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occupation, even that of dish-washer or barmaid, that had been hers when she and John first
met. When he left Charters Towers, seemingly in 1897, her situation, and her alleged drinking
habits, must have got worse.
But it seems she was a good Irish mother, putting her children before anything else. One of
Mary's grand-daughters, Alma, said of her and her children: 'She looked after them and fed
them well; she stayed home with them. They were well brought up children and didn't run wild;
they went to church and that sort of thing. Their mother was a Catholic, but the children were all
Protestants. They didn't have much of an education, and they were all very shy: they didn't mix
with anybody. There wasn't much family visiting, except on occasional Sundays. If you didn't
have money, you couldn't travel. So you just stayed home.'
In 1898, Mary Honeycombe was 45, and her eldest son, Willie, was courting one of Annie
Chapman's daughters, Esther. They married in January 1899, a month before Willie's 20th
birthday.
There may have been quite a gathering of relatives, neighbours and friends, for the Chapman
tribe was fairly extensive, and Annie Chapman's occupation of midwife must have made her
locally quite well known. Willie's younger brother, Bob, was 15% at the time and Lawrie was
not yet 11. He and
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two of his sisters, Jenny and Annie, were still at school; little Ellen was 5V4. Their mother's
emotions at the wedding may be imagined, for she had given birth to Willie more than two years
before her own marriage to John. No doubt she wept. No doubt someone, perhaps Willie
himself, wrote about the wedding to the man who may not have been his father but who
certainly treated him as such, writing to him (in 1909) as 'My Dear Son1.
Mary Honeycombe enters the records herself in 1900, when court and medical records, unseen
for nearly a hundred years, reveal that her manner, behaviour and speech at last led others to
certify her as temporarily insane.
On Friday, 17 August 1900, Mary Honeycombe was arrested and appeared before Ernest
Eglington at the Court of Petty Sessions in Charters Towers - 'on suspicion of being of unsound
mind1. Committed to the mental hospital at Goodna (between Ipswich and Brisbane), she was
locked up in the Towers' jail, where she talked incessantly and screamed and claimed that
people were going to kill her.
Transported to the Townsville Reception Centre, she was then taken by boat to Brisbane and
was admitted to Goodna on 29 August 1900.
It was noted there, presumably from what she said, that her age was 40 (her 47th birthday
occurred two weeks earlier); that she had five children, the youngest being six (she had six
surviving children, the youngest, Nellie, becoming seven that month); that she was born in
Tasmania (she was born in England); that she was a Roman Catholic and the wife of a miner
and mine engine-driver and lived in Charters Towers.
This 'attack' (as the hospital termed it) lasted two months, and Mary was discharged from
Goodna on 20 October. She made her way back to Charters Towers, to Hodgkinson Street,
Queenton. We can't be sure she lived there on her own or with her children. But a month later,
on 30 November she appeared once again before Mr Eglington at the Court of Petty Sessions
and was again committed to Goodna 'on the suspicion of being of unsound mind'.
Years later her daughter Annie, recalling this or the earlier arrest, would remember the day
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