Steel and Bennie 1856-1970

Black-White-Black
In 1856, James Steel, acquired several lighters offered for sale by the Clyde Shipping Company and formed James Steel and Son with his eldest son John [1826-1908]. This Company incorporated the Glasgow and Greenock Shipping Company which he had formed soon after leaving the Clyde Shipping Company in 1851, where he had been Lighter Manager for some years. His fourth son Robert [1832-1904] also joined the partnership. James Steel died two years later in 1858 and the brothers continued to run the company until they took David Bennie  [c1843-1922] into partnership forming Steel and Bennie in 1877.
This company continued to operate in Glasgow with John's son James, a mining engineer, joining them until 1896, when he moved to London. Robert Heron Steel died in 1904 and John retired around this time. He died in London in 1908.
By the end of the war in 1917, David Bennie retired with failing health. That year a substantial shareholding in the Company was acquired by Houlder Bros & Co. Ltd. of London.
David Finlay Bennie, who had resigned his commission in the Highland Light Infantry in 1911, succeeded his bachelor uncle as Managing Director until he died in 1955, aged 74. His son-in-law PS MacCallum, who joined the company after the war, in 1945, then took over.
David F Bennie was one of the original founders of the British Tugowners Association.
During the Second World War, the two towing companies, Clyde Shipping Co. and Steel & Bennie were amalgamated under one control for the war effort and in the 1960s they again combined until Steel & Bennie was sold to a Dutch company in 1970.
 In 1956 a Centenary Booklet was produced. The Company was associated with the great era of shipping in Glasgow and provided capital to the tea merchant and tea planting ventures in India which resulted in Octavius Steel and Co. which also lasted over one hundred years and also produced a Centenary booklet in 1976.

The Great War 1914-1918

Remembering those relatives [siblings of my grandparents] who served in the Great War 1914-18.

Dr William Hart Steel 1872-1959, served with the British Navy. Eldest son of Dr TH Steel and Isabella. His wife Phoebe Hodgson was a nurse in this war. They married in 1929.
Lt-Col. Thomas Heron Steel OBE 1877-1942. A Captain in the Scottish Regiment before the war, he was a leader at Gallipoli, Steele's Post being named after him. Fifth son.
Captain John Hart Steel 1891-1968, youngest son. Recommended for a Military Cross.
Howard Erskine Davies, 1881-1817, fifth son of Sir John Mark Davies and Emily, died of wounds in the 3rd Canadian Hospital, Boulogne, France in May 1917, leaving a wife and 21 month old daughter.

Cecil Wellington 1888-1979, third son of Henry and Jessie Wellington, was a medical orderly with 1st AGH. He was gassed during the war and never fully recovered.
Cliff Wellington 1890-1954, fourth son, with 5 Bn when wounded in France in October 1917, then he was a sergeant at AIF headquarters in London, returning to Australia in 1920.
Malvern Vail, 1893-, fourth son of Luke and Catherine Vail, served in 7 Battalion AIF.
Cecil Vail, 1897-1966, youngest surviving son, went to France with 37th Battalion in 1916, returned to Australia in 1917 and was discharged permanently unfit in Feb 1918 with a pension.

Isabella Nimmo Hart

Isabella Nimmo Hart was born in 1845 in Glasgow. Her parents, Robert Hart and Janet Alice Millar were dissenting members of the Church of Scotland so she and two siblings were not baptised until some years later. Isabella was the third of 7 children, having two sisters. Her elder sister Jane married John Steel in 1866 and it is possible that Isabella corresponded with his brother Thomas in Australia before they married in February 1871 in Glasgow.
Two of Isabella's younger brothers went to Bengal as tea planters so her move to Australia must have been an exciting prospect. She seems to have thrived on it, having a large family of 9 children, although she lost her first daughter at age 5 in 1880. Her older sister only had one son and the younger one adopted two children.
Unfortunately for Isabella, her husband died suddenly in 1893, at a time of economic crisis in Melbourne, and her youngest son being only 3 years old. She was the sole executor of the estate and a large proportion of the assets were unpaid bills from patients. Her eldest son, William, was studying medicine in Glasgow, having graduated BA from the University of Melbourne.
I imagine she was well supported at this time by Jane and John Steel in Glasgow and she in turn cared for their nephew John Steel jnr who died at the Steel holiday home at Portarlington in 1896 from TB. He had been managing the family company in Calcutta after his uncle Octavius died in 1893. Around this time, the third son, David, was sent there to learn the tea trade and he became a tea merchant in Melbourne, initially with his younger brother Octavius. Another son, Donald went to Glasgow to study medicine, then on to India, Western Australia and North Qld before he died suddenly in 1911. Tyke and Jack then went farming.
Her fourth son, Thomas, was a soldier and went to Gallipoli as one of the leaders, then on to France and England. During the Great War, she also had William serving in the British Navy and Jack in the army. Her younger daughter Alice had married in 1907 and lived in Scotland. Her second son Robert lived with her until he died in 1929. Isabella lived until her 90th year, dying in Preston in 1935.

Dr Thomas Heron Steel

Thomas was the fifth of eight sons of James Steel and Mary Heron. He was born in Glasgow in 1835, attended the Glasgow High School and graduated in Medicine at Glasgow University in 1860.
In 1861 he commenced practice in the Victorian goldfields town of Creswick. His brother William, an engineer, had moved to Melbourne in 1857, and three of his brothers went to India around this time, leaving two to run the family firm in Glasgow.
In 1870, he returned to Glasgow where he married Isabella Hart, whose sister was married to his eldest brother John. His mother died 18 days later on 19 Feb 1871.
They returned to Australia on Agamemnon and their first son, William, was born in 1872. In 1874 and opportunity arose for Thomas to move to Horsham in western Victoria where he worked in the hospital. The family continued to grow, but in 1880 they lost their only daughter Mary, aged 5 years. Not long after this, they moved to Toorak in Melbourne where he commenced practice in Williams road. The family attended the Toorak Presbyterian Church where he became Treasurer.
At Christmas 1889 his brother William died suddenly from diptheria along with 3 of his 4 children. The great crash of the 90s was commencing and the Steel family was caught up in this as some of the leaders of the land boom were part of his church group.
Worse was to come as Thomas died of a ruptured appendix in 1893, just as this was becoming operable. They now had 8 surviving children, the youngest only 3 years old.

Steel family monuments

Our family history is recorded on similar solid granite monuments in the St Kilda cemetery in Melbourne and The Necropolis in Glasgow.

There is also the grave of John Steel and Mary Smith in Greenock.
The bridges and public buildings of Marvellous Melbourne bear a similarity to those of Glasgow, reminding us of William Heron Steel's connections.
In Calcutta, the Steel gates still exist at No. 14 Old Court House Street in Calcutta, home of Octavius Steel & Co..
The Steel Memorial Hospital at Dr Graham's Homes in Kalimpong, West Bengal was opened in February 1908 by Miss Elizabeth Steel.
Both Steel & Bennie and Octavius Steel & Co. published centenary booklets of their history.
John Steel's letters written on a visit to Calcutta and Cachar in 1875 have been kept and transcribed.
Photo albums belonging to Isabella Steel and made by John Steel jnr on a visit to Australia in 1889-90 have also survived, along with James Steel's original reminiscence written for his infant son in 1828.
Mary Steel age 5 was buried in the Horsham cemetery in Victoria.
John Steel's granddaughters are buried beside their Hart relatives at Troon in Scotland.
I do not know if the lonely grave by the sea at Galle in Sri Lanka has survived.

The eight sons of James Steel and Mary Heron

Our Steel family history revolves around the family of James Steel and Mary Heron who married at Greenock in 1825. They had eight sons, all born and educated in Glasgow.
1. John Steel 1826-1908 joined his father in his shipping company. He married Jane Mitchell Hart, the eldest daughter of a papermaker-ironfounder, in 1864 and they had one son, James.
2. James Steel 1828-1869 went to India with the Bank of Bengal, perhaps around 1860. His youngest brother joined him, but James died in an asylum in Melbourne in 1869 at age 41. He did not marry.
3. William Heron Steel 1830-1889 was probably named after his uncle. He became an engineer, and, while on a voyage for his health in 1857, decided to stay in Melbourne where he rose to become the Inspector-general of Public Works before succumbing to diphtheria. He married in 1882 but three of his four young children also died of the disease at that time. They were buried in the family plot at St Kilda cemetery. It is possible that his widow and infant daughter went to Scotland with her uncle Charles Nicolson, who had inherited a baronetcy and estate at Fetlar in the Shetland Islands. She died in Edinburgh in 1912.
4. Robert Heron Steel 1832-1904 joined his father and older brother in the shipping business in Glasgow. He married Margaret Robina Kirk Yellowlees in 1871 and they had a son and a daughter before she succumbed to tuberculosis, a disease which also claimed her children later in life.
5. David Heron Steel 1833-1854 trained as a mining engineer, but he died when he was only 21 years old.
6. Thomas Heron Steel 1835-1893 attended the Glasgow High School then graduated in medicine from Glasgow University in 1860, arriving in Victoria in 1861, where he commenced practice at Creswick near Ballarat. He visited Glasgow in 1870-1, shortly before his mother died, and married Isabella Hart, sister of Jane.
7. Donald Steel 1837-1884 went to India with his brothers and became a tea planter in Cachar along with Robert and Andrew Hart, brothers of Jane and Isabella. He married Anne Webb but she died in Ceylon in 1868. Donald later lost his way and drowned in Ceylon in 1883.
8. Octavius 1840-1893 went to India in 1860 and worked at the Bank of Bengal for three years before joining his brother James in business in Calcutta. After James died, he went into partnership with Alexander McIntosh from 1870 until 1876 when he formed Octavius Steel and Co. which lasted over 100 years and still exists as Octavius Tea. He brought his nephew John into partnership in 1891, but Octavius suffered from a weak heart and died in Melbourne aged 53. John also had poor health and died at his aunt's holiday home at Portarlington in Victoria in 1895, so his cousin James left the Glasgow firm of Steel and Bennie and joined Octavius Steel & Co. in London. He died in 1946, shortly before the company was nationalised.
John had 3 granddaughters and no subsequent generations, and both Robert's children died without issue, but William's surviving daughter married in UK and left grandchildren.
The Steel surname has been continued by Thomas's descendants in Australia who have continued to use the family names of Heron and Hart.

Steel family in South Uist

We have no knowledge of the family of John Steel who was born on South Uist around 1766, other than that he had a brother Donald who went to Prince Edward Island in the Gulf of St Lawrence around 1805.
Brother David of St Alphonsus Seminary in Woodstock, Ontario, also known as Angus Steel, apparently said his family escaped from the Island of Coll during the persecution [of Catholics?]. Their name was McLean and they were headed by South Uist on a boat captained by a Steele and took his name as they feared trouble under theirs.
This has come from two sources: a private correspondence with with Steele descendants in Canada in 1957; and also Notes of South Uist Families by Dr A McLean in Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness Vol LIII 1982-4, which appears to also come from Brother David.

see From The Outer Hebrides to Prince Edward Island & Wallace, Nova Scotia by Bill Lawson

Mary Smith

According to her son, Mary Smith was born in Kerry in Argylshire, Scotland around 1766. We know nothing of her father or mother, but her brother John commanded merchant ships out of London and died when his ship, a privateer called Swift caught fire in Kingston, Jamaica. He was unmarried. Her sister Janet married a skipper, Andrew McFarlane in May 1786 at Greenock.
Two years later, in December 1788, Mary married John Steel in Greenock.
They had two sons, John and James, both born in Greenock. John was born in 1789 but died of the pox when he was 20 months old. James was born in 1792.
Mary also brought up her dead sister's son John McFarlane, who was 3-4 years older than James. She may have done this on her own as her husband was press-ganged into the navy from a merchant vessel in the West Indies in 1793-4 and was away for nine years.
When he returned he was master of a sloop in the coastal trade and herring fishing for ten years before becoming ill. He died at Greenock in 1817.
Meanwhile Mary had educated her son and John McFarlane and they both went to work in the Customs House at Greenock.

We do not know if Mary remained in Greenock when her son James married and moved to Glasgow in 1825. She died in 1836 and was buried with her husband in the Inverkip Street cemetery in Greenock.

Mary Heron

Mary Heron was the eldest daughter of John Heron, a watchmaker and silversmith in Greenock and Janet Laurie. She was born in 1798 and had 7 brothers and 4 sisters. She married James Steel, who had also grown up in Greenock, in 1825, when he moved to Glasgow with the Clyde Shipping Company. They lived in York Street near the Broomielaw docks and raised 8 sons, although one died in 1854 aged 21. Two sons joined their father in a lighterage and towage company, while three went to India and two to Australia. Mary's husband died in 1858 and she died of heart disease in 1871, soon after her son Thomas returned to Glasgow to marry. They are buried at the Necropolis in Glasgow.

Mary with sons, John, Octavius, Thomas and Robert - Jan 1871

John Steel

According to his son, John Steel was born in South Uist in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland around 1766. We do not know anything of his parents but one of his brothers, Donald Steel, went to Prince Edward Island in the Gulf of St Lawrence around 1805.
He became a cooper/mariner and married Mary Smith at Greenock on the Firth of Clyde, in 1788. They had two sons, the first dying of the pox when he was 20 months old, then James, born in 1792.
A year or two later, John Steel was impressed into Nelson's navy from a merchant vessel in the West Indies. He served in the Culloden and was at many naval actions including the Battle of the Nile, The Battle of Cape St Vincent and the landing at Teneriffe, where Nelson lost his arm. It seems likely that he was also in Naples when Nelson was wooing Lady Hamilton.
After nine years, he came home after the Peace and was employed as Master of a sloop in the coasting trade and herring fishing for ten years with a share in the sloop. But he became ill for about 4 years and died in Greenock in 1817. He was buried in Inverkip Street cemetery where his monument Lair No. 71 can be found on the north wall. Ivy is threatening to cover it these days, so please take some time to remove it if you are visiting.

James Steel

James Steel was the second son of John Steel and Mary Smith. He was born in 1792 at Greenock, a year or two after his infant brother had died of the pox. When he was only one or two years old, his father was press-ganged into the navy from a merchant vessel in Jamaica. He did not return for nine years. Meanwhile, James was educated at Mr Martin and Mr Buchanan's schools.
He grew up with his cousin John McFarlane, whose mother had died, and was sent to work with him at the Customs House in Greenock when he was 13 years old. After a year there, he was with Duncan Ferguson and Co for 8 years, Robert Macfie & sons for a year, then 4 years with John Rankin before joining The Clyde Shipping Company as their agent at Greenock.
In 1825 he was promoted to Lighter Manager at Glasgow with a salary of £200 a year and he married Mary Heron, the eldest daughter of John Heron, a watchmaker and jeweller in Greenock. They lived at 46 York Street, just up from the Broomielaw wharf in Glasgow and had eight sons.
James left the Clyde Shipping Company in 1851, buying their lighters and forming the Glasgow and Greenock Shipping Company. In 1856 he took his eldest and third sons, John and Robert, into partnership, trading under the name of James Steel and Sons in the lighterage trade between Glasgow and Greenock.
James died in 1858 from cancer of the stomach. The firm moved into tugs and became Steel and Bennie in 1877. It was eventually sold in 1970.

Marion Ethel Davies

Marion Ethel Davies was born at Irving Road, Toorak [Melbourne] in 1875. She was the fourth child and second daughter of eleven children born to John Mark Davies and Emily Frances Scales. She attended Cornelia Ladies College along with her sister Lil. From about 1880 the family lived in a new 16 room house in Kooyong Road, which was sold in 1891, when they moved to their recently completed mansion in East Malvern. This was the end of the Land Boom and the family had been heavily involved. With most of the mansion locked up, they lived in part of it and the sisters worked to maintain it.
In 1911, Marion married David Steel whose family had also attended the Toorak Presbyterian Church, and the Steel and Davies boys had been at Toorak College together. The following year, she gave birth to twin boys, then three more sons and a daughter arrived by 1919.
During the first World War, they lived at Brunswick, moving to 88 Stanhope Street in Malvern until 1923 when they moved to a larger house at 121 Stanhope Street until 1935. They then moved to 6 Nott Street, Malvern, a few doors from his brother Will, and always not far from the Davies sisters.
Five of Marion's six children served overseas in the second World War and she wrote regularly to all of them. Her eldest, John, who had gone farming with his brother David, was part of the ill-fated 8th Division which was sent to Java in February 1942 and were sent to the Burma railway. Marion was probably one of the mothers, wives and girlfriends who met each week to provide mutual support in the absence of news. Although John survived the worst of the railway construction in 1943, he succumbed to the deprivations in Thailand in October 1944 although his family did not learn of this until the end of the war a year later.
In the 1950s, Marion became blind following unsuccessful operations for cataracts. She wrote regularly to her daughter Mary in England using a hat elastic writing aid to keep her lines on track and taught herself Braille to continue her love of reading. Her husband died in 1961 and she continued  in her home with a live-in companion until about a year before she died, when she moved to a nursing home nearby. She died in 1966, just short of her 91st birthday, survived by four sons, a daughter, and ten grandchildren.

David Steel

David Steel was born in Horsham, Victoria, in 1876. His father was a doctor from Glasgow. He was the third son, and fourth of nine children. The family moved to Melbourne around 1880 and he attended Toorak College. In 1893, his father died suddenly and he was sent to India to his uncle's company to learn the tea trade. He and his younger brother Tyke traded as Steel Brothers Tea merchants in Melbourne although Tyke then left to go farming.
In 1911 David married Marion Davies, whose family had long been associated through school and church. They had five sons; two of whom became doctors and three went farming, and a daughter.
David was a dedicated elder of the Armadale Presbyterian Church. He died in 1961 in his 85th year.

Dorothy Nancy Wellington

Dorothy Nancy WELLINGTON was born in Melbourne in 1913. She was the eldest child of Frank WELLINGTON and Elizabeth VAIL. Married Thomas Heron Steel. They had one son and two daughters. 
Dorothy Steel (Wellington) 1913-2003

Dorothy Steel passed away two days before Christmas after a long and fruitful life, at the age of 90 years. She attended Lauriston for all of her schooling, matriculating and going on to complete a Science degree at Melbourne University. As well as being an academic achiever at school, she was a keen hockey player, continuing this sport through her University days. A proud Lauristonian, Dorothy was the first captain of Mitchell House in 1930.

Although Physics was not taught at Lauriston at the time, Dorothy, ever determined, took up this subject at University and graduated in 1935 with a Physics major. She went on to work at Royal Melbourne Hospital with Dr. Kaye Scott in the new field of radiotherapy. Her job involved designing the dose rates and placement of radiation treatment in what were then pioneering days of X-ray technology. By all accounts she was the first full-time physicist employed in a hospital in Australia.

In 1942 Dorothy married Tom Steel, a medico and first cousin of Gladys Davies. She continued with her radiotherapy work while Tom was away at the war; then after a year living in London where Tom was studying on a Nuffield Scholarship, they settled back in Melbourne and family life became the focus. Their two daughters Elizabeth Taverner (1965) and Margaret Coventry (1967) both attended Lauriston as did their niece Margaret Henderson (1969).

Throughout the years of raising a family Dorothy was very involved in various community and charity works. She spent many years committed to the management and development of the Berry Street Babies’ Home, being president of the Building Committee during a time of major change. She served on the Lauriston School Council and was always active in the Old Lauristonians’ Association, hosting many ‘Old Girls’ meetings at her home. She loved this school and maintained contact with her old school friends throughout her life. Alongside these activities she expressed her creativity in her fine pottery and her beautiful garden.

Farewell Dorothy, you were a loyal ‘Old Girl’ through and through and “high in our hearts we hold thee.”

Lauriston Life 2004

Thomas Heron Steel 1912

Thomas Heron Steel
Doctor
7-3-1912- 13-12-2000

Tom Steel was a dedicated physician whose life was built around service to his patients and the medical profession. To Tom, the patient was sacrosanct and nothing was too much trouble. His was the generation of home visits, a practice he maintained well into his 80s. A subsequent glass of whisky was often appreciated on such occasions.

Tom was proud of his family heritage and ancestors who had been prominent early Melbourne citizens. He grew up in Malvern, a twin and the eldest of six children to David and Marion Steel. Educated at Scotch College and Melbourne University, he graduated in medicine in 1935 and took up a residency at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. He then completed his Doctor of Medicine in 1938.

A year as a resident medical officer at the Royal Children's Hospital was followed by a period as medical officer at the Austin Hospital. During the war Tom served in the 4th AGH in Australia and the Middle East. He specialised in the treatment of chemical warfare injuries, and survived a shipwreck in the Mediterranean en route to Tobruk. He was discharged in 1946 after serving in New Guinea However, his twin brother did not survive the war; he had died in a PoW camp in Thailand.

Tom married his university colleague Dorothy Wellington while on leave in 1942. Shortly after the war he was awarded a Nuffield Fellowship to study in London towards membership of the Royal College of Physicians. On his return from England, Tom specialised in diseases of the chest. As consultant to both Heidelberg Repatriation and Heatherton Sanatorium, he made a major contribution to the virtual eradication of TB in Victoria in the 1950s.

Tom Steel joined the Alfred Hospital as an honorary physician in 1946 and provided dedicated service for more than 36 years. Here he made an outstanding contribution to both the teaching and practice of medicine. In 1962 he was appointed to the board of management and in 1975 was made vice-president of the board of directors. He retired from the Alfred in 1983, but practiced into the mid-1990s.

A committed family man, he followed in the footsteps of his father, serving as an elder in the Armadale Presbyterian Church and later the Uniting Church. Here he could combine his love of music (and opportunity to sing) with the duty of worship. He loved to visit relatives and friends at Portarlington, Portsea and various rural areas around Victoria. He placed great importance on education and took great pride in the accomplishments of his immediate and extended family.

He is survived by his wife Dorothy, his three children, seven grandchildren and one great- grandchild.

This obituary was prepared by Tom Steel’s three children, Elizabeth, Richard and Margaret.

As published in "The Age", Tuesday February 27, 2001 – Today p. 7

See also:

RACP College Roll

Encyclopedia of Australian Science

Richard John Heron Steel

I was born in East Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
My father; my mother
I started school at Spring Road Primary School in 1954.
I went to Scotch College 1956-1966.
University of Melbourne B. Agr. Sc 1967-70
Married Sally PATTERSON in 1971 and moved to Brisbane to study Tropical Agronomy.
Denpasar, Bali 1971-2
UQ St Lucia, Brisbane 1971-74 Dip. Tropical Agronomy converted to M. Agr. Sc.
Honiara, Solomon Islands 1975-9
Brisbane 1979
DPI Extension Officer for the wet tropical coast based at Innisfail North Queensland 1979-1992
Manager Field Crops Program Mareeba NQ 1992-2003
Biloela Central Qld 2003-4
DPI Policy Toowoomba SQ 2004-2010
retired