From Newcastle, With Love: For the Love of Gladys

For the Love of Gladys

[Reprinted from Cetus Convocation News 1996 p.15]

The late Harold Brawn was an intensely private man, reclusive in his later years, who had few friends, no children and no surviving family. An English immigrant who began his working life as a “fruito” in Newcastle, Harold Brawn donated a fortune in excess of $5 million to the University of Newcastle.

The reason given by Mr Brawn for his remarkable gifts, which included several million dollars in cash, was to attempt to create a national institution which would be a perpetual memorial to his late wife, Gladys.

His words were:

“I would like the Fellowship to have great publicity annually in order that my darling wife is remembered forever by the Newcastle community and I would like my part in this to have no mention at all if possible.”

When Harold married Gladys, the couple went into her family’s photographic business in Kurri Kurri in the Hunter Valley. The business thrived, expanding to include the Maitland area in the 1920s, taking photographs of weddings and family celebrations on Hunter properties.

A friend of the Brawns, Mrs Francis Jones, remembers that Harold would take the photographs and Gladys, who was “very artistic”, undertook the laborious hand colouring that brought them to life.

“They were very close,” Mrs Jones recalls. “When she (Gladys) died so suddenly, it hit him very hard.”

Gladys Marguerite Brawn died in January, 1956. Mrs Jones thinks she died from a cerebral haemorrhage. The couple had been living in Hamilton, where Mr Brawn was running a business named Kayles in addition to a “money-lending” business in Hunter Street. The former Kayles building as well as the Hunter street office building were also donated to the university.

“Harold came around one day and said he was going to change his will,” Mrs Jones said. “At first he had planned to use the money to make sure that there were fresh flowers on Glad’s grave all the time. She loved flowers.

“I said, ‘Harold you can do better than that’ and the next time we saw him he told us he was going to leave it to the university.”

After meeting with the University Bursar and Dean of Medicine, Mr Brawn requested that his grants be used to establish the Gladys M Brawn Memorial Fellowships in Medicine in honour of his late wife. He nominated a group of university and civic leaders to site on a committee to administer the fellowships.

When he first approached the university in 1985 to offer the donations, Mr Brawn was living in a tiny cottage in Tighes Hill that he had shared with his late brother Norman. The university cared from him from that time until his death in the Allandale Nursing Home at Cessnock on July 21, last year at the age of 92.

Happy Valentine’s Day

From Newcastle, With Love: Many Loves, One Timeless Message.

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