The third son was Stanley Dickson, who was born in 1889. Born deaf, it is likely that Stanley was schooled at the New South Wales Institution for the Deaf, Dumb and Blind established in 1872, the first school and boarding facility for the deaf in Australia. Family lore has it that William supported the institution financially. Stanley could deaf sign but lip-reading was the main method of communication within the family. Stanley married Henrietta (Isabel) Arrell who was not deaf when she met Stanley but became so after an illness. She and Stanley had six children – Stanley, Harry, Edena, Reta, Annesley who was also deaf, and Rodney. Over time, Stan’s family participated less and less often at large family gatherings, probably because of the communication difficulties encountered with large groups.17 Stanley died at 59 after being hit by a car.
Roy was born a year after Stanley. William and Janet also had two other children who died at birth – a sister Jessie Harriet in 1879 and an unnamed boy in 1881, two years before Harold.
In the 1890s, as William moved between businesses in Sydney and Newcastle, he bought himself a mansion in Sydney’s inner west at Concord, possibly in Davidson Ave, with a four-acre orchard set in 20 acres of pasture. This was sold after five years as he needed to return to Newcastle to repair the business that Isaac had been running there, but with less success than was anticipated.
Once William was satisfied he could leave the Newcastle business in the more capable hands of Isaac’s son, also called William, he focused on developing Winn’s Ltd in Sydney and he bought Rockley, a large, gracious, turn-of-the-century house in what was then called Campbell Street on Milsons Point.18 It had extensive views across Sydney Harbour to Garden Island, Circular Quay and the Rocks. The family used the ferries that eventually brought cars between the south and north shores of the harbour.
My father Dick remembered the Milsons Point house well. To his childhood eye, the lounge room was full of marvels brought back from various Winn trips overseas. There were black carved dragon tables and huge Chinese vases, which Dick remembered as being taller than he was and like something out of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. There were prizes from William’s target shooting successes, including a fancy clock on the mantlepiece.
My Uncle Murray’s memories of the house were different. He remembered a big woodpile on the east side of the house, an attic from which children were excluded and an ever-present widowed grandmother.19
All of Roy’s children remember assembling at the house for a family lunch every Saturday. A full-time cook and housekeeper regularly produced roast chicken, considered a great delicacy. Betty recalled hot plum pudding and cream desserts.20 The only sour note from Dick’s point of view was the cutlery. The knife handles were of ivory which went brown and shrank with a lot of washing. This resulted in a space opening up between the handle and the blade, which would fill up with a greyish deposit that revolted him.21
William would go down on one knee to say the Grace: ‘For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly grateful. Amen.’22 Dick and Murray’s cousin, Janet, remembers that the saying of grace preceded all meals and that prayers were recited after breakfast on Christmas Day, further delaying the giving of presents. Rockley Christmases, she recalls, were not nearly as much fun as those at Point Piper where her McMurtrie grandmother lived.23
I have no information about Roy’s early schooling. In January 1906, aged 15, he started at Sydney Grammar School in College Street in the city, finishing there in December 1909. The school’s archivist could provide little information about Roy’s time at the school, apart from the fact that, after the First World War, he contributed £10 for the school’s war memorial. I know Roy won the Class 4 Greek prize in 1907 and received a copy of Homer’s Odyssey because that is written on the book’s flyleaf. It was an appropriate award as, throughout his life, Roy maintained a keen interest in classical literature.
Roy’s two older brothers, Harold and Gordon, had gone to the bastion of Methodist education, Newington in Stanmore, but there is no record of Roy ever attending the school. One can only speculate why Roy wasn’t enrolled. Dick maintained that the strict religious teachings of Newington would not have suited atheist Roy, that the non-denominational Sydney Grammar School would have been more to his taste. This may well have been true but it flies in the face of Roy’s apparent personal piety as well as his pious upbringing. Dick wrote: ‘His mother wanted him to be a Methodist missionary and when he was seven years old he was taken to stand in church and swear he would never drink alcohol.’24
William and Janet initially had wanted Harold to be a missionary but having come dux of Newington he became interested in teaching as a profession. His parents would not support an alternative career like one in education, so Harold went into the family business instead.25 As Gordon was less academically able and Stanley was deaf, William and Janet appear to have turned their sights on Roy to fulfill their desire for a missionary son.
After completing school, Roy went straight to Sydney University to commence a medical degree. It was 1910 and his initial idea was that on graduation he would go to the South Sea Islands as a medical missionary. According to Men May Rise, he initially fixed on being an ordinary missionary, but later decided he would not do any preaching work at all.26 The philosophical and belief processes involved in this slippage from preaching missionary to medical missionary are unclear, but Roy eventually lost all belief in God, even though he never lost his desire to be of help to others.
Roy gained a number of honours in the various medical examinations.27 He graduated bachelor of medicine and master of surgery in 1915. He was appointed Junior Resident Medical Officer at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney.
Photos of Roy during these years show an attractive man, five feet eight inches tall, with black hair, hazel eyes and a piercing gaze. His passport describes him as having a broad forehead, ordinary face, straight nose, round chin and dark complexion.28 He was part of a close-knit family of sons who were integrated into a wider familial network of successful Winn businesses, with all members leading socially conventional lives. The expectation was of a life of comfort, status and privilege, in return for upright and honorable service under the umbrella of a robust conservative Methodism.
5 Janet Winn was known as Jessie
6 John was also known as James or Isaac Winn
7 Winn RC Fragment of a letter unaddressed, undated
8 William Winn 1849-1929
9 Winn RC Letter to Betty 20 February 1961
10 Winn RW Memoirs of Richard (Dick) Winn 2003 p5
11 Death certificate of John Winn who was buried at the Field of Mars Cemetery, Sydney
12 Janet Winn 1845-1938