East Melbourne, Simpson Street 104

104 Simpson Street stands on part of Allotments E and F of Section 22.  This land was in turn part of a larger block, originally allotments 14-17 of Section 22, which was granted to the Baptist Church.  The land was later resumed and resubdivided creating Allotments A-F and what is now Ola Cohn Place. G K Johnston, auctioneer and commission agent, bought Allotments E and F at the Crown Land sale, date unknown.

It seems that by the 1880s Allotments E and F had been subdivided into five lots, four running north-south and one running east-west, the one on which 104 stands.

In 1889 a house was erected at 104.  The owner was Arthur Thomas Metcalf Johnson, ‘Professor of Music’.  Since the 1870s he had had a career singing and composing and teaching.  He had tried running a business selling musical instruments but that failed after about two years.  In 1889 he had an invention patented which seemed to have something to do with shooting targets.  In 1915 he wrote a short book, Australian Life, or High Jinks in the Sunny South.  He became insolvent for a second time and had to sell the house in 1892 when it was described as:

Land, having a frontage of 20 ft. to Simpson-street by a depth of 80 ft. 1 in, along a roadway on the south side. On the land is erected-a substantial and well built two-story brick house, containing drawing and dining rooms, three bedrooms, dressing room, kitchen, scullery, pantry and wash house.
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The next owner was M Nichol or Nicholls, so far unidentified, who leased it and it had a number of tenants.  The next owner c.1909 was Frank Lewis Jones, station master at Jolimont, and his wife Wilhelmina and children. In the early days of their occupancy they too rented out at least one room. One daughter, Mayne, married Herbert James Mudford, chartered accountant, in 1931.  This might have been the impetus to remodel the house.  Mayne lived in the house until c.1974 (Herbert died in 1936).  Mayne died in 1985, perhaps she still owned the house.