Chapter 10. At the Diggings

Chapter 10. At the Diggings.
At last the gold-seeking Brighton men (no women are recorded) reached the destination they had left home for – the Diggings. Letters published in the Gazette in June and July 1853, written at the beginning of the year, give their families dramatically full accounts of their day-to-day experience, their occasional successes and many failures. The addresses from which the letters were sent show how the early discoveries in and around Ballarat had now been extended further afield, to the area round Bendigo and then to the Ovens goldfields, close to the border with New South Wales.

The Gazette of June 2^nd is particularly interesting as, in addition to five complete letters written in January – February, there is a long editorial comment which quotes from others not published, and gives a good deal of information about what has been happening to a number of the emigrants. This is included below, together with news items of interest to Brightonians in England and Australia. Not all the emigrants’ letters came from the Diggings. Some give addresses in Melbourne (Prahan and Collingwood, then first outside the city, are now part of it). These show that some of the emigrants had found sufficiently lucrative occupations to wean them away from a search for those elusive nuggets, though they probably made occasional trips to the diggings to try their luck. Besides, life in Melbourne, if a man had a job, was beginning to assume a more normal “English” aspect. Prices were high, but some social life was possible, with regular concerts and other kinds of entertainments, while the churches provided an important focus for respectable God-fearing citizens.

Whatever the reason,letters published in the Gazette between July and November 1853 are fewer than at any time since 1850. Perhaps people in England were less interested in News from the Diggings. Perhaps fewer letters were being written or handed over by families to the newspaper. There is certainly evidence that the earlier enthusiasm of the gold seekers was beginning to give way to thoughts of returning home. Not all though had given up hope of making something of their new lives. On August 4^th the Gazette published an affectionately moving letter from James Wooldridge to his wife about his (and their) future life. Charles Thatcher - one of the most colourful men to leave Brighton and spend much of the rest of his life “down under” – wrote with news of fellow townsmen, including the missing Franklyn and the ill-fated Bickford. His letter, and another from William Wight to James Mockford with news on Brightonians, were both published in October, and the last that year was from John Mitchell to his friend, young William (?) Pentecost who had returned to England after a few miserable weeks at the diggings.

Mr Thom, who was then on the point of returning to England with his wife, had been one of the founders of the Brighton Amateurs’ Symphony Society which had given its first concert in Brighton in 1850. At least three more performances were given before the Thoms left for Australia with other members of the orchestra—Alfred Chate, H(enry?) Bambridge, Henry Edwards and John Tucker (known in Australia as “the English Paganini”). Some of these musicians were soon playing at promenade concerts in Melbourne, where Tucker was leader of the orchestra at £5.5s a week. He then moved to Sydney to play concerts with Winterbottom’s musical corps. Alfred Chate, a tailor by trade, was paid £4.4s. a week to play in Melbourne and he too divided his time between there and Sydney. Mr Thom, also a violinist, had been leader as well as conductor of the symphony orchestra in Brighton.

Brighton Gazette June 2, 1853

The Gold Diggings

The Sarah Sands arrived on Saturday last from Australia, many days overdue, bringing numerous letters from emigrants. A great number were delivered in this town on Monday, copies of which we subjoin:-

Ovens Gold Fields,

January 2, 1853

Dear Brother, - We left Melbourne for the Diggings about 23rd October, a long journey of about 200 miles, that took us about a fortnight to walk. The weather at times was very hot.

The roads here are not like they are in England: they are very bad particularly in the winter. We went about 15 miles the first day. I had to carry our provisions, which was such a weight that I was obliged to lighten my load and leave a portion behind. The other day we were caught in a thunderstorm on the top of a mountain, which made the roads so bad that the cart could not be got on for a day or two. We did not like the idea of sleeping on the top of the mountain, everything being wet through, so we all went up to a place called Killmore, where we stopped for three days. Here things were very expensive: 2s.6d for every meal, which consisted of bread, meat and tea, and 2s.6d for sleeping on the floor. We went on and left the others behind, and fortunately fell in with two young men going to the Diggings with provisions. They kindly took a portion of our load on their cart; the other we carried between us. We had to sleep on the ground every night. You can get nothing to drink but tea and coffee. We were very glad when we arrived at the Diggings. There we had to wait until the arrival of Mr Moon, who had the provisions with him in the cart.

I will now give you an account of the Diggings. We were very fortunate. The first three or four weeks we did hardly anything. We sank two holes. The first was one was a blank. We got 6 ounces out of the other, which was nothing when divided. There are several diggings where we are that are called the wet diggings, where some have done exceedingly well. One party took out of a hole a piece of gold 53lb weight. They frequently get 20lb pieces out, so we thought we would try the wet diggings. Only very strong parties can work them. We joined another lot of diggers and began to work one. We had to cut trees down to get piles and bark to put round the hole to keep the sides from falling in. We were nearly a fortnight there, and then fell in with the washing stuff, but the water came in so fast we were obliged to give it up. Mr Moon got tired of the diggings, having to keep baling out the water all day without ceasing, which is enough to kill anyone. Mr M. went back to Melbourne, and our party broke up, which I was glad of, as we could do better by ourselves, which has been the case since. Within the last three weeks we have got 2lb weight of gold, which made up for lost time. If fortune should continue to favour us we may be back sooner than expected.

The diggings are falling off very much now. We daily expect to hear of new diggings here as gold is being found for miles around. There are a great many people doing nothing; it is quite a lottery. I should advise no one to come out who could get a good living at home, for hundreds express their disappointment at gold digging, for it is much harder work than is made out by the news sent you. Three of four holes may be sunk from 10ft to 30ft and nothing got out of them, which soon disheartens new comers. There are too many of our class out here to obtain situations. Wages are about the same. We mean to stick to gold digging. The most we have got any day has been four ounces. We are just as likely to dig a hole and get lbs. out of it as not. Some of our passengers took 12lb. out of one hole. Australian life has so altered us that we should not be known. We live and work hard, with nothing to eat but flour and water baked in wood ashes: what we call damper. Meat is plentiful, but it is obliged to be eaten directly killed, or in a few minutes it becomes fly-blown and full of maggots. Our bed is a sheet of bark on the ground, where we sleep as sound as on a feather bed at home, with large emmets (ants) for companions crawling over you. A great many murders have been committed lately by the bush-rangers. Everybody is compelled to carry fire-arms with him. The diggers, with their watch fires, resemble an army encamped. You hear hundreds of guns and pistols fired off during the night. We are not far off the Snowy Mountains. The weather is very changeable: sometimes very hot, then quite the reverse. It is not such a climate as represented in England. We spent Christmas Day by ourselves, having beef and plum pudding for dinner.

J. and C. Over.
The subjoined three letters have been received by a tradesman [almost certainly the tailor Humphrey of Bond Street] from his sons, whose statements may be perfectly relied upon. Communications from these young men, giving a graphic description of the country, have appeared in former numbers of our paper.

Prahan, February 4^th, 1853

Dear Father and Mother, Sister and Brother,

I have another opportunity of letting you hear from us. A Jew that started in the “Ferozepore” a few days after the “Statesman” from the London Docks and has been a long time seeking employment in vain, has decided on returning in the “Sarah Sands” and will be good enough to take this for me. I have nothing to contradict in my former letters. I dare say you will hear of many bad accounts. You may believe them. The few good ones are quite exceptions. I hope to hear from H―(the writer’s brother) shortly from Bendigo diggings. This country is not to be compared to England in many respects, so much annoyance from insects and vermin, and colonial insolence, selfishness and independence. Those that have done well and are doing well are grasping and over-reaching; they won’t give new comers the least chance or encouragement. There is not a house, room, or bit of ground to be got in Melbourne on scarcely any terms. We are both determined on returning to England some time or other, and myself especially. If tailoring should get slack, it would not be worth staying for; but H― might remain longer. He probably could go as a rough carpenter again, but I leave it entirely to him; it will depend rather on this his third journey to the gold fields. It is very tiresome trade being so uncertain; cannot average more than three or four days work a week, which spoils calculating. A person in work can certainly save more here than at home, and so he ought; for unless he gives way to drink or lives extravagantly he cannot help saving, as there is no society and very little amusement. It is not safe to be out after dark, for there are a great many bad characters about. I hope you have given up all idea of coming out. I am sure it would be the death of some of you. There are numbers starving, and many dying with dysentery and disease in Canvass town and round Melbourne. They are even charged 5s. a week by Government for pitching a bit of a tent anywhere out of the town. It is a strange state of things. Lots of swells and dandies from home working on the wharfs as labourers: some as carters, and others as road menders. I assure you, although I cannot average more than half a week’s work, I consider myself very fortunate in getting work as I did. Numbers are constantly applying for work, which threatens to lower wages. It is only house rent and diggings have kept it up to what it is still. Ours is 1s.3d per hour.

Sometimes I change my walk home through Canvass Town, which I described in former letters. It is a study for a political economist. Five or six streets of tents of all sizes and shapes, the inhabitants in a state of filth, rags, misery, and disease; dirty tents with scribbling outside, styling them London chop and coffee establishments, with board and lodging. One cannot help laughing when he might cry to see such a squalid scene of misery with so much pretension. There is something awful and ridiculous too in its appearance. Doctors, quacks, anti-quacks, dressmakers and washerwomen, shoemakers and tailors, clerks and drapers and nondescripts.

A large nugget of gold has just been dug out at Ballarat, upwards of 120lbs. weight. It has created some sensation, but it is only an instance of luck; thousands have been on the diggings for months and have not earned their expenses, and thousands return thoroughly disgusted and penniless. Tell Fred not to think of coming out here. Everything is very unsettled, and likely to be for some time to come. Carpenters, brickmakers and bricklayers, are doing best. A fancy bazaar has been got up by the parsons, ladies and elite of Melbourne, the proceeds of the sale to go in aid of lands for erecting temporary shelter for houseless emigrants.

There is great difficulty in selling anything out here now. So many people coming out has stocked the colony with everything wanted. I can scarcely tell when Herbert and myself will make up our minds to return.

Your affectionate son,

Henry….

P.S. I have not been able to find the Jew, and will therefore send it per “Sarah Sands”. I hear pretty good accounts of Bendigo Diggings, and I think Herbert stands a pretty good chance if he stays long enough.
Prahan, February 7^th 1853

Dear Father, Mother, Brother and Sister, ― Since my last, I have received this from H―(the letter subjoined). I thought it would satisfy you that we were all right, though not together. Patteson and Verrall (from New Road, Brighton) are with H―. I have great hopes of their doing well this time. Although trade is slack, I do not like to give it up. What lots would jump at a comparative certainty. If you get all our letters, you will see that we have been consistent in our opinion of this country, and also in advising you not to think of altering your affairs at home. Clothes, mantles and boots and shoes are largely imported here. They are three of the worst trades going. Carpenters and bricklayers are getting from £1 to 25s per day, while tailors cannot average half that sum. W. Hill is quite well. Davis got his letter. The Brighton band are pretty well scattered. I must now conclude,

Yours affectionately,

Henry……
Golden Gulley, Bendigo.

January 30^th, 1853.

Dear Harry,―I hope you are quite well and have plenty of work. On Friday we arrived at Pickfords’s Office, Golden Gulley. We looked about till Tuesday afternoon, and then began sinking on the flat south of the Golden Gulley, bottomed the hole on Wednesday, and took nearly half an ounce of gold from it Bottomed another yesterday; but, being late, we did not like to wash much, but picked up a piece on the pipeclay, nearly ¼oz, and other smaller pieces. We expect the hole will turn out pretty well. Things at the store are middling cheap: bread (4lb loaf), 3s.; flour, 6d per lb: meat 6d; black tea, 2s; sugar, 5d. and 6d.; cheese, very good, 2s. Tell —, if he comes up, to enquire at Pickford’s office for us. It is just above the blue blanket . I have no fear but that we shall do very well here. We are very economical; and can always be certain of enough to live on.

Yours truly,

H —.

Collingwood. January 18, 1853

Dear Parents,— We came from the diggings about five weeks ago, and glad of it too, for it was no great thing, after being nearly three months digging and working up to the middle in water, and only to get 11oz. amongst all of us — in fact, we stopped there until almost all our money and gold were gone, for we only had enough to carry us back to this place, where we very soon got employment. I got work for Mr Killick’s son, at carpentering. I get £3 per week; but I hope to do something better than that, for as soon as I have saved enough to buy a few tools, Steve (Stephen Cockerell) and I are going to set up for ourselves. Bainbridge started back for the Diggings after staying here a week, as he heard of his brother being there. I can only tell you the truth, that the Diggings are very different to what they have been represented by persons in England, for there are thousands like ourselves not doing much, and although there may be some making money, they are old diggers that know the ground. But we do not mean to give it up till we have been up there two or three times more, for we know there is plenty of gold. The living at the diggings is rather rough, for you can only get mutton, damper and dirty water. I cannot say any more about the diggings at present. We are almost at home at this little town, for there are a good many Brighton people here. I heard that Mr Fleeson and son are out here and two or three others. We had a very cool summer here, so at least the old colonists say, but I never experienced such a one before, for the hot winds were blowing so hot that you could not face them, and in the evening it was altogether the reverse, for you had to put on a great-coat to keep yourself warm. The climate is, I should think, very unhealthy, as the dysentery is very bad. We have all had a touch of it. Tell Aunt Cooke that this is the place for Nat to get on. It is the best place for a person in the carpentering line to come to.

I am, dear Parents,

Your affectionate son,

Henry Pepper.
To Mrs Purcell, Bedford Place, from her sons.

Melbourne, February 11, 1853 Dear Mother—I arrived in Williamstown Bay on the 24^th after a tedious passage. I am in company with brother Harry, and he is quite well. Things here are first-rate. I am going to work at 12s per day. Victuals cost £1 per week. Harry and I are going to the diggings together. Harry has been to the diggings but left before he had done any good. I can enjoy myself first-rate, and save £2 per week comfortably as a common working man. There are plenty of clerks and shopmen dying every day from hardship. Directly they come on shore they get robbed, and they have no home; in fact, most fresh comers have no home for a month, and then they can only get tents; in fact old colonists now are living in tents. There are more tents in Melbourne than built houses. Nobody has any business here except their constitutions have been well tried. It is common for people to go in the bush, night after night, to sleep, because there is no accommodation here.

Your affectionate son, J Purcell.
Dear Mother,—I arrived here on the 21^st of December after a very good passage; I should have written to you before, but I was waiting for Fred and his fine clipper brig that was to do such wonders. We beat her by more than two months. I find Australia a very good place for young men like us that can work. I have earned as much as 15s. per day, with food , &c. Provisions are cheap — meat, 3d to 5d per lb., tea and coffee from 1s.2d to 2s.4d, sugar, 3d, bread, 1s per 4lb loaf. Vegetables are dear, and so are boots, shoes and clothes.

Your affectionate son.

Henry Purcell
Extract of a letter to Mr Pointer, of the Windmill Inn, Upper North Street, from Mr Albert Godden, brother of Mr Godden, butcher, Upper North Street.

Port Phillip, Melbourne,

January 23^rd, 1853

My dear Friend,—I now avail myself of the opportunity of fulfilling the promise I made previous to leaving England. I am now staying at Melbourne, and am only paying £2 per week for board and lodging. I have nothing to complain of about the diggings on my first visit, although the work generally is desperately bad. It is very hot just now, and we are getting very short of water and it is not very good. (The writer proceeds to speak of the dearness of provisions at the diggings.) It matters not what you are at the diggings, you are always called “mate”; you may be talking to a doctor, an officer in the army or navy, or a parson, and it would be impossible to tell what he is, as the diggers dress in a loose blue shirt, short fustian trousers, with belt and straw hat, and a beard six inches long. There are now supposed to be about two or three hundred thousand on the whole at the diggings. I can compare it to nothing else but a city of tents reaching some eighteen or twenty miles each way, and the holes are very similar to those sunk for wells. Thousands are disgusted with the state of things, but I am of the opinion that it is the hard work that chokes them off. Hundreds pack up and go back to Melbourne and get work on the wharf for 10s. per day, or on the roads for Government; and then they write home to their friends telling them they have obtained situations under government! Some of our first-cabin passengers are actually working for government at 8s per week. These are clerks, who have left situations in England with their £200 or £300 per annum.

The state of society is becoming fearful, almost equalling California: robbery and murder are occurring daily, in fact, almost hourly, and some of them most brutal. Melbourne is in such a state of excitement, that it is not safe to walk the streets after dark without being well armed. I was sitting at breakfast yesterday morning, when a man having about 10lbs weight of gold by him was passing along the street. Two men pounced on him, took his gold, and dreadfully ill-used him. Our servant hearing a noise, and looking round, saw two fellows climbing over the wall. The police were called and the men were taken. The man attacked was so disfigured that you could scarcely imagine there could be such brutes; but the principal part of those fellows are convicts across from Van Dieman’s Land, some of the very scum of the world. As for women, I have hardly seen a respectable female in the colony.

Tate, the spirit merchant’s son, Bainbridge, and Wooldridge are digging; but as yet have been unfortunate.

All you can say is, it is a money making colony. I consider a man coming out here with a little capital may, with perseverance, realize a fortune.

You talk of the value of land at Brighton; I saw some sold here as high as £180 per foot.

I am very much deceived as regards the country. It shows no trees like we have in England; and the grass is very poor. Tell my friend Watson there is very little shooting excepting oppossums, kangaroos and wild fowl; and unless you go a long way in the bush you find nothing to shoot at. I have met several Brightonians. Thatcher and Tucker are playing at a sort of cider cellars, and get 30s. per night. Evans is still in Melbourne. Wight, of the Regent Tavern, is at Forest Creek, close to where I am digging; and Mussell is digging somewhere near me. We are all on equality here. I saw Henry Scarborow from North Street, Brighton, a few days ago.

It is a curious place to me. Everyone seems to me drunk all day long, and if you ask a question there is nobody knows anything at all. I asked a baker where such and such a street was; and he told me he did not know, and on looking round I found I was in the very street I enquired about.

Your sincere friend,

Albert Godden.
(These are parts only of a “ very long and interesting letter” the Gazette had not room to publish in its entirety.)


Brighton Gazette. June 2, 1853

Society in Australia.— As descriptions have been given of the state of society in Melbourne calculated to alarm intending emigrants, or the friends of those who have already proceeded to that colony, the following extract from a letter written by a lady residing in Melbourne to her friends in this country will be read with interest:-
Melbourne, November 24.

As to the state of society, it has never in the least degree interfered with our comfort, further than the hearing of it. We enjoy the ministrations of a godly man; we have our Bible and Auxiliary Missionary Societies, our Sabbath–school and Benevolent Societies; we have never, on any occasion, been kept from our Sunday and week evening meetings, nor suffered the least annoyance; and even at the diggings people may, and do, live as retired as in town. That there are large numbers who belong to the worst class in society is undoubtedly true; that the plentifulness of money has led to a great increase in intemperance is also painfully visible in our streets; but the large number of our respectable working population now in comfortable cottages of their own, and the large amount of land and house property sold at high prices, show it does not all go into the tavern. Even yet, our numerous strangers expressed themselves surprised at the decency and decorum with which the Sabbath is kept; I say it not without consideration – equal to any town in Scotland.

The writer of the above has resided several years in Melbourne, and from her position in society there has had ample opportunities of observing what she writes of.

Brighton Gazette Thursday July 7, 1853

Enormous Mail from Australia

On Saturday morning last, a number of bags and boxes, containing letters, arrived in London by the Melbourne from Australia. The weight of these boxes and bags was 12½ tons. They were in number 30 boxes and 217 bags. A good deal of curiosity was excited in the arcade of the General Post Office by the appearance of the empty boxes, when piled up after being deprived of their contents.

A large portion of these letters, with a quantity of newspapers, were received in Brighton on Saturday evening.
The following are extracts of a letter received by Mr Strudwick, tobacconist, New Road, from two of his brothers-in-law, sons of Mr Edwards, Fly Proprietor, Kings Road, who left England in company with Mr Thom, the musician.
Melbourne, March 4, 1853.

Dear Henry, - I am still living with Postlethwaite, although the wages are low for the colony, being only £2 per week, but I am able to have Harry with me. We are both together making up a bed on the counter, which serves us at present, as it is impossible to get a bed in a private house under 10s. per week each, and then perhaps five or six in a room and eaten up with vermin. So it is better as we are though, only it is not at all safe. I am obliged to sleep with loaded pistols under my head, as there is such an awful set abroad. They think nothing of getting through a brick wall, the walls being only one brick in thickness. We have luckily escaped as yet, but they will no doubt try it some night. Houses are robbed every night, and they have been very near us, the next door but one. In short, they have every facility for doing such business, as a policeman is a rare thing to see of a night, and only a few oil lamps about the town, and they generally go out by ten o’clock, so you may guess it is not very safe to be out after dark.

We have promenade concerts here every night now, conducted by Winterbottom, in conjunction with Ellis, late of Cremorne. Harry is engaged there at £2 per week, which is too little, although it is only for two hours, from eight to ten. I am also engaged as a check-taker at 24s. per week. So you see I manage £3.4s per week, which in England would be first rate, but here it is only to be compared to a £1 in England, on account of expenses. We have to pay 1s. for washing a shirt; stockings, 6d. per pair, and other things in proportion; butter and cheese very dear at 3s.per lb; eggs, 6d.each, bacon 2s.6d.. Ham, I have never had the pluck to ask what that is, fearing something dreadful; milk, 1s.per pint, a glass of ale 6d., bottle of porter, 3s., wine, 5s.per bottle, and beastly stuff too. The lucky diggers fancy champagne, 15s.per bottle. A man in England with £1 a week, is better off than one with £3 per week here, especially a married man with a family.

It is impossible to get a house under £2 per week, and then there is wood and water to find, the wood £2 per load, water, 7s. It is a place I would not advise any person to think of coming to. There are hundreds of families living in their own tents at Canvass Town, and the poor creatures are dying there like rotten sheep, with dysentery and typhus fever, and the doctors say it is lucky that this has not been a hot summer, or there would have been fearful work, for there are no drains or sewers, and water very scarce, cesspools and closets all open to the street. In fact, on a hot day, it is horrible.

On Tuesday last, we had what they call here a hot wind ― a wind that blows right from the deserts, and I can assure you I never witnessed anything so frightful in my life ― the wind a perfect hurricane, blowing with heat as from a flame of gas on to the skin, and not able to see anything before you for the dust. Shops all closed and all kinds of business suspended, houses blowing down, the bush for miles round on fire, the smoke, ashes, and dust together truly awful, the dust and stuff coming through the roofs and crevices laying about two inches thick on the floor and counters. However, we got over it at last.

I do not like the climate, and as for Harry it is doing him more harm than good, and I have tried to persuade him to return, but he will not without me. I do not think I shall stay here much longer. I think of going to Sydney in the winter. I do not know whether I shall have another turn at the diggings with a friend of Thwaites, whose brother discovered a new spot a week or two back.

Ellis is going to open Cremorne Gardens at Richmond, about two miles from here. If they answer I shall endeavour to get a horse bus on the road, if I should be here. But perhaps I shall be home before then, as I hate the place altogether and most of the people, who consist chiefly of Jews and Irish. All the principal hotels and inns on the road are Irish.

The books and works that are published concerning this country are the most lying things that were ever written. In most of them they say the climate is the finest in the world, especially for consumptive people. I will just give you an idea of it. This is supposed to be the summer. When we get up in the morning, if it is a little gloomy, you require a great coat as bad as in winter at home. Perhaps about ten the sun comes out, and then the heat is overpowering. If it happens to come over cloudy and any breeze during the day a great coat is required again till the sun comes out again. And up the country of a night, you require about six pair of blankets to keep you warm. And then again sometimes of a night it is so dreadfully hot you cannot get any sleep. I can assure you that one night as we were travelling down to Forest Creek, the cold was more intense than ever I felt it in England.

The rain here, too, is rain indeed, not in drops but in buckets full. You would hardly believe me when I tell you we had one night when returning from the concert after two or three hours rain, to walk up one street and down another to find a safe place to get over, the water being four or five feet deep, and running like a river. Now, that is summer; what the winter will be I dread to think of.

I have received neither letters nor papers from you. I got a lot of English papers the other day; but they belonged to another person of the same name. However, it was all the same to me, for I dare say they have had some of mine before. Young Evans, him that ruined my horse, has been rascally hard up. He has joined the horse police for twelve months. They get 8s.per day, and found in everything; but it is a hard and dangerous life, often out for days in search for bush-rangers ― dangerous fellows. There are lots of new chums (as they are termed) arriving here every day. All trot for the diggings, poor devils! Many of them would be glad to get back again as soon as they have landed.

We remain

Your affectionate brothers,

C.N. & H. Edwards.

Thursday July 14, 1853

A Brightonian in Australia. — Mr Juniper, of Western Road, has recently received a letter from his brother, who emigrated to Melbourne some three or four years ago, in which the latter states that rent has risen enormously. The premises which he engaged originally for 30s. a week, in Swanston Street, have risen to £12 a week; and rather than continue to pay that sum, even with a large and increasing business, he hired a piece of land, on which he has built himself a house and a shop, at an outlay of £700. He is now in the occupation of his new premises and doing a great business in the ironmongery trade, his returns being something like a £1000 a month.
Mr King, the Governor of the Workhouse, has received a letter from Melbourne, informing him of the death of his son-in-law, Mr Richards. It will be remembered, probably, that Mr Richards, only a few months ago, kept an eating house in Queen’s Road. Not being successful here, he thought he would try his fortune in Australia. He left England unaccompanied by his wife and family, the latter preferring to stay behind. The letter received by Mr King was partly by Mr Richards himself, the latter part announcing his death, by a friend; and it appears that he died of dysentery early in February. There are five children left in Brighton.
Brighton Gazette Thursday August 4, 1853

The “Diggings.”

The following are extracts from an encouraging letter, the most encouraging we have seen, received recently by Mrs Wooldridge from her husband, who emigrated to Australia about twelve months ago.―

Melbourne Victoria

12^th March, 1853

Dear Wife, ― I have no doubt but that you have been impatiently waiting to hear from me again; and I should have written some time since, but for circumstances of a very unpleasant nature, which will be explained as I proceed with my letter. My last acquainted you with my safe arrival in the colony, also the difficulties we encountered in procuring lodgings and a place to leave our superfluous luggage while we proceeded to the diggings; but ultimately we left our things with Mrs Barlow, who married Mr Atkins’ sister. He is attached to a Circus company here as a nigger singer. Having remained a few days in Melbourne, to prepare for the journey, we started for Forest Creek. I will not pain you with a recital of what I endured in the six days’ journey beneath a broiling sun and such a road. It was through a densely-wooded forest, and two thirds of the distance (a hundred miles) was actually a muddy swamp, knee deep and frequently up to the waist in water, and a weight on my back between sixty and seventy pounds; and walking in heavy nailed boots added not a little to my discomfiture.

We arrived at Forest Creek on the fifth day. I there received my impression of the gold fields, and the nature of the work. The ground was torn up for miles in every direction; holes, or more properly speaking, wells from ten to thirty feet deep had been sunk as close to each other as possible, and the ground underneath tunneled from one hole to another in a manner that to a newcomer the danger appeared frightful. The unexpected state of things was quite a damper to me. My bodily strength had already been over-taxed by the fatigue of the journey, and then to receive such a disheartening prospect when I expected the realization of all my hopes, was almost too much for me ― and you know I am not one to quail at trifles. Several of the Brighton party were so dismayed that they cut off back to Melbourne, and some from thence to England without doing a stroke. We remained at Forest Creek, looking about the whole day; and the more we saw the less we liked the prospect. At last some sailors advised us to go on to Bendigo, 25 miles further up the country, as being better suited to new hands, and we accordingly shouldered our packs once more and started for Bendigo, our ardour for gold digging considerably diminished. We made Bendigo the next day, and found that the sailors had not deceived us. We pitched our tents; and the next morning made our first attempt.

I omitted to tell you that we had added two more to our party, making four. After a week’s work the whole of us had not found as much gold as would fetch a sovereign; and the next week was worse; and provisions selling at enormous prices, the 4lb loaf 5s, and every article of food in proportion, with the exception of beef and mutton, which was 6d. per lb. Bad luck produced a grumbling amongst us; and the consequence was, that Atkins and I separated from the other two. The next fortnight produced no change in our luck, and the cause of our ill success I attributed to a want of knowledge and experience, and a proper and complete fit out of tools, which Atkins was too miserly to shell out for us. Our living, too, was of the commonest kind. Our eatables consisted of two articles, mutton and damaged biscuit; and the tea we drank was the worst apology for that beverage that ever I tasted.

Our bed was the ground. I had nothing but the oilskin coat and the small blanket under me, and the double blanket for a covering. It was hard to deprive you of it, seeing how short you were of such things; but neither you nor I knew of what service it would be to me. In fact, I owe my existence to the use of it; for at the time I arrived in the colony the days were excessively hot, and the nights bitter piercing cold. For two months I never had my clothes off, but I felt no inconvenience from it; for I used to return from work, which is very hard, so tired, that supper, although hungry, was no inducement to keep me awake. My hands suffered very much from the first fortnight with blisters; they are now seasoned. But to my tale.

The first month at the diggings passed away as unpleasantly as it is possible to conceive. There were occasional growlings between Atkins and me; he was continually bewailing his unlucky destiny, and at times in a manner not very pleasing to me, and so we were never very great cater cousins.[Close friends.] We had been five weeks at the diggings, when chance led us to a spot where there was a number of men at work, who had found a considerable quantity of gold. Atkins and I turned to, and sank two holes, and I had the good luck to meet with some of the precious metal. Atkins found none in his, and he wanted to come and work in my hole, but I objected, there not being room enough for two to work. (Here the writer speaks of a dispute which he had with Atkins, and their consequent separation.)

Having converted my gold into cash, I bought fresh tools; and since I have been working by myself I have done tolerably well. After paying expenses in five months, I have cleared about £100. It is not an unusual occurrence to get £300 or £400 worth out of one hole. My worst week’s work turns out at about £4. I am in first rate health; the climate is good, and all the misgivings which I had on first entering Forest Creek, have vanished. Atkins, after leaving me, joined two other men, with whom he worked a fortnight, and then went down to Melbourne, where he remained five weeks, and then came back to Bendigo with a mate. (The writer again complains of Atkins’ conduct towards him.)

Now, Susan, I’ll tell you my plans for the future: I have sent you £60, and this, with what you can make of your goods, will more than suffice to bring you and your children out here, which I wish you to do as speedily as possible. This is the place; and if you and I only use half the perseverance here that we have done in England, to keep our heads above water, a most happy result will be the consequence. The road to a snug little independence is open; and seven years industry, with moderate economy, will place us, for the remainder of our days, beyond the iron grasp of poverty.

You must understand that there are not public houses allowed in or near the diggings―within five miles; but refreshment tents for the sale of lemonade, etc, for which is charged 6d. per half pint glass. There is a great deal of it drunk here; and the profits on the sale of it are very great; and I propose putting you into business in the above line, and I have no doubt our joint efforts will be productive of great benefit to us. After giving instructions to his wife, the writer proceeds:-

Come to a clime where a joyous welcome awaits you, where hunger is never felt by the industrious, where there are no poor-houses, no poor-rates, and, what is still better, no poor people, and where money is so plentiful that copper coin is rarely, if ever used in trade. Hundreds are leaving the colony by every vessel coming to England, having made their thousands; and I hope we shall be able to return in a few years with something snug for our old days. With my heart’s best wishes

for your safety and that of my dear children on your voyage here,

I remain

Your affectionate husband,

James Wooldridge
Brighton Gazette Thursday October 6. 1853

Letter from a Brighton Emigrant

I beg to forward, per Mr Alfred Martin, a few incidents respecting Brighton friends and the colony, according to promise made to several people at Brighton before leaving.

John Tucker has gone to Sydney, to play at the concerts.

Alfred Chute has gone to Sydney, to play at the concerts.

Henry Edwards (King’s Road) has gone to Sydney, to play at the concerts.

Stephen Cotterill has gone to Sydney to assist at the concerts.

William Pritchard has just arrived with the Brighton Gold Company.

Joshua Vines has just arrived with the Brighton Gold Company, and is in the Treasury.

Evans, (Western Road), at McEwan and Co.’s, Ironmongers.

Nias (East Street) has gone home to England.

John Vincent (Surrey Street) is assistant to a grocer.

James Bickford arrived here per ship Africa. He called on me and told me the following:-

“I have left England unknown to any one; not even does my wife or her friends know of my coming. We put in at Lisbon. I am ruined through the fire in the King’s Road. My boy and I were painting the inside of the shop window, and left for the night. Shortly after this I was awoke and informed of the fire. I have earned a little money on board by repairing jewellery etc.”

These were his words to me. He has started with two shipmates to the Bendigo Diggings. I send his own words, thinking they may throw some light on his sudden departure.

Richard Millsome, butcher, has been doing nothing here, and is, I believe, living in a tent, or gone to the Diggings. Henry Scarborow is working at his trade here. Henry Pepper and Den Killick are doing well at sash making. Thus much do I know of some of the Brighton party. As a source of congratulation, I have not heard of a single death among any of your townsmen here. As you have previously heard, the report respecting the black fever and deaths on board the Statesman is entirely false. Now for colonial news.

Ships arrive in numbers; and I am sorry to add that thousands land here, sometimes in the drenching rain, without money, and no place to lay their heads. Think of that, ye Brightoners, who may be discontented with your condition. Truly Shakespeare’s lines are applicable―

“Better by far to bear the ills we have,

Than fly to others that we know not of.”

and never will you know the miseries of being houseless and in a foreign country till you are actually experiencing the same. Bank or other clerks should keep at home, perched on their respective stools; or they may be “off their perch” when they arrive. A man, named Snow, starts from this port today, in a search after Franklyn. Drinking kills its thousands here; but misery and privation its tens of thousands.

Milk and potatoes are great luxuries here. Now for a list of present prices. Bread, 1s.6d.the 4lb loaf; butter, 3s.6d.a pound; fresh ditto, 4s.6d,; cheese,2s.6d.; milk, 2s.a quart (think of that, old maids, when you take in your ha’porth); potatoes, 3d.a pound; eggs, 7d.each; rabbits, 15s.each; ducks, 16s.; mutton, 5d.a pound; beef, 4d. English ale, 2s.a quart; currants, 2s.a pound; sugar, 3½d.; apples 1s. and 1s.6d.a pound; coffee, 1s.6d.; tea, 2s.; two roomed houses let for £3 to £5 per week.

Now in conclusion, people of Brighton, look before you leap. Many have done right in coming, myself among the number; others curse the day they left. Remember—

“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread”

Your obedient servant,

Charles R. Thatcher.
Brighton Gazette Thursday October 13, 1853

Letter from a Brighton Emigrant.

We have been favoured with the sight of a letter received by Mr James Mockford (late of the King’s Road, Brighton, but now residing at Shoreham) from Mr W.Wight, landlord of the Regent Tavern, who formed one of a large party that left this town for Australia by the “Statesman”, in June last year, from which we take the following extracts:-

Mount Alexander, Forest Creek,

16^th June, 1853.

Dear Sir —The last time I wrote to you I mentioned that we had been very unfortunate. And to keep the others on their legs I was obliged to join the police, which I am very glad I did, for the pay came in very handy for them. I had 8s. a day and that kept them from starving. You know it was my wife’s last wish that we should assist one another in time of need, which I am pleased to think it was in my power to do, for soon afterwards two of them, William Beck and William Pearman, were taken very ill with dysentery, and unable to do any work for two months, but I am happy to say they are now quite well. I was sworn in as a policeman for six months; but my time was up about two months since, and I then joined my companions. I am sorry to say that we have not heard any thing of Lawrence, Strong, and Lewis. We advertised three times for them, but have never received any answers.

I regret to say that things are very dull at the Diggings, and unless some new discoveries are soon made, I don’t know what will become of all the people. There is scarcely one out of twenty that is doing anything at all. There is a party alongside of me that has sunk nine holes, and never got a speck of gold. The worst of it is the expense of living here. As for friends, there are none here; it is every one for themselves. I sank two holes last week, but never saw gold. The water came into the last one, so I could not try it much. Yesterday Mr Beck and I cleared a piece of ground, and commenced a hole at a spot which has proved very rich, and if we can only get down it without coming into an old tunnel, I think we may run a good chance of obtaining a large quantity of gold out of it; but the place has been so undermined, that I am afraid we shall not get a good bottom. It will be about 20ft. to 25ft.in depth, and we shall have to tunnel under a store, so you see, my dear friend, it is not child’s play, gold digging; but “never venture never won.” I mean to stick to it, and surely some day or other, I shall have some luck. I have still a country house in my eye. Winter has finally set in; and at this moment it is raining great guns; to-morrow morning our hole will be full of water. As for news, I can give you all in a few words. We go to work about eight, and leave at four or five, when we have our supper, and then retire to rest. We never know what time it is, and we see nothing but trees and mountains.

As at home, we may at times get a glimpse of the paper with very scanty news; and but for a few Christians, we should scarcely know we were alive. My dear friend, there is one thing I am looking forward to amongst all my little troubles, and that is a speedy and safe return to Old England, to meet all those who are near and dear to me; that will indeed be a happy meeting to see them all in good health. Although so many miles separate us, there is not a night passes without my heart being in Brighton: in fact I have nothing else to think about, and were I not to think about Brighton, I must be void of all feeling; for there I have met with friends that will ever be dear to me. I have got a beautiful specimen of quartz and gold for you, and am only waiting the chance of sending it by some one who may be returning before me; but I am afraid, as winter has set in, that there will not be many take the road to Melbourne; for it is so infested with bush-rangers that you are never safe. I don’t intend going to Melbourne until I am coming home. I wish all letters to be directed to the Post office, Melbourne, till called for. Give my kind regards to Mary, Mr and Mrs P―, and Mr H―, and all kind friends. I had forgotten to say that on the 27^th of this month we mean to drink all your healths in a bumper; it was the day we left Old England.

Your affectionate friend,

William Wight.
Brighton Gazette Thursday November 3, 1853.

A great number of letters from Brighton emigrants have lately been received here by their friends. Mr Daniels (formerly a carver and guilder, working for Mr Coppard, North Street) writes that he is at the diggings, and doing tolerably well; that he intends to remain there some time, having a three months’ store in hand and with good prospects before him. He has sent a nugget of gold and money home to his wife; and writes in cheerful terms.

Mr Henry Chate, tailor, has received a letter from his son. It appears that he has been with Winterbottom’s musical corps to Sydney; and has done pretty well. They have latterly returned to Melbourne. Mr Tucker, son of Mr Tucker, Western road, is the leader. He is called in Melbourne the English Paganini.

Mr Thom, who also went from Brighton, is engaged at the theatre in Geelong. He leads the orchestra, and Mrs Thom is engaged as an actress. Mrs Thom took her benefit at the theatre on July 16^th, when nearly £100 was taken at the doors. Mr Thom took his benefit the next night, and £107 was taken. The performance was Guy Mannering and a concert. Many of our readers will doubtless remember Mr Creed Royal, an excellent flute player. He is engaged in the same orchestra as Mr Thom.

Mr Edward Williams (son of Mr Williams of Norfolk Square, and who was for many years schoolmaster of the National School in Church Street) emigrated early in the year, leaving his wife and four children at home, but taking with him a son about 17 years of age. They proceeded to the diggings, where Mr Williams died, aged 42. He had been an agent and a man of business in England, and the hard work at the diggings was probably more than his constitution could support. His son is engaged in a store, at a salary of £2 a week with board and lodgings.
The Diggings.

The following are a few brief extracts from a letter received by Mr W. Pentecost, Jun, North Street, from his companion, John Michell. The letter is dated Prahan, 1^ST July, 1853:-

Your old shipmate and digging mate, Dick Livett, is still at Forest Creek, and I have heard is doing well.

Humphrey went to Bendigo on the 1^st of June to join his brother and Verrall, who have been doing well.

Patterson is at work at the Government Quay getting £3 per week.

Johnson is gone to Geelong.

Rogers went to Ballarat, fell in with a prize of about 30oz, was hocussed with some brandy, seized with a fit of “delirium tremens”, and ultimately found himself in the Ballarat lock-up. The Inspector took compassion on him and made him camp jailor at £3.12s.a week.

Tankard lives at Geelong and goes to and from the diggings with a dray, and according to his own account is doing first-rate.

With respect to myself, I have bought a piece of land and I got Hill to build me a house upon it, and I am doing pretty well at my trade.

There have been a great many deaths here in consequence of the dampness of the place. Dysentery, fever, jaundice and colds have been very prevalent. I cannot think the reason of writers stating that this is such a healthy country. I think you did well in returning to England. Young Woolaston, with his two sisters, are dead ― the cousins of the Witneys.

Business of all kinds is not so brisk as it was six months ago. Wages keep up, and so does the price of provisions; except bread, which is now 1s.4d.the 4lb loaf.

P.S. Since writing the above, I have had a letter from Humphrey. He is quite well, and very comfortable, with his brother and Mr and Mrs V. They find gold in every hole they sink, but in such small quantities as to be no better than wages in Melbourne. Cathcart is at work brickmaking. Akehurst makes his appearance now and then from the Bush, sometimes as a bullock-driver and sometimes as a stockman.

The Brighton Emigration Society continued its work.

Chapter 11. The End in Sight.
If 1853 was a bumper year for news of the diggers, 1854 was the beginning of the end, so far as publication was concerned. Fewer and fewer letters found their way into the pages of the Brighton Gazette. Only five were published in the whole of that year, one in January, giving news of the death of John Lawrence, who was styled on leaving Brighton as either a butler or a lodging-house keeper. There is a touching account of his friends at the diggings putting a black band round the caps “out of respect to him.” Another death was reported later in the year, that of Thomas Fisher, “a wine merchant, once of St. James’s Street, Brighton.” Both letters and news items refer to the state of lawlessness in the colony, particularly the frequency of robberies and horse-stealing. There is also one mention (by John Myrtle) of the unrest over the license taxes, which were a source of much irritation and resentment among the diggers.

Just two letters from Australia were published in the Gazette in 1855, one from Charles Thatcher’s father telling of the grisly end of the unfortunate jeweller Bickford, and the other, from Charles Evans, with news of the musical and thespian entertainers who demonstrated the skills they had practised years before in Brighton. The name of Charles Thatcher was well-known in the town, where his father owned a “foreign warehouse” at 4 King’s Road. In Australia however he became a celebrity on the goldfields, not from the discovery of riches but as an entertainer. Thatcher toured the diggings, sometimes in the company of fellow Brightonians (especially Tucker and Chate) and often encountering and passing on news to his father of others he met. His particular talent lay in composing and performing ballads about life in Australia, especially on the goldfields. These were immensely popular, and Thatcher with them, as he became known as “the inimitable Thatcher” or even “the inimitable” (perhaps in distant reference to Charles Dickens, the truly great “Inimitable”). Much of his time he spent at Ballarat and Bendigo where the diggers loved his tilts at the license hunters, the policemen and the “New-Chum Swell”— the “fine young gentleman” who had no luck at the diggings and ended up working on the roads “at eight bob every day.” In 1857 he published Thatcher’s Colonial Songster in which one ballad illustrates his egalitarian sympathies:

On the diggings we’re all a level, you know……

The poor man out here ain’t oppressed by the rich,

But dressed in blue shirt, you can’t tell which is which…

There’s no masters here to oppress a poor devil

But out in Australia we’re all on a level.

(Quoted by David Goodman in Gold Seeking, page xv.)

The story of the Brighton emigrants to Australia, as told in their letters, is almost done. By 1854 interest had shifted

from news of gold seekers to news of the war in the Crimea which had started the previous year. In place of the columns of Emigration News which had been published in the Brighton Gazette there were now accounts of battles and casualties, and the occasional letter to a family in Brighton from a young soldier at the front. (There was at least one Brighton man who wrote home from Balaclava.)

There was still gold to be found in Victoria but at much lower levels than the diggers could reach. The future lay in large-scale mining operations that required capital investment and men were employed by the bosses and no longer operated as free spirits on the diggings. Occasionally lucky discoveries might be made, but the final words of Charles Evans’s letter were all too true—“I am afraid the time for making fortunes is past.” For the Brighton gold seekers, coming late to the diggings, it was almost past before they arrived.
Brighton Gazette January 5^th, 1854.

The Diggings:- A tradesman of this town has received a letter from his brother, long resident in Melbourne, in which he makes mention of a party that had discovered a rock of gold, which promised to yield many thousands of pounds sterling to the diggers. They proposed only working the rock for a fortnight, and then returning to Melbourne. A party of eight had just returned from the diggings, with no less than £1800 worth of gold, which was brought down in two days, the heads of the horses being decorated with ribbons.
Letters from Brighton Emigrants in Australia. January 12, 1854.

From Thomas Mussell, many years a chemist and druggist in North street.

Barker’s Creek, Mount Alexander

September 3^rd, 1853.

I must tell you we got a newspaper, which some of the Melbourne men sent us, containing the death of Mr John Lawrence. I, and, I think, most of the Brighton men at the diggings, put a black band round our caps, out of respect to him; but we muster but few, I should say not more than 12 or 14. I am situated in a very pleasant part of the diggings, it is called ‘Barker’s Creek’, and I think I have done pretty well considering how much all of us were mistaken with what we should require for gold digging; however, I have now got everything that is required for gold working, with a very comfortable tent. You would laugh to see us of a night in it, and I know would like to sit around a good–looking wood fire, and take a pipe with us. (We are quite happy as you are at Suggers’s, though our pipes are all short ones.)

We get up with the sun, have an out and out good breakfast, then to work till sunset, and then another out and out good dinner; after that a pipe and glass, then to bed; for you must know we can get anything almost we require, but we have to pay for it, viz: bread 3s, per gallon;, sugar 10d. per pound, coffee 3s, salt 1s, split peas 1s 6d, potatoes 1s, onions 3s, etc etc; port wine 15s per bottle, brandy from 15s to 20s, rum 15s, gin 15s, etc. etc.; but those prices do not matter; if a man has the means and pluck to stick to it, his luck is sure to come. Then men get a good price for labour, there is nothing less than 10s per day; I have sent you a list. As for poor people there are none, excepting when they first arrive, and then I must say it is very very bad, for many land with very little cash, and cannot meet the high prices; still if they have pluck to look after work they can find it; no matter what the man has been in England, there will be something for him to do at Melbourne. You know there are some who will not help themselves. I fancy I am writing you a very queer sort of letter, running from one thing to the other. I would wish to write you the same as if I was sitting in your snug little room talking, or you in my comfortable tent in Victoria. I must tell you that both my boy and myself have been in the bush from the time we first landed.

I have been once to Melbourne, that was in my last ― I made the journey to see if there were any letters at the Post-office for me, and was much disappointed, there being none; it took me four days to get down, and seven to return. During the time I was in Melbourne I saw Mrs Streeter (she is not looking well), Mr Streeter had not then arrived; also Nye. The two Lamberts, Pepper, Chate, and Tucker (poor good-natured Tucker had been very ill, but was then much better; by all accounts would have died had not his friend Chate stuck to him like a trump; but I suppose you have heard all this). I also had the pleasure of seeing two little houses built by Mr Mighell, son of our old friend Mighell who used to live at the top of North Street, with money he got at the gold fields. My very old friend Tom Towner I found the other day. I think he has been doing well; it is very strange, in England he used to be very gay, he is now one of the most steady and hardest working men on the fields – if he continues so, he will return to England a rich man. R. Levett is his mate; poor Dick has been very unlucky; his first mate was ill for four months.

Mr White, from the Regent, is turned butcher; as yet, I do not think he has done any good; neither have his friends Messrs. Beck and Pearmain. Mr Spencer, from Cannon Place, has got a store just by me; he is making money very fast; I think he will soon return. Jack Hyams (happy Jack, as he was called on board the “Statesman”) I do not think is doing much; he is at Melbourne; ― although he had more pluck than some of them. He was one of the party who marched to the diggings at the same time that I did; he kept us alive all the time; I should be glad to hear of his doing well. The two Wigneys went to the Ovens fields, about 200 miles from Melbourne; they gave up good work ― I am told 25s.per day― and did nothing; still I do not blame them. Mr Nye and the two Lamberts were in good work at Melbourne; I saw them in May last; they had saved some money and bought some ground. Young Sam Akehurst is living with a butcher close to me. Mr Tate lives in the tent next to me, with a first-rate party of diggers, and most respectable men. He will do well this summer, though as yet he has been unlucky; but it has not been from not working hard. I think him one of the hardest working young men on the fields.

Now for a word to old friends in old England. Call and see my old friend Sangiovanni; remember me kindly to him; tell him I am doing pretty well, and in good health, and I often think of him, and hope to see him again. My son has just come to say that he has been informed the post will go tonight in the place of to-morrow, so I must cut it; but be sure and remember me to Good, Cheesman, Briggs, in fact all friends. Do write us a line, and direct Mr― at Mr Juniper’s, Melbourne; and date your letter outside.
Brighton Gazette January 20,1954

Letter received by Mr Tester, from young man Myrtle, whose father was well known in the town many years as a butcher,

Still in the land of the living― now in a tent about 8 miles from Bendigo― diggings generally failing, though some success ― planning to go to Castlemain, 30 miles off, to purchase land ― Miss Loxley has left her situation.―

Fancy me dressed in a wide-awake hat (which has nearly forgotten its shape through exposure to the weather), a serge shirt, a pair of cord trousers well covered with clay, a pair of boots with nails one and a half inch thick. I rise before the sun, if it is my cooking week, and get breakfast, which consists of beef steak or mutton chops, damper and tea; then go to work till about 12; dinner the same as breakfast; then work till dark, and have supper, the same as dinner; and then to bed, which consists of a sack nailed to two pieces of wood, and a blanket wrapped round me, a gun or a brace of pistols lying by my side, loaded, and at full cock; for I am sorry to say robberies have been very frequent here lately….. (the robbers have an excellent chance now, as the Government is fully occupied about the licence tax) application has been made to Van Dieman’s land for soldiers.―
Brighton Gazette March 30, 1854

Letter received by Mr Tate, wine merchant, Bartholomews, from son, John Tate.

Barker’s Creek, 6 Nov., 1853.

Dear Father,― Since I last wrote to you I have had very good health, but very fluctuating luck. I have been on the diggings ever since I came out. There are plenty of new diggings springing up; but none so lucrative as those first discovered. Sometimes I have been working for weeks, aye, months, without earning sixpence; then I have in one week cleared myself, and had £20 over. I could, if I liked, earn one ounce a week surface washing, but this would only be wages. Me and my mate prefer chancing it; and therefore keep on sinking holes. We have often sunk ten or twelve in succession without getting a speck; and these from 6 to 30 feet deep. I once thought we were in a fair way of getting on. My mate and me shared 26 ounces of gold between us, and, as water was scarce, the washing stuff had to be carried to the Creek; so we purchased a horse and cart for £70, and began to work.

We went on very well for a week, earning about £4 per day, when the McIvor diggings were opened and reported to be very rich. We packed up our traps and off; found the said diggings a failed one, no one doing any good, and provisions very dear, even for this dear place, so we turned tail to come back. On the second night our horse was either stolen or strayed away. We lost a week in hunting in the bush for it; and were then obliged to sell the cart and harness for £15, and trudge on to dig again. Horse stealing is carried on to an enormous extent, as the columns of the newspaper will tell you.

Charles Pennikett, instead of going to Alexander as I told you, went on to the “Ovens”. He had some good luck, and bought a horse or I think two; but lost them again. This is the way gold diggings don’t pay. If a man sticks to any one locality, I have no hesitation in saying he can earn 1oz or 1½oz per week; and can live for 25s. I am now living at a Boarding House kept by Mrs Crockwell, and four daughters. She is the widow of a wine merchant in Torquay. We have parties and dancing and all the et ceteras of good society. On Tuesday next, the eldest daughter is to be married to an ex- Lieutenant in the Army. The old lady is as good as a mother to us. Mussell, of North Street, is a great friend of theirs and mine. I was working with him and his son for three months; and did nothing. At last I sunk a hole and got 10oz.; and began another, when, in consequence of a slight tiff that I had with Mr Mussell’s son George, I left them to come to Mrs Crockwell’s. They went into the claim I had left, finished it; and found 3½ lbs. weight of gold.

That was a slice of misfortune for me; however, I mean to be nothing but a digger. Things are looking brighter; and I have not the slightest doubt that in less than three years from the time I started, I shall be home, with some hundreds; and how could I have done that at home? (If George really means to come out, I should like him to stop till I come home, save as much as he can, as it is in the start that it is wanted.) I should return in a few months to Australia, as I know a fortune is to be made on the diggings in storekeeping.

From your affectionate Son,

John Tate.
Brighton Gazette March 30, 1854
The bearer of this letter to Mr Tate informs us that he was at Barker’s Creek Diggings, which is about 80 miles from Melbourne, and lies between the Forest Creek and Bendigo diggings: but, having a run of ill-luck, he deemed it prudent to return home. He states that Mr Mussell is following the profession he practiced in Brighton, and that he will draw a tooth for 10s., or administer a pill for a shilling; and that, with his son George, who was at work in the diggings when our informant left, in November, he is going on comfortably. Mr Wight, late of the Regent tavern, is in partnership with a person named Neale, and is following the butchering trade. The butcher’s shop consists of four poles with a piece of canvass thrown over the top. Mr Richard Livett, he says, is the life and soul of the party in his district, from his happy disposition and witticisms. Mr Spencer, he says, is the only one of that Brighton party who has amassed anything like a good round sum of money. It was pretty generally believed at the diggings that he was already worth £1000; and that with his three occupations, storekeeper, smith and butcher, he was making a fortune. The two sons of Mr Humphrey, Bond Street, are at Collingwood, a short distance from Melbourne, working at their trade, and, as far as our informant could learn, doing well. Mr Streeter is employed in some way at Collingwood, where Mrs Streeter keeps a lodging-house; and Mr Mitchell, late of Cranbourne Street, is with some companions at Forest Creek. (Mr Streeter is reported as having arrived back home before the end of June.)
Brighton Gazette June 29, 1854.

Mr Jonathan Streeter.― “Honest Jonathan” has returned to England from Australia; and is about to establish himself in business in London. On Sunday he paid a visit to his friends in Brighton, by whom he was most cordially received. He is much thinner than when he left England; and the weather to which he has lately been exposed has wrought a considerable change in his personal appearance, his skin being much sun-burnt and “tanned”.
Brighton Gazette August 13, 1854.

The Diggings.

The following extracts from a letter received by Mr R. Livett, junior, a compositor in the Brighton Gazette office, from his father in Australia, will be interesting to some of our readers:-

Prahan, near Melbourne, 10^th April, 1854.

My dear Richard,― Now I can write. Two days since I came down from the diggings, bringing with me a trifle. I was three days on the road (78 miles); but arrived safely, and, thank God, am now well. I went to the Treasury and got my lob of gold sold…. I go back to the bush in a few days; I require a little rest; and, if in any way successful, you shall again hear from me. Oh, what happiness to come back to old England about this time! But no, I shan’t do that, for I am resolved upon more gold, and then return, or die in the pursuit. I wear fast, Dick. I am very thin; so that what I do must be done quickly. The vicissitude of weather, privations, hardships, underground work, and occasional illness (the latter not to be avoided), the Lord knows I have had my share of it.

The tremendous heat to be borne, accompanied with occasional blindness, knocks life out of us at a rapid pace. I shall soon be an old man; but nothing deters me. On, on, on. I shall some day drop upon my lob; and then home and happiness. A description of the country, manner of life, price of necessaries, etc, etc, etc, you are now so familiar with from the communications of other Brighton emigrants, that it is unnecessary for me to go into so hacknied an affair. This seems a country for people to get money in faster, much faster, than at home; but no place to settle down in.

For my part, I feel but little better than a transportee. The only difference is, the law prevents them from returning home. A horrid country to live in; anything beyond the necessaries of life money cannot purchase. In fact, there is no such thing as comfort; it’s all tear, strain, and struggle to get money; and what with the flies and mosquitoes in the heat of summer, and wet and cold in the winter, it is scarcely bearable. Nothing but the hope of getting more gold induces me to stop here. Everybody, almost of every country, Germans, Danes, Hungarians, French, Spanish, and, in fact, all that I have ever conversed with, mean to return home.

I find there are a few who have done better than me; but where one has, a thousand have done worse. I’ll never advise any body belonging to me to come out, for it can but be considered little better than self murder.

Just to give you an idea of the necessary expenses, I must inform you that I have paid as much as £45 per ton for dray-hire; £1.5s.per week, for a crib to put my head in; £2 ditto for ordinary fare, beside constantly dropping money for licenses, implements, escort of gold, etc. So you see it is not altogether so inviting as often represented. I shall return to Barker’s Creek, about four miles from Castlemain, in a short time, where I intend to spend the winter. Winter over, I shall go seventy miles further up the country, and see what I can turn up among the hills. Our winters are excessively cold, especially just before daybreak. I have had as many as eight thicknesses of blanket over me, and have then been cold, in fact, numbed, so as hardly able to stand; and yet the ice is never thick enough to bear one’s weight. I have not yet seen Tankard; but I hear he is doing pretty well at a village, about twelve miles from this place. Dr Mussell is doing well at his profession at Terran Gower (the new diggings). Having nothing more of importance to communicate at present,

I remain

Your affectionate father,

Richard Livett.

Brighton Gazette October 12, 1854.

Brightonians in Melbourne. (from anonymous letter)

I have just met Raphael Cohen, brother to Mr Cohen, Guardian Office, Brighton, and Thomas Gibbs brother to Mr Gibbs, chemist, formerly of St. James’s street, Brighton. Mr Thomas Fisher, a wine merchant, once of St. James’s Street, Brighton is just dead.
Brighton Gazette. May 31, 1855
A Brighton Jeweller in Australia Mr Thatcher, of the King’s Road…. has communicated to us the following information:-

My son Manning, who has very recently returned from Australia, says:- “Just before I left Melbourne, the streets were placarded with a police proclamation of £150 reward for the apprehension of James Bickford, for stealing 200 ozs of gold out of a tent. During my stay in Melbourne I kept a sharp look out for Bickford; but never saw him. I left Melbourne for Calcutta.” Mr Thatcher states further, “Mrs Bickford’s nephew has written home to say, in trying to apprehend him, Bickford shot a policeman with his revolver, and was executed the very day Mrs Bickford and her children arrived in Australia”. A report of this kind has been circulated in Brighton for the last eight or ten days; and we have had no other means of speaking as to its accuracy further than what we have had communicated by Mr T. Bickford was a young man; and had a jeweller’s shop in the most fashionable part of the King’s Road a few years ago. A fire took place which gutted the premises and destroyed the stock; and shortly afterwards Mr B. left for Australia.

Brighton Gazette May 31, 1855.

From Melbourne – Last Thursday, fourteen passengers from Melbourne were landed at Shoreham, from the ship Orwell, by the fishing – lugger Eight Sixtus, Carden master.

Brighton Gazette July19th, 1855.

A Brighton Emigrant Mr Charles Evans – Sydney. March 19, 1855.

I found, on my arrival here, that a gentleman named Byers was in possession of the leading parts, so I was compelled to take an inferior situation. I made an arrangement with the manager of the first theatre in Sydney to play the heavy business (Iago, Macduff etc)―for six months, at six guineas per week, which I thought not bad considering the depressed state of the colony. There are three theatres open in Sydney: ours is the principal one….. There is a Brighton man, named Chate (who came out with Tucker and Bambridge) in our orchestra. He tells me that Mr and Mrs Thom are about returning to England. They have saved some money out here; but I am afraid the time for making fortunes is past.
Chapter 12. Conclusion.
This story of our Brighton emigrants stops in 1855 as their letters home are no longer regularly printed in the Gazette. Those already published often give some indication of what was happening, or had happened to particular individuals. We know that William Pentecote, who wrote in September 1852 “I cannot bear to be away from home,” was already back in Brighton when his friend John Mitchell wrote to him ten months later: “I think you did well in returning to England.” Others, like the Thoms, William Palgrove, Charles Thatcher and Jonathan Streeter, spent a few, mainly successful, years and then went back too.

From the Brighton Gazette of January 25, 1855 comes this news item. Panorama of Australia.— This exhibition is to be re-opened this evening; and perhaps the best proof of the accuracy of the illustrations, is the praise bestowed on it by our old townsman, Mr Jonathan Streeter, who has just returned from the new El Dorado. Mr Streeter stated last week at the close of the exhibition, that it is a faithful representation of the country; and will give all who witness it an excellent idea of that far-off land. (One panorama of Australia and America showed “nearly 6500 feet of transparent scenery”.)

It is clear from this news item that “our Jonathan” (as he was affectionately known) was welcomed as an authority on that faraway land which many ex—Brightonians were now beginning to look on as their new and future home. Some who may have dreamed of returning did not live, as the letters reveal, to make that dream come true. But one man who did come back to England in 1854 was Charles Joseph La Trobe, the former superintendent, then first Lieutenant Governor of the independent colony of Victoria. Though not himself from Brighton he settled about 15 miles away at Littlington and there he died in 1875, aged 74. His grave in the village churchyard is clearly marked by a plain white cross and this is where, in 1951, during the centenary celebrations of the State of Victoria, wreaths were laid by the Victorian Agent-General in the presence of the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress of London, the sheriffs and sword-bearer carrying the Sword of State, and many Australians then in England.

Thanks though to John Chandler and his memoirs (Forty Years in the Wilderness, published in 1893), we have a first hand account of the future that awaited at least some of the Harpley emigrants. Memories cannot always be relied upon but there is plenty of evidence that the families from Ebenezer kept together in friendship and by inter-marriage, strengthened by their shared faith. The Woods and Tylers bought land next to each other at Preston (the area previously known as “Irishtown”) and later sold part of it to Stephen Vincent and Robert Dadswell. When gold was discovered the men took off for the diggings together with John Juniper, William Fairhall and the Chandlers, father and son. Tom Harvey went to the diggings

with the two Newnhams, and, with the money he made from selling his gold, sent to the Brighton workhouse for his sister Ruth and brother Daniel. Ruth (then only eleven) later married John Chandler, and Frederick Newman married the Woods’ eldest daughter Mary. Sadly, Daniel Harvey went missing from the diggings near Bendigo. After several moves of home, the Chandlers and many of their friends settled in Preston. They had their own church there, and this became their centre of worship and baptism, with Edward Wood as elder. Wood’s partner in the ironmongery business in Brighton, John Juniper, set up premises in central Melbourne and made his home there.

The young single men from the Statesman who stayed in Australia may have had some difficulty in finding wives since there was from the earliest days in the colony a shortage of women. After 1852 more families emigrated together, many of them, according to the Illustrated London News (August 27, 1852), “a new class of people” from the “middle strata of society.” Professional and business men could see good opportunities in the thriving colony. Single women were encouraged to emigrate by the Society for the Promotion of Female Emigration, founded in 1851, but needlewomen and governesses, however welcomed by “Elizabeth,” were not likely to provide happy partners for rough diggers. Strenuous efforts were made by Caroline Chisholm to select suitable young girls to send out with her Family Colonization Loan Society, though many of these proved to be a disappointment to employers hoping for good domestic servants. Some of them no doubt became wives in the new country, but we do not hear from the published letters of any marriages among the young men who left Brighton in 1852. They were still occupied in gold seeking and then probably hoped to return home. Not all shared the happy optimism of James Wooldridge whose plans to stay and settle would bring his wife and children to join him.

New gold discoveries continued to be made in Victoria throughout the 1850s, and new rushes took place across the colony at Bryant’s Range, Maryborough, Mount Cole, Ararat and Amhurst. The “army of ants” shifted with the news of fresh finds and was accompanied by armies of bushrangers, as the heavily protected gold escorts made their way back to Melbourne. Meanwhile the longer established goldfields of Ballarat and Bendigo were developing from temporary settlements into mining towns. Visitors to Ballarat today can find themselves transported back at Sovereign Hill to a street of shops of the 1850s selling confectionery and drapery (bills made out in £.s.d.), and where there are working blacksmiths and tinsmiths, potters and furniture makers, carriage-builders, wheelwrights and candlemakers. There are hotels, churches schools and a replica of the Victoria Theatre where Lola Montez (billed as a “Spanish Dancer” but born in Ireland) performed her notorious Spider Dance, “trailing clouds of wickedness.” Sovereign Hill is of course a sanitized reconstruction of what must have been a rough and raucous place but one dear to the diggers trying to

forget the backbreaking, and often heartbreaking, toil of gold-seeking, or perhaps celebrating a lucky find that might bring them nearer to home. The Victoria Theatre is however of particular interest to us as it was there that Charles Thatcher—“the Inimitable”— must have performed the ballads that made him such a favourite among the diggers.

Charles Thatcher had arrived in Melbourne from Brighton towards the end of 1852. He was then 22 and had been employed in London to play the flute in the orchestras of Drury Lane and other theatres. He spent a short unsuccessful time at the diggings but then turned to his talent for writing and performing comic songs. He quickly sensed the topics enjoyed by the diggers and his “local songs” (generally sung to old tunes) included The New Chum Swell, Goldfield Girls, License Hunting and The Queer Ways of Australia. His main base was Bendigo where he often performed in the concert hall that was part of the Shamrock Hotel. No charge was made for entrance to the elegant room, decorated in blue and white, with gold chandeliers. Profits came from the bar at one end while the performance took place on the stage at the other. In London Thatcher had been familiar with song and supper rooms in the music hall, and was happily at home on the stage. In Bendigo he met a young widow (she was still only 20) and he and Annie Vitelli began to perform together. He wrote a farce (called The Colonial Servant Girl) and, with Annie and his collection of ballads, took off for Castlemaine and Ballarat to entertain the diggers there. Charles and Annie married at Newtown, near Geelong, in February 1861. The following year they followed the gold rushes then taking place in New Zealand, and performed in all the main towns in both islands. After a few months’ break in Melbourne they set out on another tour of New Zealand where a second daughter was born in Wellington. They later returned to England and Charles set up in business in London as importer, and seller of curios. He made several trips to China and Japan and he died in September 1878 of cholera in Shanghai.

Not all the Brighton emigrants led such colourful lives as Charles Thatcher— perhaps this was just as well, since he found himself in several punch-ups, and was once taken to court for libel. There were however several who made a good living from their musical and theatrical experience of earlier days in England. Brighton had had its Promenade Concerts (even if there was “no walking room”) so it is not surprising to find several young men involved with promenade concerts at Sydney, before Winterbottom and Ellis opened the Cremone Gardens (“the Vauxhall of Victoria”) at Melbourne. On Whit Monday 1856 there was a grand procession round the town followed by a performance in the Gardens that included the Bombardment of Sebastopol, complete with fireworks, at nine o’clock at night. Among those from whom tickets could be obtained was Mr Tankard, Temperance Hotel, Lonsdale Street.

There are, then, just a few ex-Brightonians whose future lives we know something of. Of many, alas, we know nothing.

Did Rogers stay on as camp-jailor at Ballarat? Did Vincent (and Wright) follow careers in the police? Did Bryer still teach dancing under an assumed name, and was Fleeson still known as Fortune? Those who were settled in the suburb of Brighton in 1861 may just have encountered an English visitor on the beach who wrote home: “I spent quite a remarkable Christmas, one that seems unbelievable. We lunched from great whicker (sic) hampers, and nothing was missing that a fine old English gentleman would have required except that the food was cold. We had journeyed to a place called Brighton, near Melbourne. Here under great tea-trees we lunched, and later rested, while some of our party paddled in the soft, clear water.”

With the extension of the gold fields new arrivals in Victoria included Germans, Italians, and Poles as well as Chinese. The mining towns, especially Bendigo, grew in size and prosperity, with grand new public buildings and open spaces. Melbourne had already established institutions familiar to incomers from Britain well before our emigrants arrived. The Argus had carried local news since 1846. In 1851 it looked very like the Brighton Gazette of the time, with news of sheep and horse sales, livestock shows, the (Flemington) races, sports and meetings of societies as well as advertisements for jobs vacant and wanted, schools and medical remedies. Beside the theatre, where Brighton musicians found jobs in the orchestra, there was the Mechanics’ Institute (there was also one at Ballarat with library attached).

In the early 1870s Anthony Trollope, visiting his son, wrote approvingly of Melbourne’s magnificence — the wide streets “built on the Philadelphian, rectangular, parallelogrammic plan,” and the large open spaces which “afford(ed) green walks to the citizens”. He was struck by the lack of squalor (though he admitted he had not visited the Irish or the Chinese quarters) and the grand public buildings—especially the Town Hall and the Post Office. He was impressed by the public library (“open gratuitously to all the world, six days a week, from ten in the morning till ten in the evening”) and saw the beginnings of its University (so far an average of only five bachelors’ degrees awarded each year). He noted that there were “no poor laws in the colonies and consequently no poor-rates,” though the poor and destitute were so well cared for in the Melbourne Benevolent Asylum that a pauper from an English union workhouse would think it was like Buckingham Palace.

This, then, was the city that developed round the Brightonians who stayed on. John Chandler most often mentions the suburbs, especially Preston, where many of them had settled. Life was not easy for them unless, like John Juniper, they had a good trade. Even so, the economy fluctuated and increasing competition forced many businesses to fail. John Chandler and some of his Baptist friends formed a company which was later dissolved, and when the farm (and “a home of my own”) that he bought then failed, he found work with his brother-in-law William Harvey at 6s. a day.

All through these difficult years, John Chandler was faithful to the tenets of the new Ebenezer congregation though tormented by the knowledge of his own unworthiness to seek baptism as a fully “saved” member. At long last after a visit from Stephen Vincent and another member of the church, he felt in his heart that he could be accepted and was baptised together with another young man whose name was George Wigney. Since the arrival of the Statesman and the letters written to their father by his sister Martha Mudge, there was never much mention in other letters of contacts between two very different sets of Brighton emigrants. George had clearly taken up his old trade and was the printer of the Particular Baptist Magazine which may have been the reason for his conversion and baptism.

Gradually John Chandler built up another business as a grocer in the inner suburb of Hawthorn. By this time he had six children and as they grew older, his sons joined him in a new business as ironmonger and general dealer. Before he died in his eighties, he was able to find satisfaction in the success and prosperity of a much respected business and joy in the birth in 1918 of his grandson Rolicker who was to carry the family firm of D and W Chandler on into the twentieth century. Back in the 1890s however, when John Chandler was writing about his “forty years in the wilderness” he was already thinking of the changes he had seen since he had arrived in Australia in the Harpley in 1850. Like many older people he felt that the changes had not all been to the better. Writing of his early neighbours in Preston he observed that “most of those who were settled there came out before any gold was thought of. They came out to make a home, and took an interest in each others’ welfare…. There is a sad failing in the young people of this colony, who are now enjoying all the privileges which the old colonists won for them by great hardship and endurance.” Since the Second World War “Australia Felix” has continued to attract incomers seeking a better life, and the Melbourne telephone directory today includes , among names from Greece, Poland, Italy, India and more recent arrivals, many familiar to us from the lists of emigrants from mid-Victorian Brighton.

Sources and Acknowledgements

These letters which tell the story of the Brighton people who emigrated to Australia in 1849 and 1852 were all, with one exception, published in the Brighton Gazette between 1850 and 1855. (The exception, dated Saturday 27 July 1850, was written by John Juniper to the Brighton Herald and was published in that paper.) I am greatly indebted to Stephanie Green, formerly with the Local Studies and Brighton Reference Library, and to Sally Blann, at the Brighton History Centre, who with their staffs supplied me with newspapers containing the letters. My other main source for this work was John Chandler’s Forty Years in the Wilderness, two original copies of which have survived since 1893 at the Gospel Standard Library in Hove, where Mrs Poole generously allowed me the privilege of working from them. Joan Peebles of Sussex Family History Society kindly supplied details of the Wood and Juniper families.

In Melbourne I received help from the staffs of the Australian Archives and Public Record Offices, the State Library of Victoria/ La Trobe Library, the Immigration Museum and the Genealogical Society of Victoria. Following the publication in 1997 and 1999 of a few of the letters in The Genealogist (the Family History Magazine of the Australian Institute of Genealogical Studies Inc.) I enjoyed interesting and helpful contacts with Marie G. Clarke, Robyn Doble, Graham Field, Margaret A. Rowe-Keys (editor of The Genealogist), Ken Thomas and Lauren Thomson. In Wellington, New Zealand, Gwynne Clark gave me useful information about the Fairhall family. I am grateful to them all.

I am particularly grateful to Dr David Goodman, of the University of Melbourne, for giving up his time to discussing some of the letters with me. I found his Gold Seekers (1994) invaluable for understanding how the gold rushes developed in California and Victoria. For the general background to the development of Australia during the whole of the nineteenth century I often turned to Michael Cannon’s Australia in the Victorian Age – in particular Volume I Who’s Master? Who’s Man (1971) and Volume III Life in the Cities (1975). Don Charlwood’s The Long Farewell (1981) contains much graphic material on the emigrants’ experience of the voyage to Australia. For the Brighton emigrants’ experience of Melbourne as it would become twenty years after their arrival, Anthony Trollope’s Australia Volume I (1873) gives a visitor’s account of life in Victoria at that time, while S.W.Silver & Co’s Handbook for Australia and New Zealand (1874, 2^nd edition) provides all the essential information on conditions of work and wages for newcomers to the colony. Asa Briggs gives a modern historian’s view of “Melbourne: a Victorian Community Overseas” in his Victorian Cities (1963).

Back in England, I am indebted to Dr. Sheila Haines for the letter to his mother from Thomas Barnes, and her advice and help have been instrumental in the undertaking and completion of this project. I thank her most sincerely. One recollection from my last visit to Melbourne recalls the happy occasion when I took the local train to Brighton to meet Rolicker Chandler, the grandson of the boy who left Brighton, Sussex, in 1849 to settle in Australia. He very kindly gave me copies of his own My Baptist Forbears (1994) and The Migrant Ship Harpley, 1847-1862 (1996).

Last, but certainly not least, I wish to pay grateful tribute to Barbara de Souza, who generously, if rashly, offered to put the edited letters on to her computer. I hope that, in spite of the arduous task she had undertaken, she enjoyed sharing in the lives of our Brighton emigrants as much as I have done.

Joyce Collins

January 2008

INDEX OF NAMES
In addition to the names of writers and recipients of letters, this list also includes those of officials, ships’ officers and surgeons, and other known emigrants. Dependent children who travelled with parents and are named on ships’ lists are placed in brackets after the adults.-
Akehurst, Sam 92,95

Allen, Rev Daniel 27

Alwin/Aylwin, (?George) 36,62,70-2

Alwin, Mrs Sarah

(Alwin, John Lydia, Joseph, Sarah, Sarah Ann, Maria, Ann)

Ashley, Lord 4

Atkins, 85-7

Bambridge/Bainbridge, (?Henry) 57,66,75,79,81,100

Bardwell, 72

Barlow, Mrs 85

Barnes, Thomas 2

Beck, William H 55,69,89,95

Becker, George 40

Bickford, James 36,74,88,93,100

Bickford, wife and children 100

Bryer, (alias Jones) 104

Bubb, Frederick (Calcutta)

Buckland, Captain Thomas 12-13

Buckwell, Captain 30

Byers, 100

Cathcart, 92

Chandler, Mrs Ann 101

Chandler, Stephen 6,17,21,26-7,10

Chandler, John Intro, 5,6,13-16,18, 21-3,26-8,46,101-2,104-5

(Chandler, Mary Ann)

Chandler, Rolicker 13, 105

Charl(e)wood, Stephen (?Don) 6,17

Charl(e)wood, Susan 17

Chate/Chute, Alfred 57,75,88,91,93,95,100

Chisholm, Caroline 4,102

Cockerell/Cottrell/Cotterill, Stephen 57,79,88

Cockran, 58

Cohen, Raphael 100

Cooke, John 7-10,79

Coppard, 90

Cox, 35

Crockwell, Mrs 97

Dadswell/Dodswell, Mrs Naomi 6,16,18

Dadswell, Robert 8,27,30,101

Daniels, John 89

Daniels, Mrs Naomi

Davi(e)s, Francis/Frank 78

Dexter, 58

Dickens, Charles 2,44,93

Dyer, 60 (Hebrides)

Edwards, C N 82,84

Edwards, Henry/Harry 75,82-4,88

“Elizabeth” and “George”, 29,31

Ellis, D 38,42,83-4,103 (?William)

Evans, Charles 81,84,88,94,100
Fairhall, William 27,101

Fisher, Thomas 93, 100

Fleeson, John (and son) 79

Foreman, 6,21,25

Foreman, Mrs

Fortune, 104

Franklyn/Franklin, Henry 3,35,60,74,89

Gibbs, Thomas 100

Godden, Albert 80-1

Godfrey, Captain G B,

Goodman, David 93

Hardy, Mrs Jane 49

(Hardy Charles, Jane, Robert, Maria and baby)

Harris, 40-1

Harvey, Daniel 102,105

Harvey, Ruth 102

Harvey, Thomas 6,15-16,101

Hays, 13

Hill, William 78,91

Howe family, 10

Hughes, John 52,58

Humphrey(s), Henry 62-3, 70-1,73,76,78,91-2,98

Humphrey(s), Herbert 53,62,70-3,76,78,91-2,98

Hyams, G (Jack) 95

Jeffery, Mrs

Jenkins, Dr 40

Johnson, (?Alfred) 37,91

Juniper, John jnr (including references to father of the same name)

Intro, 5-6, 15-18,23-5, 27,30,36,46,49-50,52,56,64,66,85,101-2,104

(Juniper, Ellen)

Juniper, Mary 51

Juniper, Mrs Sarah 19,51

Juniper, William 13

Killick, Dan/Den 79,88

King, 85

La Trobe,Charles Joseph 28,101

Lackey, 47

Lambert, John 7

Lambert, Mrs 10

Lambert, Thomas 7,11,95

Lambert, W 8, 95

Lawrence, John 60,89,93-5

Leney, 60

Lewis, 89

Livett/Levett, Richard 66,91,95,98,99

Lockyear, 73

Loftey, Widow Margaret 3

Loveridge, 35

Mackarell, 69

Martin, Alfred 88

Mighell, Richard 5-6,25,95

Millsome, Richard 88

Mitchell/Michell, 74,91,98,101

Mockford, James 74,89

Montez, Lola 102

Moon, 75

Mossman, 36

Mudge, Daniel George Ellis 46

Mudge, Mrs Martha 45-51, 105

Mussell, George 97-8

Mussell, “Dr” Thomas 66, 81,94,97,99

Myrtle, John 93

Neale, 98

Newnham, Frederick 6,102

Newnham, William 7,102

Nias, 88

Nye, 95

Over, C and J, 75

Overton, Mrs 73

Packham, Samuel 56

Palgrave, William James 29,33-4,101

Palgrave, Mrs

Patte(r)son, James 78,91

Pearmain, John 55

Pearmain, William 55,69,89,95

Penfold, Dr Christopher Rawson 4

Penfold, Mrs Mary 4

Pennekett, Charles 96

Pentecost/Pentecote, W P 57,74,91,101

Pepper, Henry 54,79,88,95

Pepper, William 54, 95-6

Pointer, 80

Postlethwaite, 82

Pritchard, William 88

Purcell, Henry/Harry 79

Purcell, Mrs 79

Purcell, J 80

Raven, James 12

Richards, 85

Roberts, Henry 38-40

Rogers, 69,91,104

Rose,Thomas (Hebrides)

Royal Creed, 91

Scarboro(w), Henry 60,81,88

Sedgwick, Rev Joseph 5,14

Sharp, Mrs 49

Smith, Henry 7,10

Smith, Dr James D 13,16

Snow, 89

Spencer, J 69,95,98

Stanley, Lord 45

Streeter, Jonathan 44,95,98,101

Streeter, Mrs 95,98

(Streeter [adult] son and daughter)

Strong, Henry 89

Strong, John H

Strudwick, 82

Tankard, W. Samuel 5,35,49,69,91,99,103

Tate, John 66,81,95

Thatcher, Charles 74,81,89,93,101,103

Thatcher, Charles Robert 5,35,66,93,100

Thatcher, Manning 100

Thom, Edward and Herbert 74,82,91,100,101

Thom, Mrs 91,100-1

Thomas, Charles 38

Thomas, (P.O. Sydney) 40

Thomas, E 42

Thwaites, 84

Tillstone, Francis 60,66-8

Towner, John (?Tom) 95

Towson, John Thomas 45-6

Trollope, Anthony 104

Tucker, John 66,75,81,88,91,93,95,100

Turner, H

Turner, John 5-6,12-15,18,21-2,24,52,55

Turner, Mrs Lucy

(Turner John George, Louisa)

Tyler, James 5,21,24-5,27,101

Tyler, Mrs Elizabeth 101

(Tyler Mary, Richard, Sarah, Lydia)

Verrall, 78,91

Vincent, Jessy 64

Vincent, Mrs Louisa 18,28,31,64

Vincent, Mrs Mary,

Vincent, Stephen 6,18,25,27,31,64,101,104-5

Vincent, William John 25,88

Vines, Joshua 88

Vitelli, Annie 103

Watson, 81

Wight/White, William 35,37,74,81,89,95,98,104

Wigney, G A 46,50,105

Wigney/Witney, George 47,51-2,93,96

Wigney, William 46-7,50,92,95

Williams, Edward and son, 91

Winterbottom, 75,83,91,103

Wood, Edward Intro, 5-6,15,17-18,20-1,24-5,27,36,46,52,70-1,101-2

Wood, George Charles 18

Wood, Mrs Mary (nee Gillam) 17,101-2

(Wood, Mary, Edward, Emily, Fanny)

Woolaston, and 2 sisters 92

Wooldridge, James 74,81,85,88,102

Wooldridge, Mrs Susan 87

Directory: assets
assets -> Northern territory of australia
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assets -> Invitation for Bid Calact/mbta for Standard Floor and Low Floor Rural Duty Vehicles ifb no. 12-03 November 14, 2012
assets -> 12 Step Retreats For Everyone in Twelve Step Recovery Ratner Fellowship
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assets -> List of accessible executive records
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