CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The lives that were left
The Makin daughters all suffered as a result of their parents’ baby-farming activities, since every one of them was conscripted into the business. Their education, in particular, suffered—Florence’s literacy was poor compared to her mother’s and father’s, while Clarice could only read a little and Daisy could neither read nor write.
During the inquest into Baby Horace’s death, Blanche had been distressed by being unable to see her gentleman friend who had come to Darlinghurst Court to see her. This may have been the man she married on 8 May 1894 at the age of 19, nine months after the death of her father and a few months after she gave birth to her own illegitimate daughter, Ruby May Makin, on 7 January 1894. Blanche’s half-sister, Minnie Helby had given consent to the marriage as Blanche’s guardian. When Blanche visited her father in Darlinghurst Gaol the day before his execution, she was four months pregnant. Blanche was one of the lucky unmarried mothers whose child did not end up with a baby farmer since the father of her child, Charles William Deacon, had been willing to make an ‘honest’ woman of her. Perhaps the hurried nature of the marriage accounts for the fact that no marriage notice appeared in the local newspapers.
Blanche and Charles had another seven children after Ruby, who was registered as Ruby Makin when she was born then as Ruby Deacon in 1910. Three more daughters and four sons were born between 1895 and 1909, although Blanche’s first son, Charles, died in the year of his birth in 1895. Blanche died on 9 February 1953, aged 78.
Clarice was the next Makin daughter to marry when she promised to love and obey Charles Henry Ellis, a 22-year-old bootmaker, on 25 March 1896 at the age of 20. Like her sister Blanche, she was pregnant before she married. Charles saved her from being the mother of another illegitimate child in the family by marrying her six weeks before she gave birth to Ruby Pearl on 7 July at 80 Botany Road, Alexandria, close to where her other sisters were living. Curiously, the permission of Sarah Makin, who was in Darlinghurst Gaol at the time, had been obtained in writing for Clarice to marry. Blanche and her husband were witnesses at the wedding, suggesting a reconciliation between the sisters.
Clarice had one more child, Reginald, born ten years later in 1916. She died on 26 June 1951 at Bondi Junction aged 73 years after being a widow for 20 years.1 Her husband died on 6 September 1930 after an accident in which he was struck by a car on the corner of Oxford Street and Green Road in Paddington. Clarice sued the driver of the car, seeking £1000 compensation for her husband’s death, although she eventually settled her claim for £250.2 It appears she was eventually reconciled with her whole family, since she attended the funeral of her half-sister, Minnie Helby, with her other sisters and her mother in February 1912.
More mysterious is the life of Florence, who married Edward Anderson on 27 February 1900. The marriage notice, which was not published in the newspaper until April, stated they were both of Wollongong, suggesting that Florence lived with John’s family after her parents were convicted.3 They appear to have had no children. Florence died quite young at the age of 47 in 1922, although there is no record of a death certificate for Florence Eileen Elise Anderson in Australia for that or any other year. An online family history states that she lived in the Northern Cape of South Africa—a long way from the Makin family shame—where she may have died.4 Her husband outlived her, dying in Sydney in 1930. The names of Mrs (Daisy) Maloney, Mrs (Blanche) Deacon, and a daughter of Minnie Helby in Edward Anderson’s death notice indicate the Makin siblings maintained contact over the decades.5
A few days after Daisy gave evidence at the inquest into the death of Baby D, she was sent to the Benevolent Asylum after ‘being turned out’ by Minnie Helby, who denied this, saying Daisy had run away. The Journal of the Benevolent Asylum recorded that Daisy was ‘sent to the Asylum . . . as she stayed away from home’.6 Daisy’s admittance to the Asylum was recorded as an ‘emergency’ and ordered by the Colonial Secretary after the Redfern police had sought an order from the courts.
With both parents in gaol and disagreements with her eldest sister, Daisy was treated as an orphan. Her new home was run by the Benevolent Society of New South Wales, a Christian organisation established in 1818. An imposing two-storey building built on the corner of Pitt and Devonshire Streets, Sydney, it originally provided basic shelter and relief for abandoned women and children, the aged, the homeless and the sick. By the time Daisy was admitted, the Benevolent Asylum only cared for single and destitute married women giving birth and children over the age of eight years. Although the Asylum had been designed to house 60 people, on the day that Daisy was admitted there were 108 women and 145 children.7
When Daisy was discharged on 29 April 1893, she was given into the care of a Boarding-Out Officer. Such officers oversaw the boarding-out system that had been introduced to replace institutional care by placing abandoned children into the care of families who were willing to become foster parents,8 although this was sometimes a euphemism for free domestic labour. Perhaps Daisy returned to live with Minnie after a four month cooling off period, although at the age 12, she was old enough to go into domestic service.
Twelve years later, Daisy married John Patrick Molony (or Maloney), a 22-year-old tanner, on 21 March 1905, with Blanche and Florence as witnesses. Like her sister Clarice, Daisy was employed in ‘home duties’ at the time. She and John had two children, Edward, born in 1905, and Eveline, born in 1907. And like Blanche and Clarice, Daisy was pregnant before she married. She gave birth to Edward five months later on 6 August 1905 at 243 Abercrombie Street, the home of her sister, Florence. Daisy died in 1930 at the young age of 49.
Cecil, also known as Tommy, was two years old when his parents were arrested in 1892. Although he was looked after by Minnie Helby in the short term, it appears he ended up living with the Makin family in Wollongong. He changed his name to Meakin after his marriage in 1916, the same name as his brother William. Cecil died in 1950 aged 60 years. William remained in Wollongong after he spent most of his teenage years with one of his father’s brothers ‘learning the trade of wool classer’ and died in 1953. The Makins’ second son, Percy, also spent his teenage years in Wollongong with an uncle learning the blacksmith’s trade; he died in 1922.9
Sarah’s eldest daughter, Minnie Helby, had five children (Alma, Vincent, Gerald, Lorenzo and Minnie) with her husband Carl, who was still giving gymnastic performances in 1893.10 Their youngest daughter, nicknamed Queenie, died when she was two on 28 June 1898. Minnie and Carl remembered their daughter with a notice in the newspaper a year after her death. As with other family notices, Minnie emphasised her paternal parentage, noting that her ‘little Queenie’ was the granddaughter of the late Captain Charles Edwards and grandniece of Captain John Garthley, with no mention that she was also the granddaughter of Mrs Sarah Makin.11 As we know, Minnie died at the age of 45 on 7 February 1912 from bowel cancer. Her husband died in 1941, aged 88.
The unmarried mothers
Although they were the victims of baby farming, and, unwittingly, the lead players in the drama of Sarah and John Makins’ lives, Minnie Davies and Horace Bothamley found a happy ending of sorts when they married in 1894.
Minnie had been born Mignonelle (or Mignonette) Lavinia Davies on 23 October 1876 at Woodburn in northern New South Wales, the daughter of William and Elizabeth Davies.12 Her beau, Horace William Henry Bothamley, was an Englishman who was born in the cathedral city of Salisbury in Wiltshire. He had arrived in Australia at the age of nine on 2 May 1884 with his father, Henry, aged 38, mother, Mary, aged 48, and brother Oliver, aged seven, on the Belgravia. His father was a painter, glazier and agricultural labourer who could read and write, as could his mother. Mr and Mrs Bothamley were one of the ‘general assisted married couples’ who emigrated to Australia that year, the men on the ship being trades-people or labourers for a growing colony.
The Bothamley family had paid £21 for their passage to Australia, more than double the amount p
aid by other couples. The £15 ticket for Mary Bothamley was almost four times that of her husband (who paid £4) and seven times that of other, younger spouses listed on the ship’s passenger list (who paid £2). In fact, all passengers over the age of 40 paid £15, possibly to deter them from applying.13
Minnie Davies was only 17 when she gave birth to Baby Mignonette, while Horace was 19. Perhaps they had intended to marry when Minnie reached her majority and reclaim their child from the Makins. A year after the execution of John Makin, Minnie was pregnant a second time but this time she and Horace married on 9 August 1894 at the Newtown Registry Office with the consent of Minnie’s father, William Davies, a miner. By this time, Horace was 21 and a reader with the Daily Telegraph while Minnie’s occupation was listed as ‘private life’.
Minnie and Horace only had one more child, a son, Harold Lawrence, who was born three months after their marriage on 6 November 1894 in Balmain. Minnie died young at the age of 53 on 11 December 1929 while Horace lived to 92, dying in 1967.
The fate of Miss Amber Murray, whose gentleman friend had encouraged her to give up her baby son to baby farmers, has been impossible to track down. She was the only mother to find some comfort from the Makins’ conviction, since they were tried for the murder of her child. There is no record of an Amber Murray born in Australia who would have been 18 years old in 1892. Although there was an Amber Constance Murray born in 1880, she was too young to be the 18-year-old who gave birth to Horace Amber Murray in 1892. While Amber Murray could have been illegitimate, it is more likely she was born in Britain given the comment made by Mrs Patrick who, when identifying the baby clothing made by Amber, said ‘colonials do not sew like that’. It has not been possible to find out what happened to Miss Murray—no records of her marriage or death were found.
Miss Agnes Jane Todd was 25 years old when she gave birth to her baby, Elsie May, on 1 January 1892. After Agnes paid £3 for the adoption of her daughter by the Makins, she never saw her child again. It is likely that Elsie was one of the babies buried by the Makins in the backyard of 25 Burren Street. Agnes had been born on 22 November 1866 to William and Agnes Todd in Sussex Street, Sydney. She married William Hart, a blacksmith, on 2 January 1895, almost three years to the day after Elsie May had been born in 1892, a happy ending in St Barnabas Anglican Church, George Street, Sydney. She and William spent a busy life rearing seven children, Gladys (b.1895), Alice (b.1897), Henry (b.1900), Isabella (b.1904), Elsie (b.1907), Alma (b.1909), and Kathleen (b.1910).
Miss Clara Florence Risby was another of the unmarried mothers who encountered the Makins. She was admitted to Sydney’s Benevolent Asylum on 7 March 1892 where she gave birth to her daughter, Elizabeth May, on 16 April 1892. The admission records state that Clara was pregnant by ‘Henry Holmes, shipping clerk, now supposed to be in New Zealand’. On her discharge, it was recorded that ‘[t]he putative father of [her] child is supposed to be in Brisbane’, suggesting she kept in touch with Henry, who was possibly not of the marrying kind.14 Clara’s real name was Florence Rigby and she was born on 22 May 1873 to Thomas and Barbara Rigby in Glebe, Sydney. Although Clara had two older half-sisters from her father’s first marriage, it is curious she was not able to give birth at the home of one of them. She was discharged from the Asylum on 16 May into the care of her sister, Mrs Sargent, the same day she relinquished her baby to the Makins, who were living in East Street, Redfern. No babies were found in the backyard of East Street and it does not appear her daughter was one of the babies dug up at 109 George Street. She married William Alfred Davis several years later on 8 April 1909. They had one child, Cecil, who died the year he was born, 1909.
Miss Agnes Ward, the unmarried domestic servant who handed over her ‘delicate’ baby boy to the Makins in April 1892, was born in Goulburn in 1873, the third youngest of 16 children born to John and Sarah Ward. In 1910, Agnes Ward married Walter Edward Dolan but had no children. She died in 1957 aged 84.15
The final player in this drama, who has been assigned a rather small role, was the man responsible for a dozen inquests, a sensational trial, two appeals, several petitions and one execution. That man is Patrick Mulvey, who one day in October 1892 innocently employed two drain-layers to solve what he thought was a drainage problem in his backyard. The day after John Makin’s execution, Mr Mulvey, the owner of 25 Burren Street, passed away and was buried in Waverley Cemetery:
MULVEY, — August 16, at his late residence, Eileen, Burren-street, Macdonaldtown, Patrick Mulvey, age 39. Deeply regretted.16
There is no record of Patrick’s birth in Australia, suggesting he was an immigrant. The passenger lists for ships arriving in New South Wales reveal that Patrick Mulvey, a groom aged 22 years, arrived in Sydney on 20 February 1878 aboard the Tyburnia from Leitrim in Ireland, the son of a farmer.17 He married Mary Grogan in Sydney on 2 September 1880. At the time of his death, Mr Mulvey was the manager of the wine and spirits stores of Messrs J T and J Toohey, brewers.18 Dead at a young age, he had been suffering from a lung condition, possibly tuberculosis. It was Mr Mulvey’s illness that forced him to move out of his house in Burren Street and enabled its later occupation by the Makins. If Mr Mulvey had not done so, most likely the Makins would have remained living in the Sydney underworld of buying and killing babies, rather than becoming the most infamous baby farmers of their time and providing us with a sobering insight into the social and economic reality of times past.
Notes
Abbreviations in notes:
BC The Brisbane Courier
BFPMJ Bathurst Free Press and Mining Journal
CLJ Colonial Literary Journal
CRE Clarence and Richmond Examiner
DT The Daily Telegraph
EN The Evening News
MMHRGA The Maitland Mercury & Hunter River General Advertiser
SAR South Australian Register
SGNSWA The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser
SMH The Sydney Morning Herald
SRO State Records Office of New South Wales, Kingswood
TA The Argus
TG The Guardian
Author’s note
1 Buttercup in HMS Pinafore by Gilbert & Sullivan.
2 South Australian Register (henceforth SAR), 10/3/1893, p.5.
3 The Sydney Morning Herald (henceforth SMH) was the lawyers’ preferred source of law reporting because it employed legally trained reporters, unlike some of its competitors (see http://www.law.mq.edu.au/scnsw/html/introduction.html; accessed 25 October 2010).
Prologue
1 Rima Dombrow Apple (1987) Mothers and Medicine: A Social History of Infant Feeding 1890–1950, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin, p.9.
Chapter 1
1 John’s last days and hours and his hanging are taken from The Brisbane Courier (henceforth BC), 19/8/1893, p.6; the Bathurst Free Press and Mining Journal (henceforth BFPMJ), 16/8/1893, p.2; Inquest No. 849/93.
2 T Flannery (ed) (1999) Watkin Tench 1788, Text, Melbourne, pp.49–50.
3 P Norrie (2007) An Analysis of the Causes of Death in Darlinghurst Gaol 1867–1914 and the Fate of the Homeless in Nineteenth Century Sydney, Master of Arts (Research) Thesis, School of History, University of Sydney, p.104;
4 ibid., p.103.
5 Deborah Beck (2005) Hope in Hell: A History of Darlinghurst Gaol and the National Art School, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, p.137.
6 The first cervical vertebra transected the spinal cord, stopping John’s breathing instantly: Norrie, p.102.
7 Carol Herben (1997) From Burren Street to the Gallows: The John and Sarah Makin Story, J & C Herben, Fairy Meadow, NSW, p.170.
Chapter 2
1 Emanuel Sutcliffe’s convict record was obtained from the Archives Office of Tasmania, digitised record Item: CON31–1–40,
2
3 Archives Office of Tasmania, digitised record Item: CON18–1–20,
4 Terry Newman, extract from ‘Becoming a Penal Colony’, p.1,
5 L L Robson (1985) A Short History of Tasmania, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, p.118.
6 Newman, p.2.
7 E Barnard (2010) Exiled: The Port Arthur Convict Photographs, National Library of Australia, Canberra, p.74.
8 ibid.
9 Newman, pp.4–5; A Atkinson (1979) ‘Four Patterns of Convict Protest’, Labour History, 37: pp.28–51.
10 Barnard, p.63.
11 Newman, p.6.
12 ibid.
13
14 H de Bougainville (translated by M Serge Riviere) (1999) The Governor’s Noble Guest: Hyacinthe De Bougainville’s Account of Port Jackson, 1825, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Victoria.
15 The Teetotal Advocate, 10/4/1843, p.2.
16 A Summers (1975) Damned Whores and God’s Police: The Colonisation of Women in Australia, Penguin Books, Ringwood, Victoria, p.277.
17 The Colonial Times, 19/8/1834, cited in ibid.
18 Herben, p.3.
19 J C R Camm and J McQuilton (1987) Australians: A Historical Atlas, Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, Sydney, p.204.
20 The Colonial Observer, 31/10/1844, p.4.
21 Camm and McQuilton, p.90.
The Baby Farmers Page 28