Caroline Chisholm
Page 12
Caroline’s doctor diagnosed a severe pulmonary infection.3 Horrified by the tale Margaret Ann Bolton told, Caroline interviewed both the ship’s captain and the surgeon. Realising that they had indeed ill-treated the woman, she petitioned the governor to charge both men. When Sir George hesitated, she was insistent: “I am ready to prosecute: I have the necessary evidence; and if it be a risk whether I or these men shall go to prison, I am ready to stand the risk.” If Caroline had prosecuted and lost the case, it is likely she would have been fined or even possibly faced a jail term.4
The trial, in mid-April 1842, with Roger Therry leading the prosecution, held the colony in thrall. Other immigrants had suffered bullying and brutish behaviour on the high seas, but few thought they had any redress against someone as powerful as a ship’s captain, let alone that the law would hold him to account for his ill deeds. This case was to prove that both were possible. The captain and the surgeon were each sentenced to six months’ jail and fined £50. Reporting the verdict, The Australasian Chronicle noted that “the result of this trial will give masters of ships to know that they have no power to punish passengers at their caprice”.5 The case would also bolster Caroline’s subsequent appeals for substantial changes in conditions on boats transporting immigrants around the world. It was a cause she took up first in her 1842 pamphlet Female Immigration Considered, where she suggested that “the rate of remuneration to the surgeon-superintendent ought to be increased so as to secure the services of properly educated and responsible individuals”. Some ten years later she would give similar evidence to government committees in London and help redesign the interiors of immigrant ships during her work with the Family Colonization Loan Society.
In 1842, however, although the conviction of the ship’s captain and surgeon brought a certain peace of mind to Margaret Ann Bolton, it was not to significantly alter the story of her sad life. In Roger Therry’s words:
Poor Margaret Ann Bolton lingered for a few months in the Colony . . . she found relief in sitting, for a few hours each day, in the verandah of my house, which was in a cheerful situation, and where a gentle breeze breathed from the sea in the hottest days of an Australian summer . . . Missing her accustomed visits, I made inquiry about her; and found that some days before she had surrendered her subdued and bruised spirit, and had been consigned to an humble grave.6
Nor did punishment persuade the Carthaginian’s surgeon, Richard William Nelson, to change his ways. Not long after finishing his prison sentence, he set up a successful medical practice in Sydney. He married a wealthy local lady and “sported a carriage, the usual indication of professional prosperity”. At the height of his success, though, news reached him that the wife he thought was still safely in England was, in fact, expected to arrive in Sydney within days. “With wonderful rapidity of action, he sold his carriage, horses, furniture, etc. and stole away from the Colony in a ship sailing at night, bound for California.”7 His fate thereafter remains unknown.
Roger Therry was indeed assisted in the Carthaginian case by Thomas Callaghan, then a twenty-seven-year-old, somewhat impecunious lawyer who had arrived in Sydney from Dublin in 1839, a year after Caroline. Seven years younger than Caroline, Callaghan was immediately captivated by her when he met her at Ann and Roger Therry’s home for the first time on Tuesday, 22 February 1842, writing in his diary, “Only that she is a little too old and married I should not be unlikely to transfer to her my home affections . . . I think that she has a kind heart and I consider her decidedly good looking.”8 A series of meetings and an exchange of notes between the two followed immediately, mostly initiated by him, but not always. There is no suggestion of an affair between them, but in the way of sudden and mutual attraction between two people, they managed to communicate on six of the next seven days. Callaghan was clearly besotted with Caroline.
There is no evidence as to how he affected her, although Thomas Callaghan believed that she was “very friendly” towards him. Caroline may have been responding in a normal cordial manner and anything warmer may have been just wishful thinking on his behalf. Then again, she may have been lonely and genuinely charmed by the attentions of a good-looking younger man about town. Caroline was an elegant, fashionable woman, an extrovert who, despite her work, still managed to collect friends and enjoy society. Her children were tucked away at Windsor with Miss Galvin and her husband had been absent for more than two years. There would certainly have been ongoing communication between Caroline and Archibald but, given that mail was still transported by sailing ships, it would have taken months for letters to reach their destination. Caroline must have felt herself to be very much alone, but also free to live the life she wished.
Portrait of Thomas Callaghan, by W. Baker, 1847 (National Library of Australia, nla.obj-148456420)
With time on his hands and being a socially insouciant character, Thomas Callaghan decided to pursue his new acquaintance. The very day after meeting Caroline, he visited her home to give legal advice on the contracts that she was drawing up for the immigrants. In his diary he painted firsthand the scene he encountered: “She was sitting there writing hard amidst a bevy of women assembled round her in a small and crowded room. She looked very well and happy: but this must be terrible work for a lady, and it is apparently done for charity’s sake.” And then, “Our interview was short and satisfactory to me.”9 His description reflects the belief then prevalent among middle- and upper-class men that women were too frail to work.
Two days later he was successfully chasing donations for Caroline’s home from leading criminal lawyer George Turner. Then, furthering his claim for her attention, he sent Caroline a contribution of one guinea of his own money. In present-day terms, that one guinea was worth about $180 — not an insignificant amount from a man whose diary constantly alluded to his financial difficulties. The next entry expressed his delight when Caroline sent back a note “kindly written”. Like a love-struck schoolboy, he exclaims to his diary, “Her name is Caroline!”10
The following Sunday, returning from church, he met her again and she gave him a “very friendly salute”, which inspired him to return home and to write her a long letter. He received her reply later that evening and although he doesn’t describe it in detail in the diary, it sounds as though Caroline, aware of his growing interest in her, was trying now to hold him at arm’s length. He says her letter was “kindly and anxiously written.”11 Given the frequency and the rapidity of the messages between them, their notes must have been hand-delivered by a servant.
The budding friendship then fell into an enforced hiatus. Thomas Callaghan was sent to Maitland and Windsor for more than a month to attend the local Quarter Sessions Court. There is a considerable gap of about two months in his diary entries, aside from references to other lawyers and the various cases with which he was concerned. It is likely that Caroline was out of Sydney for some of this time, travelling with her immigrant girls. On Monday, 2 May, he recommenced writing, endeavouring to fill in some of the lost days, before going on to comment on the Carthaginian case. He described Caroline being questioned by the senior defence lawyer, Edward Broadhurst, a close friend of his, to whom Callaghan had admitted his infatuation: “Mrs Chisholm was a witness in the case and was politely cross-examined by Broadhurst who was quizzing me in court about her. She gave her evidence with a great deal of nervousness . . . I like being on intimate terms with women of station and character.” Yet while Thomas Callaghan’s words suggest he was still fond of Caroline, his next statement makes it clear that he now felt it would be foolish to pursue a married woman: “I am very fond of female friendship and I have pleasure in thinking that there are such women . . . who take an interest in my fortunes. But there is noone in this country who can be more than a friend to me.”12
There is very little about Caroline in Thomas Callaghan’s diary during the next eight months, apart from a note saying he was not impressed by her 1842 pamphlet, Female Immigration Considered. There were, however, large gaps betwe
en entries, as he acknowledged in January 1843: “I have been more than usually dilatory in making up this history of my fortunes.”13 When he does mention her again, in late January 1843, it seems that his interest in Caroline has cooled further. Although unwell from colic, he is once more dining at the Therrys’ home. Caroline is there and seems to have been teasing him about his matrimonial prospects. His reaction is unequivocal, “I don’t think as much of Mrs Chisholm as I once did.”14 There are few references to her thereafter.
With one exception, all other biographies of Caroline fail to mention Thomas Callaghan.15 His cameo in Caroline’s life was short, but to ignore him is to discard a fascinating insight into Caroline both as a woman and as a prominent member of colonial society. His diary accentuates two aspects of Caroline rarely highlighted: her sex appeal and her social mien. Few biographers have paid any attention to Caroline’s physical appearance, and where she is described or depicted she is almost always portrayed as stout and sexually unappealing. The only early biographer to describe her was Eneas Mackenzie. It appears unlikely, considering a few of the inaccuracies in his manuscript, that he knew Caroline well, although he would probably have seen her in Sydney in the early 1840s.16 Showing Victorian “delicacy against gratifying a mere morbid taste by rudely peering behind the veil of domestic life”,17 he gave very little detail about Caroline the person or her family, although he was unable to resist a short description of her near the end of his book: “Mrs Chisholm is tall, embonpoint, and . . . her eyes are grey, penetrating in their glance; and her countenance beaming with kindness . . . Her voice is musical, without the slightest provincialism, she speaks with fluency and appropriateness of phraseology, and, as occasion calls forth, can be affecting, sarcastic, or witty.”18 Mackenzie published this account in 1852, some ten years after Thomas Callaghan found her so attractive. Caroline was admittedly only forty-four years old, but she had, by then, taken eight pregnancies to full term. No wonder she was “embonpoint”, as he puts it, meaning “stout”. Few women who had given birth eight times would have retained a slender figure, and the prescribed female fashion of the day, with its crinoline cage, would likely have exacerbated the impression.
Down the ages, Caroline has been portrayed as rotund and frumpy, but that wasn’t the case in her early years, and in fact she was probably never dowdy. Evidence from two disinterested men, Sir George Gipps, who described her as “a handsome stately young woman”,19 and Thomas Callaghan, who was very obviously smitten, indicates that she probably exuded as much sexual allure as was possible for a conventionally dressed Victorian woman. Then, too, her husband, Archibald, was another man clearly attracted to her.
Caroline noticed when other women, such as Flora, were beautiful, and she understood well the attraction between the sexes. There is no doubt that Caroline was a committed Roman Catholic and felt morally driven to use her abilities to help less fortunate people, but to suggest that therefore she must have been a sexless, drab creature with no interest in her own appearance or appeal to the opposite sex is not just a mistake, it also serves to deny her real character. In later years, she was, according to Mackenzie and various illustrations, overweight, and yet she still maintained her enjoyment of fashion and style. A story that has come down through the family recounts how, when she was in her late sixties and very unwell, she was being driven in a carriage from one part of London to another. All at once she asked her driver to stop, so that she could do a little window-shopping and study the latest modes in women’s fashions — hardly the act of someone not interested in appearances.20
Similarly, it would be ignoring the truth to suggest that her character was universally admired. Even Eneas Mackenzie described her as “sarcastic”, while Thomas Callaghan goes further at times in his diary, saying that she “wants judgement” and “is a very unreasonable and indiscreet woman”.21 He even quotes Ann Therry as agreeing with his summation. In Thomas Callaghan’s case, it is likely that he had been irritated by her teasing him about his possible love interests in Sydney; however, Caroline apparently admitted to being imprudent and lacking judgement, according to another of her early biographers, Samuel Sidney. In his 1850 book, Sidney’s Emigrant Journal, which includes a chapter on Caroline, he described how she asked him not to mention the name of the pamphlet she had written about immigration eight years earlier, Female Immigration Considered. Apparently “in spite of [using] dashes and asterisks” instead of names, she had caused “dismay among . . . many of the wooing husbands and Don Juanic bachelors of Sydney”. Wrote Sidney, “We respect the scruples of the writer; and . . . we will circulate no scandal.”22 Caroline’s pamphlet no doubt caused something of a stir within the colony and she obviously thought better of revisiting troubled waters, even if it would have given her pleasure to allude to the real men who were the hidden lechers of the city, so that they could be shamed. She may have made that decision to minimise any distress caused to the wives and families of the men involved.
There is no doubt that Caroline was a remarkably gifted woman who contributed to the betterment of thousands of immigrants. But to ignore her anchorage in our temporal world, with all the fluctuations of temper and character that involves, as though she were some sort of superior deity, is to diminish her capabilities and achievements and suggest perhaps that divine interference, rather than skill and courage, was responsible.
As for Thomas Callaghan, he had a successful albeit short career in Australia, becoming a Crown prosecutor before being appointed in 1858 as one of the first three judges in the Court of Quarter Sessions. A few years after first meeting Caroline, he married Eliza Milford, the daughter of a Supreme Court judge; they had two sons and a daughter. Unfortunately, he was only forty-eight when he was killed in an accident involving a horse at Braidwood, in the New South Wales Southern Tablelands.23
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Success is not measured by the length of a project, so much as by its efficiency. Caroline’s home operated for just seven months, yet within that time she placed some two thousand immigrants in work, 1400 of them women, mostly outside Sydney. The home closed in mid-1842, when there was no longer any demand for its services, as the backlog of unemployed had been cleared. Soon after, Caroline documented the story in Female Immigration Considered. When publishing the pamphlet in late 1842 she claimed to be “the first lady in Australia who has ventured in the character of an author, to appear before the public”.24 She was wrong. A year earlier, in October 1841, a children’s story had appeared in the Sydney Gazette, titled A Mother’s Offering to Her Children, and dedicated to Master Reginald Gipps, son of the governor. The writer ascribed herself only as “The Author”, although she is now believed to have been Charlotte Barton, an immigrant governess who also made legal history by winning guardianship of her four children from an insane, alcoholic and violent second husband.25
Despite Caroline’s success with the Immigrants’ Home, as 1843 ventured onto the horizon the economic outlook seemed little improved, with the colony still beset by depression and drought. It would be another two years before there was any recovery. Although she had closed the home, Caroline kept the registry open to help new immigrants find work; that also gave her an excuse not to return to the rural tedium of Windsor. Leaving her home office in Sydney, she moved first to Glebe and then took a lease on a cottage with a large garden at Albert Park, about eleven kilometres from town on the Liverpool Road.26 At the same time she retrieved her sons from Miss Galvin in Windsor. They were growing up: Archibald Jnr was seven, William six and Henry four years old. Little information exists about their private lives at this time, but it is likely that at least Archibald Jnr, and possibly also William, received formal tuition, either privately or in a day school. Miss Galvin was no longer with them, but undoubtedly Caroline would have hired other nannies and servants. Her husband was still in India, and Caroline was not about to become a homebody.
There was change, too, in how New South Wales was to be governed. Like a first-term foetus still snuggl
ed in the womb, wholly dependent on its mother, the colony was preparing for its birth as a fledgling democracy. The Legislative Council had existed since 1824, but its ten to fifteen members were appointed by the man they advised, the governor. Now, in 1843, the council was extended to thirty-six men, twenty-four of them elected by a restricted franchise of adult, white males who met strict financial criteria. Put another way, the “property-owning electorate had produced a property-owning Council . . . [it was] overwhelmingly Protestant, prosperous and conservative”.27 Nonetheless, it was a beginning and it at least held some sort of limited potential. Moreover, there were exceptions to the rule; it wasn’t a totally homogenous entity. Amongst the elected members were pro-democracy agitator William Charles Wentworth; Caroline’s friend Roger Therry, a Catholic who had been acting Attorney General for the previous two years; and also the Presbyterian minister, immigration campaigner and abrasive firebrand John Dunmore Lang.
Within three months of the election, Caroline was invited to give evidence to one of the first committees established by the new Legislative Council, on the existing conditions for labourers and skilled workmen.28 If any further indication was needed to confirm her extraordinary position in the colony, this was it. The committee consisted of seven men; they interviewed fifteen expert male witnesses, plus Caroline. In a society where only a small percentage of men were even allowed to vote, and where women’s suffrage wasn’t discussed, the invitation to contribute was a clear acknowledgement of the value of Caroline’s work.