Ray continues the saga of the children of Nicolle the Tailor.

For a future edition, I am working on the research of the naval career of my father, Donald E. Jerrems II, who flew cargo flights to Australia during World War ll. I have requested an archival record from the National Archives and Records Administration (National Personnel Records Center) in St. Louis, Missouri. I am not sure it will be as interesting a Ray’s story about the notorious Squizzy Taylor

Enjoy.
Introduction 
I know! I know! In the previous Jerrems Journal I said that I would be telling you more about Arthur Reginald Jerrems and his fellow residents of Richmond, the notorious Squizzy Taylor and the famous Dame Nellie Melba. However I am doing more research for that article, and in the meantime I will dive into my archives with another interesting story.

The photo at the top of the article shows the Ballarat Theatre Royal, which was partly owned by Thomas Bellair (see later for details).

This article continues on from a previous article in the September 2014 Journal about the children of Alexander Nicoll, otherwise known as Nicoll the Tailor, the great great grandfather of many of our United States readers.

In the previous article we left Thomas Bellair in Sunderland, England, where I surmised that he was an entertainer in pubs, and I took the opportunity to tell you about the history of music halls. Thomas’s connection with Nicoll the Tailor was somewhat oblique, because his son married Jeannie Leonard, who was the daughter of Nicoll’s daughter Emma.

Quite simple, really!

Thomas had a varied career which I am sure you will find to be interesting.
Thomas Bellair surfaces in Australia
 
Thomas Bellair surfaces again in Australia, where he spent some time in Sydney, Melbourne and the famous gold mining town of Ballarat in Victoria, Australia.

Although I have evidence that my great great grandfather Thomas Jerrems spent time at the Mount Alexander goldfield in 1852, this evidence took the brief form of a “dead letter” which had been returned unclaimed from the goldfield post office.

On the other hand in the case of Thomas Bellair I have very specific information about his career in Australia, based on his obituary. This colourful career serves to give us significant insights into an important era in Australia’s colonial history, which has parallels with the history of the United States.

Summary of Thomas’s career in Australia

Briefly (I will describe some aspects later), his obituary shows that Thomas migrated to Australia in 1855, where he took up a post as an actor in Sydney. After taking a theatre company to New Zealand he acted in two major theatres in Victoria, becoming part owner of the second theatre. It was at this stage that he leased a theatre in Ballarat, married, and followed by leasing a pub in the same town.

After completing his sojourn in Ballarat he took a dramatic company to Calcutta in India. Upon return to Australia he then leased a pub in Melbourne, was the mayor of a Melbourne regional Council, and finally moved to Wagga Wagga in rural New South Wales where he bought his final pub.

Thomas’s marriage to Anne

Although it seems fairly clear from the 1851 UK Census that Thomas and Anne had in fact married in the late 1840s in England (possibly in the Sunderland region where the baby Stuart was born) researchers have not found any record of a marriage, death of Anne or a divorce.

Framework of this article

Thomas’s obituary was published in the Wagga Wagga “Express” of 16th May 1893.I have quoted parts of the obituary extensively to form the framework of this article. Each quotation (in italics) is followed by my further research, including photos.

Thomas migrates to Australia

At a very early age he showed a preference for the stage and joined the dramatic profession rather than enter upon any other line of life. He very soon secured a good place in theatrical circles, and ‘was a much esteemed as an actor in England before coming to Australia. He arrived in the colonies by the well-known clipper James Baines in 1855.

The clipper James Baines

Thomas certainly had an eye for quality when it came to sailing ships. The James Baines was commissioned in September 1854 and carried 700 passengers with 100 crew, plus 1500 tonnes of cargo. We are told that she provided for three classes of passengers, the luxury (1st class) accommodation was equipped with the finest furniture available and mahogany paneling, with standard rooms for all classes. The ship also had state-rooms and dining-rooms of the finest design.

Once described as “the most perfect ship afloat”, the ship itself had three full length decks and a shorter poop deck, its dimensions being 226 ft (69 m) length and weighing 2,515 tons (2,555 tonnes). It was one of the largest ships of its time, and it was very fast, at one stage holding the Trans Atlantic record.

Unlike its contemporary, Brunel’s bigger SS Great Britain, which had coal-powered engines, it relied purely on sails.

After less than four years plying the high seas the ship’s promising career was brought to an ignominious end when it caught fire on Thursday morning, April 22, 1858 (to be precise) while discharging her cargo in the Huskisson Dock at Liverpool. The ship burned down to the waterline.

The clipper finished two voyages from Liverpool to Melbourne in 1855, finishing in February and October. Thomas was on one of these voyages. The February trip took a sizzling 64 days, which would have been close to the record. The time also shows clearly that the ship had taken the dangerous non-stop “Great Circle Route”.

As explained in the July 2007 Journal, the new route, which reduced travelling time from 4 months to less than 3 months, took advantage of the curvature of the earth and prevailing winds, taking the ships south to 50 degrees of latitude and lower. These latitudes were previously only frequented by Antarctic explorers and sealers in specially built ships. It required supreme navigational and seamanship skills. The winds, already very high in the Roaring Forties, reached prodigious speeds, frequently whipping the waves up to 12 metres, and there was the constant fear of icebergs (in 1854 the SS Great Britain recorded seeing 280 icebergs).
Thomas’s sojourn in Sydney
Thomas arrived in Sydney in 1855 “to fulfil a two years’ engagement to Mr. Andrew Forning, who was the lessee of the Victorian Theatre, Sydney. He was acting stage manager for Mr. Forning”.

Thomas had an excellent taste for theatres, and was definitely not a mere pub entertainer as I had thought before I found the obituary. Built in 1838, the Victorian Theatre was a large theatre for its time, as can be seen from the above sketch of its interior. The Boxes would hold about 550 people, the Pit 1000, and the Gallery 350, making in all an audience capacity of nearly 2000 . Its name appears to have been changed later to the Royal Victoria Theatre.

To put the theatre’s audience capacity in context, the Concert Hall of the famous Sydney Opera House holds 2679, which is only 800 more than the Victorian Theatre.

Thomas goes to New Zealand for a short season

Thomas “at the termination of his engagement took a company on his own account to Auckland, New Zealand. After playing a short season there he went to Melbourne.”

This seems to have been an ambitious project, involving (amongst other things) securing the venue in Auckland, assembling actors, support staff, costumes and stage sets, arranging shipping berths for the passage and accommodation in Auckland.

All of this took place before Auckland had any telegraph link with Australia.

Thomas moves on to Melbourne as a Shakespearian actor

“Mr. Bellair will be remembered by old Victorians as a sterling actor, who made his first appearance in Melbourne, at the Royal, as Gratiano in the “Merchant of Venice,” when G. V. Brooke and George Coppin were the lessees.”

 
Thomas becomes part owner of a theatre with George Coppin
 
“When the latter couple dissolved partnership, Mr. Bellair joined Mr. Coppin in the Olympic Theatre (then ironically termed “The Iron Pot”),”

Erected on the site of one of Melbournes earliest play-houses the “Iron Pot,” (officially called the “Coppin’s Olympic Theatre”) was originally built in 1855 and abandoned in 1894. This Melbourne icon gained this name because it was a prefabricated iron theatre purchased in Manchester, England by the entrepreneurial George Coppin, himself a former comedian and actor.

The mind boggles at the cost of shipping the ironwork to Melbourne and assembling it. Surely it would have been cheaper to build a theatre from normal construction material. Also, I wonder whether the acoustics were a resounding success! Perhaps they were too resounding.
George Coppin
 
Here is a photo of a painting of George Coppin by the famous Australian landscapist Tom Roberts.
 
George Coppin was a famous entrepreneur who had his own private Zoo.

In an interesting historical twist he had a link with the famous Burke and Wills Expedition, which attempted to reach the northern coast of Australia from Melbourne. In 1859 Coppin imported six grumpy camels from Egypt as exhibits for his Cremorne Gardens menagerie and in 1860 he sold them for a thumping £300 to the Exploration Committee of the Royal Society of Victoria, who used them on the expedition.

We know that, sadly, Burke and Wills perished on the expedition but the fate of the camels is not recorded.

The fact that Thomas became a business partner of the flamboyant George Coppin demonstrates that Thomas also had an entrepreneurial streak comparable with Nicoll the Tailor.
Thomas moves to Ballarat

At this stage Thomas moved to Ballarat. This leads me to describe the town to place his notable activities in Ballarat in context.

Ballarat, situated 120km (75 miles) west of Melbourne, was one of the most significant Victorian era boomtowns in Australia. Just months after Victoria was granted separation from New South Wales, the discovery of gold transformed Ballarat from a small sheep station to a major settlement. Gold was discovered in August 1851 and news quickly spread of rich alluvial fields where gold could easily be extracted. Within months, approximately 20,000 prospectors had rushed to the district.

Civil disobedience in Ballarat over fees charged for gold mining licenses led to Australia’s only armed civil uprising, the Eureka Rebellion (colloquially referred to as the Eureka Stockade, pictured above) which took place in Ballarat in December 1854. The event, in which 22 miners died, is considered by many to be a defining moment in Australian history.

The population of Ballarat reaches a peak

The city earned the nickname “The Golden City” in the 1850s. The gold rush population peaked at almost 60,000, mostly male diggers, by 1858. However the early population was largely itinerant. As quickly as the alluvial deposits drew prospectors to Ballarat, the rate of gold extraction fluctuated and, as the alluvial deposits were rapidly worked out, many prospectors rushed to other fields as new findings were announced. This included Mount Alexander, where my great great grandfather made an appearance.

By the time Thomas arrived, a smaller number of permanent settlers, numbering around 23,000, had established a prosperous economy based around a shift from alluvial mining to deep underground gold mining.

Ballarat’s ramshackle tents and timber buildings gradually made way for permanent buildings, with many impressive structures of solid stone and brick mainly built from wealth generated by the earlier mining. These buildings included the huge theatre leased by Thomas Bellair (see later), substantial hotels (including a hotel leased by Thomas), and civic projects like a Botanical Gardens (1858) and a Town Hall in East Ballarat (1862).

The railway reaches Ballarat

Another significant event was the construction of the first railway line from Melbourne to Ballarat via Geelong. Construction began in 1858 and took nearly four years to complete. The project employed 3,000 men and cost approximately 1.5 million pounds.

Railway enthusiasts will be interested to hear that the line officially opened in 1862, with the first train running on 10th April-at a rate of 15 miles per hour-taking around four and a half hours to reach Geelong (which was less than half of the way to Ballarat), amid various complications including the engine’s inability to pull up a particular hill and the lack of firewood.
Visit of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh

A measure of the town’s maturity was evidenced by the visit of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh in 1867 and, as the first royal visit, the occasion was met with great fanfare. As a prominent citizen Thomas would have taken part in the festivities. The Prince Room was prepared at Craigs Royal Hotel (a rival of Thomas’s more modest hotel) for his stay.

The Prince’s favourable impressions of Ballarat may have been dampened later by the assassination attempt by former Ballaratian Henry James O’Farrell at the harbourside Clontarf in Sydney.

Thomas manages a theatre

Returning to the obituary, we learn that Thomas “afterwards became joint lessee with Mr. W. Hoskins of the Theatre Royal, Ballarat.”

Ballarat’s very grand Theatre Royal (see photo at the top of the article) was built in 1858 in Sturt Street. This 1861 photo shows the theatre with groups of people posed outside, and advertisements for performances by “Marsh’s Juvenile Comedians” and a signboard in front of the Bar on the left advertising a tableau of “The Bottle Imp”.

A tableau is a representation of a picture, statue, scene, etc., by one or more actors suitably costumed and posed. Although much later the famous author Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a short story in 1891 about a bottle containing an imp which granted its owner’s wishes it is possible that Thomas’s earlier production had a similar theme.

As you can see from the photo at the top of the article, the stone and brick building was two stories high, with a facade almost an additional storey high. The four pillars round off a stylish building, very likely the largest building in Ballarat at the time. The smooth pillars are known as “Tuscan” style.

It seems amazing to me that a mere seven years after gold was discovered in the area such a large building could be constructed, when materials in the necessary quantities would have been difficult to obtain.

The completion of the railway line in 1862 would have helped Thomas considerably by enabling him to bring in theatre productions quickly from Melbourne.

Conclusion

We will continue to follow Thomas’s career in a later article.