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their child. Emma died at home of bronchitis and phthisis - in other words, of TB. This Dr
Nicholson is said (by Aunt Lil) to have lived in Benalla and to have attended Ned Kelly when he
was wounded. Emma went to work for Dr Nicholson and his wife when she left school - aged
14 presumably. After Mrs Nicholson died, Emma herself became ill. Said Aunt Lil: 'She took
sick and the doctor said to her: "Emma, you've got a nasty cough - I'll give you something for
it." But she got worse, and he wrote down to our people to tell them how bad she was and he
was going to send her home. And when he went into her bedroom, there was all the medecines
on the chest. She'd never taken a drop!'
In 1877, when we find the family still living at 108 Nicholson St, the eldest daughter, Elizabeth
Jane (who would never marry) was 29, and the youngest, Louisa, was 12. The four unmarried
boys - George, Richard, Thomas and Jack -were respectively 24, 20, 18 and 16, and the last
three were presumably still living at home. George, who did not get on with his father and was
allegedly beaten and kicked by him, was a coach-painter (of railway carriages); Richard,
Thomas and Jack were stonemasons. Their father, Richard, as he had been since before his
merry marriage at Gretna Green, was a stonemason still and probably worked in a quarry
'shaping' stones.
1877 was the year in which the first 'Test' cricket match was played against England - in
Melbourne in March. Australia won by 45 runs. In May a general election returned a radical,
Graham Berry, as the new premier of Victoria. More importantly, in 1878, the telephone came
to Melbourne; and in New South Wales, near Bourke, the first man-made artesian bore was
sunk, solving the problem of watering cattle and arid outback land. Elsewhere, in
1879,
Alexander Forrest discovered the Ord River in northwestern Australia, as
well as millions of acres of good grazing land in the Kimberieys; and an £8,000
reward was offered for the apprehension of Ned Kelly's gang of four. He was
caught at Glenrowan the following year and hanged in Melbourne - 'Such is Life',
he allegedly said. Born in January 1855 of Irish parents, he was but 25. Also in
1880,
Peter Lalor, chief protagonist at the Eureka Stockade, became speaker of
the Victorian Parliament; and the white population of Australia exceeded
2,230,000, most of it contained in five cities around the coast.
In this three year period the Honeycombes continued to reside in Nicholson Street, and would
have been aware of the above events from their reading of the Melbourne papers. They may
also have read about two American inventions: the bicycle, and electric light, which first
completely lit the streets of a city (Wabash, Indiania) in 1880. But they would not have read
about the (then) significant opening of the first successful Woolworth's store in Pennsylvania.
Richard Honeycombe was 50 in September 1879. The following year he embarked on a new
occupation as a grocer. We know very little about this enterprise, except its address, 73
Nicholson St, and that Richard, his wife and
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their remaining children, lived there for the next five years. Few people had holidays then,
although they might go off on day outings by train, or spend a day, fully clothed, at the beach.
During this period four of the children got married: three of the boys and one of the girls. It was
said by Aunt Lil, Richard's grand-daughter, that Richard's wife, Elizabeth, 'didn't want the sons
getting married and had no time for the daughters-in-law".
The first to marry was the third son, Thomas. His bride, who wasn't pregnant, was Catherine
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