The Horsekeeper's Daughter

by Jane Gulliford Lowes

  Turbot Street then, as now, is one of the city’s main thoroughfares; then, as now, it was lined with business premises and hotels, and was home to Brisbane’s market. Farmers from all over Queensland would bring their fruit, vegetables, meat and dairy, to the indoor warehouse market on Roma Street, which ran parallel; their produce would then be set out on the many market stalls on both sides of Turbot Street, ready for sale. The street would have been full of stalls and barrows, market traders calling out to passing customers, ponies and carts, the air heavy with a heady mixture of fruit and horses, as servant girls and housewives moved from stall to stall amongst the hustle and bustle to purchase the provisions for their mistresses or families.

  There were other new arrivals on Turbot Street in January 1887 too. At the corner of Turbot and George Street, roughly where the Friendly Society dispensary building stands, there appeared an establishment by the name of Higgins’ Menagerie. This was a small, private, travelling zoo which took up residence in Brisbane, much to both the consternation and fascination of the city’s residents. This was no small collection of half-domesticated farm animals and pets. Higgins’ Menagerie boasted African lions, Bengal tigers, assorted monkeys, snakes and other exotic animals.39 These unfortunate creatures were kept caged and chained for the amusement of passers-by in what are described in local newspapers of the time as “ramshackle, dangerous and stinking premises”. Sarah must have walked past the Menagerie every day on her way to the market, perhaps pausing to look at the forlorn animals and chatting to their tormentors.

  The tigers, however, had the last laugh. Or rather, the last bite. During a busy lunchtime on Wednesday 21st October 1888, the residents of George and Turbot Streets were somewhat alarmed when one of the menagerie assistants, a chap by the name of Peter Bertram, came hurtling out of an alleyway, covered in blood and screaming, hotly pursued by Sammy, a full grown male Bengal tiger. Sammy had mauled the unfortunate Bertram in his cage. The local newspaper describes how Bertram, trying to escape, had fled the menagerie, unsurprisingly not pausing to close the gate, and Sammy gave chase down Turbot Street. Equally unsurprisingly, Bertram soon discovered that tigers can run faster than people – Sammy, “his vast frame flying through the air as if propelled from a catapult …felled him to earth with one blow of his terrible paw.” Sammy attacked his victim once again, shaking his body in his jaws like a rag doll. He then dropped poor Bertram, who somehow managed to get up and try to escape, only to be pounced upon and seized a third time by the enthusiastic Sammy. The beast had Bertram completely pinned down, and he was only saved from a grisly end when the proprietor Higgins and the beautifully-named Valentine Spendlove intervened. After turning on his master, Higgins, and taking a fair chunk out of his arm, Sammy eventually got bored, and, “by the dint of much flogging”, was finally driven back into the menagerie and chained up again.

  Amazingly, all the participants in this sorry episode survived – not least poor Sammy, who miraculously escaped being shot. After much campaigning by citizens and businesses in the immediate vicinity, the menagerie was eventually sold and Higgins and his animals moved back out to Toombul, (where they had originally been bred by Higgins at the Toombul Tiger Farm). The tigers were apparently kept on long chains just two hundred metres from the Toombul Railway Station, pacing up and down, growling and snarling at the terrified passengers.

  Brisbane offered many other diversions and entertainments to occupy Sarah in what little leisure time she had available to her. Perhaps she visited the Gaiety Theatre, the Opera House, the Theatre Royal, or maybe the Town Hall which catered more for “working class tastes”, with boxing matches and hypnotists. Opera and classical concerts were very popular, and there were regular variety performances at the Oxford Music Hall.40 There were all sorts of sporting activities available, such as rowing, cricket, cycling, football, rugby, swimming and sailing, though it’s not clear to what extent these pastimes were considered suitable for young ladies. Sarah may have had her portrait taken by one of the fifty-two photographers’ establishments operating in Brisbane at the time – if she did send any photographs back home to her family in County Durham they have disappeared or been lost or destroyed. In Edie’s box, I have photographs of Sarah’s sisters, her mother, her brother-in-law and her nieces. Sadly, not a single photograph of Sarah still exists.

  In 1887, Queensland was at its zenith. The Brisbane building boom of the 1880s was at its peak, and in rural Queensland the farmers were thriving too. By the end of the decade, the number of sheep in the state had increased from seven to twenty million, and heads of cattle from three to six million.41 The sugar cane industry was proving lucrative, and new technology in shipping and refrigeration meant that Queensland’s meat could be more easily transported around Australia and exported abroad. There was a lot of money to be made by the enterprising, the inventive and the hard-working, and much of that new money was spent in Brisbane. Land in the city became phenomenally expensive, with prices peaking around 1890.

  1887 also marked the Golden Jubilee of the accession of Queen Victoria to the throne. Across the British Empire, this momentous event was marked with festivities and civic events, from Canada to New Zealand, and many places in between. Back in Seaham Harbour, school children were issued with commemorative coins, and picnics and concerts were held, together with civic receptions for visiting dignitaries. The Jubilee Methodist Church opened in what is now Eastlea Road, right opposite Seaham Colliery and then at the very edge of the pit yard. New streets sprang up, including Viceroy Street, named in honour of the occasion. Ten thousand miles away in Queensland, Brisbane also marked the 50th anniversary of the Queen’s coronation with the creation of a new housing development, the Jubilee Township Estate, out towards Bardon. Plots of land were auctioned off to purchasers wishing to live at such eminent addresses as Empress Terrace, Queen Street and Sceptre Row, and various events took place across the city to honour Her Imperial Majesty. Victorian Brisbane was at the height of its commercial success in 1887, but the spiralling property prices and building boom couldn’t last, and by 1890 Queensland and its capital were plunging into a deep depression.

  The document I discovered which records Sarah’s residence as Turbot Street is dated 7th December 1887. Unfortunately, it doesn’t give the name of the establishment where she worked, nor a house number to pinpoint her precise location. There is no clue as to the identity of her employer, nor a specific description of her duties. She is described simply as a “domestic servant”. However, it does reveal other intriguing and crucial information about Sarah and her new life in Brisbane.

  The document is Sarah Marshall’s marriage certificate.

  10

  Ghinghinda

  Sarah’s new husband, William John Campbell, was an Irishman and a farmer from Ahoghill near Ballymena, in County Antrim, in what is now Northern Ireland. Ahoghill was and remains a staunchly Protestant area, infamously remembered as the location of the murder of Catholic village chemist shopkeeper William Strathern by Protestant paramilitaries in 1977 at the height of “The Troubles”. Like the rest of the island of Ireland, the village and its inhabitants suffered terribly during the potato famine which blighted that country between 1845 and 1852, and which resulted in a massive decline of the population, with an estimated million souls starving to death. Another million departed its shores either voluntarily or by forced evictions by absentee landlords, to start new lives in America, Britain, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.

  Today, it seems incomprehensible that the British government of the time stood by and watched its Irish subjects starve. Whole generations of families were wiped out, entire villages left deserted.

  The guiding principle of British government in the 1840s and 1850s was one of laissez-faire, a doctrine which meant minimal interference in economic affairs. The Irish were left to “get on with it”, in the genuine belief that the crisis would “sort itself out”. There was a widely-held view t
hat the Irish people were entirely responsible for their own predicament and that they were too stupid to grow crops other than potatoes to feed themselves. They were looked upon by many of the British governing elite as idle, uneducated, ignorant savages, who deserved every misfortune that befell them.

  William Campbell was born in Ahoghill in 1844, the second of nine children of farmer Thomas Campbell and Elizabeth Shaw, and was something of a “dark horse”. Little is known about his early life – there is simply no record of him anywhere, from after his birth, until his marriage to Sarah. Several of his brothers and sisters emigrated, some to America (via Australia), some to New Zealand. Two of William’s younger brothers, Samuel and Hugh, arrived in Adelaide, South Australia, on the Trevelyan, in October 1875, but no record of William’s arrival exists. According to Campbell family stories, there is a suggestion that William and one of his brothers left Ireland for South Africa, as they were escaping the law. There is no record of William in South Africa, although if he was on the run it is entirely conceivable that he entered that country under a false name. It is rumoured that William then made for Sydney, and found work as a cedar cutter, eventually making his way north to Queensland.42

  By 1887, William Campbell was living in George Street, Brisbane, just around the corner from Turbot Street. Perhaps the young Englishwoman caught his eye as she made her way amongst the market stalls; perhaps she waited on him in one of the large hotels, pouring his drinks or fetching his supper; perhaps they bumped into each other whilst staring at the lions and tigers in Higgins’ Menagerie, where their respective streets crossed. William married Sarah Marshall on 7th December 1887, at the Brisbane Registry Office. William was almost twenty years older than Sarah; his occupation is given as farmer, as is that of his father; Sarah is described as a domestic servant. Her father? “Thomas Marshall (deceased) –Horsekeeper”.

  Was this a love match or a marriage of convenience? Had William been married before? Had his first wife passed away, or perhaps been abandoned? Maybe had he decided to put his wild days behind him and settle down. It is possible that Sarah viewed the union as a means of escape from her life as a servant girl, like so many of her class, perhaps as her younger sister Fanny would when she eventually married Robert Threadkell. It’s also possible that she was charmed by this roguish Irish farmer and genuinely in love.

  Amongst the faded and fragile sepia photographs in Aunt Edie’s box, there is an image of a group of nineteen moustachioed men, dressed smartly in suits, waistcoats, shirts and ties, handkerchiefs in their breast pockets, one row standing, one row seated in front of them, with two young women sitting on the grass at their feet. All are facing the camera, unsmiling, hats removed and hanging on the bushes behind them. Fourth from the left, there stands a tall, slim elderly gentleman, with a balding head, high cheekbones and a bushy white moustache, dignified and proud, though perhaps a little frail. On the back of the photograph, in Topsy Campbell’s handwriting, there is the intriguing inscription “This is a Groupe [sic] of Gov. Inspectors. Your Uncle is the fourth from the left.”

  This is the only surviving image of William John Campbell, taken around 1912, when he was about sixty-eight, and the description raises more questions than it answers. I could find no record that he ever worked as an inspector. However, there is no denying the fact that this smart elderly chap must have been a handsome man in his prime.

  After their marriage, William and Sarah took lodgings south of the Brisbane River, on Logan Road, in the rapidly expanding district of Woolloongabba, about two miles south of Turbot Street, near to the busy railway yards and the horse tram route and just around the corner from where the famous Gabba cricket ground now stands. Originally an old droving route, once used by farmers to take their livestock to market in Brisbane, by the time the newly-married Campbells moved in at the end of 1887, Logan Road was a busy commercial area with shops, business premises, locomotive works, factories, timber yards, hotels, churches, schools and houses. The suburb of Woolloongabba had for many years been known as One Mile Swamp – up until the mid-1860s it had been just that, and the area was still prone to flooding on a regular basis.

  Although William Campbell was described on his marriage certificate (and indeed in all other official documents) as a farmer, given his residence on George Street in the centre of Brisbane just prior to his marriage, and the newly-weds’ relocation to the urban district of Woolloongabba, it’s unlikely that William was farming at this point in his life. There is no evidence that William actually worked any land of his own when he married Sarah. He had probably moved to the city to find work, perhaps hoping to save sufficient money to purchase his own land. Many men described in official documents as “farmers” worked in the cities or wherever there was well-paid work available, for at least part of the year, particularly during the frequent droughts which blighted the area, or during the floods which laid waste to thousands of square miles of farmland and pasture for months at a time.

  Almost exactly a year after the wedding, on 14th December 1888, Sarah gave birth to their first child, a healthy boy, James, at the house in Logan Road. I often wonder how her family back in County Durham must have felt upon receiving news, first of her marriage, and then of the birth of her first son. Happiness yes, but perhaps tinged with sadness and regret that none of them – neither Sarah’s mother Margaret, nor her six younger sisters – would ever be likely to see her again. Nor would they ever get to meet her husband and family. Maybe Margaret simply felt relief that Sarah was safe and happy and making a success of her new life, well away from the poverty and straitened circumstances that she and her other daughters had found themselves in since Thomas Marshall’s death. It is evident from the letters and photographs in Aunt Edie’s box that the two families managed to keep in fairly regular contact, despite the distance, and that there remained a great affection between them.

  In 1889, Sarah was settling into her new role as a wife and mother in a respectable working-class suburb of Brisbane, devoting her every waking moment to caring for her new baby and her husband. Life has an annoying habit of being incredibly unpredictable. Just when everything looks rosy, when we are feeling happy and content with our lot, and making plans for the future, events beyond our control can suddenly turn our world upside down. So it was to be for Sarah and William. Towards the end of that year, construction work in Brisbane began to slow down and the need for labour began to decline. By 1890, the city was plunging headlong into the worst economic depression in its short history, as property values crashed and the supply of workers far outstripped demand.

  There had been massive speculation, particularly in land sales, by British-based and foreign investors throughout the 1880s. Worried about the gap between actual and promised but ultimately unsustainable returns, these investors began to withdraw their funds. Land and rent values began to tumble. Business and politics were riddled with corruption and nepotism, and as the flow of money into Queensland began first to slow down and then to dry up altogether, public works such as railway and road building were brought to a halt, resulting in soaring unemployment. In the countryside, a simultaneous drop in wool prices resulted in both the sheep station owners and their shearers finding themselves in dire straits.

  The Brisbane Courier reported that:

  “The foundries of Brisbane are all but deserted; plant which had hitherto kept itself bright has become dust-covered; there have been no ships to build, no sugar machinery to construct, bridge building has been at a dead standstill… timber yards, like foundries, are practically depopulated.”

  Such was the level of unemployment within the city that a labour bureau was opened, with some two thousand unemployed men registering in the first three months alone. Soup kitchens were established by churches and charities to feed the destitute. Businesses large and small collapsed like dominoes and the economy was decimated. Industrial unrest inevitably followed, with the Great Maritime Strike of 1890, and the infamous Sh
eep Shearers’ Strike of 1891.

  By April 1892, it was estimated that as many as twelve per cent of Brisbane’s houses stood empty and abandoned. The State government encouraged men to leave the city to look for employment “up country”, on the farms and sheep and cattle stations of rural Queensland, and even provided free rail tickets. These often isolated and in some cases desolate spots, sometimes hundreds of miles from the nearest town, were no place to raise families and many men left their wives and children behind. A few never bothered coming back, and their abandoned families were left to survive by whatever means they could.

  The sudden and rapid economic decline of 1890 wasn’t just a Brisbane problem. The desperate economic situation in the Queensland capital was replicated throughout the state and throughout the country. In Melbourne, sixteen small banks and building societies went under in 1891 alone, and in 1893 the Federal Bank itself collapsed. Thousands of people, of every class and income level, from shipping and railway magnates to shopkeepers and smallholders, lost everything they owned. By May 1893 almost seventy-five per cent of Queensland’s banks had closed their doors. Economic turmoil was compounded by natural disasters – in early 1893 huge floods swamped southern Queensland, and Brisbane in particular was severely affected. Countless numbers of livestock were drowned, railway lines and roads were cut off, bridges were swept away, warehouses and goods destroyed, homes and families flooded out.