A Millers Point Man All His Life

Harry John Lapham, 1915-2007
 #savemillerspoint

HARRY JOHN LAPHAM was born in Millers Point when The Rocks was almost a self-contained village, with everything but a post office to its name.


Steady … Lapham thought people had changed, not The Rocks.

It was a quiet time, when the pubs closed at 6pm and electricity was yet to be connected; when the roads were mud and there were extra horses kept to haul wagons with big loads up from the ships.

Lapham lived in the area for most of his life, seeing the houses come down for the Harbour Bridge; watching the bridge go up; witnessing the neighbourhood change as people moved out and houses were divided into flats; seeing backyard coppers give way to washing machines and bathrooms built inside houses where once the dunny had been out the back, and looking on as horses gave way to cars and trucks.#savemillerspoint

His parents, Edward and Elizabeth, were born in the area, descendants of mid-19th century migrants. Their eldest son, Harry, was born in Gloucester Street (later torn down to make way for the Cahill Expressway). Edward's family had moved to Gloucester Street from Cumberland Street during the bubonic plague in the early 1900s.

The family then moved around in the neighbourhood and ended up in Dalgety Terrace, where Harry lived for most of the rest of his life. The original house had a front room, two bedrooms, a bathroom, a laundry, a toilet and a yard. The bathroom was outside but it did have a roof over it, Lapham recalled.

There the Laphams raised their children, Harry, George, Esmeralda and Betty.

Lapham's father was a coal lumper, then a drayman delivering goods to local businesses. His mother was a housewife and later, after the marriage broke down, a cleaner for city companies.

Dalgety Terrace had the Mortcliffe Eye Hospital (later the Sydney Eye Hospital) on the corner, and a mixture of people in the houses and flats. #savemillerspoint

The men were waterside workers, coal lumpers and storemen and packers.

The local children played in the streets, because the backyards were full of toilets and laundries; they were once caught playing cricket on a Sunday and taken to the Children's Court. Those over 18 were fined £2 and the younger ones were given a lecture.

The houses were all owned by the Sydney Harbour Trust. There were no leases in those days, but so long as you paid your rent, you and your house were looked after. If you wanted a repair done that you couldn't do yourself, you just popped down to the depot at the wharves and someone would come and fix it.

On weekends the Laphams and their neighbours would take a ferry to Mosman to visit the newly opened zoo and have a picnic at Clifton Gardens.

All the Lapham children went to Fort Street Public School. Harry left school when he was 14. His mother had heard of a messenger boy position at Sydney City Council and as the Depression was starting to bite, she thought he should settle into a paying job. He got£2/0/6 a week, less the sixpence, which was taken out for the hospital fund.

All the Lapham children were lucky enough to get jobs when they left school, and were never out of work.

When Lapham was 19 he was got a job with council as a street sweeper, then as a driver and a rent collector. He was emptying parking meters 47 years later when he retired.

He loved sailing and football. In fact he missed the opening of the Harbour Bridge because he was trying out for the Balmain rugby league teams (he was taken into the reserves) but he made up for it by walking across the bridge and back that evening.

With the outbreak of World War II, Lapham enlisted and stayed in the army for more than five years but he worked in the stores and didn't leave Australia. He stayed at Dalgety Terrace as his brother and sisters married and moved away.

He never married and lived with his mother until she died. After that he stayed in the house, refusing to have it renovated because he said it was the way he liked it.

When the shop and houses at Susannah Place were turned into a museum in 1993, Lapham gave the Historic Houses Trust much of his "stuff" for display. He remembered the corner store as Mr Youngein's. (Lapham thought he was German, although it turned out he was Swedish. Still, his son Jimmy changed the family name to Young during the war, just in case.)

In an interview in 2005, Lapham said The Rocks hadn't changed much; most changes had been in the people. He approved of moving the container ships to Botany and getting rid of the finger wharves, and he loved the tourist ships that brought people in for some shopping. He also loved most forms of progress and anything that made life easier for people.

In 2004 he happily moved to aged-care accommodation. He is survived by a large family of nieces and nephews.

#savemillerspoint
Harriet Veitch

Reference Source: http://www.smh.com.au/news/obituaries/a-millers-point-man-all-his-life/2007/04/27/1177459974993.html?page=2 

#savemillerspoint