Photograph of Martin Place Soldier's Day Appeal, Friday 9 November 1923

SPG/192

fonds

1923

Graphic Materials, Photographs

1009666

1 photographic print - gelatin silver - 25.4 x 30.4 cm

Friday 9 November 1923 was set aside for the annual Soldiers’ Day Appeal which took the form of a fair in Martin Place with over forty stalls set up around a central platform. Members of the public were asked to wear a poppy in remembrance of those who fell in the War and about 800 women assisted in the appeal. On 10 November the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the public response "to the annual Poppy Day Appeal was both spontaneous and generous … and … it was anticipated that considerably over £100 would be finally handed over to the Returned Soldiers’ League.”
The first such appeal when poppies were worn seems to have been held in 1921. On 10 October 1921 the Sydney Morning Herald reported that on the advice of the Soldiers’ League, people who wished to support the widows and orphans in ‘the devastated region of France’ should wear a poppy on Armistice Day, November 11.

Reference: Library correspondence file

Photograph of Martin Place Soldier’s Day Appeal, Friday 9 November 1923, by an unknown photographer. The focus of this photograph is a group of 12 women and a girl, all but two of them dressed entirely in white, holding collection boxes labelled ‘Soldiers’ Day Appeal 1923.’ In the background two stalls and a chocolate wheel can be seen.

Out of copyright: Created before 1955
Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales