Alice Jean McClure (known as Jean McClure)

Jean Bottrill (nee McClure) was born 22 May 1917 at Murray Bridge, South Australia and was the last of 6 children to be born to Alice Burgess Hope and George McClure.

I spoke with Jean and Roy several years before they died, at their home at Rosewater. What a beautiful couple they were. They were both delighted to share a couple of stories about their upbringing and their lives together. Throughout their adult life, they spent a lot of time with her uncle (Edgar William Hope and Christina O'Brien) and also their cousin Ron AB Hope.

She remembers that her grandfather used to live in the hut on his property near Casterton and that her father, George McClure, worked at the Murray Bridge Railway Station. An accident when Jean was about twelve months old, left her unable to hear and when she was 7 years old, she started attending the Murray Bridge Primary School but because of her deafness she couldn't stay on there. It was not until she was 11 that she went to the Blind, Deaf and Dumb school at Brighton. It was a common practise in those days that parents kept their children home, rather than send them away to school, especially when there was a handicap involved with them.

As her family lived at Murray Bridge at that time, she boarded at the school, going home during the school holidays until she was 16 years old and after that time she stayed at home, helping about the house with the daily chores. Another Aunt (Pearl) worked at the Shell Roadhouse in Murray Bridge. Life at the Boarding School was not all fun and games for young Jean, as she had to help with the chores as well as assist the younger children, especially the blind kids. She remembers helping one little blind boy, named Ron, to walk because he kept bumping his head as he stumbled into things that were in his path. At school, Jean learnt various crafts that would be put to good use in the future, like sewing, knitting and embroidery, although she didn't really enjoy craft work. Reading was another activity that was encouraged at the school and that is still one of her past-times today.

As the school catered for Blind, Deaf and Dumb children, Jean also learnt how to lip read, sign spell with her fingers and learnt how to write. After she left school, Jean had no permanent home, and alternated living with her sisters Doris and Coral, both of whom lived within the township of Murray Bridge. It was not until she and Roy were married that she had a home of her own and there they have stayed these past 41 years in their home at Rosewater, an Adelaide suburb. Jean married Roy Bottrill on 26 April 1952. Roy was born on 27 February 1911 and at 82 years of age, he still drives the car and is enjoying good health.[1]

Although Roy attended the same school as Jean, they don't recall knowing each other during that time. Like Jean, Roy's deafness was also due to an accident, al beit a "medical" one. It was after an operation on his tonsils when he was 3 years old, that left him partially deaf. While he can hear noises, like planes, trains and horns and whistles, he can't hear sufficiently to understand conversation. Roy left school just before his 14th birthday and worked on his family's fruit block near Berri before trying his hand at carpentry. After 12 months he returned to the fruit block until he was lured to the "big smoke" of Adelaide. Not knowing anyone in Adelaide, he found accommodation and a job within a short amount of time and finally found work that better suited him at General Motors Holden where he worked for the next 22 years until his retirement at 65 years of age.

[1] January 1995

Jean died on 14 June 1973 in Adelaide.

Regretably, I have no further information about Jean McClure or Roy Bottrill

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Thomas Hope (great grandfather)

Richmond Armstrong Hope (grandfather)

Alice Burgess Hope (mother)

Family McClure