Victorian shoes

Our house was built in 1891. It was one of the first houses in Lindisfarne on Hobart's Eastern Shore. People who lived in Hobart used to come across by boat for the weekend.

It has lots of big rooms and a hallway that is both wide and long. But when we bought it in 1999, the bathroom was hideous and the living room kitchen was a dog-leg shape with no external windows so we had to have the light on all day.

We fixed the bathroom first (priorities) then in 2004 we undertook the Great Renovation Project which meant handing over one quarter of the house to the builder for eight months and setting up a temporary kitchen in one of the bedrooms.

Our builder decided it was easier to remove all the floors and external walls and then put them back in the new configuration.

Well with a house this age, you'd really hope to find something interesting under the floor boards and we weren't disappointed.

Here we have a glass bottle, two children's shoes, a teaspoon and a child's leather glove.

I mentioned the shoes to a friend, who recalled seeing a documentary about shoes being placed under the floorboards near the door as protection against evil spirits. The theory is that the shoes are the only item of apparel to retain the shape of the wearer when removed, so the evil spirits are tricked into thinking a person is there.

I contacted the ABC who put me in touch with Ian Evans, the author of the documentary, who has a wealth of knowledge about old houses and concealed objects. You can read more on his website Old Houses.

The result was that Ian Evans and his wife came to visit (he just happened to be coming to Tasmania to see a number of houses where old shoes had been discovered), and he took photos of our shoes for his next book. I'm not sure if it has been published yet.

I made scones for them in the toaster oven in the bedroom/kitchen which he kindly said were the best scones he'd ever had.

I haven't yet done anything with the shoes - I'm a bit nervous about removing them from the house to have them cleaned and presented by someone with appropriate skills in this area. After all, their removal might signal a free-for-all to the evil spirits!

The other interesting link in this story is that I grew up over the back fence of this house which we now own. I remember old Miss Simmons - a fearful character - who lived there into her nineties. Her father built the house. I checked the births and deaths and she and her sister would have been small children in the 1890's.
The shoes are not actually a pair - I think they're two right shoes.

I like to think that Mr Simmons put one shoe from each of his daughters under the floorboards where we discovered them 110 years later.