May 2019 – Edition 170

Hello hello, what do we have in the above photo? By jove, it is a photo of the very impressive Randwick Asylum for Destitute Children, showing the opening ceremony for the extended building, complete with belfry! Its relevance to the Lenton family will become apparent later.

By way of explanation, this article continues the story of the Lenton family, who were the ancestors of my wife Diane.

In my previous article I completed the story of Joseph Lenton and his wife Mary Frost, listing their various children including Charles b1858. However I have some loose ends to fix up before I finally leave Joseph and Mary.

Ray

My first loose end is to show you the very humble grave of former convict John Wild, referred to in (a) above. It is in St John’s Cemetery, O’Connell Street, Parramatta, the oldest existing burial ground in Australia.

It is particularly notable because it is by far the smallest grave I have seen, its size illustrated by the fact that it is dwarfed by the normal grave behind it.

It is in surprisingly good condition considering its age of 201 years!

The wording is “Sacred to the memory of John Wild who died July…1818 Aged 55 years.” (Looks like it could be July 6th.) His Burial Certificate says he was buried on 8th July, 1818 and the ceremony was performed by Joseph Kenyon. It also gives John’s profession as simply ‘Free’!

Here is a photo of Mary Frost, referred to in (d) above. It was taken at Brickfield Hill, in the centre of the city of Sydney, in 1877, eight years after her husband Joseph had died. She was about 57 at the time.

Her dress is very elaborate and has a number of interesting attributes, including the lace trim on the sleeves.

Here is a photo of the gravestone of Joseph and Mary Lenton (nee Frost), in Rookwood Cemetery, Sydney and a transcription of its text.

The floral depiction at the top is of very high quality and shows no sign of weathering despite the gravestone’s age of 120 years.

At last we have returned to Charles!

Born in 1858 in Narellan, Charles would have moved to the Sydney suburb of Waterloo with his parents Joseph and Mary and some of his siblings in 1868. Presumably he then went to the local schools until he was fourteen, and would have then been apprenticed to a bootmaker to train as a “boot finisher”.

Several years after completing his apprenticeship Charles married Eliza Westacott, who was born in about 1859. Her parents were John and Margaret Westacott (nee O’Brien), and the marriage took place at the Church of St Paul, Cleveland Street, Redfern in 1878.

Having married at the fairly normal ages, for those days, of 20 (Charles) and 19 (Eliza) one would have hoped that the young couple would have had a long and fruitful life, but it was not to be. They had three children, all of whom died in infancy, followed by the death of Eliza. It is said that they died from consumption (now known as TB), which is quite feasible (see later).

 I have included this information because it graphically illustrates the problems encountered by our forbears in raising children. The three children were Edith, Amy and Charles.

Eliza died in 1884 from TB, at least one year before her son Charles. There is no known specific gravestone for her.

As I mentioned earlier, it was said that Eliza and the children died from consumption (TB). Although this was not known at the time, TB was communicable by droplets caused by coughing and sneezing. It also lay dormant in indoor dust. Hospitals were notorious in those days for passing on diseases.

Often TB was exacerbated by poor living conditions and poor diet. However the living conditions should have been of a reasonable standard in the streets where Charles and Eliza lived, the possible exception being Chelsea Street in Surry Hills, a suburb which later became notorious for its slums.

Whatever the reason, TB sufferers endured a long and painful illness.

Charles’ second marriage was to Louisea Eleanor Chislett, the youngest child of Alfred (1809-1862) and Jane Chislett. The Chislett family came from Somerset, England, and Louise’s father Alfred was born in 1809. He was an optician and spectacle maker, completing his training in 1837.

Alfred had an interesting career which I will summarise for you.

Alfred’s first marriage, in 1831, was to Jane Ann Cornel, and they had four children (Henry b1833, Elizabeth b1836, Emma b1838 and George b&d 1841) in England.

Jane died in 1841, and two years later Alfred married Jane Kemp and initially they had five children in England (Emmeline Jane b1846, Alfred d1850, George 1848-1854, Mary Ann b1850, Alfred (2) b1852.

In 1853 Alfred had a change of career path. He applied to the Royal Mint in London for a position as engineer at the proposed Branch Royal Mint in Sydney, for which he was offered 250 pounds per year and a free passage to Australia for his family.

In 1854 the family set off as saloon passengers in the screw (propeller driven) ship “Calcutta” and 78 days later arrived in Sydney, the ship having taken the shorter (but far more dangerous) Great Circle Route where they saw whales and icebergs in the Antarctic region. When winds were favourable the ship’s sails were used, much to the relief of the passengers because the ship’s steam engines were very noisy.

The Mint must have been making a lot of money (ha ha!) because the following year the salaries of the senior engineers were raised to a staggering 725 pounds per annum.

No doubt this was of small consolation to the couple because, having lost two out of five children in England, three of their four children (Alice b&d 1855, Sarah Charlotte 1857-1862 and Emily 1858-1860) all died in childhood in Sydney. The sole survivor was Louisa Eleanor.

Louisa was born in 1860 at Glebe Road, Glebe and baptised at St Barnabas Church in Parramatta Road (constructed in 1858, the church was a local landmark and was replaced when it was badly damaged by fire in 2006).

Sadly Louise’s father died from dysentery (indicative of poor quality of water supply) when she was 16 months old and her mother died from TB (another casualty of this disease) when Louisa was not yet nine years old in 1869, so, now being an orphan, Louisa was placed in an orphanage.

In a sad coincidence Louisa’s older brother Alfred and his wife Elizabeth Malvina Bruce, married in 1871, lost their first three children in four years in Sydney. Sydney was obviously a very unhealthy place!

Dear readers,

I am afraid you are going to have to wait for a while to hear about the married couple (Charles and Louisa), because I am now going to tell you about Louisa’s childhood.

When I realised that Louisa had been placed in an orphanage my heart sank. Visions of Charles Dicken’s book “Oliver Twist” (published in the late 1830s) ran through my mind. But I am very pleased to announce that Louisa picked a very good time to be an orphan because my reconstruction of events demonstrates that it is very likely she had a quite happy childhood.

The actual name of the orphanage was the Randwick Asylum for Destitute Children, shown in the photo at the top of this article. Built in 1858 to house 400 children and extended in 1864 to house an additional 400 children, it was set on an area of 60 acres (25 ha), the land now being occupied by the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. The sandstone Asylum was funded by the Society for the Relief of Destitute Children with some contribution from the Government.

Children were taken in between the ages of three and ten, and in fact only a small proportion were orphans, the others were children needing care because they came from broken homes. In some cases the mother was listed in the Asylum’s records as a drunkard, or the father was sick or had deserted his family. Quite often the children were sent home when the family circumstances changed. Occasionally the Managing Committee specified that the parents had to contribute six shillings or twelve shillings a week.

It was common for orphans to enter into so-called “apprenticeships” when they reached the age of 12 or 13, as happened with Louise. Looking through the records, I have seen that most of the orphans were taken in by local foster parents, but quite a few were taken in by country people who had travelled long distances. Particular instances of the latter were in Wagga Wagga in the south-west of NSW, Eurobodalla (on the far South Coast) and nearby Wolumla. There were also a number of foster parents who came from the Hunter River region, north of Sydney.

In fact Louisa was taken in in December 1872 by Philip Behl’s family from distant Wolumla, near Bega on the far south coast of New South Wales.

Philip, a tanner, was born in Bavaria, Germany in about 1835 and migrated to Australia in 1857 aboard the sailing ship “Gottorp”, named after the German Duchy of Holstein-Gottorp. In 1859 he was granted an area of farming land at Wolumla, over 200 miles (320 km) south of Sydney.

In 1866 he married Mary Ann Gordon (1824-1906).

In a future article I will describe Louise’s selection by Philip Behl, her probable experiences in travelling by steamer to Wolumla and her probable experiences living on Philip’s farm.