The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka

by Clare Wright

  4 A file of cuttings from the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard is held by the Royal Historical Society of Victoria.

  5 The observations of Fanny Davis are drawn from her ship diary, written upon the Conway, 3 June 1858–10 September 1858. The diary is held at the State Library of Victoria.

  6 The best analysis of the nineteenth-century concept of ‘manliness’, which is quite different from today’s notion of ‘masculinity’, is provided by Gail Bederman in her book Manliness and Civilization. My thanks to Marilyn Lake for pointing me in the direction of Bederman’s work.

  7 This fellow’s words are recorded in Mrs May Howell’s book.

  8 These lines are all drawn from the Marco Polo Chronicle, 23 November 1853–21 January 1854. Thomas Evans, brother of Charles and George Evans, was on this ship.

  9 For these letters and diaries to be found in Australia, either copies or original items need to have been repatriated to Australian collections. Copies of Lucy’s letters are now held at the Gold Museum, Ballarat.

  10 Graeme Davison discusses the English pastoral idyll, transplanted onto Victoria’s rural hinterland, in The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne. Historian Helen Doyle has also written eloquently on this subject in her unpublished doctoral thesis.

  11 This statistic is not derived from immigration agent Bell’s reports. It is gleaned from the research of Pauline Rule. See her article ‘Irish Women and the Problem of Ex-Nuptial Conception’.

  12 In 1857, popular goldfields balladeer Charles Thatcher penned a song touching on the cultural anxiety about the sexual homogeneity of Chinese immigrants. Called ‘The Fine Fat Saucy Chinaman’, it included these lyrics: Now John, with all his many faults/Leads an industrious life/The greatest drawback that he has/Is that he has no wife …Now as he’s getting lots of gold/I’ve not the slightest doubt/That ultimately Chinese girls/By thousands will come out. For the full song, see Thatcher’s Colonial Songster, 79.

  13 On the Chinese regarding Europeans as inferior, see Keir Reeves and Andrew Mountford’s work on the Chinese during the gold rush.

  14 PROV, original papers tabled in the Legislative Assembly, VPRS 3253/53.

  THREE: CROSSING THE LINE

  1 The life of Louisa Timewell, including her first-hand accounts of the ship journey to Victoria, is honoured in the 1934 Records of Pioneer Women. I’ve supplemented the 1934 entry with basic birth, death and marriage research.

  2 The Marco Polo Chronicle.

  3 Céleste de Chabrillan was a French courtesan prior to her marriage to Lionel de Chabrillan, the French consul. She had written a scandalous memoir of her highly colourful life prior to her voyage to Australia. Her second book was her memoir of her journey to and time in Victoria, based on diary entries and published as Un Deuil au bout du mond (Death at the End of the World) some twenty years later. Shunned by Melbourne society due to her self-publicised shady past, the melodramatic but remarkably modern Céleste came to see her time in the antipodes as a sort of bereavement. An English translation of Un Deuil has been written by Patricia Clancy and Jeanne Allen as The French Consul’s Wife.

  4 Charlotte Spence’s experiences aboard the John and Lucy in June 1854 are captured in her husband John Spence’s diary. Agnes Paterson’s observations are drawn from her ship journal aboard the Lord Clyde in 1859, held by the State Library of Victoria. Henry Nicholls’ observations are drawn from his 1852 ship diary. Henry and his wife Marian lost their baby daughter, Marian, eight days into this ill-fated journey. Marian was their fourth child. The Nicholls had five more children in Victoria. State Library of Victoria holds all of the these manuscripts.

  5 The observations of Bethuel Adams are drawn from his ship diary, written aboard the Van Marnix, departing Gravesend in October 1853. The diary is held by the State Library of Victoria.

  6 Quoted in Don Charlwood’s The Long Farewell, 88.

  7 The observations of Jane Swan are drawn from her Diary of a Voyage from Gravesend to Port Phillip on the William and Jane, 12 August 1853–2 December 1853, held by the State Library of Victoria.

  8 An excellent account of the Ticonderoga tragedy and its aftermath can be found at www.mylorenet/Ticonhome.html

  9 Henry Nicholls gives us this insight.

  10 James Menzies immigrated to Victoria in 1848. His shipboard diary is held by the State Library of Victoria.

  11 Beelzebub, alias Lucifer, alias Satan, was sometimes held accountable for the demonic possession of young women. His name also comes up repeatedly in the Salem Witch Trials.

  12 The observations of Alpheus Boynton are drawn from his diaries, kept between 1852 and 1856. The diaries are held by the Mitchell Library in Sydney.

  13 Sarah Ann Raws’ shipboard diary, kept between May and August 1854, is part of the Tomlinson Papers, held at the State Library of Victoria. Sarah’s father had owned a cotton mill in England before trying his luck in Victoria. Sarah remained in Victoria after the rest of her family returned to England in 1858. Sarah married butcher John Tomlinson and lived on the Mt Alexander diggings. They had ten children.

  14 Mrs William Graham sailed to Victoria on the Marco Polo in 1863. Her account of her journey is held by the State Library of Victoria.

  FOUR: THE ROAD

  1 John D’Ewes published his account Ballarat in 1854 in London in 1857.

  2 These statistics are compiled from the Melbourne Monthly Magazine vol. 1 no. 11 June 1855 and the Colonial Secretary’s Office Inward Correspondence, PROV VPRS 1189/94. For Aborigines as a ‘dying race’, see William Westgarth’s early history of Victoria, Victoria and the Victorian Gold Mines. Westgarth attributed the decline in the Aboriginal population to the practices of cannibalism and infanticide, particularly of first-born females.

  3 Solomon Belinfante’s ship journal, penned between 3 April and 21 June 1854, is held by the State Library of Victoria.

  4 The observations of Martha Clendinning are drawn from her unpublished memoirs, Recollections of Ballarat: A Lady’s Life at the Diggings Fifty Years Ago. The manuscript forms part of the Clendinning–Rede papers, held by the State Library of Victoria.

  5 This lovely phrase belongs to Weston Bate, drawn from his essay ‘Gold: Social Energiser and Definer’.

  6 Janet Kincaid’s letter is included in a collection of letters addressed to residents of Maryborough, Victoria, 1851–1902. The collection is held by the State Library of Victoria under the author/creator label Maryborough. The diary of American digger Silas Andrews is also in this collection of records.

  7 Information pertaining to Eliza Darcy is drawn from the oral history and records of the Darcy/Howard families.

  8 The passage is published in John Capper’s 1855 guidebook.

  9 The observations of Eliza Lucus are drawn from her reminiscences, written in 1913 and held by the State Library of Victoria.

  10 Jane McCracken’s anguished letters make for uncomfortable reading. From the physical and emotional symptoms she describes to her mother, it is likely Jane was suffering from postnatal depression. Jane’s letters form part of the McCracken Family Papers, available on microfilm as part of the Australian Joint Copying Project. Jane’s brothers-in-law, Robert and Peter McCracken, established the famous McCracken’s City Brewery in 1851. McCracken’s was one of the original six breweries that formed the cartel of Carton and United Breweries (CUB) in 1903.

  11 John Capper cites these statistics.

  12 Historian Geoffrey Serle relates these statistics in The Golden Age.

  13 These are merchant Robert Caldwell’s numbers.

  14 William Kelly records these numbers in the 1860 edition of his book. William Westgarth’s offers the same statistical analysis.

  15 This forms part of Magistrate John D’Ewes’ analysis of what went wrong in 1854.

  16 Bonwick’s Notes of a Gold Digger is the source here.

  17 Blake’s vision in turn came from Luke 3:2–6: Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him. Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain an
d hill made low. The crooked roads shall become straight, the rough ways smooth. And all mankind will see God’s salvation.

  18 The observations of Emily Skinner are drawn from her journals and memoir. These were written anonymously, the initials E. S. being the only clue to the woman who had immigrated to Victoria in 1854 to join her husband. Writer Edward Duyker painstakingly traced Emily’s identity and published the manuscript in 1995. The observations of Mary Bristow are drawn from her journal, kept in 1854, and catalogued as Aunt Spencer’s Diary in the Royal Historical Society of Victoria’s collection. Mary addressed her journal to her nephew. Mrs Mannington Caffyn’s observations are included in the anthology of women’s writing, Coo-ee: Tales of Australian Life by Australian Ladies, edited by Mrs Patchett Martin in 1891. Other contributors to the collection include the well-known writers ‘Tasma’ and Mrs Campbell Praed.

  19 James Bonwick, Australian Gold Digger’s Monthly Magazine, March 1853.

  20 Margaret Watson’s story is recorded in Records of Pioneer Women.

  21 These stories are drawn from the Victorian Police Gazette of 27 February 1854 and 24 March 1854 but any given edition of the Police Gazette in this era will have similar details of runaway women and dead babies.

  22 The physical description of Catherine Bentley comes from her prison entry record. Public Record Office Victoria, VPRS 521: vol. 2: prisoner no 2818. Descriptions of her temperament are from family oral history. Andrew Crowley, descendant, interview with author, 20 July 2004. Audio and video recorded. Description of James from Victorian Police Gazette, 20 March 1856.

  FIVE: THE GOLD DIGGERS OF ’54

  1 PROV VPRS 1189/93, monthly returns January 1854.

  2 Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, A Visit to Australia and Its Gold Regions (London, 1853). This rare book is held in the Special Collections of the Baillieu Library, the University of Melbourne.

  3 This is Jo Anne Levy’s number. Susan Lee Johnson cites the proportion of women on the southern Californian diggings as three per cent in 1850 and nineteen per cent by 1860.

  4 Susan Lee Johnson makes this point in Roaring Camp.

  5 PROV, Colonial Secretary’s Office Outward Registered Correspondence, VPRS 3219, E1483.

  6 The quote is drawn from an undated article in the Ballarat Star entitled ‘Reminiscences of 1851–4’. The article is in the Francis William Niven Collection held by the University of Melbourne Archives. MS 74/73.

  7 Chris McConville used this expression in his speech at the launch of the collection Deeper Leads, edited by Keir Reeves and David Nichol, at the Ballarat Art Gallery in 2007.

  8 Mary Ann Tyler (nee Brooksbank) wrote her memoirs of life as a female gold digger in New South Wales in 1909, six years prior to her death.

  9 The Advertiser article is cited in Fred Cahir’s PhD thesis, ‘Black Gold’.

  10 Records of shareholders date for 1857. Marion McAdie’s CD ROM, Mining Shareholders Index 1857–1886, is an invaluable data set for tracing the shareholding activities of individuals and families. Her index is extracted from the Victorian Government Gazette 1857–86.

  11 Geelong Advertiser, 10 June 1854.

  12 Star of the East arrived in September 1853. Depending on whether Anne conceived on board, the baby could have been born as early as April 1854. The dead baby materialises on the certificate for Anne’s second marriage. Anne Diamond (née Keane/Kane) married John Bourke in August 1856.

  13 Quoted in Laurel Johnson’s groundbreaking booklet, Women of Eureka.

  14 Mary Davison King’s story is relayed in Records of Pioneer Women.

  15 Shandy-gaff was a mixture of pale ale and ginger beer, a forerunner of today’s shandy of beer and lemonade.

  16 Mr McMillan’s evidence to the Gold Fields Commission, recorded in the Gold Fields Commission Report 1854–55.

  17 Harriet’s story is included in John Capper’s guidebook.

  18 For Mrs Fitchett’s reports in the Geelong Advertiser, see, for example, 13 February 1854.

  19 Victorian Census, 1857.

  SIX: WINNERS AND LOSERS

  1 PROV, Denominational School Board, Inward Registered Correspondence, VPRS 61/3.

  2 All details of Sarah Skinner’s death are drawn from her inquest files. PROV VPRS 24.

  3 William Buchan, Domestic Medicine; Or, A Treatise on the Prevention and Cure of Diseases by Regimen and Simple Medicine, 1798 A. Strahan [etc.] cited in Rudy’s List of Archaic Medical Terms. http://www.antiquusmorbus.com/

  4 Jean Edois Carey Inquest. PROV Inquest Deposition Files, VPRS 24/18 (1854/103).

  5 Observations of Charles Eberle are drawn from his diary, held by the Royal Historical Society of Victoria.

  6 The observations of Martin Mossman are drawn from his 1853 letters to his Aunt Hetty. The State Library of Victoria holds the letters. Martin told Hetty that he was going to leave the diggings for New Orleans, but there is no record of his departure from Victoria.

  7 Antoine Fauchery’s Lettres d’un Mineur was originally published in Paris in 1857.

  8 These numbers are drawn from Digger—Victorian Pioneers Index 1837–1888, available online at the National Library of Australia’s eResources website. The figures are by nature conservative, as many itinerant gold seekers did not stop to register their newborns, particularly stillbirths.

  9 David Goodman devotes a whole chapter to the concept of Excitement in his exemplary study, Gold Seeking.

  10 The observations of Samuel Huyghue are drawn from his unpublished account, The Ballarat Riots, penned in 1884. The State Library of Victoria holds the manuscript.

  11 Greg Blake has calculated the mean ages of the soldiers stationed at Ballarat. He does so in order to make a counterpoint: that the men of the 40th had significantly more experience as trained soldiers than Huyghue gives them credit for.

  12 See, for example, Paul Kennelly’s unpublished thesis, Wives in Search of Servants. Kennelly has compiled a particularly useful collection of data tables regarding female emigration to Victoria in the period 1848–54.

  13 These statistics are drawn from my analysis of the Victorian marriage registers. There were many more common law marriages, like that of Anne and Martin Diamond and William and Sarah Skinner. The fact that wives were choosing de facto relationships over sanctified marriages is another indicator that women were hedging their bets, particularly in an era when divorce laws meant that til death us do part was the legal reality.

  14 Henry Catchpole’s observations are drawn from the book Victoria Gold:The Everyday Life of Two English Brothers Who Were Diggers, compiled by Kenneth Kutz.

  15 Catherine Chisholm’s brother’s remarks are drawn from a rare collection of letters spanning 1854–75. The letters are all to Catherine from her tight-knit farming family in Scotland. The Chisholm family papers are held by the State Library of Victoria.

  16 The Brownlow Medal is a annual award ceremony for Australian Rules football that has become infamous for the bared flesh and glamorous gowns of the players’ wives and girlfriends. The event is held at Crown Casino.

  17 Irvine Louden’s extraordinary 1992 study, Death in Childbirth, looks at the evolution of systems of maternal mortality between 1800 and 1950 in Britain, the USA, Australia, New Zealand and continental Europe.

  18 Janet McCalman, Sex and Suffering.

  19 Henry Handel Richardson based her novel The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney on her father’s life. Dr Richardson’s statistics are quoted in the MA thesis of Ballarat nurse Desley Beechey.

  20 Keith Bowden, Goldrush Doctors.

  21 Observations of James Selby are drawn from his diary and papers, kept between 1852 and 1854. The State Library of Victoria holds these manuscripts.

  22 Desley Beechey reveals these ghastly details.

  23 Details of Mrs Hazlehurst’s case are drawn from court reports in the Ballarat Times, 19 February 1858.

  24 Harry Hastings Pearce (1897–1984) left an extensive archive of goldfields’ history and memorabilia to the State L
ibrary of Victoria. Pearce’s manuscript, What It Was Like to Be a Miner, provides these details about infant mortality.

  25 The anonymous digger is quoted in John Capper’s guidebook.

  26 Jocelynne Scutt, Even in the Best of Homes (Ringwood: Penguin, 1983).

  27 Isaac Batey referred to the Hobart Town coat of arms in his reminiscences of life on the goldfields. Batey’s manuscript is held by the Royal Historical Society of Victoria.

  28 The Williams case is reported in the Bendigo Advertiser 22 March 1856. Other examples of domestic violence cases are contained in the PROV series Court Records, including Petty Sessions Registers, 1854–1962, VPRS 289, and Court of Petty Sessions Record Book VPRS 5939, both series housed at the Ballarat Archives Centre.

  29 Eliza Perrin’s letters are held in the Montrose Cottage Collection at the Gold Museum, Ballarat.

  30 The dirty picture scandal is recounted in the Melbourne Monthly Magazine vol. 1, no. 1 May 1855. The Sophia Lewis story is told in exhilarating detail by Melbourne criminal lawyer Ken Oldis in The Chinawoman.

  31 See John S. Levi and G. F. J. Bergman’s history of Jewry in the colonial era, Australian Genesis.

  32 The first purpose-built synagogue was consecrated in November 1855 in Ballarat East.

  33 There was a large Jewish Harris clan in Cornwall, many of whom emigrated in the 1850s. A number of Henry Harrises came to Victoria between 1852 and 1854, making Ballarat Henry difficult to trace. Ballarat’s current synagogue was built in 1861.

  34 Stories drawn from Records of Pioneer Women.

  35 Keith Pearce and Helen Fry, The Lost Jews of Cornwall.

  36 Dyte was so lauded by Nathan Spielvogel, a Ballarat historian who specialised in Jewish history. His lionising of Dyte appears in his article ‘The Ballarat Hebrew Congregation’.

  37 Quoted in Marise Lawrence Cohen, ‘Caroline Chisholm and Jewish Immigration’.

  38 Levi and Bergman make this point in Australian Genesis.

  SEVEN: THE WINTER OF THEIR DISCONTENT