42 Gipps Street was built in 1870 for Mrs Anne/Annie Jones by Murray and Hill, a local firm based in Victoria Parade.  The firm built many houses in East Melbourne, some for clients, some on its own account. 

Mrs Jones has been difficult to identify with any confidence.  According to the rate books she lived in the house until the early 1880s.  In 1882 the Sands and McDougall directories listed Mrs F E Jones as the occupier.  The 1883 rate books cited Mrs Fanny Elizabeth Bushell as the owner.  Were the initials a coincidence, or were the two women one and the same? It did, in fact, turn out that Fanny Elizabeth Jones married Frederick Gilmore Bushell in 1883. Fanny’s previous husband was Frederick Robert Jones, son of Robert Jones of Dublin, a solicitor. Frederick died in 1868 after only two years of marriage.  There is no mention of Frederick Jones’ mother, or Robert Jones’ wife, anywhere.  The presumption at this point is that Fanny was Annie’s daughter-in-law.   

Frederick Gilmore Bushell, on the other hand is well documented.  He spent his early years as a banker, but for nearly twenty years until he retired in 1919 he was bursar at Melbourne Grammar School. He died in 1935, Fanny predeceasing him in 1917.  Fanny and Frederick never lived in the house in Gipps Street and sold it in the early 1900s.  Walter George Smith, a reporter for The Age was a tenant at this time. 

The next owner was Charles William Carnegie.  Carnegie was an interesting man who nobody knew anything about until his death in a road accident in 1927.  He had been riding his bicycle along Wellington Parade with two greyhounds on leads trotting alongside him when he collided with a motorcyclist exiting Lansdowne Street. His body lay unidentified in the morgue for four days before somebody found, and recognised, his dogs.  It turned out that he lived in a single room in the house at 109 Grey Street while at the same time owning a number of houses in East Melbourne and Richmond, including the three houses of Clarendon Terrace in Clarendon Street, and of course, 42 Gipps Street. [For more about Charles Carnegie see links below.]

Dietrich Martin was the next owner. His is a familiar name as the first owner of Nelson Square, 105-113 Simpson Street, built 1914. [see link to building history below.]

Henry Ernest Pittock, musician, was a tenant from about the mid-1930s and he bought the house when it was sold after Martin’s death.  His son, Francis Joseph John Pittock, came to live with him after returning from duty in the RAAF in WW2. After Henry’s death in 1968 Francis continued to live at 42 Gipps Street for many more years. 

In 1986 a building application was made to add a two-storey extension behind the house.