Mug shots – Julius Goeldner’s Turbulent Life.

The heroically named Julius Caesar Alexander Goeldner loved a drink. He also had a furious temper. An enthusiastic indulgence in the former weakness gave free rein to the latter characteristic, which brought Julius Goeldner to the attention of the Brisbane Police for thirty years.

Julius Caesar Alexander Goeldner was born in Brisbane in 1862, one of five sons born to Wilhelm Moritz Roberts Goeldner and Elizabeth Bryans.

At 19, disagreements with his father turned physical, causing Wilhelm to summon his son to the Magistrates Court for assault. The Magistrates listened to an inordinate number of accusations and grievances, finally delivering a stern lecture to both men, and a good behaviour bond to Julius.

Marriage, children and career.

In 1885, Julius married Brisbane girl Ada Lillian Huber, and in between rows, imprisonments and separations they managed to have nine children between 1886 and 1905.

Perhaps Ada had an inkling of things to come when, in August 1886, with their first child (William) not 2 months old, Julius went to gaol for a month. He had assaulted a bailiff and was fined £5, which he did not care to pay. He would have the same attitude to maintenance payments later in life.

When Julius went to gaol, he took his earning power with him. Ada rather courageously kept her head above water by taking in sewing.

Julius had a craft and could earn a good living when sober. He was a skilled French polisher, creating masterpieces by painstaking applying layer after layer of polish to wood to create a striking, almost mirrored finish.

Life continued along its rocky path and Julius kept committing the offence of “creating a disturbance.” Sometimes, quite spectacularly.

Julius Goeldner, 30 years of age, was charged with having conducted himself in a disorderly manner in Leichhardt-street, with having made use of obscene language, resisting the constable who arrested min, and with having committed an assault on one Edwin Howell. It appeared from the evidence that as Edwin Howell was passing the Jubilee Hotel the accused came up to him and said, “Your name is Edwin Howell, isn’t it?” Howell replied in the affirmative, and without more ado Goeldner struck out, dealing Howell a heavy blow on the cheek, another on the lip, which split it, causing blood to flow, and a third on the temple. He also knocked Howell down and rolled him over on the pavement, not the slightest provocation having been given. A constable at this juncture arrived upon the scene, and Goeldner then began to use some very choice expressions, too choice even to be repeated even in the foul air of the Police Court.

When the matter returned to Court after a week’s remand, Howell was anxious to withdraw the charge, as the defendant’s wife was ill.

Ada was indeed ill and gave birth to the couple’s first daughter, Ada Maude, three months later.

Brisbane gaol.

The incident that brought Julius Caesar Alexander Goeldner before the Brisbane Gaol’s photographer was the assault on his wife, followed by an assault on arresting officers in 1896.

Julius Goeldner 1896. One eye appears swollen, which may be a result of the fight with Police.

Julius C. A. Goeldner, a strong, strapping-looking Queenslander 34 years of age, was charged at the City Police Court yesterday, I before Mr. Pinnock, P.M., with using obscene language and resisting the police on Saturday night last. A warrant also charged him with assaulting his wife. Defendant pleaded guilty to all three charges and said that of the first two charges he knew nothing, as he was drunk.

Mr. Pinnock asked the policeman what was the nature of the resistance? “Kicking and resisting, your worship, and it took myself and another constable an hour and a-half to get him to the watch house.” For the obscene language defendant was fined £3, or seven days, and for resisting the police £1, or seven days. The warrant for assaulting the wife was then read to defendant. He pleaded guilty to the charge under extenuating circumstances. “What extenuating circumstances?” queried the Police Magistrate. “My wife has been nagging at me ever since I came out of gaol. I have tried to keep straight, your worship, and have succeeded pretty well until last Saturday, when I took a couple of glasses of beer.”

Sergeant Taylor told the Police Magistrate that the wife had two black eyes and her upper lip cut-the result of the husband’s violence. The arresting policeman -Constable Heaslip – in reply to Mr. Pinnock as to the wife’s character, said she was a hard-working, sober woman. “The last time defendant was in gaol, your worship,” interjected Sergeant Taylor, “she earned her own living with a needle.”

Without further ado the Police Magistrate sentenced defendant to six months’ imprisonment for the assault on his wife. Defendant’s shirt (white at one time) was saturated here and there with blood – the result of the tussle with the constables in a narrow passage, when defendant struck his head with great violence on a banister, making a cut on the forehead over an inch long.

In the late 19^th century, women had few options to protect themselves from violent spouses. Their earning power was limited, there were no refuges and no social security. The couple made do, and five more children were born (including a set of twins).

In 1902, when their second last child, Cecil, was still an infant, Julius (not Ada, who may have been recovering from baby number 8) was prosecuted for “willfully neglecting children in a manner likely to cause them unnecessary suffering or injury to their health,” was fined £10, or three months’ imprisonment.

The couple’s final child was a boy, lumbered, as was his father before him, with a preposterously grand name. Royal Archibald Goeldner was born in 1905. Things calmed down, at least as far as the Police Magistrate was concerned.

By 1915, the couple had parted, and an epic maintenance case played out in Court, to the undisguised amusement of the Truth.

Ada sought money from her husband, who made her go through one of their daughters to get maintenance. He claimed she was a drunk. She claimed that she had given him money when he needed it because she was still fond of him. He offered to pay for boarding house accommodation for her but no cash, she left the courtroom in tears.

In 1919, Julius Goeldner passed away, aged 57. The various generations of Goeldners met and mourned his loss at son Maurice’s house at Paddington. I imagine that there were a few mixed feelings among those present. Ada lived on until the age of 73, passing away in 1935.