Liberating lives: Invisible Australians and biographical networks

Liberating lives
Invisible Australians and
biographical networks

Tim Sherratt
@wragge

www.invisibleaustralians.org

Charlie Allen was born in Sydney in 1896.


His mother was Frances Allen (sometime
sweet shop owner and brothel keeper), his
father Charlie Gum (a buyer for Wing On
company).


Charlie was raised by his mother, but in
1909, at the age of 13, he was taken to
China by his father.


His father returned to Sydney, leaving
Charlie in China. He lived with relatives
in the town of Shekki (inland from Hong
Kong) for 6 years.


Charlie was homesick, but had no means
of getting back to Australia. His mother
attempted to enlist government help but
to no avail. Charlie finally returned in
1915.


The following year Charlie enlisted in
First AIF (well actually he enlisted three
times, and was discharged as medically
unfit each time).


Charlie married in Sydney in 1917 and had
two daughters soon after. He returned to
China in 1922 for 7 months.


Charlie Allen died in 1938 as the result of
an industrial accident. He was 41.


How do we know about Charlie Allen?


NAA: ST84/1, 1909/22/41-50


NAA: A1, 1911/13854


NAA: B2455, ALLEN C A


NAA: SP42/1, C1922/4449


Between 1901 and 1911, 400 circulars were
issued to port officers about immigration
restriction.


The confidential manual on immigration
restriction grew from one page in 1902 to
more than 200 in 1912.


For the years between 1902 and 1948 there
remain:

●
More than 50,000 CEDTs
●
90 shelf metres of records
●
15,000 case files


What changes when we examine the world
through the collected fragments of knowledge
that we can recover about a single person,
reorganised as a biographical narrative, rather
than as part of an archival system?

– Tim Hitchcock


http://www.invisibleaustralians.org


●
Crowdsourced data extraction
●
50,000+ CEDTs
●
Other files
●
Match identities
●
Eeek!



Pauline Ah Hee, 1906.
NAA: ST84/1, 1906/111-120

Pauline Ah Hee, 1906. NAA: ST84/1, 1906/111-120


Choy Hing family including their adopted daughter, Pauline Ah Hee, 1906. NAA: SP244/2, N1950/2/4918


Pauline Ah Hee, 1906. NAA: SP244/2, N1950/2/4918


Pauline Ah Hee, c. 1950. NAA: A659, 1950/1/1954


Pauline Ah Hee


Shadee Khan, 1916. NAA: E752, 1916/8


Shadee Khan, 1921. NAA: E752, 1921/21


Shadee Khan, 1925. NAA: E752, 1925/7


Shadee Khan


Pauline Ah Hee

Shadee Khan


History wall
defining.net.au/wall


Use URLs to identify things in the real world


This is me:
http://nla.gov.au/nla.party-479364#foaf:Person


Wragge’s identity browser
wraggelabs.com/identities


The Flickr Machine Tag Challenge
wraggelabs.com/fmtc/


●
Make links
●
Give advice
●
Create tools & examples
●
Help!



Liberating lives: Invisible Australians and biographical networks

Empfohlen

Empfohlen

Weitere ähnliche Inhalte

Mehr von Tim Sherratt

Mehr von Tim Sherratt (20)

Liberating lives: Invisible Australians and biographical networks