Melbourne bride helps uncover mystery behind vintage English 1930s wedding dress in Perth skip

The slightly battered box had a string tied around it. A fading label showed its recipient to be a Miss Bloye.

Inside, wrapped in crumpled brown paper, was the remnants of a wedding from nearly a century ago — ivory gloves, dried flowers, bride’s headpiece, cake decorations and a wedding dress.

Melbourne woman Claire Alexandra was on the hunt for a vintage wedding dress for herself when she came across the box of memories.

“I’ve always been interested in vintage clothing, and I knew I didn’t want to wear a new wedding dress,” Ms Alexandra said.

“I love the history that comes with [them].”

So, she set an alert on Facebook Marketplace for a “vintage wedding dress”.

“One day, I got this notification for a 1930s wedding dress, and it said there were other things in the box as well,” Ms Alexandra said.

“I wasn’t even sure the dress would fit me, but once I caught a glance of the photos and everything that was in there, I just got so excited.”

The seller said her auntie had rescued it from a rubbish skip outside a house in Perth.

“She told me the children or grandkids … were being quite ruthless in clearing out a house, a deceased estate,” Ms Alexandra said.

“Her auntie said, ‘Can I buy that off you? Please, don’t throw it away. My niece might like it.'”

But since the dress didn’t fit, the seller too decided to part with it.

And, so, the box was delivered to Ms Alexandra on the other side of the country, in Healesville, Victoria.

‘Vintage wedding show bag’ from the 1930s

It contained the carefully packed-away memories of a wedding in England in 1938.

“I opened the brown paper … and the first thing I saw were the original beautiful photos,” she said.

“As I pulled things out, there were the gloves the husband wore, there were dried roses from the bridal bouquet, little wax buds from the wedding cake, the headpieces the bride wore and her bridesmaid, all kept beautifully … treasured over the years, kept together.

“To me, it was like a vintage wedding show bag.”

But there was more.

“I was pulling things out, and there were the receipts from having the dress made, buying the fabric,” Ms Alexandra said.

“And then at the very bottom out came the dress.”

Wedding box a ‘rare find’, expert says

Intrigued, Ms Alexandra turned to Josephine Cafagna, a connoisseur of vintage clothes, for help.

Ms Cafagna said the dress was made of a material known as liquid satin.

“[It is] very hard to find these days,” she said.

“In fact, you can’t really buy it, and it just flows like liquid. It’s really a heavy silk.”

The former ABC journalist has long been fascinated by vintage clothes and has collected and restored some exceptional pieces.

However, she said the wedding box was a rare find.

“It’s a treasure box,” Ms Cafagna said.

“Rather than write a diary, [the bride] kept a visual and tactile diary of that day and the events leading up to it.”

She said the “extraordinary” discovery offered a glimpse into the woman’s wedding preparations.

“[There is] the magazine in which she found the style of her wedding dress, and there was a little pencil mark ticked to it,” Ms Cafagna said.

“Even the letter from the store saying ‘your dress is ready to try on’.

“My favourite part of it all was the wedding day confetti shaped like bells that she kept. All these treasures lovingly stored away for nearly a century.”

Here comes the bride

The box also unveiled clues about its owner. 

The bride was Gertrude Bloye, and it was no whirlwind romance. The couple waited, curiously, for eight years to tie the knot.

Gertrude got engaged to Fred MacDonald in 1930 in Plymouth in south-west England.

A receipt for the engagement ring, made out to Fred from the Plymouth jeweller F J Knight, described it as an 18-carat diamond ring in a platinum setting. Fred paid 8 pounds and 15 shillings on May 9, 1930.

But by the time Gertrude and Fred got married, it was 1938, a year before the outbreak of World War II. George the Sixth was king, and British prime minister Neville Chamberlain was trying to appease Hitler, who was building up Germany’s military armaments.

Across the other side of the world, Joseph Lyons was prime minister of Australia. But it’s unlikely Gertrude gave any thought to that or the possibility of her treasures ending up here.

‘It needs to go to a museum’

So impressed was Ms Cafagna by the box and its memories, she decided to share it.

“What I normally do is restore them and sell them on to people who love vintage, but in this case, while people wanted to buy the wedding dress, I really didn’t want to separate these pieces,” she said.

“If they’ve been together for nearly a century, who am I to tear them apart and sell them off.

“It’s of historical value. It needs to go to a museum.”

So Ms Cafagna turned to Peter Bottomley, who runs the café, Run Rabbit Run, in Castlemaine, Victoria.

It also houses his extensive collection of vintage wedding dresses — a passion acquired while living in the UK.

Snapshot of social history

Mr Bottomley said he became fascinated by the stories behind them.

“It seemed sad that these once-treasured items had been discarded and ended up in charity shops or in vintage markets,” he said.

“Gertrude’s treasure box is a snapshot of social history, and it’s tragic that it was thrown out.

“It’s somebody’s life that’s been kept in a box and ended up in a dumpster.”

Mr Bottomley traced Gertrude’s family to try and find out how the box ended up in a rubbish skip.

He discovered the couple had no children, and their estate was left to Gertrude’s younger brother, Roy Allen, who left everything to distant cousins, Jim and Lesley Truscott.

Fortunately, the Truscotts still live in south-west England. 

“I just rang them up and said, ‘You don’t know me. I’m calling from Australia. Please don’t hang up’, and we had a great chat,” Mr Bottomley said. 

He said Mr Truscott was surprised the dress was found in a rubbish skip.

The Truscotts said when Gertrude’s younger brother died, they cleared the house and found the box.

They decided to send it to Mr Truscott’s sister, Jenny, who lived in Perth and was interested in “all things old”.

Mr Truscott believed his sister, who has since died, donated the box to a small museum at Kalamunda, outside Perth.

“She most certainly would not have put it in a skip,” he said.

But the Kalamunda and District Historical Society president, Jenny Lewis, said despite having many donations from Jenny, they had no record of the wedding dress.

She said it could be because the wedding box, though fascinating, was not relevant to the history of the Kalamunda area.

However, Mr Truscott was able to shed light on one mystery at least – the reason behind Gertrude and Fred’s long engagement.

He said, Fred could not get a job during the Great Depression of the 1930s when unemployment rates were as high as 20 per cent.

“Fred was an electrician but without permanent employment. By 1938 he must have found employment as an electrician at the naval dockyards in Plymouth, and so they were able to be married,” Mr Truscott said.

“We are surprised that there is still so much interest in the wedding dress.”

Vintage garments tell a story

Josephine Cafagna says she’s seen a resurgence in people valuing vintage clothes.

“There’s great history in garments,” she said.

“Things were made differently to today. A lot of time, effort and talent went into making a garment. It wasn’t off the rack. It was usually hand stitched by artisans.

“When you look at the work that’s gone into a dress like Gertrude’s, like all those buttons down the front, the only designers who replicate that today are couture, which means it’s very, very expensive.”

Ms Cafagna said it made her feel sad to think someone had discarded the whole package in a skip.

But she was glad the dress had got a pride of place in Mr Bottomley’s Castlemaine museum.

“It deserves it,” Ms Cafagna said.

“It warms me to think that Gertrude might be looking down on us and saying, ‘Wow, they liked what I did.'”

In the end, Claire Alexander didn’t wear Gertrude’s dress when she got married last year.

But she did borrow Gertrude’s mother-of-pearl hair clip, carrying it in her wedding purse.

“I felt like in my heart I sort of asked Gertrude, ‘Is it OK if I keep this for my wedding?’ and I felt it was a, ‘Yes,”‘ she said.