City of Darebin Heritage Study Volume 1 Draft Thematic

VOLUME 2: THEMATIC ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORYindustry, and the boys’ families benefited from their few shillings a week. Later Howe’s took onboys at the age of fourteen, and many of them spent their whole working lives progressingthrough the firm.The tanning industry pervaded everyday life in Preston. According to Pamela Murphy:The tannery whistles used to go all the time. You didn’t need a clock in Preston, didn’t need aclock at all. The whistles would start about 7.25 in the morning, then there would be anotherone at 7.30 and this was to start the workers for the day. Then there would be more through theday. For lunch time, and the end of lunch time, and then knock off time. You’d be walkingdown the street, you’d hear the whistles and you’d know what time it was. But the odour of thetanneries was the thing Preston was known for. It was a definite odour, leather odour, you couldsmell it anywhere. It was quite a harsh sort of smell (Jones, 1995:15).In the mid twentieth century most of Preston’s tanneries had either changed hands or closeddown completely, and by the end of the century, only Howe’s was still in operation, althoughit has since closed. Howe’s 1920s building in High Street is one of the few remaining sites ofPreston’s most important industry. Preston Market covers much of the other parts of‘Tantown’.4.3 Other manufacturing industriesIn addition to its three main industries of brick-making and potteries, bacon curing andtanning outlined above, Darebin has seen a variety of industries develop within its borders.One of Northcote’s earliest and most enduring factories was William Lawrence’s dye worksestablished in Cunningham Street Westgarth in 1874. Although the oil cloth section of thefirm was discontinued following complaints regarding its noxious nature, a new dye works wasbuilt in Westgarth Street in 1902. Lawrence’s expanded to become one of Melbourne’s largestdyeing and dry-cleaning businesses (Lemon, 1983:71, 140).In 1814 Angus and Co. moved their glue factory from North Fitzroy to Arthurton RoadNorthcote. The company manufactured inks and various glues for the office, including thewell-known Clag, used by every school child. The firm expanded into New South Wales in the1930s, and became Australia’s largest manufacturer of its kind (‘Jubilee Celebrations’,1933:12).With the proximity of the leather industry, the manufacture of leather goods was an importantindustry for Darebin. Northcote had at least two footwear manufacturers. The Exhibition BootCompany commenced in 1902. The Northcote Shoe Company commenced in EastmentStreet and transferred to a large building in Arthurton Road in the 1930s (Lemon, 1983:140;‘Jubilee Celebrations’, 1933:30) By the 1930s, there were four footwear factories in Preston,however Darebin’s footwear industry was small compared to that of Collingwood (Vines &Churchward, 1995:58, 99). Darebin also had a few textile clothing and hat manufacturers, butnot on the scale of Brunswick and Coburg.Other industries that proliferated in twentieth century Northcote were furnituremanufacturing and engineering. Sutton Tool and Gauge Manufacturing commenced inNorthcote in 1917, and its founder William Sutton played a leading role in developingprecision toolmaking in Australia. His first factory was a converted stable, and the large HighStreet factory was built in 1933. By 1970, Suttons had outgrown the Northcote premises, andmoved to Thomastown (Vines & Churchward, 1995:85).A number of small engineering and metal work factories also developed in Preston, some ofthem supporting the larger local industries. Matthew Drolz had a workshop on the corner ofBell and Mary Streets, where he made machinery for tanneries and bacon factories. By far thelargest Preston factory in the early to mid twentieth century was the MMTB workshop,mentioned in Chapter 3, which made the W Class trams and employed 500 workers in the1920s.51