John Curtin's family home in Cottesloe, 1943 - asset 1

Description

This is a photograph taken in 1943 of the front room of Prime Minister John Curtin's family home at 24 Jarrad Street, Cottesloe, a suburb of Perth, Western Australia.

Educational value

This resource is useful because it:

• This asset shows the interior of the home of John Curtin, Australia's Prime Minister from 1941 to 1945 - Curtin moved to Western Australia in 1917 to take up the editorship of the state's Labor newspaper and this house was his family home from 1923 until his death in 1945.
• This asset shows a plain and comfortable front (lounge) room - the furnishings reflect the modest financial circumstances and plain domestic tastes of John Curtin and his wife, Elsie.
• This asset is an example of a 1940s Australian modest family living room with its comfortable lounge chair.
• This asset shows the comfortable lounge chair in which John Curtin liked to sit and read.
• This asset indicates the extensive family library at the Curtin home - John Curtin was a self-educated man, having left school at age 14, and he read for both pleasure and improvement.
• This asset shows the smokers' stand right next to the lounge chair - John Curtin was a heavy smoker and this no doubt contributed to his ill health in his final years and his eventual death from congestive heart failure in July 1945.
• This asset provides a contrast with much grander present-day homes of former prime ministers.