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Street. But in 1846, William moves across the River Avon to Dove Street and is no longer
working with George Wilkins.
When exactly was the move made, and was the dissolution of the partnership connected with
Jane's pregnancy? It seems so, and the date of William's move to Dove Street must be crucial in
this respect. We know he was there in 1846 - but from what month?
On the other hand, the change of address and Jane's pregnancy may be coincidental. William
may not have known about her plight For Jane gave birth to her child in London in April 1847.
She couid have gone there ostensibly to stay with her married sister, Mary Ann Henderson, and
then have remained, on the pretext that she had obtained some employment. But she is back in
Bristol in 1851 - by which time her parents are in Australia. She appears in the census for that
year, aged 25, as a house servant, working for a Mrs Mary Tierney, widow, in Clifton, at 9
Caledonia Place. Mrs Tierney, who was 49 and a 'pensioner', had several dependents and
servants and was born in the East Indies. Cliton was a middle-class address and her husband's
pension must have been a good one, not to mention his East Indian assets.
It seems likely that Jane had left the infant George Edward with her sister in London or had had
him adopted. She would not, as a spinster, be living in Mrs Tierney's superior house with a 4-
year-oid child. After this, it appears she returned to London, as when she emigrated, her county
of residence in England is given on the ship's passenger list as 'Middlesex'. Hoxton was in
Middlesex then.
The fact that George Edward was born in London, and not in Bristol, must indicate that there
was something secretive or shameful about the event, and that her father did not approve or
would not approve, had he known about it. Perhaps he never knew - nor saw his daughter from
the time she first went to London to the day he met her again in Geelong. Perhaps only Mary
Ann Henderson knew. For it is surely she who brought the infant up in the Borough of
Southwark, where later on he spent nearly all his married life.
But Jane was not ashamed in the birth certificate to name the baby's father - George Wilkins.
More than this, she toewwho he was, and wished his responsibility (or irresponsibility) to be
known.
Do we have here a broken promise of marriage? Was Jane in love with him? Or did he seduce
her - even force himself upon her?
Research has revealed very little about our George Wilkins - whether he was married and how
old he was. Two men named George Wilkins married in Bristol in 1831 and another with that
name in 1837 - occupations unknown. No evidence has been found that connects any of these
three with our George. A fourth George Wilkins (possibly one of the above), who was born in
St Agnes near Truro in 1789 and who married there in 1825, would have been 57 in 1846.
22
Is he our George? Or was it a son of his who deflowered William the stonemason's daughter,
Jane? We do not know.
All we know is that the father of Jane's child lived with the Honeycombes in Bristol for three
years, from 1842 to 1845, when Jane was aged 16 to 19. She was 20 when she became
pregnant in 1846. George Wilkins was still in Bristol in 1849, in a business as a builder in
Stapleton Road, St Philips. Was he still seeing Jane? Or avoiding her? Was she still hoping he
would marry her? In this she was disappointed, as in much else, it seems. For five years later, in
1854, Jane emigrated, abandoning not just what friends she had and any small expectations, but
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