Design and Art Australia Online

Embroiderer who was the eldest daughter of Edward Lane Courthope, Auditor General of the Colony of Western Australia, and his wife Annie n_e Mitchell, daughter of the Anglo-Irish Reverend Mitchell. Mitchell, the first rector of the Swan Parish in Western Australia, and children had arrived in The Shepherd in 1838. Annie Harriet’s father, Edward Lane Courthope, was born in England and came to the colony in 1841 to visit his sister, the wife of Lieutenant Colonel Irwin, the first military commander of Western Australia and owner of “Henley Park” at Upper Swan. In 1847 Courthope entered the civil service as a clerk. In 1854 he was appointed secretary to the Board of Education. Around 1872 he became Auditor General a post he held until 1891 whilst farming.

Annie Harriet was born in a cottage in Hay Street, Perth behind the Western Australian Bank. Her father was at the time in the Audit Office under William Knight. Her godmother was her aunt, Eliza Irwin. From 1859-63 the family lived at “Whitehall” on the corner of Mounts Bay Road and William Street. This was the first stone house built in the colony. Perth in 1859 was tiny, described by a Melbourne visitor as “very pleasantly situated on a bend in the river where it widens considerably and consists of three or fours streets running east west.” The family then moved to Bridge House in Adelaide Terrace. In 1865 they moved to a Swan Valley property “Sandalford” where they made wine. In 1870, the year that Annie Harriet became engaged, they moved to “Henley Park”.

Annie would have had a typical education for an Anglican girl in Western Australia at this time with either her mother or governess to teach embroidery, music, the scriptures and the social graces. She was close to her father and was encouraged to have a taste for literature. Her mother wrote: “She was her Father’s pride, our first born … Never was there a more devoted unselfish daughter.”

Annie Harriet married Nathan Elias Knight at a service conducted by the Reverend Sweeting in her grandfather’s octagonal church, St Mary’s Middle Swan on her birthday 10 July 1873. The groom was born in the colony in 1848 at York, the son of Nathan Elias and Sarah Sophia n_e Hester. He had been educated at the Perth Boys’ School, worked in the Registrar’s Office and as a clerk in the magistrate’s office at Guildford where he probably met Annie Harriet. He became Chief Clerk in the Colonial Secretary’s Department two days after they married. In 1884 he became Inspector of imported stock in the Customs Department, a position he held until his death in 1904. They lived at first in Guildford and later at 4 Dean Street in Claremont, Western Australia. With eleven children in seventeen years Annie Harriet would have had a busy domestic life. However she took some time to become a student at Perth Technical School. She died in 1942.

A lovely smoking cap made by her is in the Augusta Museum. The cap was made in 1870 as an engagement present for Nathan. She had just moved with her family from the farm and winery at Sandalford to “Henley Park” one of the best-known properties on the Swan. As the eldest daughter she had been her mother’s companion and help, a position she took up again in later life. Her mother wrote in 1908, “I am staying with her in her own home. She has always made her house our home whenever we needed care and rest. ... My sweet daughter has been my support and comfort all through these years of trial and change, constantly reminding me of our many mercies and of God’s love for us.”

Annie Harriet’s father had been a man of scholarly tastes who delighted in literature. It is probable that he also wore such a cap and the twenty year old girl thought that such a gift made by her own hands would please her intended. The cap is of purple velvet lined with taffeta. The silk embroidery around the rim is of gold, white and olive green. Border designs for smoking caps were illustrated in books such as S.F.A. Caufield and Blanche C. Saward’s The Dictionary of Needlework: An Encyclopaedia of Artistic, Plain and Fancy Needlework, published in 1882 by AW Cowan in London and probably in earlier publications.

Writers:

Dr Dorothy Erickson

Date written:

2010

Last updated:

2011