A ‘Virtual Walk’ Down Pitt Street in 1858: Uncovering the Hidden Women Workers of Colonial Sydney

Catherine Bishop

Abstract

Colonial women have been regarded as domesticated creatures, kept within the private sphere and occupied with housework and child-rearing. This image has pervaded the historiography as well as popular culture. Even where women have been recognised as economically active it has been as ‘colonial helpmeets’ rather than independent citizens. Women were certainly politically, legally and economically marginalised during this period, but in spite of this, there were female entrepreneurs, employers and employees, occupied in making money for themselves and their families in Sydney in the 1850s and 1860s. By taking a ‘virtual’ walk down Pitt Street in 1858 and peeking in each window at the occupants it is possible to get a very real sense of just how many women were engaged in the pursuit of mammon, either independently or alongside their husbands and families as well as the nature of their businesses. With online, searchable, digitalised sources newly available, a ‘collective biography’ of the women in Pitt Street can be created. Only when the individual stories of these women are investigated do they become visible as participants in the labour force to the historian’s gaze.

Catherine Bishop is in her final year of a PhD at ANU; ‘The Hidden Colonial Workforce: Women and Work in Sydney, Auckland, Wellington and Nelson 1830-1880’.  After doing an undergraduate degree at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand, she completed her MA by thesis at ANU in 1991. She then escaped academia for several years, working in schools and bookshops in the UK. She now lives in Sydney with her husband and two teenage daughters.  

The study of mid-­nineteenth-­century, colonial women within the context of Australian labour history would have seemed something of an anomaly a few decades ago. Women were apparently valued during this period for their reproductive rather than productive qualities, as Katrina Alford pointed out.¹ Their contributions to the economy were as domestic servants (if working class and single) or as ‘colonial helpmeets’, assisting their husbands, fathers and brothers, who were the real pioneers, businessmen and entrepreneurs.

Since then there has been a growing feminist historiography recognising women’s economic contribution. Initially this focussed on promoting the importance of women’s domestic work as well as on detailing the political, legal and social limitations upon women’s behaviour. The Victorian ideology of domesticity, with the gendered separation of public and private spheres, has been emphasised. More recently, studies have uncovered female teachers, publicans, farm workers and postmistresses, and there has been increasing recognition that women were also active in small business.² The separation of public and private spheres has been questioned in Australia, as elsewhere, with a growing understanding that, as Maria Nugent noted, ‘mapping the heritage of women’s employment requires a reconceptualisation of the ‘home’ as workplace.’³ Grace Karskens’ innovative and groundbreaking combining of archeology, traditional archives and family history demonstrated that working-­ class women were active economic agents in the Rocks area of Sydney, while Shirley Fitzgerald’s research into nineteenth-­century Sydney pointed to this being a more widespread phenomenon.⁴ Nevertheless, their work, like most, has focussed either on the early period in New South Wales and the experiences of convict women, or, conversely after 1870 when factory and office work opened up for women, when educational opportunities expanded and when, in the 1890s, Australasian women were the first in the world to obtain the vote.⁵  The years between 1830 and 1870, the focus of my research, have been less well studied.⁶

In spite of the presence of academic work acknowledging the presence of women in the colonial economy, the popular image of nineteenth-­century women in Australia is still that of a rural, housebound wife, albeit a useful one. Yet, by the middle of the nineteenth century the majority of the female population of New South Wales was urban.⁷ Furthermore, an analysis of census figures for Sydney for 1861, for example, reveals that, of the 40 per cent of the adult female population who actually declared an occupation to census-­takers, only half of these were domestic servants, leaving 20 per cent of the adult female population with alternative occupations.⁸ They were employees or small businesswomen, working alongside family members or independently, usually from necessity and within a distinct range of occupations. They were also property owners and heads of households. Although these women have become almost invisible in the historical record and although contemporary diaries and letters generally fail to mention them, they were nevertheless present and visible to their fellow settlers.⁹

This paper takes a ‘virtual walk’ along seven blocks of Pitt Street in Sydney in 1858 to uncover how many women were present as property owners, independent householders, employers and employees, and to highlight the activities in which they were engaged. Pitt Street was and still is a main street in Sydney. 1858 is a year in the middle of the time period under consideration, well served by sources.¹⁰ This micro-­study adds to the growing body of scholarship recognising the importance of women’s work in nineteenth-­century colonial cities, putting names and faces to some of the hundreds of women gestured to by past studies.¹¹ This is possible because of new on-­line, searchable databases, especially the digitalisation of Australian newspapers.¹² The extent and longevity of female involvement in business can now be identified in greater detail and individual lives can be traced more easily.¹³

A glance at the trade directories for 1857 and 1859 produces thirty-­four women listed in Pitt Street between Hunter and George Streets in 1857 and only twenty-­three in 1859. There are 341 men in 1857 and 299 men in 1859. Thirty female householders appear in the 1858 rates assessment book alongside 370 men.¹⁴ None of these figures would inspire confidence when looking for a female presence in Pitt Street. However, closer investigation as we peer in the windows of the shops and houses reveals a street full of busy, productive women, providing a snapshot of the variety of their experiences. Although concentrated in a small range of types of employment, there are widows, wives and spinsters, some working alone, some with husbands and others in partnerships with other women. Some women have reinvented themselves upon emigration or after being widowed out of necessity, while others had experience running businesses in England. The significance of family support is evident as is the way in which families became interconnected through business.¹⁵

This study also shows the ways in which women’s lives are obscured in the sources. Investigations into each woman with a connection to a Pitt Street property in 1858 involved tracing each name through a plethora of sources.¹⁶ Some women’s lives have been relatively easy to uncover, back into the past, through marriages, emigration and life in England, and forward into the future, to childbirth, widowhood, remarriage and death, while others remain elusive. Sometimes it has been impossible to give them Christian names, or to positively identify them from among others with the same name.

We start our walk on the corner of Hunter and Pitt Streets outside the Union Bank and follow Pitt Street south to where it meets George Street.

Block One: Hunter Street to King Street¹⁷

As you turn out of Hunter Street and head past the Union Bank towards King Street you wave to Elizabeth Tierney, wife of the licensee of the Currency Lass Hotel.¹⁸ Local residents, Elizabeth Codlin and Mary Ann Mop are buying fruit from neighbour, Mrs Ann Makins.¹⁹ Poulterer Elizabeth Knight has moved since her remarriage late last year, as has washerwoman, Mrs Morris.²⁰ You glance at the blank windows of what was Madame de Lolle’s millinery business, ‘Maison Francaise.’ She is now in George St since the very public split between her and French teacher, Emile de Lolle, who advertised firmly that he was not responsible for debts of the person ‘calling herself Madame de Lolle which name she is not entitled to bear.’²¹ Like de Lolle, John and Ann Stitt have moved their baby-­linen warehouse to George Street, after taking over from Frederick and Ann Bradly.²² Such relocations are common, especially among the smaller businesses. Matilda Cox, a new arrival in Pitt Street, selling the ‘finest and best fruit’ in Sydney,²³ will move to George Street in 1859,²⁴ while milliner, Madame Laroche, who has only just arrived in Pitt Street, will lose everything in a fire in 1859. After assistance from public subscriptions she will also resume business in George Street for at least another eight years.25 Mary Piper, staymaker, who has exhibited at the Royal Exhibition, is even more mobile, moving six times in as many years.²⁶ Piper and Laroche share a landlady in Pitt Street. Rosetta Terry, widow of wealthy Samuel Terry, but successful in her own right, owns nearly half of this block. Terry herself lives on the west side of the street, next to Eliza Hudson’s music shop. This longstanding business was in George Hudson’s name even after his death in 1854 but Eliza has always had a main role, her name rather than his being on a partnership agreement in 1850.²⁷

On the other side of Brougham Place, Susan and John Glue are busy at their labour registry and coffee house. Glue has been in charge of the female servants’ registry since her marriage in 1854 and will be until 1862. After the birth of her fourth child she will open a boarding house in Ashfield while her husband supervises the Pitt Street shop, now a grocery store.²⁸ Recently the Glues have gained competition. Marianne Pawsey has moved her Servants’ Registry Office almost next door. Pawsey has been sole proprietor since her husband’s death in 1855. She will be in Pitt Street until 1872 when the business will pass to Charlotte Wilson, who runs Robinson’s Ladies Baths at the Domain.²⁹

Block Two: King Street to Market Street

 There are only three female property owners with six properties between then in this most fashionable block in Pitt Street. Nevertheless, there is a strong female presence. You might stop for a drink in the Liverpool Arms, where Emma Palmer is interviewing prospective barmaids,³⁰ or at Harriet Rubsamen’s hotel, the Elephant and Castle.³¹ Instead you buy an apple from Mrs White’s fruit shop. Listed as Charles White’s business in directories, Mrs White is also busy, especially since White opened his Oyster Saloon in King Street.³² Jane Horne runs the Prince Albert Restaurant. Widowed last year with five children, she was sole proprietor until her marriage to Robert Horne, whose name appears in subsequent directories. Nevertheless the restaurant is popularly known as ‘Mother Horne’s.’ ³³ Next door is a confectionery shop, owned by Timothie Cheval, whose manager, Miss Bohen, successfully sued for outstanding wages in 1856.³⁴

Further down lives infamous Caroline Pope. Not listed in any trade directory, her age-­old profession is well-­known. She was recently convicted of assaulting a neighbour, Julia Stevens, with a decanter.³⁵ In a few months she will marry Richard Cochrane, aka ‘Dick the Cabman’, but they will separate by 1861, Caroline remaining in the Oyster Saloon they have opened and Dick resuming his old trade and colourful activities.³⁶

Over the street, several actresses are performing at the Royal Victoria Theatre.³⁷ One local favourite is Theodosia Guerin, whose life epitomises that of theatrical women, full of transnational mobility and on the edge of respectability, with several possibly simultaneous marriages to her credit.³⁸ She has been appearing on Australian stages since the 1840s and will do so well into the 1870s. Nevertheless, after her death in 1904 she will be celebrated primarily for her reproductive qualities, as the mother of the much more famous Nellie Stewart.³⁹ 

Eighteen of the businesses in this block are drapery stores, mainly owned by men, but all reliant on female labour.⁴⁰ You see many young apprentice milliners and dressmakers, the more experienced ‘first hands’ and the girls who serve behind the counters. Not all of the businesses are male, in spite of their names. Mary Ann Robson, the real milliner behind William Robson’s millinery business, is continuing the work she has done since her emigration as a single woman in 1840.⁴¹ ‘Doak and Kerr’ are in fact widow, Margaret Doak and her sister, Rebecca Kerr, who have been in business in Sydney since 1840. Previously, Doak had her own shop, alongside her husband’s carpentry workshop, in Londonderry in the 1830s.⁴² Kerr will officially retire in the 1860s and Doak will be joined by her married daughter, Minnie Beattie, in the 1870s.⁴³ Doak and Kerr will die, within months of each other, in their eighties, still on the business premises, indicating the true longevity of their working lives.⁴⁴ Across the street is ‘Webb and Co’, actually Mary Webb, milliner, who recently moved from King Street. ‘Late of Oxford Street, London’, she will still be in Pitt Street at her death in 1867.’⁴⁵ It has been impossible to identify Mary Webb from among the several Mrs Webbs and Mary Webbs in Sydney, many of whom were dressmakers. This caused Mary Webb herself to advertise in February 1857;

Mrs Webb, London and Straw Hat manufactory, 41 King Street, begs to inform the public she has no connection with Mrs Webb, late of Castlereagh and Pitt Streets.⁴⁶

After Webb’s death in 1867, her store will be absorbed into the neighbouring business of Emily Way, wife of Ebenezer. Beginning in 1865, her business will last until the 1950s as E. Way and Co., although at the firm’s jubilee in 1914, Ebenezer Way and the firm’s ‘first manager, Mr B Boston…brother-­in-­law of the founder’ will be celebrated, with no mention of Emily Way’s contribution.⁴⁷

Similarly, nearby ‘Farmer, William and Giles’ began life as Caroline Farmer’s millinery business. Her pivotal role will be glossed over in the 1940 centenary celebrations, which note merely that she ‘helped behind the counter.’⁴⁸ Next-­ door is the drapery shop run by George Tuting, whose second marriage to Caroline Farmer’s sister-­in-­law, Mary Farmer, precipitated his emigration. Capable Mary Tuting supervises the female staff, while caring for numbers of stepchildren.⁴⁹

You have reached the end of the block and the Bull and Mouth, owned by Miss Plowright and run by Joseph Wakely. His wife, Ann, is the widow of another publican and her mother has a hotel in Balmain. Joseph Wakely is still paying ten shillings a week to Bridget Torpy, their ex-­servant, as child support for her illegitimate son after an incident when his wife was away for the weekend. Torpy’s predicament was not unusual. The birth of her son limited her employment opportunities, making application to the courts imperative.⁵⁰ 

Block Three Market Street to Park Street

 There is less of a female presence in the next block. Nine properties are owned by women, including Ann Ritchie.⁵¹ Widowed in 1849, she also manages property in the Hunter region. She will die in Pitt Street in 1865, remembered as ‘an old and respected colonist,’ leaving a large estate of £6000.⁵² ‘Charlotte Place’ is owned by Alexander Dick’s widow, Charlotte Ellard, who owns four more properties in another block, inherited from her latest husband. The daughter of a convict, Charlotte Hutchinson married jeweller, Alexander Dick, continuing his business for three years after his death in 1843 before marrying her neighbour, music seller and composer, Francis Ellard. Since his death in 1854, she successfully manages her properties and will leave an estate of £2000 in 1875.⁵³ One of her tenants, laundress, Margaret Tunk, is still recovering from her recent brawl with a neighbouring laundress over the use of the communal washing line.⁵⁴

You walk past Jane Higgins, who lives next to Augusta Bynon, who, like many Sydney women, relies on her own skills to survive because she has had bad luck in the colony. A milliner in some of the ‘first London establishments,’ before emigrating, she married Walter Fayers in 1850 and opened a drapery store in George Street. Her first bad luck was when Walter Fayers died of consumption in 1853. His estate of £1700 was partially tied up although his wife was given access to much of it while she carried on the business.⁵⁵ She married William Bynon in 1855 and he took over the advertisements. He went to England in January 1857 and auctioneers sold off the ‘the entire stock in trade of Mrs Bynon’ in April. Bynon’s bad luck continued with William’s drowning in the wreck of the Dunbar off Sydney Heads in August 1857. Unlike Fayers, he died intestate, leaving only £200. Bynon and her three young children moved to Pitt Street, where she continues her business. In 1859 Bynon will finally have some good luck and her days as a milliner will be over when she marries her third husband, John Walker, a watch manufacturer. In about 1862 they will return to London, where Walker will join his father’s established business in Regent Street. By 1881, Augusta Walker will finally have prospered, living in Kensington with her family and two servants.⁵⁶

You continue past Brandon’s millinery warehouse and Joseph Sly’s upholstery business, where several needlewomen are employed,⁵⁷ towards ‘Lees and Cotton’, straw bonnetmakers. Like Doak and Kerr, Jane Lees and Ann Cotton are sisters, who emigrated in 1853 with family members from Staffordshire. Although designated ‘domestic servants’ on the passenger list, they had had their own straw-­hat business in England. Lees will die in 1862 but Cotton will continue in partnership with her brother-­in-­law until his marriage in 1866 to Eliza Dickie, a rival dressmaker.⁵⁸ Cotton’s business will survive his defection and she will still be in business ten years later, before getting married in her sixties and continuing to advertise as Mrs Hamilton.⁵⁹

On the other side of the street, Edward Curtiss’ paperhanging business shares space with Louise Dutruc and her husband Pierre, both French teachers, who taught in Glasgow for twelve years before emigrating. Eminently respectable, Pierre Dutruc will be a Randwick city councillor, while his wife will run schools for twenty years and have a street named after her.⁶⁰

You would not think to find many women at the School of the Arts, except accompanying their husbands to the occasional lecture. Much to your surprise you see the next lecture is to be given by Mrs Foster about establishing a home for respectable female emigrants. At the end of 1858, the soon-­to-­be-­notorious Cora Ann Weekes will make her debut.⁶¹ Weekes has been flitting her way around the United States and is about to arrive in the Australian colonies.

‘Interesting, lovely and intellectual,’ she establishes quasi-­feminist newspapers, collects subscriptions, and prints a few issues before disappearing into the night with her husband. They will be last heard of en route to Calcutta under false names on the ‘very superior and fast sailing’ Glen Isla in 1859.⁶²

Block Four: Park Street to Bathurst Street

On the corner of Park Street, photographer William Blackwood is taking a picture of one of another two buildings owned by Rosetta Terry. This is Wiley and Son’s wholesale basket warehouse.⁶³ Posing alongside the proprietorial David Wiley is not his son, however, but his wife, Hannah, who, like many other wives, works in the family business.⁶⁴

Others run their own concerns alongside their husband’s businesses. Margaret Donohue, wife of a butcher, James, has offered board and residence for gentlemen since at least 1853. Widowed in 1863 with several young children, she will demonstrate the transnational mobility of so many immigrants, marrying again in Honolulu in 1871. Mary Ann Stephens and husband, William, use poetry to advertise their separate enterprises:

If you should a bedstead need
Or a pleasant book to read
We can either want supply
If to us you will apply… ⁶⁵

On the other side of Pitt Street you pass the house of fruiterer, Mrs Rose Davis, and nod to Elizabeth Wright.⁷¹ Elizabeth Jeffries used to live next-­door running a fruit shop and offering dressmaking services, but she has moved in the last few months. Further down, Mrs Mary Donohue, milliner, dressmaker and feather dyer, will be in business for the next two decades, moving from Pitt to Castlereagh to William Street, where she will remain until her death in 1888.⁷²  Butcher, Jane Jolly, in business alone since her husband died in 1854, leaving her with six children under eleven, is about to pass her shop to another butcher widow, Margaret Watson, who has been in business in Castlereagh Street.⁷³ Finally, on the corner is the Edinburgh Castle hotel, once run by Sarah Doran and now by Phillip Steer. By March 1859, he will be dead and his widow, Jane, will take over the licence, passing it to Sarah Joseph in 1862.⁷⁴

Block Five Bathurst Street to Liverpool Street

You have reached the top of the rise and you cross over Bathurst Street and head down the hill. Fourteen of the seventy properties in this block are owned by five different landladies, including Lucy Hyndes, who owns all eight properties down to Wilmot Street, inherited from her much older husband when he died in 1855 aged 77.⁷⁵ One of her properties is the Cottage of Content pub, the licence of which Martha Samson transferred to Joseph Woods in late 1856.⁷⁶ Samson moved to Upper Fort Street, where she is running a boarding house to support herself and her children.⁷⁷ Hyndes’ tenants also include Susan Paul, who could be the Deptford schoolmistress, who emigrated at the age of 52 with six children, aged from 3 to 19 in 1852, or possibly the housemaid from Devon, Susan Paul, who emigrated in 1855 aged 22.⁷⁸

Tenants in this part of Pitt Street change over fairly quickly and many, like Paul, are impossible to identify, appearing briefly in one directory or newspaper advertisement. Miss Brown, Mrs Simmonds, Mrs McCann, Mrs Stewart, as well as Bridget Hickey, have all disappeared from Pitt Street, while Mary Bowers, Amelia Dubbs, Catherine RIchardson and Mesdames Scholey, Ross, Lewis, Scotton and Goldsmith appear and disappear equally as quickly during the year. These dressmakers, greengrocers and boarding-­house keepers do not necessarily advertise city-­wide, perhaps relying on local business, making them impossible to trace. On the other hand, you do know that Lucy Hillier died recently and that Sarah Wakely still has a tripe shop in the Markets.⁷⁹ Fireman George Atkins and his wife, a monthly nurse, will move to Bent Street, Mrs Atkins continuing her profession for at least another decade.⁸⁰ Less fortunate is Isabella MacTaggart, now a respected teacher at the National School. By 1865 she will be in Macquarie Street, blaming her lodgers’ unexpected departure for her insolvency, her downward spiral indicative of the precariousness of economic survival.⁸¹ More permanent and prosperous residents are George Stone, saddler, and his wife, Mary, a milliner and dressmaker. Born in Jamaica, Mary Stone has been in Sydney since 1849. They will be eminently respectable residents of Pitt Street until the 1870s. When she dies in 1881, Mary Ann Stone will be treasurer of the ‘No 27 Division, Daughters of Temperance, Advance Rose of Australia’.⁸²

As well as being full of short-­term residents, this block houses small, one-­ person businesses. There is not the same crowd of milliners and saleswomen as further back. Nevertheless, you suspect there are several barmaids working in the five hotels in the block.⁸³

 You wave to Mary Dick, who owns her own house and the coach-­house next door. Eighty-­eight year-­old Ann Sewell is at no. 408. ⁸⁴ Next door was Theresa Burridge’s fruit shop but it is now occupied by Rachel Moss, a general dealer, who has moved from York St. Having had a confectioner’s licence in her own name, Burridge will shortly marry another Pitt Street resident, Isaac Norris, assuming control of his well-­established ginger beer manufactory after his sudden death in 1864. A force to be reckoned with, she will run the business for another decade.⁸⁵ Near by, M. A. (Mary Ann?) Reynolds lives in a house formerly occupied by Henrietta Chandler, whose removal of her ladies school to Goulburn Street has not been successful, leading to her insolvency.⁸⁶ In contrast, Sarah Jones’ school next door is thriving and will still be operating in ten years’ time.⁸⁷ You reach James Stewart’s Australian Hotel on the corner of Goulburn Street, wondering if they have filled the barmaid’s position recently advertised.⁸⁸

The end of the road: Goulburn Street through to George Street

The Sportsman is run by Timothy Cowell. He took over the licence from his father-­in-­law, Thomas Kelsey, three years ago. By 1860 he will be insolvent. His wife, Frances, ‘compelled to leave his house by ill treatment,’ will sue him for maintenance and take over the hotel.⁸⁹ She will be a successful publican for two decades, leaving an estate of over £500 when she dies in 1886.⁹⁰ You walk past Mrs Cook’s boarding house and Elizabeth Turner’s home.⁹¹ Mrs T. M. Edwards at no. 442 has been an upholsterer for at least the last five years but will disappear after 1859.⁹² Three doors down, Sarah Mitchell and Mrs Whitby advertise their services as midwives and monthly nurses.⁹³ Already a midwife in Portland, Mitchell’s move to Sydney has been one of geography rather than career. She also takes in lodgers.⁹⁴ Perhaps some of Mitchell and Whitby’s midwifery business is at the Refuge for Destitute Females in the next block, under the watchful eye of matron, Mrs Baker. Passing this institution you have reached the intersection with George Street and the end of your walk.

Reflecting on your journey, you can see that, in spite of the sparse female presence in the trade directories, in reality the street is alive with busy women, as property owners, independent tenants, employees and small businesswomen. They are predominantly in the needlework and retail trades, especially those involving food and drink, although there are some teachers and others who manage their own properties. Their businesses are small, like those of many of their male counterparts. You have passed just over 400 properties and have counted 107 individual women, in addition to the nameless employees. Eighty of the properties, just under 20 per cent, are owned by women, 78 properties are occupied by women, and 15 of these have two female names associated with them. At least 40 of the other properties in the street employ women as barmaids or needlewomen, sales assistants or actresses.⁹⁵

The biographical sketches of some of these women show just how varied were their experiences. They are also representative of the wider Sydney population. There are those who have transported existing family businesses and husband-­and-­wife partnerships from Britain, women like milliners, Doak and Kerr, the language-­teaching Dutrucs and lace-­cleaning Robertsons. There are widows who have taken over their husband’s businesses, for varying lengths of time and with varying degrees of success? Mrs Ellard, jeweller and property owner, and publican Harriet Rubsamen. There are very many women hidden behind their husband’s names: Mary Ann Robson, Eliza Hudson, Hannah Wiley and Emily Way, all of whom are obvious to their contemporaries but whose contribution to the business will be lost over time. There are the women whose working lives extend beyond and between second and third marriages, such as Augusta Baldwin/Fayers/Bynon/Walker. There are the eminently respectable, such as Louise Dutruc and Mary Ann Stone, temperance committee member, as well as the unfortunate, such as Isabella MacTaggart and Henrietta Chandler, whose income as widows is precarious, and survivors, like Frances Cowell, whose husbands are less than satisfactory in so very many ways. There are the colourful characters, skirting the edges of respectable society, such as actress Mrs Guerin and dressmaker ‘Madame’ de Lolle, along with the downright dishonest, like Cora Ann Weekes, con woman, and the utterly unrespectable, such as Caroline Pope, brothel keeper. And then there are the eternally elusive women: Mary Webb, whose business lasted at least twelve years and perhaps longer, but the details of whose life are a mystery, along with the scores of other women who remain just names on the pages of a directory, appearing briefly, like Amelia Dubbs, or for years, like Mrs Sarah Jones, schoolteacher, but equally invisible.

Thus, although the official listings in the directories and rates assessment books show a mere handful of women’s names, closer inspection reveals far more. And if so many women can be hidden in Pitt Street in plain view in 1858, just imagine how many more are boldly strolling the rest of Sydney’s thoroughfares, with property to rent, services to offer and goods to sell.

1   Katrina Alford, Production or Reproduction?: An Economic History of Women in Australia, 1788-­1850 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1984).
2   For example, Desley Deacon, Managing Gender: The State, the New Middle Class and Women Workers 1830-­1930 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1989). Much of this work has been focussed on Victoria, under the watchful eye of Patricia Grimshaw. Patricia Grimshaw et al, Creating a Nation (Melbourne: McPhee Gribble, 1994); Patricia Grimshaw, Chris McConville, and Ellen McEwen, Families in Colonial Australia (Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1985); Clare Alice Wright, Beyond the Ladies Lounge: Australia’s Female Publicans (Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 2003)? Kathryn McKerral Hunter, Father’s Right-­Hand Man: Women on Australia’s Family Farms in the Age of Federation, 1880s-­1920s (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2004)? Marjorie R. Theobald, Knowing Women: Origins of Women’s Education in Nineteenth-­Century Australia, Studies in Australian History (Cambridge? Melbourne: Melbourne University Press,1996).
3   Maria Nugent, ‘An Historical Overview of Women’s Employment and Professionalism in Australia: Themes and Places’ (Canberra: Australian Heritage Commission, 2002), 7.
4   Grace Karskens, The Rocks: Life in Early Sydney, 1st pbk. ed. (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1998) and Inside the Rocks: The Archaeology of a Neighbourhood (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger,1999), Shirley Fitzgerald, Rising Damp: Sydney 1870-­90 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press,1987); Shirley Fisher, ‘Sydney Women and the Workforce, 1870-­1890’, in Nineteenth-­Century Sydney, ed. Max Kelly (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1978). In contrast with much historiography that has tended to assume a cultural hegemony of middle-­class values, Karskens noted that the much vaunted middle-­class notions of domesticated female respectability had little relevance for the lives of many of the Rocks people. Karskens, The Rocks : Life in Early Sydney, Chap. 9 in particular. The pragmatic working-­class acceptance of working wives, mothers and daughters was apparent throughout Sydney. The archives might be awash with diaries and letters from middle-­class men and women bemoaning the lack of domestic servants and speaking of women in terms of their gentility, but most women did not have the luxury of leisured lives. It may have been an aspiration for many, but not a reality.
5   This is partly because sources for this later ‘long twentieth century’ are more readily available and accessible than records for the earlier period. For example: Raelene Frances and Melanie Nolan, ‘Gender and the Trans-­Tasman World of Labour: Transnational and Comparative Histories’, Labour History, 95 (November 2008), 25-­42; Patricia Grimshaw, John Murphy, and Belinda Probert, Double Shift: Working Mothers and Social Change in Australia (Beaconsfield, Victoria: Circa, 2005)? Edna Ryan and Anne Conlon, Gentle Invaders: Australian Women at Work, New introduction. ed. (Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin, 1989); Beverley Kingston, My Wife, My Daughter, and Poor Mary Ann: Women and Work in Australia (Melbourne: Nelson, 1975)? Raelene Frances, Selling Sex: A Hidden History of Prostitution (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2007)? Margaret James, Margaret Bevege, and Carmel Shute, Worth Her Salt: Women at Work in Australia (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1982); Margaret Anderson, ‘Good Strong Girls: Colonial Women and Work’, in Gender Relations in Australia: Domination and Negotiation (ed.), Kay Saunders and Raymond Evans (Sydney: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992). Work in New South Wales on the period before 1830, focussing on convict women, includes Portia Robinson, The Women of Botany Bay: A Reinterpretation of the Role of Women in the Origins of Australian Society, Rev. ed. (Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin, 1993)? and The Hatch and Brood of Time: A Study of the First Generation of Native-­Born White Australians 1788-­1828 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985); Monica Perrott, A Tolerable Good Success: Economic Opportunities for Women in New South Wales 1788-­1830 (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1983). Work dealing with the intervening years in detail is more recent and includes Glenda Strachan and Lindy Henderson, ‘Assumed but Rarely Documented: Women’s Entrepreneurial Activities in Late Nineteenth Century Australia’, in The Past is Before Us (Sydney: Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, 2005); Maria Nugent and Australian Heritage Commission, Women’s Employment and Professionalism in Australia: Histories, Themes and Places (Canberra: Australian Heritage Commission, 2002).
6   This paper is part of a wider project looking at colonial working women in Sydney in New South Wales and Auckland, Wellington and Nelson in New Zealand, between 1830 and 1870.
7   Statistics taken from ‘Historical Census and Colonial Data Archive’. Australian National University, www.hccda.au.edu.au.
8   Statistics taken from ‘Census of the Colony of New South Wales’ (Thomas Richards, Government Printer), www.hccda.anu.edu.au/documents/NSW-­1861-­census.
9   Most letters and diaries, which are predominantly written by women with leisure, when they mention women at all, mention other middle-­class women in terms of respectability and state of wedded bliss, or, if working class, as potential or dreadful domestic servants. See for example Louisa Anne Meredith, Notes and Sketches of New South Wales: During a Residence in the Colony from 1839 to 1844 (Sydney: Ure Smith in association with The National Trust of Australia, NSW, 1973). As an indication of exactly how invisible women’s work is, a working milliner and dressmaker in Sydney in the 1830s has left a diary which makes no mention of her work. Phebe Tilney Hayman, ‘Diary’ (Sydney: privately held, Mrs Katherine Christian, 1806-­1847, 1852).
10   It is also the year, I discovered rather rapidly, that the numbering of properties in Pitt Street was reversed, making the task of identifying individual properties between 1857 and 1859 somewhat more difficult.
11   While the presence of female businesswomen has been acknowledged by historians, it has been primarily in passing, for example, as in Anderson, “Good Strong Girls: Colonial Women and Work.” There has been no detailed study of mid-­nineteenth-­century female businesswomen. The scale of most female businesses was small and assumed to be short-­lived, although the recent availability of searchable digitalised newspapers challenges this assumption.
12   National Library of Australia, ‘Australia Trove Digitalised Newspapers and More’, www.trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper. What once would have required months of painstakingly scrolling through pages and pages of microfilmed newspapers, searching for names, while trying not to succumb to the microfilm reader-­induced nausea, now takes far less time and is far more foolproof.
13   The sources used in this study have illuminated self-­employed women rather than employees. One could question whether, within the context of labour history, these women should be classed as part of the labour force as workers, or do they belong on the ‘other side’, as capitalists, employers and entrepreneurs. I would argue that they straddle the boundary. As women who are self-­employed they are entrepreneurial, particularly if one considers the risks inherent in starting a business as a woman in mid-­nineteenth-­century colonial society, with all the very real legal, political and social barriers that existed. On the other hand, most women’s businesses (like most men’s businesses during this time) were small. Such businesses required the ‘entrepreneur’ to labour alongside her workforce, if she had one. In addition, not only were female wage levels low at this time, meaning that self-­employment was often a better, if not the only, alternative, but women also often had domestic responsibilities including housework and childcare that meant they needed to work from home. Therefore it seems reasonable to include self-­employed women as part of the workforce. See Susan Ingalls Lewis, Unexceptional Women: Female Proprietors in Mid-­ Nineteenth Century Albany, New York, 1830-­1885 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2009).
14   Cox and Co., Cox and Co.’s Sydney Post Office Directory, 1857: Contains Street Directory, Trades’ Directory, Commercial Directory, Law Directory, and Government Official Directory … Also a Complete Compendium of the Postal Arrangements Throughout the Colony (Sydney: Cox, 1857)? John Sands (Firm), Sands’ Sydney Directory ([Sydney]: John Sands, 1858-­1900), 1858-­9, City of Sydney, ‘Assessment Book’ (Sydney: 1858). These figures are approximate. Some of the differences are the result of the renumbering of Pitt Street (see above) and also the inclusion, or not, of properties ‘off’ Pitt Street.
15   Publicans’ daughters married publicans and became publicans themselves, for example. One was Ann Wakely, whose father and then mother ran pubs, and both of whose husbands were publicans. Another was Harriet Rubsamen, both of whose husbands were publicans. Frances Kelsey, daughter of publican, Thomas, married fellow publican, Timothy Cowell. These women are all mentioned later in the paper.
16   Almost all of the women in the paper have been listed in one or more of the following sources: Cox and Co., Cox and Co.’s Sydney Post Office Directory, 1857: Contains Street Directory, Trades’ Directory, Commercial Directory, Law Directory, and Government Official Directory … Also a Complete Compendium of the Postal Arrangements Throughout the Colony (Sydney: Cox, 1857); John Sands (Firm), Sands’ Sydney Directory ([Sydney]: John Sands, 1858-­1900). 1858-­9, ‘City of Sydney Assessment Books 1845-­1948’, Council of the City of Sydney, www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/AboutSydney/HistoryAndArchives/Archives/ServicesForRese archers/AssessmentBooks.asp.1858. They have then been followed up using ‘Australia Trove Digitalised Newspapers and More’, and ‘Online Historical Indexes of Births Deaths and Marriages’, New South Wales Registry of Births Deaths & Marriages, www.bdm.nsw.gov.au/cgi-­ bin/Index., ‘Online Index to Assisted Immigrants Arriving in Sydney, Newcastle, Moreton Bay and Port Phillip’, State Records of New South Wales, www.records.nsw.gov.au/state-­ archives/indexes-­online and assorted other online (and offline) resources, detailed in the footnotes.
17   At the beginning of each block is a table showing where women are located. Properties left blank are those with male tenants/owners. Owners are listed first, then occupiers, with their businesses described if applicable. Properties that are unoccupied are noted, as are churches and banks. Businesses that are either known or can reasonably be assumed to have employed women, although owned by men, primarily drapers and pubs, are listed in capital letters. A single bracket indicates that adjoining properties are occupied by the same business and therefore count as one occupier. Properties ‘off’ Pitt Street are also included where listed in the Assessment Book of 1858. Women shown in brackets indicate that they were present in the past but have not been discovered to be in business elsewhere during 1858. Those women who have moved on from Pitt Street but are still in business elsewhere are shown without brackets. Finally, husbands, even if they are involved in the business are not shown. Thus, for examples, Susan Glue is listed but not her husband, John, although they both ran the Registry Office. A husband’s presence is made clear in the text and attached footnotes.
18   Elizabeth Tierney (nee Russell) arrived with her husband Daniel and his brother James on the Resource from Tipperary, Ireland, in 1840. She was a 23-­year-­old dressmaker and her husband, a shepherd, was 25. ‘Index to Bounty Immigrants Arriving in N.S.W., Australia, 1828-­1842’, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-­day Saints, www.familysearch.org. Daniel Tierney held the licence of the Harp of Freedom in Princes Street for several years before taking over the licence of the Currency Lass after John Beal’s death. Harriet Beal moved to the Harp of Freedom with her two young children. She and her young son died in March 1857 leaving her daughter an orphan. ‘Online Historical Indexes of Births Deaths and Marriages’, New South Wales Registry of Births Deaths & Marriages, www.bdm.nsw.gov.au/cgi-­bin/Index. Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney: 1842-­1870), 22 August 1856, 28 February 1857, 21 March 1857, Empire. (Sydney: Henry Parkes, 1850-­1875). 25 December 1856. Elizabeth Tierney played an active role in the hotel business, appearing in court to give evidence that ‘her beds were full’ in 1859. SMH, 12 April 1859. Daniel Tierney died in 1878 back at the Harp of Freedom and Elizabeth Tierney died in 1911. She owned several properties at the time of her death. Ibid. 2 July 1878, 4 September 1911, 17 February 1912.
19   Ann Makins, nee Gunner, in 1834 married Thomas, who died 1854 aged in 67. They had several children. She died in 1872 aged 63. “Nswbdm Online Indexes.” SMH, 25 May 1872, Cox and Co., Cox and Co.’s Sydney Post Office Directory, 1857. Mary Ann Mop married Thomas Brown 1865 ‘Nswbdm Online Indexes’.
20   Elizabeth Knight lived there after her husband died in January 1855, leaving her pregnant and with three young children. SMH,13 January 1855, 27 July 1855, 25 August 1857, ‘Nswbdm Online Indexes’, ———, Cox and Co.’s Sydney Post Office Directory, 1857. She married George H Hocek or George Heady, according to the Sydney Morning Herald and Births, Deaths and Marriages Records respectively. SMH, 25 August 1857. ‘Nswbdm Online Indexes’.
21   SMH, 29 December 1855, Mr de Lolle French professor -­  Ibid., 4 January 1856, 25 July 1857, 6 March 1858, 19 April 1859. ———, Cox and Co.’s Sydney Post Office Directory, 1857. John Sands (Firm), Sands’ Sydney Directory. 1858-­9. SMH, 23 December 1857. Unlike some others in her profession, Madame de Lolle is known for demanding a premium from parents of new apprentices, but by 1863 it will be only Monsieur de Lolle listed in the directory. Ibid., 5 June 1857, ———, Sands’ Sydney Directory. 1863. Perhaps she continues in business under another name. Emile de Lolle regularly advertises his French lessons until in 1872 he is sentenced to two years imprisonment for forging a cheque. SMH, 17 June 1872.
22   Ann Bradly advertised baby linen at Brunswick House at 273 Pitt Street in 1853. Frederick Bradly became insolvent in 1854, and again in 1858 after he became a commission agent, and by the 1860s was at the City Wine vaults, where Ann Bradly died in 1863. Ibid., 31 August 1853, 9 April 1863, ‘Insolvency Index Compiled from Nrs 13656 Supreme Court Insolvency Index 1842-­87’, State Records of New South Wales, www.records.nsw.gov.au/state-­archives/indexes-­online/bankruptcy-­insolvency-­records/index-­to-­insolvency-­records. John Stitt is listed in the 1855 Directory in Pitt Street and his wife advertises from Brickfield Hill in 1857. They are still in business, having moved to Elizabeth Street in 1864. Waugh and Cox’s Directory of Sydney and Its Suburbs, 1855: Containing a Complete and Alphabetical List of Names of Streets, Householders, Trades, Professions, Government and Public Boards, Institutions, &C, &C.: With Postal Arrangements, Carefully Compiled (Sydney: Waugh and Cox, 1855). SMH, 6 June 1857, 31 March 1864. Finally, William Drynan has a drapery warehouse in this block. His sisters advertised their own millinery business in Hunter Street in the early 1850s. Misses E and M Drynan advertise their new millinery business in Hunter Street in 1850 and remain there until 1854. Ibid., 18 March 1850, 2 September 1854. Ford’s Sydney Commercial Directory for the Year (Sydney: Printed and published by W. & F. Ford, 1851). Eliza, Margaret and Mary Dryman arrive with Mrs Dryman and a son and daughter from Melbourne on the Glenbervie in February 1850. This is probably William Drynan’s mother and siblings. State Records Authority of New South Wales, ‘Mariners and Ships in Australian Waters’, http://mariners.records.nsw.gov.au/.
23   SMH, 5 March 1859.
24   Moves to George St then to King St and back to George St by 1861. Ibid., 5 March 1859, 22 December 1860, John Sands (Firm), Sands’ Sydney Directory,1861.
25   She is referred to variously, and somewhat confusingly, as Jane, Annie and Victorine Laroche in newspaper reports and directories. It is possible that ‘Madame La Roche’ is the estranged wife of William Roche and began life as Jane Boyle, daughter of Sydney builder, John, and apprenticed to Mrs Canavan, milliner and dressmaker. Ibid., SMH, 29 March 1851, 1 March 1858, 18 November 1859, 17 August 1865.
26 Mary Piper first appears advertising in Hunter Street in July 1856, announcing her arrival and requesting customers call on her soon before she moves to other colonies. Ibid. 29 July 1856. In fact she remains in Sydney for several years, moving to Pitt, George, King and Macquarie Streets and finally to Enmore Terrace in King Street. She expands her business to include the making of surgical bandages by 1864. Ibid. 8 April 1857, 8 December 1857, 4 March 1858, 13 July 1858, 19 March 1859, 4 February 1860, 9 January 1864. She is listed variously as Mary Piper and Mrs F. Piper in the directories and advertisements. Cox and Co., Cox and Co.’s Sydney Post Office Directory, 1857; John Sands (Firm), Sands’ Sydney Directory. 1858-­9, 1861, 1863. She has been impossible to trace before 1856 and the last mention of her in the newspapers is in 1867 when Dr Jones of College Street is requesting that Mrs F. Piper, Surgical Bandage Maker, should send him her address. SMH, 1 February 1867.
27   The business was even labelled as George Hudson’s in Cox’s 1857 Directory, more than two years after his death. The business partnership between another Sydney musician, John Gibbs, and Eliza Hudson was dissolved in 1851. Cox and Co., Cox and Co.’s Sydney Post Office Directory, 1857; SMH, 11 April 1851.
28   Susan Achison married John Glue in 1854. They had five children (one every two years) before her death in 1866. In 1862 the family moved to Concord on account of Susan’s health. After her death in 1866, John Glue will employ Mary Bourne to oversee the boarding house, marrying her within a few weeks. ‘Nswbdm Online Indexes’, SMH, 7 June 1854, 8 April 1859, 27 August 1862, 12 July 1866, ‘Nswbdm Online Indexes’.
29   The business has been in existence since 1848 when James Pawsey married the newly widowed Marianne Watson. SMH, 9 May 1848, 30 January 1855, 4 September 1858, 25 May 1872.
30   She is assisting her husband, Benjamin, the licensee, whilst caring for her three small daughters and heavily pregnant with her son. Ibid., 19 March 1858.
31   She moved recently from a hotel in Castlereagh Street after her husband’s death. When she remarries in 1859 the licence will transfer to her new husband, William Camb, but it is unlikely that she will no longer take an active part in the hotel, as hotels predominantly involved the labour of both husband and wife. For more on pubs see Diane Kirkby, Barmaids: A History of Women’s Work in Pubs (Cambridge? Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997). Wright, ‘Beyond the Ladies Lounge: Australia’s Female Publicans’. Diane Kirkby, Tanya Luckins, and Chris McConville, The Australian Pub (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2010). Harriet Mary Brown married a baker, John Rubsamen, in 1850. In 1855 John Rubsamen changed businesses and obtained the licence of the Settler’s Arms in Castlereagh St. He died in October 1857 and his widow, having lost her youngest child in January 1858, transferred this licence to another publican and instead took up the licence of the Glebe Tavern in Pitt St. By the end of 1858 she was at the Elephant and Castle on the corner of King and Pitt Streets. William Camb remains the licensee of the Elephant and Castle until 1867, moving to a new hotel in Castlereagh Street by 1870. They have a son (who dies young) and a daughter. William dies in 1880 and Harriet in 1888. ‘Nswbdm Online Indexes’. SMH, 10 April 1850, 5 September 1855, 6 October 1857, 13 March 1858, 16 November 1858, 14 December 1858. John Sands (Firm), Sands’ Sydney Directory, 1858,1861,1863,1865,1867,1870.
32   Although listed as Charles White’s business in the directories, Mrs White advertises for female shop assistants. Cox and Co., Cox and Co.’s Sydney Post Office Directory, 1857. John Sands (Firm), Sands’ Sydney Directory. 1858-­9. SMH, 16 April 1857 & 13 January 1858.
33   She ran the business in spite of being assaulted by her Chinese servant in October 1857. Ibid., 16 October 1857. Robert Horne may not have been a good choice as he will become insolvent in 1861 and again in 1882, the latter after his wife’s death in 1881. ‘Robert Horne Sydney Restaurant Keeper’, in Supreme Court Insolvency Files (Sydney: State Records of New South Wales, 27 May 1861), ‘Robert Horne 234 Pitt Street Sydney Restaurant Keeper’, in Supreme Court Insolvency Files (Sydney: State Records of New South Wales, 29 May 1882). ‘Nswbdm Online Indexes’. Joseph Fowles, Sydney in 1848: Illustrated by Copper-­Plate Engravings of Its Principal Streets, Public Buildings, Churches, Chapels, Etc (Sydney: J. Fowles, 1848), 93. SMH, 18 January 1881.
34   Ibid., 24 July 1856. Nearby, barmaid Ellen Farrell, also appeared in court with her employer in 1857, charged by Margaret and husband James, with stealing. Margaret Henshaw, widow of Thomas Henshaw of Hobart, married James Milton Foans, an American actor, female impersonator and singer, in 1853 in Sydney. They ran the Shakespeare Tavern for a short time (1856-­7) before Foans returned to the stage, having gone insolvent in 1857, his profession listed as ‘gentleman’. Margaret Foans reappears in the newspapers briefly in 1859, after a man called William Wilkinson threatened to cut her throat, and then again upon her death in Young in 1870 aged 42.’Nswbdm Online Indexes’, SMH, 10 March 1856, 10 July 1857, 29 May 1858, 20 September 1859. Sacramento Transcript, (Sacramento, California: 1851),8 February 1851. Argus, (Melbourne, 23 January 1854).
35   Julia Stevens is the wife of a sailor, also living somewhere in Pitt Street and had been either innocently fetching her daughter from the street or verbally attacking Pope, calling her a ‘street-­walking faggot’, when Pope assaulted her with a decanter and possibly also bit her. SMH, 21 June 1858.
36   Caroline Pope will attempt suicide in August 1859 and Richard Cochrane will be imprisoned for three months for beating his wife in October of the same year. By 1861 the couple will have separated, each declaring themselves not responsible for the other’s debts. Ibid., 3 March 1859, 30 August 1859, 24 October 1859, 29 May 1861, 30 May 1861, 1 July 1861. For Cochrane’s colourful activities see police reports for example, Ibid. 26 July 1867, 26 November 1867.
37   There were numerous actresses and singers who travelled around the colonies spending seasons at different theatres -­  for example there was great excitement in 1856 when Anna Bishop performed. Ibid., 3 May 1856, 14 August 1857. More minor actresses remained associated with particular theatres for longer periods.
38   She first appeared on stage as part of the company of theatrical entrepreneur, Mrs Anna Clarke, in Hobart in 1842, calling herself Mrs Stirling. Marriages to men called Macintosh and Digges have also been discovered, with bigamous implications. She arrived in Sydney in July 1845, with a daughter, who died in the 1840s. She married her fellow actor, James Guerin in 1846, using the surname Macintosh, had three children and then after Guerin’s death in 1856, married Richard Stewart in 1857. The register recorded his name as Gzech, and when their daughter is born in 1859 her surname will be recorded as Towsey. In spite of her last marriage, Theodosia will continue to use the name Guerin on stage well into the 1870s. Guerin’s complicated life story is being investigated by Desley Deacon.
39   Ibid., 15 July 1845, 7 January 1854, 30 January 1860, 4 June 1879, 20 July 1904. ‘Nswbdm Online Indexes’.
40   This is indicated by the number of advertisements for shopwomen and apprentices, milliners, dressmakers, improvers and first hands. For example’ milliners, cap milliners and saleswomen at Brandons. SMH, 29 May 1857, 31 July 1857, 24 March 1858;? milliners at Parry and Halberts, Ibid., 17 April 1857, 4 August 1857, at Farmers, Williams and Giles Ibid.23 July 1857, at Robinson and Morey Ibid. 7 December 1857;? at S. Clark, Ibid.,12 December 1857, 24 March 1858.
41   Mary Ann Rossiter married WIlliam Robson in 1854. Miss Rossiter was in the 1847 directory with a millinery business in Jamison St and advertised a millinery and dressmaking business in Pitt Street in 1849. Francis Low, Low’s Directory of the City and District of Sydney for Mdcccxlvii (Sydney: Printed by Alonzo Grocott … for the compiler, 1847). SMH, 12 May 1849. This was probably Mary Ann or possibly her sister, Elizabeth, both of whom arrived in 1840 on the Lord Weston, Mary Ann listed as a lady’s maid and Elizabeth as a needlewoman. “Familysearch,” Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-­Day Saints, www.familysearch.org. When William Robson opened his millinery warehouse at 256 Pitt Street in 1853, he advertised that he was ‘late in the employ of Messrs. Joseph Thompson and Son’ and that ‘all orders for the dressmaking, &c. will be conducted as formerly by Mrs Robson, late Miss Rossiter’. SMH, 12 February 1853.
42   New Directory of the City of Londonderry and Coleraine, Including Strabane with Lifford, Newtownlimavady, Portstewart and Portrush (Derry: F.R. and G. Kinder, 1839), 22-­3, 32-­3.
43   Margaret Doak was the mother of five children. Miss Rebeccah Kerr arrived aged 24 on the Crescent in 1840 with her sisters, Elizabeth (20, died 1841?) and Mary (19, married a Mr Pearce 1849?), brother John (18, carpenter) and father, Patrick (56, labourer). “Online Index to Assisted Immigrants Arriving in Sydney, Newcastle, Moreton Bay and Port Phillip,” State Records of New South Wales, www.records.nsw.gov.au/state-­archives/indexes-­online. Crescent, 1840 “‘Online’ Microfilm of Shipping Lists,” State Records of New South Wales, www.records.nsw.gov.au/state-­ archives/guides-­and-­finding-­aids/nrs-­lists/nrs-­5316. Doak and Beattie, SMH, 29 December 1873; Doak retired and Beattie selling off stock ,10 October 1882? Mrs Beattie advertise at Wynyard Square address, where her mother and aunt die, until 1888 then moves to George St by 7 December 1889.
44   ‘Nswbdm Online Indexes’. Margaret Doak died aged 85, SMH, 15 December 1883. Rebecca Kerr died, Ibid., 2 May 1884.
45   In 1852 there were two Misses Webb (Sarah and Mary), who were straw bonnet makers, milliners and corset makers at 186 Oxford Street. Perhaps the Mesdames Webb who have appeared in Sydney are these two sisters, reinventing themselves as widows. Mary Webb of Webb and Co has been in business in Sydney.
46   Ibid. 4 February 1857. The several Mrs Webbs include Jane Webb, now in Riley Street, who has survived insolvency in 1856 and by 1859 there will also be another Mrs Webb advertising as a milliner in Denham Street. There is also Mrs Webb at 99 King Street, unusual because she does not live on her business premises but in Pyrmont. One of these was perhaps the other Mrs Webb of the original partnership.
47   Emily Boston emigrated from Essex in 1859 on the Annie Wilson with her parents William (a schoolmaster) and Mary (a milliner), and several siblings, marrying Ebenezer Way in 1864 in Bathurst and opening her shop shortly afterwards firstly for a brief time in George Street and then in Pitt Street. “Online Index to Assisted Immigrants Arriving in Sydney, Newcastle, Moreton Bay and Port Phillip.”, “’Online’ Microfilm of Shipping Lists’. William White, White’s Directory of Essex (1848). Post Office, Post Office Directory of Essex, Herts, Kent, Middlesex, Surrey and Sussex., 3rd ed. (London: Kelly, 1855). ‘Nswbdm Online Indexes’. SMH, 21 October 1864, 25 September 1865, 3 November 1865. She is listed in the 1867 directory in her own name. John Sands (Firm), Sands’ Sydney Directory. 1867. Her husband is also involved in the business, which becomes known as E Way and Co. and remains as a large department store in Pitt Street until the 1950s. Ebenezer and Emily Way retire to England at the end of the nineteenth century and upon his death Ebenezer leaves a large estate worth nearly 30,000 pounds. SMH, 10 August 1907. Emily Way’s founding of the business was forgotten, although acknowledged in Beverley Kingston, Basket, Bag and Trolley: A History of Shopping in Australia, Australian Retrospectives. (Melbourne: Oxford University Press,1994). SMH, 9 January 1914, 4 March 1865, 8 November 1865, 19 July 1867.
48   Sydney Herald. (Sydney: 1831-­1842). 21 August 1839. SMH, 14 September 1940. Thirty-­two years later the entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography gave slightly more credit to Caroline Farmer, writing that she ‘opened a dressmaking and millinery shop,’ but implied that the drapery shop subsequently run by her husband was a completely separate enterprise. G P Walsh, ‘Farmer, Sir William (1832-­1908)’, in Australian Dictionary of Biography (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1972).
49   George Tuting, who had a drapery shop in Beverley in Yorkshire, arrived in Sydney in 1850, with his second wife and five children under ten. His new wife is forty-­seven-­year-­old Mary Farmer, sister-­in-­law of Caroline Farmer. Her relationship to the Farmers was doubtless one reason for the Tutings’ emigration. Mary Tuting advertises for milliners and superintends the female staff, which includes saleswomen. SMH, 8 September 1852 dies 1868 & 3 July 1868.
50   Ann Wakely’s mother, Mary Aiton is a publican. Ann Wakely’s sons from her first marriage died young and her second marriage is childless, She dies in 1867. Wakely has not learned his lesson and will face court again in 1860, when he will be lucky to be acquitted of raping Bridget Kennedy, who, with her husband, James, works at the hotel in 1860. Ibid. 10 May 1851, 16 April 1853, ‘Nswbdm Online Indexes’. SMH, 23 August 1854, 8 December 1855, 4 August 1857, 10 February 1860, 11 February 1860, 15 April 1867, ‘Online Index to Publicans’ Licenses’, State Records of New South Wales.
51   Catherine Wilcox was the widow of Zachariah Thomas Wilcox, who died in 1850. He had been in the 32nd Regiment and then a shoemaker, from 1834. They had at least eight daughters and one son, three of whom died young. Catherine Wilcox died in 1870, leaving her estate of £100 to be divided between just two of her daughters, causing the rest of the family to challenge her will unsuccessfully in court. “Nswbdm Online Indexes.” SH, 13 January 1834. SMH, 12 April 1851, 14 January 1854,13 May 1865, 14 June 1865, 11 August 1885, 6 October 1865.
52   Ibid., 20 January 1865. When one of her horses was stolen in 1855 she advertised that she would know the horse when she saw it, Ibid., 12 April 1855. She took great care to distribute her money precisely as she wished in a very long and detailed will. ‘Ann Ritchie Probate Packet Date of Death 1 January 1865, Granted on 30 January 1865’ (Sydney: State Records of New South Wales).
53   Ellard is the daughter of William Hutchinson, a convict, who managed to crawl his way up the social and economic ladder, using what could politely be called ‘enterprising’ techniques. John Wade, ‘Dick, Alexander (C. 1791-­1843)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography Online Edition (2006). Paul Edwin Le Roy, ‘Hutchinson, William (1772-­1846)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography Online Edition (2006). The Australian, (Sydney), 9 May 1834. Less canny in business than his new wife, Ellard became insolvent soon afterwards and Charlotte Ellard found her own money under threat from creditors. ‘Francis Ellard George St Music Seller’, in Supreme Court Insolvency Files (Sydney: State Records of New South Wales, 18 November 1842). ‘Francis Ellard George St Sydney Dealer in Music’, in Supreme Court Insolvency Files (Sydney State Library of New South Wales: State Records of New South Wales, 20 February 1847). SMH, 14 December 1846, 10 May 1849, 27 March 1857, 15 July 1875. ‘Charlotte Ellard Probate Packet Date of Death 14 July 1875, Granted on 18 August 1875’ (Sydney: State Library of New South Wales).
54   Tunk successfully sued her neighbour and was awarded ten shillings. SMH, 23 July 1858.
55   Augusta was born in Middlesex, the daughter of artist, Ben Baldwin, who exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1838 and 1842. The Exhibition of the Royal Academy (London: W. Clowes and Son, Printers to the Royal Academy, 1838). The new Mrs Fayers took charge of the millinery department, as well as giving birth to a son and daughter in quick succession. ‘Nswbdm Online Indexes’. SMH, 16 July 1850, 21 September 1852, 6 December 1853. ‘Walter Kemp Fayers Probate Packet Date of Death 4 December 1853 Granted on 18 January 1854’, (Sydney: State Records of New South Wales). Her daughter also died in 1853. ‘Nswbdm Online Indexes’, (Ada Fayes) SMH, 2 July 1855, 18 March 1856, 1 April 1857, 25 August 1857, 4 November 1857.
56   The couple will have 3 more daughters, born in New South Wales, France and England. In 1881 she is living with her husband and three of her daughters. She dies in 1907, aged 82. Ibid. 25 November 1862, ‘Nswbdm Online Indexes’. UK Census 1881 and other databases at “Familysearch’, ‘Freebmd’, The Trustees of FreeBMD, www.freebmd.rootswb.com.
57   SMH, 22 April 1853.
58   Their business is nicely non-­gender specific in the 1858-­9 trade directory. They are listed as ‘Lees and Cotton’. John Sands (Firm), Sands’ Sydney Directory. 1858. ‘Online Index to Assisted Immigrants Arriving in Sydney, Newcastle, Moreton Bay and Port Phillip’, George Lees chemist and druggist in High St in Tunstall, Staffordshire and Cotton and Lees straw bonnet makers 58 Rathbone St Tunstall, Staffordshire in William White, History, Gazetteer and Directory of Staffordshire (Sheffield: Printed for William White by Robert Leader, Independent Office, 1851). SMH, Jane Lees dies; 14 June 1862, Lees and Cotton partnership dissolved? 20 March 1866, Lees marries Dickie? 7 April 1866, Dickie advertises first;? 22 June 1861.
59   Ibid. 4 April 1871, 8 August 1873 Ann Cotton marries George Hamilton in 1875, ‘Nswbdm Online Indexes’. SMH, 5 February 1876, 9 December 1876.
60   Pierre Dutruc also has a wine and spirit business in Sydney and is the author of a French Grammar Book. In addition to their own private lessons, both the Dutrucs teach French at various local private academies. Ibid. 5 April 1854, 6 June 1854, 21 February 1855, 19 January 1857, 28 March 1857, 15 January 1858, 9 March 1858, 27 January 1859. Pierre Dutruc is a city councillor for Randwick between 1867 and 1871, and also acts briefly as the French Consul. Dutruc Avenue in Randwick is named after him. Eulalie Avenue is named after his wife, Eulalie being her second name. Ibid., 30 November 1853, ‘Councillors from 1859’, Randwick City Council, www.randwick.nsw.gov.au/About_Randwick/Heritage/Randwick_150_years_of_local_government. “Randwick Street Names a-­F,” Randwick City Council, www.randwick.nsw.gov.au/About_Randwick/Heritage/History_of_the_Randwick_area.
61   Caroline Dexter spoke there in 1855 and Madame Cramer gave a concert in July 1856, SMH, 28 February 1855, 2 July 1856, 22 March 1858, 31 December 1858.
62   Ibid. 22 January 1859. Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer (Sydney: 1845-­60). 12 February 1859,The Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser. (Newcastle: 1843-­1870), 22 February 1859. Moreton Bay Courier (Brisbane: 1846-­61), 2 March 1859. Patricia Clarke, Pen Portraits : Women Writers and Journalists in Nineteenth Century Australia (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1988).
63   William Blackwood, ‘Wiley & Son’s [Basket Wholesale Warehouse, Park Street, Sydney/ by William Blackwood]’, (Sydney: State Library of New South Wales, 1858).
64   She will go so far as to advertise it herself in 1862, SMH, 23 December 1862. They emigrated a few years ago having had a business in Oxford Street in London and have several children ranging in age from two to thirteen. David Wiley has flair, as you can see from his outfit in the photograph, and his advertisements are usually in the form of rhyming verse. Unfortunately this is not matched by his business ability and he will become insolvent three times in the 1860s. In 1860, 1863 and 1868 see ‘Insolvency Index Compiled from Nrs 13656 Supreme Court Insolvency Index 1842-­87’. Hannah Wiley is also active in the church and will contribute a decorated basket for raffling in support of the organ fund at St Andrews Cathedral in 1865, SMH, 12 August 1865.
65   Ibid., 23 July 1855.
66   Her library has only recently closed after seven years. Ibid.,17 November 1849, 23 September 1850, 14 November 1857 Ford’s Sydney Commercial Directory for the Year.
67   They arrived with three nearly grown children and with three more children and are expecting another son and his wife this year. Beejapore, Rose of Sharon, Forest Monarch passenger lists ‘Online Index to Assisted Immigrants Arriving in Sydney, Newcastle, Moreton Bay and Port Phillip’.
68   Cox and Co., Cox and Co.’s Sydney Post Office Directory, 1857. John Sands (Firm), Sands’ Sydney Directory. SMH, 1 January 1857, 27 October 1860. Elizabeth Ayton does not warrant an independent listing in the trade directories of 1861, 1863 or 1865 in spite of her school. She reappears in 1867. ———, Sands’ Sydney Directory. 1861,1863,1865,1867. Elizabeth Ayton died aged 65 in 1874. SMH, 12 May 1874, William Ayton died 1878, Ibid. 2 November 1878.
69   She will run up a bill at the grocery store of Ann Doodson. In spite of being a married woman at a time when the law of coverture still applied, Doodson will then sue Richard Seddon, who is by then ill and stone deaf. Seddon will die as an insolvent in 1884, leaving his unmarried, schoolteacher daughter to take responsibility. (The law of coverture essentially meant that women could not operate independently of their husbands. They were not supposed to sue or be sued and could not go into debt.) Ford’s Sydney Commercial Directory for the Year. Cox and Co., Cox and Co.’s Sydney Post Office Directory, 1857. ‘Richard Seddon’, in Supreme Court Insolvency Files (Sydney: State Records of New South Wales, 20 October 1868).
70   Her husband had a parallel business cleaning men’s clothes until his death. They commenced business at 328 Pitt St, W.F. Robertson advertising in verse. They moved away, then back to 244 Pitt St, then were at 18 Harrington St, Church Hill, having moved from King St, also at 273 Castlereagh St. SMH, 25 April 1850, 6 July 1850, 13 September 1850, 14 October 1850, 31 August 1850, 18 March 1851, 19 February 1852, 15 April 1854.
71   She is preparing for her forthcoming marriage to John Cummings and move to Sussex Street,
Ibid., 5 October 1858.
72   Ibid., 29 June 1861, 31 January 1877. John Sands (Firm), Sands’ Sydney Directory. 1863, 1865,
1867 1870. SMH, 8 August 1868, 16 January 1888.
73   Cox and Co., Cox and Co.’s Sydney Post Office Directory, 1857.
74   ‘Online Index to Publicans’ Licenses’. Henry Doran, 1847, Sarah Doran, 1853,4; Jane Steer, 1860. Sarah Doran died in 1855. ‘Nswbdm Online Indexes’, Sarah Joseph was probably the widow of Nathan Joseph, who died in 1859 aged 44. He was the licensee of the Golden Fleece in Patricks   Plains for much of the 1850s and he and his wife had been publicans and storekeepers in the area since the 1830s. “Online Index to Publicans’ Licenses.”, “Nswbdm Online Indexes.” Sarah Joseph was a licensed publican until at least 1869 and died in 1892. SMH, 26 June 1869 & 11 April 1892.
75   ‘Thomas Hyndes Probate Packet Date of Death 8 February 1855 Granted on 21 March 1855’ (Sydney: State Records of New South Wales).
76   ‘Online Index to Publicans’ Licenses’.
77   SMH, 13 June 1857.
78   ‘Online Index to Assisted Immigrants Arriving in Sydney, Newcastle, Moreton Bay and Port Phillip.”, Humboldt 1852 or Hungerford 1855 “‘Online’ Microfilm of Shipping Lists”.
79   Hillier, death? ‘Nswbdm Online Indexes’. Wakely tripe shop; SMH, 29 December 1854. Bowers?
‘William Bowers Probate Packet Date of Death, 2 April 1857, Granted on 12 June 1857’, (Sydney: State Records of New South Wales). Mary and Hugh Gorman took over Mrs Scotton’s greengrocer’s shop. There seem to be two Hugh Gormans and several Mary Gormans in Sydney at this time making it difficult to identify this couple. I suspect they are the Hugh Gorman who was a convict arriving in 1837. He has appeared regularly before the courts and was in prison for assault last year, leaving his wife with the shop to run as well as several young children. She is now pregnant again. Empire, 9 October 1851, 23 October 1851, 21 May 1855. SMH, 11 March 1857. ‘Nswbdm Online Indexes’. I think Hugh and Mary Gorman exchange the shop for dairying in 1859, with Mary continuing after her husband’s death in 1866. Rosa Butler was born and married in Jamaica before moving with her husband, Thomas Scholey, to England between their marriage in 1835 and 1851. Thomas was a florist’s salesman in Islington in 1851. Rosa Scholey emigrated on the Light of the Age in 1855 and ran variously a newsagency, servants’ registry office and boarding house in the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s. She died in 1893. Thomas Scholey appears to have ended up in the workhouse in Islington by 1861. Jamaica Church of England Parish Register Transcripts 1664-­1880 Manchester Baptisms Marriages and Burials 1816-­36, 13, 315;? English Census 1851, 1861 at ‘Familysearch’, Ford’s Directory 1851;? Sands’ Sydney Directory 1870;? SMH, 27 April 1860, 5 March 1881, 29 May 1893.
80   John Sands (Firm), Sands’ Sydney Directory. 1867.
81   SMH, 19 June 1858, 5 March 1859. ———, Sands’ Sydney Directory.1858-­9. ‘Isabella Mactaggart, Macquarie Street, Boarding House Keeper’, in Supreme Court Insolvency Files (Sydney: State Records of New South Wales, 1865).
82   ‘Online Index to Assisted Immigrants Arriving in Sydney, Newcastle, Moreton Bay and Port Phillip’. Kate, 1849 ‘Online’ Microfilm of Shipping Lists’. SMH, 9 August 1880.
83   Cottage of Content, Curriers’ Arms, Oven’s Hotel, The North Star.
84   Sewell won the right to reside here by evicting her widowed daughter-­in-­law in a bitter court battle the previous year. The younger Mrs Sewell had paid her rent for seven years by doing washing for her mother and sister-­in-­law. Ibid. 11 August 1857.
85   Theresa Cottrell arrived from County Cork on the Calcutta with her sister and married brother in 1838. She apparently married convict Benjamin Burridge although no record has been found and upon her second marriage she used the name Cottrell. Burridge died in 1852. Theresa Burridge held a confectioner’s licence in 1857. She married the widowed Norris in 1860 and after his death was quick to advertise her independence in business. She even fired her own sons in1869. She was fined for using insulting language to Martha Veney in 1866. She was forced to make a public apology after slandering Mr J Cannon in 1863. The cordial business was sold off in 1874. Theresa Norris died in 1878. ‘Index to Bounty Immigrants Arriving in N.S.W., Australia, 1828-­1842’. SMH, 20 June 1840, 17 December 1857, 25 February 1860, 23 March 1863, 22 April 1863, 24 July 1863, 9 November 1863, 14 March 1867, 16 November 1868, 2 February 1869, 17 June 1878. Empire, 24 November 1866, 6 April 1867. ‘Nswbdm Online Indexes’.
86   Henrietta Eliza Stafford? Strafford married James Chandler in 1835. They had one son, also called James George, born in either 1833 or 1838. Ibid. James Chandler advertised the removal of his English Grammar School from Haymarket to Pitt Street in 1838. Sydney Monitor and Commercial Advertiser, 11 April 1838. He died in 1839 aged 43 leaving his 31-­year-­old widow with a young son. Ibid. 5 April 1839. Mrs Chandler took over the school. Francis Low, The City of Sydney Directory for Mdcccxliv-­V : Containing : Names, Places of Business & Residences of the Principal Inhabitants ;  the Several Government Offices? Public Institutions and Societies;  Lists of Vessels Entered at the Port of Sydney;  Rules of Practice of the Courts of Requests;  by-­Laws of the City Council; Table of Fees, &C (Sydney: Printed by E. Alcock … for the compiler, 1844). Her move to Goulburn Street in December 1856 (Empire. 10 December 1856) precipitated her insolvency. ‘Henrietta Eliza Chandler, Widow, Goulburn Street Sydney’, in Supreme Court Insolvency Files (Sydney: State Records of New South Wales, 1857). She then moved her school to University Row, Yurong St, SMH, 6 July 1857. She died in 1860 aged 52. Ibid. 12 September 1860.
87   John Sands (Firm), Sands’ Sydney Directory. 1857-­1870. Mrs Chandler moved to Pitt Street from 210 Liverpool St in 1855. SMH, 21 March 1855. She had been there in 1851 and before that at 129 Pitt Street. (1844, 1847) Low, The City of Sydney Directory for Mdcccxliv-­V: Containing: Names, Places of Business & Residences of the Principal Inhabitants? the Several Government Offices? Public Institutions and Societies? Lists of Vessels Entered at the Port of Sydney? Rules of Practice of the Courts of Requests; by-­Laws of the City Council; Table of Fees, &C.———, Low’s Directory of the City and District of Sydney for Mdcccxlvii. Ford’s Sydney Commercial Directory for the Year. She moved from Goulburn to Yurong Street in 1857 SMH,.6 July 1857 and died in 1860. She had continued the school after the death of her husband, James Chandler, in 1839. SH, 1 April 1839. He had opened the school in December 1836, after his marriage to Henrietta Stafford in 1834. Ibid. 15 December 1836. ‘Nswbdm Online Indexes’.
88   SMH, 2 January 1858.
89   Empire, 19 May 1860. He will fail to pay the 30 shillings a week maintenance awarded and be imprisoned in October. Ibid. 6 October 1860, SMH, 6 October 1860. Timothy Cowell then disappears from the records.
90   ‘Online Index to Publicans’ Licenses’. SMH, 14 February 1855, licence to Thomas Kelsey, 6 September 1860. This is either Frances’ father or brother. It is unclear. Licence of Fortune of War George Street from Margaret Moore to Francis (sic.) Cowell;? 25 January 1871, licence of Sydney and Goulburn Hotel, Pitt Street from Frances Cowell to S Erdis;?  28 January 1871, 28 January 1872. ‘Frances Cowell Probate Packet Date of Death 31 January 1886, Granted on 6 May 1886’ (Sydney: State Records of New South Wales).
91   Elizabeth Turner is the widow of John and mother of Joseph. 36-­year-­old blacksmith John Turner and his wife, Elizabeth, a 34-­year-­old house servant emigrated from Lancashire on the Elizabeth in 1844 with three children, including oldest son, Joseph, aged eight. ‘Online Index to Assisted Immigrants Arriving in Sydney, Newcastle, Moreton Bay and Port Phillip’. ‘Online’ Microfilm of Shipping Lists’. Joseph will take over the business in 1859. John Sands (Firm), Sands’ Sydney Directory, 1858-­9.
92   She was in Sussex Street in 1855 and Bank Street in 1857. Cox and Co., Cox and Co.’s Sydney Post Office Directory, 1857. Waugh and Cox’s Directory of Sydney and Its Suburbs, 1855: Containing a Complete and Alphabetical List of Names of Streets, Householders, Trades, Professions, Government and Public Boards, Institutions, &C, &C: With Postal Arrangements, Carefully Compiled. She has been impossible to trace after 1859, as has any mention of T M Edwards before 1855.
93   SMH, 4 March 1854, 8 March 1858, 16 April 1858, 2 September 1858.
94   Sarah Mitchell arrived in Sydney in 1853 as a forty-­two year old assisted immigrant from Portland in Dorset. Talavera, 1853 ‘Online’ Microfilm of Shipping Lists’. UK census records for 1841 and 1851 at ‘Familysearch’. She was living on the other side of Pitt Street at No 406 until recently (see previous block.) She will sue one unfortunate young woman in 1864. Annie Cox, a dressmaker will fail to pay her two-­year-­old debt of £40 to Mitchell and end up in Darlinghurst debtors’ gaol. ‘Ann Cox, Sempstress’, in Supreme Court Insolvency Files (Sydney: State Records of New South Wales 1864).
95   This figure have been calculated from the tables accompanying the text.