PAWN BROKING IN GEELONG
160 YEARS AGO IN GEELONG
(From the pages of the Geelong Chronicle)
Daryl Wight’s 1864 piece on pawn broking opens a rare window onto a Geelong caught between respectability and hardship, where the quiet traffic of pledges and repayments revealed as much about the town’s social fabric as any official record. Drawn from the pages of the Geelong Chronicle, his article treats the pawn shop not as a curiosity but as a barometer of the vicissitudes of everyday life, exposing the pressures, improvisations and judgements that shaped survival in a growing colonial town. His portrait of Szymanski Leon also offers a glimpse of Geelong’s early diversity, not yet thirty years after first settlement.
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PAWN BROKING IN GEELONG
In 1864, there were several pawn brokers in Geelong. Then, as now, there was a place in the financial market for many different types of money lending. Banks, lawyers, wool brokers and others provided loans secured against land and other large assets and pawn brokers offered smaller loans, usually secured against items of personal property.
These smaller loans were called pledges. If, after a period of time, a person did not return to repay the loan and redeem their personal item, the pawn broker would hold a sale of ‘unredeemed pledges’.
In 1864, such a sale was advertised by pawn broker, Mr S. Leon, of Kardinia Street, one of the oldest streets in central Geelong. (For those not familiar with Kardinia Street, it is now subsumed by the Westfield Shopping Centre and surrounding development.)
His sale of unredeemed pledges for the previous six months comprised all sorts of jewellery. There were gold and silver watches, gold and silver chains, gold and silver brooches, gold rings and studs, diamond rings and pins, silver spoons and cups, and a large quantity of fancy jewellery. He also offered for sale ladies and gentlemen’s wearing apparel, musical instruments, carpenters’ and joiners’ tools, telescopes, pistols and guns.
Mr Leon had previously been a draper in Geelong in the 1850s. He sold up to start his pawn broking business in 1859. Pawn brokers required a license from the local Police Court in order to operate and Leon was required to re-apply annually. In 1872, he transferred his license to Mr Oscar Brandt.
Mr. Leon, whose first name was Szymanski, was an observant Jew and noted in his advertisements that ‘no business transacted in this establishment from Friday dusk till dusk on Saturday’. He was President of the Jewish Synagogue in Geelong for some years.
Szymanski Leon later moved to Melbourne, where he died at his residence, 12 George Street, Fitzroy, on 24 December 1882, aged 72 years. His youngest daughter, Florence, married Maurice Brodzky, journalist, and proprietor of ‘Table Talk’, a Melbourne weekly journal of politics, literature and the arts.
