John Harry Grainger: Architect and Civil Engineer
Decline and a Pauper's Grave
By 1915 Grainger was a complete invalid and was suffering the last stages of tertiary syphilis. His companion Winifred Falconer nursed him. Entirely crippled and barely able to hold cigarettes, to which he was highly addicted, he spent many hours pumping a player piano for entertainment. His son, Percy, wired him £30 a month from New York as neither he nor Falconer had any income. He died on 13 April 1917 at 71 Stevenson Street, Kew in Melbourne.
Grainger died a pauper and was buried in an unmarked grave at Melbourne’s Box Hill cemetery. It wasn’t until the 1930s that Percy Grainger became interested in his father’s story. It coincided with Percy’s development of his autobiographical museum at the University of Melbourne. He began to correspond with his father’s surviving friends and colleagues asking for recollections of John Grainger to be written down – the manuscripts upon which much of this essay is based. He also negotiated the donation to his Grainger Museum of the Amy Black correspondence.
Grainger’s name lived on after his death in the name of his architectural practice. Grainger & Little became Grainger, Little & Barlow and finally Grainger, Little, Barlow & Hawkins – the latter existed until 1924. Posthumous use of his name is perhaps an indication of how this highly accomplished architect and engineer was viewed by his professional fraternity.