the Honour Boards (a work in progress).
The other information provided concerns memorials and honour rolls, large and small, that we are researching in the former City of Collingwood. Some of these remain elusive mentions in newspaper reports, while others are large and readily visible or in the case of the City of Collingwood honour roll covered and inaccessible, but at least due to our many requests to Yarra Council cleaned and with a conservation study completed. Yet others exist only in transcripts.
We have also researched local nurses who served in World War I, such as Lettitia Moreton (pictured) who appears on our City of Collingwood World War I Honour Board. You will find information on our Collingwood Women page if you want to read about them.
Finally, there are many different endings to the individual stories of Collingwood men and women who served in World War I. Some died. Some survived the battlefield only to die abroad or at home from the “Spanish” flu. Some returned hugely changed to lives they could not settle in, while others flourished and lived long and successful lives. There is much further research to be done on the lives of Collingwood people who went off to war in 1914-1918, but particularly for those who returned.
Collingwood AIF project
A great and useful project undertaken to commemorate the centenary of World War I was the AIF Project conducted by the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA). The project is an online database of the military records of men and women who served Australia during the Great War. This provides a wealth of information for starting research into anyone who enlisted and may be supplemented by resources listed in the last section of this page such as the Australian War Memorial and the Australian Archives and Ancestry. You can search the full ADFA database here: https://aif.adfa.edu.au/aif/
To facilitate searching specifically for Collingwood people, we have extracted a database of about 2,400 people who have links to the former City of Collingwood, that is to say, the suburbs of Abbotsford, Clifton Hill and Collingwood. But please be aware of the limitations of this database as the linking of people to places in this database essentially relates to place of birth and where the next of kin was living. We know, however, that many more people such as those who lived, went to school or worked there for example, were associated with Collingwood. So if you do not find your person here, you will need to expand your search.
You can search people who specifically relate to Collingwood in the following smaller database that provides links to the main ADFA database:
Collingwood Bios
Our Collingwood Bios database is a collection of one page PDF Bios of people related to Collingwood who served in World War I. We commenced the database when we started researching the Collingwood WWI Honour Roll (see below) and to date the bulk of the entries relate to people on that Honour Roll. The main focus to date has been to create bios for those who died as that was the main focus of that honour roll. However, as we identify other sources, we are adding to the database with people from those honour rolls and sources such as the Collingwood AIF Project and this will include people who returned from the war. If you have someone you have been researching who relates to Collingwood and is not included, please let us know through the Contact Us page. Our database is still under development and we are continuing to add bios.
INSERT WWI BIO Database
Collingwood WWI Honour Roll and Returned Soldiers and Sailors Hall
One in six Collingwood enlisted are said to have died in the Great War. After the end of the war, community support arose for a facility which would both honour the fallen and serve as a meeting place for survivors. Eventually, in June 1920, the City of Collingwood purchased land in Hoddle Street Abbotsford near the corner of Vere St for the Returned Soldiers & Sailors (RSS) Hall and fundraising started in earnest. On 1 December 1920, two foundation stones were laid by General R Smith and Lieutenant W Ruthven, VC, who was a local man and was to become a Collingwood Mayor and Councillor. The architect was BW Tapner, a Collingwood Mayor and Councillor whose son had died in the war. The Hall was opened by Captain Jacka VC in June 1924. In 1954, a new two-storey rear addition was added. We are not sure exactly when it stopped being used, but possibly in the 1990s.
Darragh Joseph William
However, well before the war ended and in fact soon after information about the Gallipoli casualties started to filter through, there was discussion at Collingwood Council about how the local men could be commemorated. Judging by reports in the press, from the start there was confusion about who would be commemorated on the City of Collingwood Honour Roll. A request in the Argus on 28 May 1915 in relation to “the names of all soldiers now at the war who belong to or are connected with Collingwood… desired that relatives, friends, lodges, clubs or associations will forward names and particulars”. While on 24 June The Tribune reported that Father Malone read out at Mass at St John’s, Clifton Hill, a letter from Collingwood City Council requesting information about residents who had been killed in the war. These two reports form the parameters for the compilation of the Collingwood Honour Roll which although labelled as being for local men who died certainly includes men who returned from the war, two women (with “nurse” after their names), and people who seemed to be included because they had friends, relations or some sort of connection with Collingwood. These conflicting parameters certainly form a background to the difficulties we have experienced in identifying the names mentioned in the Collingwood Honour Roll.
Eventually, once the RSS Hall was built, the City of Collingwood Honour Roll commemorating people with local connections who died (or did not) in World War I was painted on the south wall of its entry hall. The Honour Roll of the RSS Hall is thus an integral part of the structure of the hall, but for years has not been accessible. In 2017, a conservation assessment of the Honour Roll was undertaken for Council by the University of Melbourne Potter Museum and, as a result of this, cleaning was undertaken and the current covering was commissioned and installed. Proper conservation work on it awaits the restoration of the building and an ability for it to be displayed in an appropriate environment. The families of the 500 men and women represented on this roll will welcome the ability to see the roll again as currently their only access to it is via photographs online in the collection of the Collingwood Historical Society.
The City of Collingwood World War I Honour Roll is a unique and iconic memorial to the people of Collingwood who served their country in the First World War as well as their friends, relations, churches, workplaces and organizations who submitted their names to Council for inclusion on this Roll. This Roll should be accessible to the community so that the contribution of these people can continue to be honoured.
School Honour Rolls
Bolton G
Apart from the Collingwood wide databases and the Collingwood Honour Roll, other organizations in Collingwood have large Honour Rolls that are being researched, compared with other databases and honour rolls and providing individuals to be added to our Bios database. Gold Street SS in Clifton Hall has 345 names on their roll including George Bolton (pictured). If you wish to see the Honour Roll and people listed on it, you can check out our photos on Flickr here: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmtmz3Eu. Cambridge Street SS also has a large honour roll with 268 individuals included, and photos of their Honour Roll can be seen here: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmym4SLc. We are still researching memorials and honour rolls for other schools.
Church Honour Rolls
St Andrews Architect Drawing
In the early days of the war, there were reports of two Honour Rolls in Collingwood Wesleyan churches. However, despite searching the Honour Roll graveyard of the Uniting Church archives, we have not been able to identify them. Honour Rolls are also documented as having been installed at the Catholic churches of St Joseph’s in Collingwood and St John’s in Clifton Hill, but these have also not been able to be discovered.
The two church Honour Rolls that we do have records from are from the former St Andrew’s Church of England in Clifton Hill (see photo) and the Clifton Hill Presbyterian Church in North Fitzroy. In both cases, these relatively small rolls have been researched. Most people have been identified and are in the process of having their Bios written and added to the Bios database.
Workplace Honour Rolls
Tapner & Robertson
For the City of Collingwood, we have only identified two workplace memorials, despite the number of factories in Collingwood. The two workplace Honour Rolls are from the Denton Hat Mills and the Collingwood Town Hall. You can read more here about the Denton Hat Mills, a site recognized on the Victorian Heritage Register. An analysis of the Denton Hat Mills Honour Roll data was done for the Collingwood History Walk in 2016, and is currently being updated as we have identified a few mysteries. You can see the Honour Roll here. The Collingwood Town Hall Honour Roll was also looked at during our Collingwood Town Hall tours, and just recently the last remaining people have been identified. You can see the Honour Roll here. Lieutenant Benjamin Tapner, the son of a Collingwood Councillor, is commemorated on this honour roll.
Other Memorials
Spensley St State School Memorial
In addition to the honour rolls referred to above, other local memorials have been identified. Unlike the schools previously mentioned, Spensley Street SS chose to honour its former scholars who served in the Great War by a monument in the grounds. You can see the dedication in the photo attached here, look at the monument if you are passing down Spensley Street, or check out some photos of it here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/collingwoodhs/albums/72157705199863305/
The original St Philip’s Church of England, formerly in Hoddle Street Abbotsford, once had hanging a large Union Jack inscribed and “honouring the Boys of the church who fell in Battle”. This was donated by Councillor Arthur Collins, J.P., whose son Arthur William Collins died in France in 1916.
Do you remember the World War I Field gun which used to be in the Darling Gardens until a few years ago? Have you been wondering what became of it? It has now been restored and installed at the Barkly Gardens war memorial site in Richmond and was ‘unveiled’ at the Remembrance Day ceremony on 11 November 2019. Whether you think it should have stayed in Clifton Hill, been melted down for scrap metal, or installed in Richmond, you will probably find the background story of interest. Read the background story in this PDF file entitled World War 1 Field Gun and look at some photos here.
Earl of Carnarvon Lodge Honour Board
And finally, thanks to an attendee at our 2016 November History Walk we discovered that the local Earl of Carnarvon Lodge had created an honour board for their members who fought in the Great War. A photo of it showing the names of the Lodge’s fourteen members illustrates this page.
There may well be other local memorials or honour boards that were created in honour of the Collingwood people who served in the Great War. Please let us know if you are aware of any by filling in the form on the Contact Us page.
Collingwood VC winners
Maurice Buckley
We are proud that Collingwood had three men who were awarded the Victoria Cross in the course of World War I. Their names were Maurice Buckley, William Dartnell, and William Ruthven and they are honoured by plaques in the pavement outside Collingwood and Fitzroy Town Halls.
Buckley, though from Hawthorn, went to school at St Joseph’s Technical School in Abbotsford and was also associated with John Wren in relation to his participation in the St Patrick’s Day Procession in 1920. Buckley died in 1920 after his return to Melbourne, a broken man. Dartnell spent his early years in Collingwood where his father ran a confectionery shop on the corner of Langridge and Little Oxford Streets. He moved to Fitzroy as a child and later lived in North Fitzroy. He did not survive his act of bravery in 1915 in Kenya, when attacked by a German patrol. Ruthven, on the other hand, was born and bred in Collingwood. He went to school in Collingwood, married at St Philip’s and survived his feat of bravery to return to Collingwood to work as a carrier and live in Clifton Hill, with a stint as a soldier settler. And of course he barracked for Collingwood Football Club. He was a Collingwood Mayor and Councillor for several terms before he moved to Preston and was elected as MLA. He had a railway station and a street named after him and died in 1970.
These three men with their different experiences provide three typical examples of the war experiences of Collingwood men: the one who died and did not return, the one who returned discharged as medically unfit with shell-shock and never found his path again before dying a couple of years later; and the one who came back and flourished in Collingwood and later in broader fields, though he too experienced difficult times as a soldier settler, as did many of those who tried to make something of it.
After the War
For those who died at war such as William Dartnell VC, that was usually the end of the story, for the others, survivors from the battlefields, some of them became ill and died from the “Spanish” flu in the latter stages and the aftermath of the war. And it was, of course, the returning troops who brought the influenza epidemic to Australia, to Melbourne and to Collingwood. During the COVID pandemic, the 1918-1919 influenza epidemic was much discussed and compared, and we assembled a selection of newspaper articles, garnered from Trove, which refer to flu cases in Collingwood. Click here to read them.
We were fortunate that, in the early days of our research, World War One: a history in 100 stories (Viking, 2015) was published by Monash University. For these stories tell the whole story, not only for those who died at war and were honoured for it, but also for those who returned from war shattered physically and mentally and not able to cope with life, as well as those who returned to a successful life but sometimes not until after their failure coping with attempting to make something of a soldier settlement plot.
In parallel to the launch of the book, Monash offered a free online course on the MOOC platform FutureLearn and developed with Melbourne Museum an excellent but disturbing exhibition. In none of these platforms did they resile from telling the full story of the 100 people, in most cases drawing on the valuable, but nearly lost, Repatriation Department records of those who returned.
In Collingwood, we do not have 100 but potentially at least 3,000 stories to tell. We have made a start with our VC men, and are now also working on the four nurses who returned and who feature on our Collingwood Women page.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/collingwoodhs/54383389868/in/datetaken/
Resources for your own research
AUSTRALIA
Australian War Memorial
https://www.awm.gov.au/
– Search for a Person
https://www.awm.gov.au/advanced-search/people?facet_related_conflict_sort=8%3AFirst%20World%20War%2C%201914-1918
National Archives of Australia
– Anzacs in the archives
https://www.naa.gov.au/students-and-teachers/classroom-resources/history/anzacs-archives
– RecordSearch Database https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/SearchScreens/BasicSearch.aspx
– Service Records
https://www.naa.gov.au/explore-collection/defence-and-war-service-records/researching-war-service
– Repatriation Records
https://www.naa.gov.au/about-us/media-and-publications/media-releases/national-archives-world-war-i-repatriation-records-reveal-legacy-war
AIF Project
https://aif.adfa.edu.au/aif/
Trove [National Library of Australia]
https://trove.nla.gov.au/
Includes digitised full text Australian newspapers
Australian Dictionary of Biography
http://adb.anu.edu.au/
Australian Victoria Cross Recipients
https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/biographies/vc-recipients
List of Australian Victoria Cross Recipients
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_Victoria_Cross_recipients
Anzac Portal
https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au
Public Record Office Victoria [PROV]
https://prov.vic.gov.au/
– World War I in the archives
https://prov.vic.gov.au/about-us/our-blog/wwi-archives
– Battle to Farm: WWI
https://prov.vic.gov.au/explore-collection/explore-topic/researching-land-and-property/soldier-settlement-scheme
State Library of Victoria – Research Guide to WWI
https://guides.slv.vic.gov.au/wwone_soldiers
Fitzroy History Society
Fitzroy WWI Soldiers Database
https://fitzroyhistorysociety.org.au/resources/
Darebin in World War One
https://libraries.darebin.vic.gov.au/Darebinheritage/darebin-at-war/world-war-one
Richmond & Burnley Historical Society
Some information in posts about World War 1 in the Facebook page of the Richmond and Burnley Historical Society.
https://www.facebook.com/page/599118490145829/search/?q=World%20War%20I
Local History Societies in the City of Yarra [Yarra Libraries]
https://library.yarracity.vic.gov.au/research/local-history/local-history-societies
OVERSEAS
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
https://www.cwgc.org
Imperial War Museum, UK
https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections
Lives of the First World War, UK
https://livesofthefirstworldwar.iwm.org.uk/
Firstworldwar.com – a multimedia history of World War One
https://www.firstworldwar.com/about.htm
Great War Forum
https://www.greatwarforum.org/
Ancestry.com Database
https://www.ancestry.com.au/
is available by subscription, or it can be searched in most Victorian Public Libraries, or the State Library of Victoria. The “Military” category has the following sub-categories:
- Draft, Enlistment and Service
- Casualties
- Soldier, Veteran & Prisoner Roll & Lists
- Pension Records
- Histories
- Awards & Decorations of Honour
- News
- Disciplinary Actions
- Photos
(all links checked and updated where appropriate on 4 Mar 2025 AH)
World War I in Collingwood
Lettitia Moreton
This World War I page of the Collingwood Historical Society focuses on research we commenced in 2014 at the time of the centenary of the start of World War I. Through our two databases of Collingwood people who enlisted in World War I, we are attempting to make it easier for you to find information about Collingwood-specific people. If you can’t find the person you are searching for, then you can move down to the end of the page and continue your research using other resources. Information about specific local people can also be found in other sections such as VC winners and where we have done or are doing analyses of the people on the Honour Boards (a work in progress).
The other information provided concerns memorials and honour rolls, large and small, that we are researching in the former City of Collingwood. Some of these remain elusive mentions in newspaper reports, while others are large and readily visible or in the case of the City of Collingwood honour roll covered and inaccessible, but at least due to our many requests to Yarra Council cleaned and with a conservation study completed. Yet others exist only in transcripts.
We have also researched local nurses who served in World War I, such as Lettitia Moreton (pictured) who appears on our City of Collingwood World War I Honour Board. You will find information on our Collingwood Women page if you want to read about them.
Finally, there are many different endings to the individual stories of Collingwood men and women who served in World War I. Some died. Some survived the battlefield only to die abroad or at home from the “Spanish” flu. Some returned hugely changed to lives they could not settle in, while others flourished and lived long and successful lives. There is much further research to be done on the lives of Collingwood people who went off to war in 1914-1918, but particularly for those who returned.
Collingwood AIF project
A great and useful project undertaken to commemorate the centenary of World War I was the AIF Project conducted by the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA). The project is an online database of the military records of men and women who served Australia during the Great War. This provides a wealth of information for starting research into anyone who enlisted and may be supplemented by resources listed in the last section of this page such as the Australian War Memorial and the Australian Archives and Ancestry. You can search the full ADFA database here: https://aif.adfa.edu.au/aif/
To facilitate searching specifically for Collingwood people, we have extracted a database of about 2,400 people who have links to the former City of Collingwood, that is to say, the suburbs of Abbotsford, Clifton Hill and Collingwood. But please be aware of the limitations of this database as the linking of people to places in this database essentially relates to place of birth and where the next of kin was living. We know, however, that many more people such as those who lived, went to school or worked there for example, were associated with Collingwood. So if you do not find your person here, you will need to expand your search.
You can search people who specifically relate to Collingwood in the following smaller database that provides links to the main ADFA database:
Collingwood Bios
Our Collingwood Bios database is a collection of one page PDF Bios of people related to Collingwood who served in World War I. We commenced the database when we started researching the Collingwood WWI Honour Roll (see below) and to date the bulk of the entries relate to people on that Honour Roll. The main focus to date has been to create bios for those who died as that was the main focus of that honour roll. However, as we identify other sources, we are adding to the database with people from those honour rolls and sources such as the Collingwood AIF Project and this will include people who returned from the war. If you have someone you have been researching who relates to Collingwood and is not included, please let us know through the Contact Us page. Our database is still under development and we are continuing to add bios.
INSERT WWI BIO Database
Collingwood WWI Honour Roll and Returned Soldiers and Sailors Hall
One in six Collingwood enlisted are said to have died in the Great War. After the end of the war, community support arose for a facility which would both honour the fallen and serve as a meeting place for survivors. Eventually, in June 1920, the City of Collingwood purchased land in Hoddle Street Abbotsford near the corner of Vere St for the Returned Soldiers & Sailors (RSS) Hall and fundraising started in earnest. On 1 December 1920, two foundation stones were laid by General R Smith and Lieutenant W Ruthven, VC, who was a local man and was to become a Collingwood Mayor and Councillor. The architect was BW Tapner, a Collingwood Mayor and Councillor whose son had died in the war. The Hall was opened by Captain Jacka VC in June 1924. In 1954, a new two-storey rear addition was added. We are not sure exactly when it stopped being used, but possibly in the 1990s.
Darragh Joseph William
However, well before the war ended and in fact soon after information about the Gallipoli casualties started to filter through, there was discussion at Collingwood Council about how the local men could be commemorated. Judging by reports in the press, from the start there was confusion about who would be commemorated on the City of Collingwood Honour Roll. A request in the Argus on 28 May 1915 in relation to “the names of all soldiers now at the war who belong to or are connected with Collingwood… desired that relatives, friends, lodges, clubs or associations will forward names and particulars”. While on 24 June The Tribune reported that Father Malone read out at Mass at St John’s, Clifton Hill, a letter from Collingwood City Council requesting information about residents who had been killed in the war. These two reports form the parameters for the compilation of the Collingwood Honour Roll which although labelled as being for local men who died certainly includes men who returned from the war, two women (with “nurse” after their names), and people who seemed to be included because they had friends, relations or some sort of connection with Collingwood. These conflicting parameters certainly form a background to the difficulties we have experienced in identifying the names mentioned in the Collingwood Honour Roll.
Eventually, once the RSS Hall was built, the City of Collingwood Honour Roll commemorating people with local connections who died (or did not) in World War I was painted on the south wall of its entry hall. The Honour Roll of the RSS Hall is thus an integral part of the structure of the hall, but for years has not been accessible. In 2017, a conservation assessment of the Honour Roll was undertaken for Council by the University of Melbourne Potter Museum and, as a result of this, cleaning was undertaken and the current covering was commissioned and installed. Proper conservation work on it awaits the restoration of the building and an ability for it to be displayed in an appropriate environment. The families of the 500 men and women represented on this roll will welcome the ability to see the roll again as currently their only access to it is via photographs online in the collection of the Collingwood Historical Society.
The City of Collingwood World War I Honour Roll is a unique and iconic memorial to the people of Collingwood who served their country in the First World War as well as their friends, relations, churches, workplaces and organizations who submitted their names to Council for inclusion on this Roll. This Roll should be accessible to the community so that the contribution of these people can continue to be honoured.
School Honour Rolls
Bolton G
Apart from the Collingwood wide databases and the Collingwood Honour Roll, other organizations in Collingwood have large Honour Rolls that are being researched, compared with other databases and honour rolls and providing individuals to be added to our Bios database. Gold Street SS in Clifton Hall has 345 names on their roll including George Bolton (pictured). If you wish to see the Honour Roll and people listed on it, you can check out our photos on Flickr here: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmtmz3Eu. Cambridge Street SS also has a large honour roll with 268 individuals included, and photos of their Honour Roll can be seen here: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmym4SLc. We are still researching memorials and honour rolls for other schools.
Church Honour Rolls
St Andrews Architect Drawing
In the early days of the war, there were reports of two Honour Rolls in Collingwood Wesleyan churches. However, despite searching the Honour Roll graveyard of the Uniting Church archives, we have not been able to identify them. Honour Rolls are also documented as having been installed at the Catholic churches of St Joseph’s in Collingwood and St John’s in Clifton Hill, but these have also not been able to be discovered.
The two church Honour Rolls that we do have records from are from the former St Andrew’s Church of England in Clifton Hill (see photo) and the Clifton Hill Presbyterian Church in North Fitzroy. In both cases, these relatively small rolls have been researched. Most people have been identified and are in the process of having their Bios written and added to the Bios database.
Workplace Honour Rolls
Tapner & Robertson
For the City of Collingwood, we have only identified two workplace memorials, despite the number of factories in Collingwood. The two workplace Honour Rolls are from the Denton Hat Mills and the Collingwood Town Hall. You can read more here about the Denton Hat Mills, a site recognized on the Victorian Heritage Register. An analysis of the Denton Hat Mills Honour Roll data was done for the Collingwood History Walk in 2016, and is currently being updated as we have identified a few mysteries. You can see the Honour Roll here. The Collingwood Town Hall Honour Roll was also looked at during our Collingwood Town Hall tours, and just recently the last remaining people have been identified. You can see the Honour Roll here. Lieutenant Benjamin Tapner, the son of a Collingwood Councillor, is commemorated on this honour roll.
Other Memorials
Spensley St State School Memorial
In addition to the honour rolls referred to above, other local memorials have been identified. Unlike the schools previously mentioned, Spensley Street SS chose to honour its former scholars who served in the Great War by a monument in the grounds. You can see the dedication in the photo attached here, look at the monument if you are passing down Spensley Street, or check out some photos of it here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/collingwoodhs/albums/72157705199863305/
The original St Philip’s Church of England, formerly in Hoddle Street Abbotsford, once had hanging a large Union Jack inscribed and “honouring the Boys of the church who fell in Battle”. This was donated by Councillor Arthur Collins, J.P., whose son Arthur William Collins died in France in 1916.
Do you remember the World War I Field gun which used to be in the Darling Gardens until a few years ago? Have you been wondering what became of it? It has now been restored and installed at the Barkly Gardens war memorial site in Richmond and was ‘unveiled’ at the Remembrance Day ceremony on 11 November 2019. Whether you think it should have stayed in Clifton Hill, been melted down for scrap metal, or installed in Richmond, you will probably find the background story of interest. Read the background story in this PDF file entitled World War 1 Field Gun and look at some photos here.
Earl of Carnarvon Lodge Honour Board
And finally, thanks to an attendee at our 2016 November History Walk we discovered that the local Earl of Carnarvon Lodge had created an honour board for their members who fought in the Great War. A photo of it showing the names of the Lodge’s fourteen members illustrates this page.
There may well be other local memorials or honour boards that were created in honour of the Collingwood people who served in the Great War. Please let us know if you are aware of any by filling in the form on the Contact Us page.
Collingwood VC winners
Maurice Buckley
We are proud that Collingwood had three men who were awarded the Victoria Cross in the course of World War I. Their names were Maurice Buckley, William Dartnell, and William Ruthven and they are honoured by plaques in the pavement outside Collingwood and Fitzroy Town Halls.
Buckley, though from Hawthorn, went to school at St Joseph’s Technical School in Abbotsford and was also associated with John Wren in relation to his participation in the St Patrick’s Day Procession in 1920. Buckley died in 1920 after his return to Melbourne, a broken man. Dartnell spent his early years in Collingwood where his father ran a confectionery shop on the corner of Langridge and Little Oxford Streets. He moved to Fitzroy as a child and later lived in North Fitzroy. He did not survive his act of bravery in 1915 in Kenya, when attacked by a German patrol. Ruthven, on the other hand, was born and bred in Collingwood. He went to school in Collingwood, married at St Philip’s and survived his feat of bravery to return to Collingwood to work as a carrier and live in Clifton Hill, with a stint as a soldier settler. And of course he barracked for Collingwood Football Club. He was a Collingwood Mayor and Councillor for several terms before he moved to Preston and was elected as MLA. He had a railway station and a street named after him and died in 1970.
These three men with their different experiences provide three typical examples of the war experiences of Collingwood men: the one who died and did not return, the one who returned discharged as medically unfit with shell-shock and never found his path again before dying a couple of years later; and the one who came back and flourished in Collingwood and later in broader fields, though he too experienced difficult times as a soldier settler, as did many of those who tried to make something of it.
After the War
For those who died at war such as William Dartnell VC, that was usually the end of the story, for the others, survivors from the battlefields, some of them became ill and died from the “Spanish” flu in the latter stages and the aftermath of the war. And it was, of course, the returning troops who brought the influenza epidemic to Australia, to Melbourne and to Collingwood. During the COVID pandemic, the 1918-1919 influenza epidemic was much discussed and compared, and we assembled a selection of newspaper articles, garnered from Trove, which refer to flu cases in Collingwood. Click here to read them.
We were fortunate that, in the early days of our research, World War One: a history in 100 stories (Viking, 2015) was published by Monash University. For these stories tell the whole story, not only for those who died at war and were honoured for it, but also for those who returned from war shattered physically and mentally and not able to cope with life, as well as those who returned to a successful life but sometimes not until after their failure coping with attempting to make something of a soldier settlement plot.
In parallel to the launch of the book, Monash offered a free online course on the MOOC platform FutureLearn and developed with Melbourne Museum an excellent but disturbing exhibition. In none of these platforms did they resile from telling the full story of the 100 people, in most cases drawing on the valuable, but nearly lost, Repatriation Department records of those who returned.
In Collingwood, we do not have 100 but potentially at least 3,000 stories to tell. We have made a start with our VC men, and are now also working on the four nurses who returned and who feature on our Collingwood Women page.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/collingwoodhs/54383389868/in/datetaken/
Resources for your own research
AUSTRALIA
Australian War Memorial
https://www.awm.gov.au/
– Search for a Person
https://www.awm.gov.au/advanced-search/people?facet_related_conflict_sort=8%3AFirst%20World%20War%2C%201914-1918
National Archives of Australia
– Anzacs in the archives
https://www.naa.gov.au/students-and-teachers/classroom-resources/history/anzacs-archives
– RecordSearch Database https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/SearchNRetrieve/Interface/SearchScreens/BasicSearch.aspx
– Service Records
https://www.naa.gov.au/explore-collection/defence-and-war-service-records/researching-war-service
– Repatriation Records
https://www.naa.gov.au/about-us/media-and-publications/media-releases/national-archives-world-war-i-repatriation-records-reveal-legacy-war
AIF Project
https://aif.adfa.edu.au/aif/
Trove [National Library of Australia]
https://trove.nla.gov.au/
Includes digitised full text Australian newspapers
Australian Dictionary of Biography
http://adb.anu.edu.au/
Australian Victoria Cross Recipients
https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au/biographies/vc-recipients
List of Australian Victoria Cross Recipients
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Australian_Victoria_Cross_recipients
Anzac Portal
https://anzacportal.dva.gov.au
Public Record Office Victoria [PROV]
https://prov.vic.gov.au/
– World War I in the archives
https://prov.vic.gov.au/about-us/our-blog/wwi-archives
– Battle to Farm: WWI
https://prov.vic.gov.au/explore-collection/explore-topic/researching-land-and-property/soldier-settlement-scheme
State Library of Victoria – Research Guide to WWI
https://guides.slv.vic.gov.au/wwone_soldiers
Fitzroy History Society
Fitzroy WWI Soldiers Database
https://fitzroyhistorysociety.org.au/resources/
Darebin in World War One
https://libraries.darebin.vic.gov.au/Darebinheritage/darebin-at-war/world-war-one
Richmond & Burnley Historical Society
Some information in posts about World War 1 in the Facebook page of the Richmond and Burnley Historical Society.
https://www.facebook.com/page/599118490145829/search/?q=World%20War%20I
Local History Societies in the City of Yarra [Yarra Libraries]
https://library.yarracity.vic.gov.au/research/local-history/local-history-societies
OVERSEAS
Commonwealth War Graves Commission
https://www.cwgc.org
Imperial War Museum, UK
https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections
Lives of the First World War, UK
https://livesofthefirstworldwar.iwm.org.uk/
Firstworldwar.com – a multimedia history of World War One
https://www.firstworldwar.com/about.htm
Great War Forum
https://www.greatwarforum.org/
Ancestry.com Database
https://www.ancestry.com.au/
is available by subscription, or it can be searched in most Victorian Public Libraries, or the State Library of Victoria. The “Military” category has the following sub-categories:
- Draft, Enlistment and Service
- Casualties
- Soldier, Veteran & Prisoner Roll & Lists
- Pension Records
- Histories
- Awards & Decorations of Honour
- News
- Disciplinary Actions
- Photos
(all links checked and updated where appropriate on 4 Mar 2025 AH)