[JUDAICA] Manuscript diary of Mondle Emanuel Phillips, law clerk. Sandhurst (Bendigo), Victoria, July 1857 to May 1858.

Small quarto (205 x 170 mm), half calf over marbled boards (rubbed, leather backstrip lifting and with loss); marbled endpapers; manuscript in ink, [55] + [40] pp., the front of the diary with a title-page worded: ‘Diary of a Law Clerk. Sandhurst, July 1st 1857. Mondle E. Phillips’, followed by entries written in a neat, clerical hand from July 1857 up to May 1858, with one later entry from June 1861 (55 pages), and the rear of the diary containing Phillips’ notes relating to legal studies (40 pages), with a number of blank leaves at centre; the diary’s contents are complete and very clean throughout, with no stains or foxing.

The unpublished diary of a year in the brief life of Mondle Phillips, scion of one of Sydney’s (and later Melbourne’s) most prominent early Jewish families.

Mondle Emanuel Phillips was born on 6 October, 1841 in Parramatta, New South Wales and died of lung disease on 28 October, 1865 in Melbourne, aged just 24. He was the son of Solomon Phillips (1810-1877) and his wife Caroline (Solomon) Phillips, both of whose families were part of London’s Jewry. Mondle’s parents arrived in Sydney in 1833, where his father initially took up a position as Assistant Minister at the newly formed Bridge Street Synagogue. The couple soon afterwards moved to Parramatta where Solomon went into business as an auctioneer. He became active in the political and literary affairs of Parramatta and was secretary and treasurer of the Road Trust and Town Council. Back in Sydney, Solomon Phillips assisted in the consecration ceremonies and afterwards performed the duties of reader at the opening of the York Street Synagogue in April, 1844.

Mondle’s numerous siblings included Rosetta (1834-1916), who would become mother to the artist Emanuel Phillips Fox; Philip David (1836-1909); twins Ephraim and Daniel (1838, both died in infancy); Lydia Constance (1839-1913); Joseph (1840-1901); Edward Elias (1843-1925); Lewis Samuel (1845); Hannah (1846-1920); Simeon (1847-1925); Abraham (1849-1910); David Solomon (1850); and Samuel Asher (1852-1913).

In 1852, at the height of the Victorian gold rush, Solomon Phillips took his young family to Melbourne where he set himself up as an importer of furniture, pianos and ironmongery in partnership with a Mr. Bowling. However, after the death of Bowling the business folded. Solomon returned to Sydney in 1859 to take up the position of Minister at the new secessionist Macquarie Street Synagogue. (Also on the synagogue committee was his brother-on-law Abraham Joseph Levy, who had married Solomon’s sister, Catherine, in Sydney in 1833). In 1874, Solomon and Caroline would return to Melbourne, where Solomon died in 1874 and Caroline in 1904.

In 1856, at the age of 15, young Mondle Phillips was already employed as a law clerk in Melbourne. Early in 1857 he moved to Sandhurst (Bendigo), where his sister Rosetta was living with her husband, Alexander Fox, to take up a new position as solicitor’s clerk with the firm Ward and Dunbar. In Sandhurst, Mondle lodged with his sister and brother-in-law. His diary contains, as would be expected, many fascinating insights into his professional career in Sandhurst; but it also provides a multitude of charming glimpses – refreshingly naive, as they are seen through the eyes of a young adult – into his social life and circle in the booming goldfields centre. Probably the most significant content of all, however, is that relating to the Jewish community on the goldfields: Mondle’s candid, often caustic first-hand commentary and observations on Jewish services and religious observance are typified in the following entries:

Sunday. 12th July. Went to the Half Way House between Bendigo and the White Hills to see two Germans about Pa’s coming up to “Yidish” some five or six children.

Thursday. 30th July. “Tisher Boav” [Tisha B’Av], fasted all day, of course, and better than ever I can remember doing before.

Saturday 19th September. First day “Roushashona” [Rosh Hashanah]. I was quite surprised at our Shool [shul], I expected to see a tent … and instead I found it was a nice neat little wooden building … the Reader Mr. Simmons has come all the way from Ballaarat….

Sunday. 27th Septr. Anniversary of Mamma’s Birthday. ‘Col Nidra’ [Kol Nidre] Night. Mr. Simmons read and very well too but, though I say it who shouldn’t, not so well as Papa.

Monday. 28th Septr. Youm Kippur [Yom Kippur], passed over very well. Joseph (the Secretary of the Shool) read “Shachras” [Shacharit] but poorly and his Brother “Mincha” ditto, Simmons read “Mussef” very nicely indeed and Michael Emanuel “Neelah” [Neilah] very badly as a set off I suppose, but though three readers out of the four were muffs still we passed a very pleasant Youm Kippur and felt much better after it. Raining, thundering and lightning nearly all day.

Friday. 2nd October. Went to Shool [shul], it being first night of Succas [Sukkot]. Mr. Joseph, the watchmaker, read very badly.

Saturday. 10th Octr. At Court all day too. In the Evening went to Shool [shul] at Eight, that hour having been appointed for the convenience of persons in business, and heard the Service read worse than anything I’ve experienced yet, the “Chozin” [chazan] did no more know what to say than a Child but was assisted by sundry suggestions of various members of the Congregation, it makes me quite melancholy to think of it.

Sunday. 11th Octr. “Simchas Tourah” [Simchat Torah] and my Birthday, went to Shool [shul] and if possible the Service was worse than last night – it was really awful.

A brief selection from the many highlights among Mondle’s pithy and forthright diary entries would also include his description of a demonstration outside the Shamrock Hotel to protest the new Land Bill; his sister Rosetta (Rosy) gives birth at home to a baby girl (Caroline Fox); the desolation of the gullies and flats around Bendigo as diggers leave to join the Ararat rush; an amateur theatre performance for the benefit of the Bendigo Benevolent Asylum; a visit to Bendigo by Sir Henry Barkly; an excursion by cart to Big Hill; his employer emerging from a Cobb & Co. coach covered in dust; diggers, horses and riders, and Chinamen passing down Pall Mall; an evening playing whist; a visit to Ashton’s Royal Olympian Circus – ‘which afforded me but very little amusement’; a visit to the theatre to see actress Miss Ivy Gougenheim; the largest fire Bendigo had ever seen (24 December 1857); and a visit to the Shamrock Concert Hall to see the San Francisco Minstrels – ‘but I was quite disappointed with them’ (27 May 1858).

Provenance: Lydia Constance Phillips (Mrs Louis Ellis), older sister of Mondle Emanuel Phillips (later handwritten notes by an Ellis family member loosely enclosed at rear), thence by descent; Kestenbaum & Company, New York, Sale 107, 19 September 2024, lot 112; private collection, Melbourne.

Further reading: Margaret Chapman, Fragment of a short life: The Diary of Mondle Emanuel Phillips (1841-1865), Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal, 9, 5 (1983), pp. 356-383. In this scholarly essay, Chapman examines another of Mondle Phillips’ diaries which has survived, covering the months immediately preceding July 1857. The essay can be accessed online at https://collections.ajhs.com.au/Detail/objects/53005