My husband’s great grandfather John Morley (1823-1888), John’s wife Eliza née Sinden (1823-1908) and their two children, Elizabeth aged 3 and William aged 1 emigrated to Australia in 1853, arriving in Melbourne on the ‘Ida‘ on 12 July.
SHIPPING INTELLIGENCE. (1853, July 14). The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 – 1957), p. 4. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article4794495
Five years before, on 17 September 1848, John Morley, then 25, had married Eliza, also 25 years old, at Hurstpierpoint in Sussex.
John Morley was a railway labourer. In 1851, he and Eliza and their one year old daughter Elizabeth were living at 97 Railway Terrace, Keymer, a couple of miles from Hurstpierpoint. Keymer Junction, which had opened four years before, was an important railway junction on the East Coastway Line to Lewes and the Brighton main line.
In 1854, a year after the Morley’s arrival in Victoria, they were living in Collingwood, a suburb of Melbourne. On 10 March, little Elizabeth Morley died, a few months before her fifth birthday, of tabes messenterica, tuberculosis of the abdominal lymph glands. This disease, rare now with pasteurisation, is an illness of children, caused by infected cows milk.
Drawing of Collingwood in 1853 retrieved from http://www.mileslewis.net/lectures/11-local-history/inner-melbourne-1850s.pdf
In the first annual report covering deaths to 1854, the Registrar General of Births, Deaths and Marriages of the Colony of Victoria listed tabes mesenterica as one of the diseases of the digestive organs. Deaths from diseases of the digestive organs, including tabes mesenterica, teething and enteritis, chiefly deaths of children, constituted about seven percent of total deaths for that year.
The Report paints a picture of Melbourne and the goldfields struggling with the challenges of the rapid increases in population. Victoria’s population trebled from 1851 to 1854. 78,000 arrived in the year 1853-54, the Morley family among them.
REGISTRAR GENERAL’S REPORT. (1855, September 7). The Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 – 1954), p. 6. Retrieved August 22, 2017, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article154891906
Population for Victoria estimated at 31 December each year from Geoffrey Searle, The Golden Age: A History of the colony of Victoria 1851 -1861, Melbourne University Press, 1977, (Appendix 1 Page 382) reproduced at http://education.sovereignhill.com.au/media/uploads/VICTORIAN_POPULATION.pdf
John and Eliza Morley had eight children, only three survived childhood to become adults.
Further reading and sources
- REGISTRAR GENERAL’S REPORT. (1855, September 7). The Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 – 1954), p. 6. Retrieved August 22, 2017, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article154891906
- Vamplew, Wray, 1943- Australians, historical statistics. Fairfax, Syme & Weldon Associates, Broadway, N.S.W., Australia, 1987. page 26.
- Population figures as at 31 December for each year from 1851 to 1861 from Geoffrey Searle, The Golden Age: A History of the colony of Victoria 1851 -1861, Melbourne University Press, 1977, (Appendix 1 Page 382) reproduced at http://education.sovereignhill.com.au/media/uploads/VICTORIAN_POPULATION.pdf
- Public Record Office Victoria , VPRS 14, Assisted passenger lists (index) retrieved from https://www.prov.vic.gov.au/explore-collection/explore-topic/passenger-records-and-immigration/assisted-passenger-lists.
- Marriage certificate John Morley and Eliza Sinden Registration England Year 1848 Registration Quarter Jul-Aug-Sep Registration district Cuckfield Volume 7 Page 453
- Death certificate of Elizabeth Morley Victoria 1854 /1143
