I’ve never been much of a prankster except for a few times I stuck a sign on one of my brother’s back reading “kick me”. Not real original. Now my mum just loved April Fool’s Day which I wrote about briefly HERE.
This year I’ve been musing over where mum got her sense of humour and whether, in days gone by, our ancestors also played jokes on April Fool’s Day. With it being Trove Tuesday… to the old newspapers I headed.
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I remember mum saying that her mum, my Nana (Elizabeth Mary Murray Evans Allan) was not just a feisty woman but also quite a jokester, so I decided to check out the Port Pirie newspapers which is where she would have been living at that time, with her first husband and two of her three children.
There was no joy to be had there as the Port Pirie Recorder was full of doom and gloom, not the least of which was the huge miner’s strike taking place in Broken Hill and affecting many workers, and industries including those in nearby Port Pirie.
STRIKE AT BROKEN HILL. 2 Apr 1913. p1. The Port Pirie Recorder, South Australia, Australia
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/page/9100940
There was no sense in checking out newspapers in other locations, for most of my maternal ancestors lived in surrounding districts and would have been similarly affected by the miner’s strike. So a general search for April Fool’s Day 1913 was my next port of call and these items in the Adelaide Advertiser, although not published in 1913, drew my attention.
AN APRIL FOOL’S DAY JOKE. 2 Apr 1914. p8. The Advertiser: Adelaide, South Australia.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/5422591?searchTerm=April
ALL FOOLS’ DAY. 31 Mar 1919. pg.6. The Advertiser: Adelaide, South Australia.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/5640730?searchTerm=April
Logging on this morning I found that even the “techy big kids” have been at it this April Fool’s Day
April Fools’ 2013: The best techy pranks of the day. ZDNet. 1 Apr 2013
http://www.zdnet.com/april-fools-2013-the-best-techy-pranks-of-the-day-7000013324/?s_cid=e551
This is my favourite… I wonder which is yours? Just click on the link above to check them all out 🙂
Many thanks to Amy Houston for setting up the Trove Tuesday meme and also to TROVE… where would we be without you?
Here we are… Port Pirie is north of the capital city, Adelaide (just above the “leg”) and Broken Hill is in NSW, just over the north east corner of South Australia .
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Copyright © 2013. Catherine Ann Crout-Habel