T is for Talbot in 1869

In March 1852, my great great great grandfather Philip Champion Crespigny (1817-1889) with his wife Charlotte Frances née Dana and their two children, Ada and Philip, arrived in Port Phillip, Victoria, Australia.

Philip Crespigny, then 34, was moderately well-educated. He had attended Cambridge University, admitted on 7 November 1838 to Downing College as a Fellow-commoner. He had the status of a student who had matriculated, and he was not on a scholarship.

His period at Cambridge did not lead to a career in the Church, and it appears that at the time of his arrival in Victoria he had never previously had paid employment, nor had he been in business or trade.

Philip's arrival coincided with the great rush for gold in Victoria which followed the announcement of significant discoveries in July 1851. In March of that year, Victoria had a population of about 77,000. By the end of the following year, 1852, this figure had increased by 100,000.

The administration of Victoria's Lieutenant-governor, Captain Charles La Trobe, under-staffed and under-resourced, was barely able to cope with the huge population increase.

The management of the goldfields was specially difficult. LaTrobe copied the New South Wales system of gold-digging licenses, designed to discourage people from joining the rush to the diggings. It didn't work. Despite the enormous numbers of immigrants, Melbourne suffered from a serious labour shortage as men deserted their jobs to join the scramble for gold. Agricultural production fell. The harvest of wheat, for example, fell from 733,000 bushels in 1851 to 154,000 bushels in 1853. The area of land under cultivation shrank.

Philip Champion Crespigny (1817-1889)

Philip was appointed an Assistant Commissioner of Crown Lands for the Goldfields on 18 November 1852.

Victoria Government Gazette, Gazette 57, Wednesday, October 5th 1853, page 1459 retrieved from http://gazette.slv.vic.gov.au/view.cgi?year=1853&class=general&page_num=1459

Philip Crespigny was first appointed as a magistrate in 1853. Victoria Government Gazette, Gazette 58, Wednesday, October 12th 1853, page 1532 retrieved from http://gazette.slv.vic.gov.au/view.cgi?year=1853&class=general&page_num=1532

In February 1859 Philip was appointed police magistrate at Amherst, near Talbot, central Victoria. In 1861 the population of Amherst and Talbot was about 2,200.

View of Talbot c 1854-1862. Elevated view over township, in foreground a sign on wall reading Talbot Drug Store, on left line of double storey shop fronts with porch over footpath: Metropolitan Hotel, the library, jeweller and the Theatre Royal. In the distance scattered huts and earth works. From the State Library of Victoria Image H2009.84/35.

There are many newspaper reports of Philip Crespigny's police-court cases in the newspapers. (They will be covered in separate blogposts.)
In 1869 Philip left Talbot to become magistrate and coroner at Bairnsdale. A farewell banquet for him was held in the Talbot Borough Hall.

THE NEWS OF THE DAY. (1869, February 4). The Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 - 1954), p. 2. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article177005710

In March 1869 Mr Dowling, the magistrate who had replaced Philip, was transferred to Geelong and Philip returned to Talbot from Bairnsdale, with Clunes and Creswick added to the area he administered.

In August 1869, Philip advertised his farm near Talbot for sale. This property, of 83 acres, was on the road between Talbot and Amherst. There was a house, stable, barn, and an orchard and garden.

Advertising (1869, August 5). The Ballarat Star (Vic. : 1865 - 1924), p. 3. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article112891274

Later in the month Warden Crespigny fell from his horse near Clunes. According to the newspaper report, he was lucky to escape serious injury.

In June 1870 Philip was transferred from Talbot to Bright.  When Philip took up the Bright post in north-east Victoria, the rest of his family moved to Hawthorn, a suburb of Melbourne, 330 kilometres away. Some people felt he had been badly treated. At the time of his transfer Philip Crespigny was 53.

THE NEWS OF THE DAY. (1870, July 28). The Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 - 1954), p. 3. Retrieved from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article189330876

In February 1871 a rumour was reported in the Bright newspaper that the local police magistrate, Mr P. C. Crespigny, was about to be removed. In March 1871 Mr Crespigny took leave and was relieved by Mr Willoughby. In April 1871 Mr Crespigny PM was hearing cases in Eaglehawk, Bendigo. In May it was announced that Mr P. C. Crespigny PM would succeed Mr Daly as police magistrate in the Ararat district. He remained at Ararat until he resigned from government service in 1877.

Map showing Talbot, Bairnsdale, Bright, Hawthorn (a suburb of Melbourne), Eaglehawk (near Bendigo), Clunes and Creswick (south-east of Talbot) and Ararat. (click image to enlarge)

Related posts

• Australian arrival of the Champion Crespigny family on the 'Cambodia' 31 March 1852
• Divorce of John James and Charlotte Frances née Dana

U is for Union Mine disaster

On 2 January 1884, there was an accident at the Union Gold Mining Company's mine at Mount Greenock, 5km south of Talbot, in central Victoria.

Mount Greenock and the site of the Union Mine

The accident happened when four men were being lowered to the working level of the mine at the beginning of their shift.

The cage carrying miners to the working level was lifted and lowered by a steam engine which turned a horizontal shaft called a 'pinion-shaft'.

Attached to the pinion-shaft was a large spool of wire rope (this reel was called the 'spider') which, winding and unwinding, raised and lowered the cage.

The accident was caused by poorly-designed and insufficiently strong keying (joins) between the spider and the pinion-shaft. The keys gave way and the spider spun out of control on the shaft. 

The spool of wire rope supporting the cage ran out of control, and the cage fell the last eighty feet of a 230 foot shaft. The cage was not a safety cage, although safety cages had been the subject of a Parliamentary Report five years earlier.

One of the injured men was John Reher (1837-1891), the husband of Alice Young (1859-1935), my husband's great grand aunt.

MISCELLANEOUS ITEMS. (1884, January 4). The North Eastern Ensign (Benalla, Vic. : 1872 - 1938), p. 2. Retrieved April 22, 2014, from http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article70745282

Syndicated newspaper reports, such as the one that appeared in the Australian Town and Country Journal of 5 January 1884, reported that Reher was "the most severely hurt. His internal injuries are considered certain to prove fatal". It went on to say, incorrectly, that Reher, "who was too badly hurt to be moved, is a single man".

Alice Young and John Reher had married in 1880. They had two children, Gertrude Alice Carol Reher born 1881 and Percy Powell Albury Reher born 1882. A third child, Elfleda Cecilia Anna Reher, was born in 1884, the year of the accident.

Reher broke his right leg, dislocated his right elbow joint and had severe internal injuries. (Report in the Talbot Leader of 4 January 1884)

John Reher, and the three other injured men, survived. Morris Whelan was also married and had eight children, John Beckman was married with one child and John Sellborn was single. All four men were compensated with part wages paid for three months.

The newspaper reports were not completely accurate about the names of the men and other details. For example, John Selborn's name was reported as Selthorne.

The names of the four men are recorded in the Victorian Mining Accident Index compiled by Dave Evans at http://www.ballaratgenealogy.org.au/resources/victorian-mining-accident-index . The on-line index has information of about 5,600 miners killed or injured from the early 1850s to the 1940s. There is also a more comprehensive index available on CD-ROM with about 9,100 names and more details.

Nearly sixty years later the accident was remembered by a letter writer to the Age who recalled that Reher had to spend the greater part of his days sitting in a chair.

The Age 26 August 1939 page 9 retrieved from Google News

John and Alice had a fourth child, Mary Maude Mabel Reher, born in 1886.

John Reher died in 1891, seven years after the accident.

Transcription of article in the Talbot Leader of 4 January 1884