A GRIM TALE
Donald,
As is our custom, our December issue will recap the 2014 Journal stories.
Let us know if you have a greeting you would like to pass along.
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Introduction |
Ray Jerrems, Our Genealogist, Historian, and Adventurer
Firstly a word of warning to parents that this is a grim tale which is unsuitable for children under the age of fifteen. It is the story of Grimshaw Heyes (known as “Grim”), the great uncle of my wife. A photo of Grim is at the top of the article.
Some of the specific information about Grim’s career, and the photo, was obtained from an article “Not Grim at all” written by James Lerk and published in the Bendigo Weekly of 21-Feb-2014.
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My interest in Grim |
My interest in Grim was twofold. Firstly he was my wife’s great uncle, but secondly he was a gold miner, an area that has interested me greatly since my early childhood.
When I was young I used to visit my uncle, Alf Jerrems, in Gundagai, in the south west of NSW. Although it had never achieved any fame as a goldmining area, there was evidence of gold mines nearby. Within less than half an hour’s walk from the town there were exploration shafts and a horizontal tunnel going into the hill behind the town (Mount Parnassus), which I explored with my long-suffering cousin Sue.
Within half an hour’s drive past the Dog on the Tuckerbox there were the remains of a village (Mount Reno), with numerous deep shafts and a small derelict rock crushing battery. To whet your appetite I have included the above photo of a restored battery similar to the one at Mt Reno which I will explain in a later article.
Not far away were the gold mining areas of Adelong, Muttama and the picturesquely named Jackalass.
In later years I visited a number of famous goldmining localities further afield, including Araluen, Welcome Reef, Yalwal, Kiandra, Sofala and Hill End. In fact central and southern New South Wales had an amazing number of goldmining areas. I also explored coalmining and shale mining areas, not knowing at the time that some of my ancestors had been coal miners and shale miners.
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The search for El Dorado |
For centuries mankind has been searching for the legendary El Dorado (or its equivalent). In America the 49ers combed California for gold, despite the immense difficulty in getting there, either across the United States or by sea. Further north half a century later adventurers traveled to the Klondike with immense hardships including toiling on foot through deep snow (see above photo of Chilcoot Pass) carrying large loads and according to legend lawlessness was common.
Meanwhile, in more sedate Australia, men seeking fame and fortune spread through New South Wales and Victoria following established travelling routes and subject on the whole to law and order.
Well-documented exceptions to “law and order” were the Eureka Stockade revolt in Ballarat (near Bendigo) and riots at Lambing Flat in NSW. The only real ongoing lawlessness came from the bushrangers who held up the mail coaches carrying gold.
Against this backdrop thousands of migrants from all parts of the world combed the Australian countryside for the elusive gold metal. After they had finished in most cases the bush reclaimed the land, leaving overgrown mullock heaps, collapsing mine shafts, silted dams and rusting machinery to mark their blood, sweat and toil. Probably only a quarter of the miners made any significant finds.
Occasionally, as with Ballarat and Bendigo in Victoria, mining continued for almost a century. Mostly the diggings were exhausted after less than ten years.
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Other Jerrems family connections with mining |
When I started thinking about it, I realised that other Jerrems relatives have had experiences with mining. The most obvious is my distant cousin Alan Fitz Patrick, whose grandfather (a grandson of Big Bill through Big Bill’s son John) emigrated from England to live in Barberton, in South Africa. Barberton was a famous goldmining town where mining began in 1883.
Another distant relative, Arthur Jabez Small (a great grandson of Big Bill through Big Bill’s daughter Elizabeth) also invested in a number of NSW goldmines.
William George Jerrems, the grandson of Big Bill through Big Bill’s son Thomas, and also being the grandfather of our editor, also had large investments in mining companies.
So, if you will pardon the pun, my discovery of Grim presented me with a golden opportunity to look into the life of a typical goldminer. So fasten your seatbelts!
But what was Grim’s background?
Briefly, Grim (1864-1926) was the fifth child of George Hayes and Jane Lomas (both born in 1832 in Lancashire, married there in 1853) who migrated from England and settled in Bendigo in Victoria. George died in Bendigo in 1900 and Jane died there in 1916 in Ballarat, tended by her daughter Ellen (my wife’s grandmother).
Grim lived virtually all his life in Bendigo, as did his children. It is therefore appropriate that I describe Bendigo to you at this early stage so that you know what I am talking about.
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Bendigo history |
Bendigo is a city (population about 100,000) in northern Victoria, about 160 km (100 miles) north-west of Melbourne. Today, agriculture, commerce and industry support the city. In the surrounding countryside, farmers raise cattle and sheep, and grow fruit and vegetables.The city has two cathedrals, an art gallery and many fine public buildings.
During the gold rushes in Victoria, Bendigo was one of the largest gold-mining centres. When alluvial gold became exhausted, miners discovered that the area was rich in quartz reefs containing gold. Experts estimate that the miners extracted the staggering quantity of about 624,000 kilograms of gold from the area between 1851 and 1949.
The railway reached Bendigo in 1862. The above photo shows the Taradale Viaduct, on the line to Bendigo. It is 36 metres above Back Creek.
The town became a city in 1871.
This brings me to the migration of Grim’s parents to Australia, an interesting story in itself.
Grim’s parents migrate
In what has become a familiar story (for instance my great great grandfather did it) Grim’s father, George (aged 25), accompanied by his younger brother John, came to Australia ahead of his family. George arrived in Melbourne in January 1857 on the “Tudor” and Jane and their two surviving children arrived in July 1859 on the “Telegraph”.
Sadly, John’s dream of settling in Australia ended prematurely some years later in a tragic accident, but that is another story.
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George and the “Tudor” |
I have a confession to make. I like to include a photo of a ship to give authenticity to an article. In this instance I googled the name of George and John’s ship “Tudor”, but Google could only come up with an illustration of the ship “Mary Rose” built in the Tudor period, so I thought that I would include that ship instead. The only problem is that the “Mary Rose” was Henry Vlll’s main warship. Still, there is a certain similarity, so I have still included it. I hope you like it.
The actual “Tudor”, weighing a little over 1000 tons, took 82 days (arriving in January 1857) for the voyage, showing that it had taken the faster “Great Circle Route”, described in the Journal of July 2007.
This route 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. 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).
Passengers were confined to their quarters for weeks on end while the ships were in the Fifties. At these times the stench from the passengers, cooking, oil lamps and toilet buckets (bad at the best of times) would have been overpowering.
Grim shared these grim conditions with 400 other passengers, the maximum allowable for the size of the ship. One passenger was drowned, possibly having been swept overboard. Perhaps indicative of the bad reputation of this route was the fact that three quarters of the passengers were men (mostly unskilled) desperate to discover a new life, 248 of them being single. The shorter travelling time presumably meant that the fare was less, a significant attraction.
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George writes home to Jane |
The 1900 newspaper report of George’s death stated that George had lived in Bendigo for 43 years, indicating that would have travelled to Bendigo soon after he arrived in Melbourne in January 1857. He must have been sufficiently impressed to write back to Jane to recommend that she and their children follow him out to Australia.
As readers would know, I am always interested to find out why people migrated to Australia. What was the attraction for George?
Why did George migrate?
When George migrated to Australia Bendigo had settled down as a gold mining town, reef mining had taken over from individual gold fossicking. So what was the attraction for George and his brother John in Bendigo. Had they acquired skills in Accrington, Lancashire where they grew up, which would be particularly useful in Bendigo, and would encourage them to travel all that distance from Melbourne?
For many decades the textiles industry, the engineering industry and coal mining were the central activities in Accrington. Cotton mills and dye works provided work for the inhabitants; but often in very difficult conditions.
At first I thought that George may have been a coal miner, where his experience would have proved very useful in Bendigo. However, when I looked at the 1851 UK Census he was described mysteriously as a “clogger”, with his father Grimshaw (Snr) being a “Block printer and calico” and his brother John being a “calico printer” (calico is a coarse cotton cloth).
The ship’s manifest proved to be more useful. Both George and John are described as a “printer”. Not having any idea what a clogger was, I think that these references pointed to George having a textile printing background, where dye is placed on blocks or rollers and the calico is pressed against them. A clogger may have regulated the supply of dye to the blocks or rollers, an occupation which had no apparent relevance in Bendigo.
The report on George’s death says that he had been an engine driver, a quite different vocation to calico printing. The choice of Victoria and Bendigo therefore seems to have been a change of both location and vocation for him.
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Jane and the “Telegraph” |
This is a genuine illustration of the “Telegraph”, a 1100 tone barque built in Amsterdam in 1853. The term “barque” comes from its two main masts plus a smaller mizzen mast at the back.
The voyage in this ship took 88 days, finishing in Melbourne in July 1859 with a total of 374 passengers, including 44 men, 295 women, and 35 children. The ship probably took the normal route, calling in at South Africa.
My mother-in-law often told the story that her grandmother (Jane) had been so seasick on the voyage to Australia that she refused to ever travel by boat again, let alone return to England.
The voyage would have been taxing for Jane, with a five year old son and a two year old daughter, coupled with her sea-sickness. The next entry in the ship’s manifest is for an eleven year old maid, raising the possibility that Jane took the maid with her for assistance.
However a lot of other assistance would have been available on board because the bulk of the passengers were made up of single women aged between 18 and 33 from England, Scotland and Ireland, all having a servant background.
Conclusion
As often happens, I have written too much for one article. I will include more information about Bendigo, Grim and goldmining in a later article.