[A humble request: If you can, please donate to help me carry on tracing word histories. Thank you.]
The obsolete Australian-English noun Billjim (also, less frequently, Biljim) designates the average, ordinary Australian. This noun later came to also designate the typical Australian private soldier.
This noun is a blend of Bill and Jim, pet-forms, respectively, of the male forenames William and James.
This blend arose from the fact that the male forenames Bill and Jim were each used to designate the typical bushman 1. The Australian author Henry Lawson (1867-1922) mentioned that fact in Some Popular Australian Mistakes, published in The Bulletin (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Saturday 18th November 1893 [page 20, column 4]:
Half the bushmen are not called “ Bill,” nor the other half “Jim.” We knew a shearer whose name was Reginald! Jim doesn’t tell pathetic yarns in bad doggerel in a shearer’s hut—if he did, the men would tap their foreheads and wink.
1 Here, the noun bushman designates a man who lives and works in a remote or uncultivated area of Australia.—Cf. the phrase Sydney or the bush.
In the sense of the typical bushman, the male forenames Bill and Jim were used interchangeably—as illustrated by the following from The Bulletin (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Saturday 31st October 1896 [The Red Page, column 4]:
Dr. Cobb brightens the Sept. number of N.S.W. Agricultural Gazette with a defence of the Crow, which shows how interesting natural history can be made when sauced with a little humor. “I stand up for the crow,” says Dr. Cobb. And he does, manfully. He even carries his defence into literature, quotes the harrowing tale of the lost Bill or Jim in the Australian desert whose eyes are picked out by the crow almost before his death-struggle ceases, and shrewdly enquires how Bill came back to tell the tale; or, if Jim saw him die, why he didn’t drive the crows away; and where is there any reliable affidavit against the crow, anyway? The Bulletin, as one or Bill’s patrons, shamefacedly admits that it doesn’t know, and passes the question on to Jim.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the noun Billjim that I have found:
1-: From Answers to Correspondents, published in The Bulletin (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Saturday 29th May 1897 [page 11, column 3]—only the answers were published:
C. A. J. T.: “Bill and Jim” may do. It seems useless to struggle against the Billjim disease.
2: From Aboriginalities, published in The Bulletin (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Saturday 12th March 1898 [page 14, column 3]:
Louis M.: “A bushwhacker out my way recently had a harrowing experience. Heat-apoplexy has been very prevalent round here, and Billjim, who is very fond of his brother, felt bad when he got this note, dated from a pub. 55 miles distant, and traced in a very staggery hand:—
Bushman’s Rest, W——, Feb. 3. dere Billjim, i have had a stroak, come over at once.—Fred.
Billjim saddled his favorite cuddy about tea-time, pushed on, and struck the Bushman’s Rest at dawn next day. The signs of a mighty drunk were everywhere. The door was off its hinges; snoring forms filled the house and verandah; and everything looked as dissipated and wretched as if the house had been struck by an avalanche of gin and lemons and strong plug tobacco. Fred lay in the stable, surrounded by bottles, and Billjim kicked him angrily for an explanation. ‘I told yoush I’sh had strokesh luck. Won ninetysh poundsh Tatt’sh shweepsh. But you’sh too latesh. We cutsh it outsh yeshterday! Tole yer had bloomin’sh shtroke.’”
3-: From Answers to Correspondents, published in The Bulletin (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Saturday 2nd April 1898 [page 11, column 4]:
H. Symonds: Good yarn, but practically the same tale as a Billjim narrative recently published in Bulletin.
4-: From Society, published in The Bulletin (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Saturday 9th July 1898 [page 11, column 4]:
How they combine cheap labor and piety in Sandgroper Land:
JAPANESE MISSION,
Perry’s Buildings, Murray-st.
MISSIONARY FAITHFUL MICAH
Has a Number of Young Japanese,
Capable Cooks and Others,
Accustomed to Domestic Work,
Whom he Desires to Obtain Situations for
With Persons who will endeavor to improve their religious life.
Particulars can be obtained at the Mission Home.The Little Brown Man is cheap and the Little Brown Girl is cheap and pleasant to look upon, and complaisant as well. Therefore, the boss ’Groper would rather employ them anyhow, and when, in addition, he can feel that he is “endeavoring to improve their religious life”—why, that settles it. No one ever applied at any Mission Home for particulars about the white Billjim, or improved his religious life. Billjim hasn’t any. If there was only an element of mild snuffle cast over the white bushman—if you could go, for instance, to a Mission Home kept by Faithful Bill, and he “supplied” you with Mitchell (Henry Lawson’s Mitchell, who tells dog-stories out on the plains), and allowed you to take away that meek believer (who would be too ’umble and too deeply convinced of Sin to kick about his wages), with his hymn-book and his tract, on condition that you promised to work him hard and look after his spiritual improvement—how different it all would be!
The earliest occurrence of the form Biljim that I have found is from Society, published in The Bulletin (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Saturday 15th July 1899 [page 10, column 3]:
Brisbane Courier the other day had a column report about the case of a man whose crime seemed to be lack of work. The proceedings lasted two hours; there was an adjournment, and the man must eventually be discharged for want of evidence. Yet in salaries and expenses the investigation will cost £30, whereas a railway-pass and a £1-note would have sent the man out into the Biljim country, where he would have had a chance to earn what he ate.
A variant of Billjim is Jimbill, a blend of the male forenames Jim and Bill. The earliest occurrence of the noun Jimbill that I have found is from The North Coolgardie Herald and Miners’ Daily News (Menzies, Western Australia, Australia) of Friday 16th June 1899 [page 3, column 2]:
Taking Down Jimbill.
Brisbane, June 15.
Two bushmen were robbed of £130 at Brisbane yesterday by means of the confidence trick.
Both the nouns Billjim and Jimbill occur in the following from Sundry Shows, published in The Bulletin (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Saturday 17th February 1900 [page 8, column 1]:
A dramatised version of Charles Reade’s novel, “It is Never Too Late to Mend,” was presented at Sydney Lyceum last Saturday night, when a large audience spread itself up to the ceiling, and fell down noisily at intervals, and was reproached audibly by other people, to do that morally-entitled production all honor. “It is Never Too Late to Mend” will probably have a successful run, partly because it introduces the bush and the mopoke and the laughing jackass and the man who has jim-jams, and other bits of Australian life, and partly because there is a good deal of prison in it, which gives people a home-like feeling, and makes them think of grandpa and Auld Lang Syne. The fact that it is a very badly constructed drama will also materially help to its success, as Billjim and Jimbill and the other literati of this great country like their drama with lots of loose tags about it, and in a general state of disrepair.
It was during the First World War (1914-18) that the nouns Billjim and Jimbill came to also designate the typical Australian private soldier—this is comparable to the use of Tommy (Atkins) to designate the typical British private soldier.
The earliest occurrences that I have found of this use of Billjim and Jimbill are as follows, in chronological order:
1-: From the Sandringham Southern Cross (Sandringham, Victoria, Australia) of Saturday 16th January 1915 [page 4, columns 6 & 7]—in this text, Billjim and Jimbill are used interchangeably to designate the same person:
“Proud Percy” writes:—When Billjim (we call him that, though he has a much prettier name) announced that he was going to the front to slay Germans many admired him for his determination—and he was determined, as you will see later. Some of us shed tears, some stopped drinking beer, tea, and other things, for twenty-four hours, and shed pennies to give him a farewell. In the meantime Jimbill got ready, and sharpened his teeth to eat the Germans with. The day of departure drew nigh, and we gave our instructions to slay Hoginheimer & Co. with a fearful slay; also a watch to see how many he slew in an hour, and he went off to obey and honour his country. To-day I got a shock. Saw Billjim in the street, and at once blamed the whiskey, so ran away and changed the brand. Later on I ran into him again. He spoke, so I was calmed, and knew it was no apparition. Poor Jimbill! He told me a tale of blighted hopes and rotten luck. He got nearly up to the front, when a cow of a doctor came up and wanted to prod him with a needle to vaccinate him, so Billjim reared up and like a true soldier would not allow any fool to poke cold steel into him. All the other fools let him—a nice lot of soldiers. When they get to the front they will let the Germans prod them with a bayonet. Not so, Billjim. He would object. I tell you I am, for one, proud of Jimbill, and intend to subscribe and put him on a monument for future generations to gaze on and think over.
2-: From Truth (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) of Saturday 30th January 1915 [page 1, column 3]:
REV. WORRY WORRALL.
THE STORMY PETREL AGAIN ON THE WING.At a “Pleasant Sunday Afternoon” service at Wesley Church, Lonsdale-street last Sabbath, Worrall got up steam and went bald-headed for the rich and seemingly respectable section of citizens who frequent places of ill-fame, and by setting pernicious examples encourage the pornically-disposed youth of this chaste metropolis to indulge in the most indefensible forms of carnal pastimes.
The rev. watchdog recommended his audience to carefully peruse the article of Captain C. E. W. Bean on the men in khaki who were on their way back to these shores suffering from a disease […]. Captain Bean […] mentioned that some of the men returning have been made the unwilling victims “o’ the disease o’ France”—to use the language of Ancient Pistol […].
[…] Who are the men and women, referred to by Worrall, who made it possible for Billjim in khaki to spoil his prospects of becoming a field marshal? Do these people attend “Pleasant (?) Sunday Afternoons,” that the rev. party was so insistent in his reference to their scandalous conduct?
3-: From The Mullumbimby Star (Mullumbimby, New South Wales, Australia) of Thursday 4th February 1915 [page 4, column 6]:
The news that has come through has been of a very up-and-down nature—a history of trenches taken at great loss of life and re-taken at as big a loss again. […] At present all the combatants in Belgium and the north of France are in precisely the same condition as they have been for months past.
[…]
The Turk has not yet captured Egypt—Billjim (the Australian) still holds it; the Cossack (if he does not gain much ground still keeps up his Napoleon-to-Moscow tactics) and keeps on harassing the Austaian [sic] and the German.
4-: From an article about the “aquapuritans”, defined by the author as “an intermeddling tribe of fanatical reformers”, published in Truth (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia) of Saturday 6th March 1915 [page 1, column 1]:
The sign of drink on a member of the Expeditionary Force, say these people, is a disgrace to the King’s uniform. Very well, friends; if you think it possible to fill the ranks with saints and total abstainers, why do you not offer your own offspring to the Crown to meet and repel the danger with which the Empire is threatened? These exemplary young gentlemen are still doing the “Block,” 2 either too proud to consort with Billjim, or too cowardly to risk their precious skins in defence of the country.
word histories 