One of my husband’s maternal great aunts was Rosina Doidge née Sullivan formerly Saunders (1889-1969).
She was the second child of Henry Sullivan (1863-1943) and Anne Sullivan née Morley (1861-1946). (Anne had two children before her marriage to Henry.)
Rosina was born at “Navillus”, the family home in Evelyn Street, East Bentleigh, Victoria.
In 1910 she married John Henry Saunders (1891-1948). They had four children.
John Saunders worked as a linesman, installing and maintaining electrical power, telephone, and telegraph lines. On Christmas Eve 1948 he was killed when he fell through the roof of the North Melbourne Locomotive Depot.
Alfred Doidge (1890-1964), one of John’s work-mates on the railways, went to Saunders’s house to pay his condolences to the widow. To his surprise he discovered that his mate’s wife Rosina was a girl he had “kept company with” for four years from 1905.
It hadn’t worked out, because Alfred and Rosina had quarreled.
One Saturday evening in 1909, Rosina dyed a white dress black, and spoilt it. ‘Look what’s she done,’ Rosina’s mother said to Alfred. ‘What a shame,’ said Alfred. ‘You didn’t have to pay for the dress,’ said Rosina. There was quite a row, and Alfred and Rosina stopped keeping company …
Widower and widow, both of them now 60, the former sweethearts Alfred and Rosina married on 8 June 1949. Their wedding and the story behind it was reported in newspapers around Australia.
Rosina Saunders marrying Alfred Doidge 8 June 1949 at St Silas Church, Albert Park, Victoria
Tiff Over Dress (1949, June 6). Kalgoorlie Miner (WA : 1895 – 1950), p. 4. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article95732387
The graves of my husband’s family are quite often just bare earth. Rosina, however, erected a substantial gravestone at her parents’ grave in Cheltenham cemetery.
The headstone on the grave of Rosina’s parents at Cheltenham cemetery
I am grateful to our cousin Mark Schmidt for the photo of Rosina and Alfred on their wedding day
Anne's Family History 
It just shows how easily an argument can change the course of people’s lives. What a bitter/sweet story.
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Delightful story… and that it was recorded by a newspaper too. It’s lovely that you can have these insights into your ancestors’ lives.
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It is the newspapers that are giving me so many insights. My husband is a little sceptical that the newspaper story was a justification by Rosina who he, my husband, thinks from the look in her eyes was very determined. Otherwise perhaps it is not such a good thing for a widow to be remarrying so soon after her husband’s death.
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That’s an interesting perspective. Maybe she did feel the need to justify her marriage for ‘society’s benefit’ yet it’s still quite amazing that they reconnected at just that moment, after so many years.
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My mother-in-law and her sister had a tiff over a dress and never talked to each other the rest of their lives (Thirty years!!!!), even though one had to pass by the others house to go anywhere…. she would look the other way! Some people are so pigheaded and would cut off their nose to spite their face!!
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Awww, even if she did marry quickly, that’s still sweet.
http://findingeliza.com/
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