Mrs Long's Cottage

In 1875 John and Ellen Battern purchased a thirteen perch block of land on Isaac Street. They constructed a house on the lot (now 118 Isaac Street, house no longer extant). The Batterns lived in the house for only a year and then rented it to tenants. In 1880 John McDonald, a compositor, purchased the property and was first listed at the address in the Post Office Directories in 1883. In 1884 McDonald subdivided his land into two lots – a nine perch block and a four perch block. The larger block contained the already existing house (No. 118 Isaac Street); the smaller, vacant four perch block (116 Isaac Street) was sold in 1885 to Thomas Long. 

Long was recorded as a clerk with the General Post Office, residing in James Street, Fortitude Valley. In the same year as he purchased the land, the small cottage was constructed, and in the same year Mrs Long was listed in the Post Office Directories at the address. 

Mrs Elizabeth Long was Thomas’s mother. In 1883, her husband, John Long, deserted her leaving her with nothing. At a time before social security, there was no government support if the husband and sole earner left. In April 1883, however, John Long appeared before the police magistrate charged with desertion of his wife and “leaving her without the means of support, was ordered to pay 10s. per week for a period of twelve months for his wife’s maintenance”1.  It seems, then, that her son, Thomas, built her the cottage to live in after her marriage had ended.  

In 1885 the Queensland Government introduced the Undue Subdivision of Land Prevention Act 1885. The government began to have concerns with over-population in inner-city areas from as early as the 1870s. The construction of small tenements and tiny cottages on very small parcels of land increased the risk of disease and fire throughout the inner-city suburbs. With the passing of the 1885 legislation it became illegal to subdivide land into lots of less than sixteen perches (405m²). It also regulated the width of new roads and lanes and the distance between new houses and the road. 

In a February 1886 article in the Queensland Figaro and Punch, Spring Hill’s overcrowded conditions were commented on:

Some steps should be taken in order to put a stop to the manner in which buildings are huddled together in the suburbs of Brisbane. One has only to visit, say, Spring Hill, and he will see three or four dwellings on a small allotment of ground barely sufficient for one decent dwelling house … fever and other diseases will be breaking out which will spread like a plague, and the cry then will be “I always said it would end badly”1. 

By the 1890s, Spring Hill had become Brisbane’s most crowded suburb.

Mrs Long was first recorded in the house in 1885 and continued to reside there until her death in 1920. 

The small timber cottage situated on a four perch block of land is important as it represents the intense subdivisions of land that occurred in Spring Hill prior to the 1885 legislation was passed. It reflects the increasingly crowded conditions that the division of lots caused in the inner-city suburb and the subsequent need for government legislation to control it.

1. The Brisbane Courier, 11 April 1883, p5

2. Queensland Figaro and Punch, 13 February 1886, p15

3. Post Office Directories.

4. Certificates of Titles, Department of Natural Resources and Mines

5. Queensland Electoral Rolls

6. Australian Death Index 1923

7. Australian Birth Index 1858

8. Allom Lovell Marquis-Kyle, The Character of Residential Areas, Brisbane, A Study for the Brisbane City Council, 1994

9. Brisbane History Group, Housing, Health, the River and the Arts, Papers No. 3, 1985

10. The Brisbane Courier, 30 September 1885, p4