Finding Fanny Finch, episode 12 of the podcast series Look history in the eye shares an entertaining musical performance about 1850s goldfields businesswoman Fanny Finch.
Fanny Finch's legacy as a trailblazer for women's rights, and her courageous survival story as a single mother on the Castlemaine diggings, has only recently been uncovered.
The episode was recorded on International Archives Day 2023 at the Victorian Archives Centre. Performed by historian Kacey Sinclair, alongside Finch's descendants, Bill Garner and his daughter Alice, with accompanying music by Friends of Wendy Cotton.
Kacey’s research makes a welcome addition to the histories of people with African Australian ancestry.
Episode 12: Finding Fanny Finch
Duration: 50 min
Produced by Public Record Office Victoria (see credits for writer and performer details)
The theatrical performance Finding Fanny Finch was written by Bill Garner, Alice Garner, Kacey Sinclair and Sue Gore.
Music by Friends of Wendy Cotton - musicians Briony Phillips, Steph Carson, Nicole Simirenko, Christine Webb and Anthony Webb.
Recorded at the Victorian Archives Centre, for International Archives Day 2023.
Presented by Kate Follington for the podcast series 'Look history in the eye'.
Note: In this episode the host describes Finding Fanny Finch as a 2022 Victorian Community History Award-winning project. Finding Fanny Finch actually won in 2021 and performed at the 2022 award ceremony. See photos of their 2022 performance here.
Transcript
Kacey Sinclair:
I decided I want to learn about the women of early Castlemaine. So I decided to go to the experts. I went to Robyn Annear, local and writer, and asked her when I say the words women and Castlemaine, does anything particular come to mind? She immediately responded with have you heard of Fanny Finch?
Kate Follington:
That's La Trobe historian Kacey Sinclair sharing the moment she first heard of English immigrant Fanny Finch, who sailed to Adelaide in the 1830s. Simultaneously, in another part of the country, Bill Garner was a descendant of Fanny and he was tracing his family tree, but he hit a roadblock. His great-great-grandmother, Cecilia Hotham, Fanny's mother, was penciled into the tree but there were no records.
Bill Garner:
My mother fastened on the name Hotham because Hotham was, of course, the name of the governor at the time, which is quite possibly why Fanny actually chose that as the name for her mother. The family in general, I discovered they would rather like this notion that they might have, you know, a vice-real sort of connections. This is not unknown in family history. It turns out to be, of course, completely false.
Kate Follington:
Kacey's interest in Fanny Finch and Bill's family research eventually crossed paths and he learned something which profoundly altered his sense of identity. Fanny Finch's mother was not Cecilia Hotham. In fact, Fanny grew up in an orphanage in England. The story we're telling you today is about this little girl, now a grown woman, living on the gold fields of Victoria, Australia, by then a single mother. It was 1852, and 25,000 men were digging for gold along a cold, muddy creek bed. Fanny offered a large, warm canvas tent with beds likely made of leaves and covered in bull hides to keep it warm, along with a handful of women. Somehow, fanny managed to dodge open mine shafts and drunken men, and she succeeded. But how did she end up there? Why was she described as the famous Mrs Finch in the local newspapers? Why is she so admired by Castlemaine historians today? Well, you're going to find out. Thanks to Kacey and Bill, her story has been made into a short stage play which won a Victorian Community History Award in 2022. And this is a warning the story does contain a brief mention of violence towards children. Music. My name's Kate Follington and you're listening to the podcast Look History in the Eye produced by Public Record Office Victoria, the archive of the state government. 100 kilometres of public records are preserved in climate-controlled vaults and we meet the people who dig into those boxes, Look History in the Eye, and bother to wonder why. You can see records related to this story by searching Look History in the Eye podcast online.
Alice Garner:
Music. I'm Alice Garner and Fanny Finch is my great, great, great grandmother.
Bill Garner:
I'm Alice's dad, Bill Garner, and Fanny is my great, great grandmother.
Kacey Sinclair:
And I'm Kacey Sinclair. I'm doing a PhD on Fanny Finch.
Alice Garner:
But it's not just a family story.
Kacey Sinclair:
Early in 1852, a woman from the wheelbarrow joins a long line of diggers on the road to Forest Creek. She has African heritage, a woman of colour, Fanny Finch, then 37, is a big, strong woman. She's heading for a camp packed with thirsty miners where grog prices are sky-high. Music. Fanny had come out to South Australia as a domestic servant in 1837, just one month after Colonel Light had surveyed the site for Adelaide. There she married a chain-maker from a survey party named Jo Finch. She left him in 1850 and took their children to Melbourne, Children she had had to board out before leaving for the Goldfields. It takes Fanny four days to get to Forest Creek digging. She sets up a tent that soon becomes very popular.
Alice Garner:
They call it the Head Centre and General Resort of Everybody, the only place of entertainment on the creek.
Bill Garner:
Even 40 years later. Someone says if anyone would hear her name now, no doubt they'd remember the many memorable nights had by her tent. Music.
Singers:
Oh, Polly's good looking. Polly is young. Polly's possessed of a smooth oily tongue. She's an innocent face with a good head of hair... fade out.
Kacey Sinclair:
Sly Grogging was profitable but risky. You got a hefty fine. Fanny's tent was destroyed twice in one week.
Bill Garner:
At each time the police burnt it down, the diggers put up another one.
Kacey Sinclair:
Fanny prospers at Forest Creek In 1854, she moves her business into Castlem aine, expands it and places a notice in the local paper.
Alice Garner:
Baths, baths, baths, what does she sound like? Baths, Mrs Fanny Finch. Mrs Fanny Finch begs respectfully to inform the inhabitants of Castlem aine and diggers generally that she has taken the undermentioned extensive premises which she has furnished as a bathing establishment.
Bill Garner:
That's good. May I Please? In offering this great summer luxury to her friends, Mrs F begs to assure them that no expense has been spared and that every regard has been paid to the comfort and convenience of bathers, and hopes to meet that encouragement and support which such an undertaking deserves.
Alice Garner:
A refreshment and reading room is attached where all the leading periodicals will be found, ladies and children carefully attended to by Mrs F. Personally.
Bill Garner:
Note the address. Templeton Street, next door to Mrs Pye and Company's lemonade manufacturing.
Singers:
Come down to the baths, bring your wives and your baths. Templeton baths, baths, baths. Wash the digging stoves away. Warm water, ash and tallow. Pye and curds lemonade. Ooohhhh. Three shilling for a shower. Four shillings for a bath.
Alice Garner:
I didn't know what her accent would be like. I also knew that physically we were quite different. But I thought that if I spent time with her words, because she did write letters that are in the records. I might be able to make sense of her way of seeing the world, so that was my way in.
Kacey Sinclair:
Then she gets a heavy fine for selling grog. In a letter to the Mount Alexander Mail she boldly proposes a solution to her money worries.
Alice Garner:
If those who were in my debt would come forward, each with one third, I would be relieved of all my debts, have a good house for my family and cash to put in my pocket. I also beg to state that, in spite of what enemies I may have, I intend to keep throughout the winter, ready-cooked ham, beef, soups à la mode, etc. From seven in the morning till seven at night.
Bill Garner:
She doesn't miss a chance.
Alice Garner:
She's not shy. Listen to this. A coloured lady, at tired in bright blue silk and artificial flowers. How good would it be to find a picture of that?
Bill Garner:
Any picture of her.
Kacey Sinclair:
Fanny Finch must have been brave. Late one night walking home, she hears screaming coming from inside a shop.
Alice Garner:
She bursts in, makes her way through to a bedroom.
Bill Garner:
She sees a man attacking a woman, she drags him off, she pushes him out of the room.
Alice Garner:
She bounces him on the counter and holds him till the police come.
Kacey Sinclair:
The story appears in the Mount Alexander Mail. Everyone in Castlem aine hears about it. Fanny is known as a defender of women and children, even back in Melbourne, in Bourke Street, when she had seen the continuing abuse of a seven-year-old named Mary Ann Bamford at the hands of her drunken parents.
Alice Garner:
Don't murder your child. You neglect her sufficiently without treating her with such cruelty.
Bill Garner:
She offers to pay for medical attention for Mary Ann.
Alice Garner:
I'll carry the girl to the hospital myself. I'll call the police if you don't help her.
Bill Garner:
By the time the parents take her to the hospital, it's too late.
Kacey Sinclair:
Fanny testified at the inquest and then at the mother's trial for murder.
Alice Garner:
To see children abused, I will say my piece.
Bill Garner:
A strong-minded woman with a genuine tenderness of heart which led her to be ever ready to serve another in distress, and that too, without the slightest ostentation. No face was more welcome at the Castlem aine Hospital, and not anyone perhaps was more charitable to its inmates. She was continually supplying them with creature comforts, and regularly, as Christmas came round, she furnished the whole female ward with a first-rate tea with all the necessary concomitants.
Alice Garner:
Not that it helps me. When I get in there, I don't know where all the subscription money goes, because the place is filthy holes in the floor, mice running everywhere. The matron is a monster, but nothing compared to the quack in charge.
Bill Garner:
You were ill.
Alice Garner:
A disease I won't mention. Then I go back in with a cough and they keep me there for more than two months. Inflammation of the lungs, they say. I don't know how I recovered.
Bill Garner:
You didn't. It's your obituary in the paper. You died.
Alice Garner:
Not yet. I've only just got started.
Kacey Sinclair:
Fanny Finch died at the Castlemaine Hospital in 1863. That quack killed me. She was buried at Campbell's Creek, but without a headstone. Like a pauper.
Bill Garner:
There's a headstone, now a beauty paid for by the government.
Alice Garner:
On my grave. Yes, the governor did that.
Bill Garner:
Not the governor, the government.
Kacey Sinclair:
The Minister for Women.
Alice Garner:
There's a Minister for Women.
Kate Follington:
Yes Woo. In 2020, the Minister for Women, Gabriel Williams, unveiled a very special headstone to mark Fanny's grave in acknowledgement of Fanny's contribution to women's history in Australia, and it's significant.
Bill Garner:
While running her business in Forest Creek. Fanny keeps her daughters in boarding school in Melbourne, but the kids are with her later in Castlemaine. Do they help with the sly grog? It is a restaurant.
Alice Garner:
Sorry Restaurant. Thank you, young man.
Kacey Sinclair:
Fanny was big on correcting the record. A notice in a local paper says she is required to apologise for insulting a Miss Miller.
Bill Garner:
I never she belts out a letter to the miners' right.
Alice Garner:
Sir, in the first place, I am not acquainted with a Miss Miller. In the next place, I am not in the habit of using any language likely to injure the character of any female, even as to require a private, let alone a public, apology. So I will thank you to rectify the assertion to my satisfaction in next. Fanny Finch. She's defiant. They cause me endless trouble.
Kacey Sinclair:
There was a sustained campaign against sly grogging. The £50 fine provided substantial revenue.
Alice Garner:
And the jacks get a cut.
Bill Garner:
She's charged with sly grogging again.
Kacey Sinclair:
Apart from a heavy fine, Fanny faces four months' jail for failure to pay. I have a lawyer.
Bill Garner:
She always has a lawyer.
Kacey Sinclair:
Fanny has tried in the police court.
Bill Garner:
The Melbourne Argus calls her the notorious Mrs Fanny Finch.
Alice Garner:
It's not just the sly grog charge.
Bill Garner:
The Mount Alexander Mail says the fair Fanny invited two policemen into her tent.
Alice Garner:
They were acting under orders. Of course they were. We're playing Four and and and the police join in. Goes on for three and a half hours. They're playing for lemonade at first, Then they ask for a couple of nobler's brandies. I know their game.
Kacey Sinclair:
The police said Fanny produced a bottle from under the sofa. That wasn't a crime as long as she received no payment. Her lawyer insisted that Fanny wouldn't be so stupid as to take money from police in uniform.
Alice Garner:
They swore they paid me after everybody else had left. They were lying.
Kacey Sinclair:
The bench accepts the police story.
Alice Garner:
I appeal immediately.
Kacey Sinclair:
At her appeal. At her appeal, Fanny is represented by her friend Morris McDonough.
Alice Garner:
I loved Morris, a real fighter in court. Very good comic actor too. Drank himself to death very young.
Kacey Sinclair:
McDonough's main line of argument was entrapment. He asked the police who sent them on the job. The judge told them not to answer. Jackson. The judge. The judge was likely protecting Edmund Jackson, the licensee of the Victoria Hotel next door to Fanny's restaurant.
Bill Garner:
He pays people to dob in Sly Groggers.
Alice Garner:
Morris says how can police spies be compared to someone of my good reputation? He calls them Vandemonians.
Bill Garner:
We call them Tasmanians now.
Alice Garner:
Why.
Bill Garner:
To clear up their reputation.
Alice Garner:
Vandemonians.
Kacey Sinclair:
A police constable tells Fanny if they can't get her on the Sly Grog charge, they'll start a row and get her for keeping a disorderly tent.
Alice Garner:
My tent is never disorderly.
Kacey Sinclair:
A disorderly tent was code for a brothel.
Alice Garner:
They want to drive me out of Castlem aine. If my word is not to be believed and the police continue to perjure themselves, then all I can do is appeal to the people of Castlem aine. Sir, I can scarcely tell you what I want to say, but write this letter as coming from myself, making notice of the time, which is since the diggins first opened my having house and at one time the only house either the commissioners or the diggers could be accommodated in. I've held a licensed refreshment tent ever since the diggins commenced and can prove by any of my former neighbours that they're never and I believe, the only tent that there was never even a quarrel in, and always conducted by myself. My neighbours on my right and at the back say they do not wish for a better neighbour, as does every neighbour I've had before, and are willing to prove it.
Bill Garner:
Except the neighbour on your left.
Alice Garner:
Everyone knows that.
Bill Garner:
Edmund Jackson.
Kacey Sinclair:
Jackson's preferred target was unprotected females.
Alice Garner:
To whom must I look for protection? I'm compelled to seek it from someone, but cannot tell who. The head of police should certainly see into these sorts of affairs and not allow if two or three have a spite against an individual to be crushed just as they please. For I positively deny ever taking one shilling from the two constables for Grog in any shape. Had not my witnesses one I think, but am not sure took a bribe to go to Melbourne, the other made drunk during the other trials, I could have convinced the public these men were perjured themselves. It looks to me very like a planned affair altogether, for I myself and others saw a constable whisper in one man's ear. In half an hour afterwards he, the witness, was quite drunk. Is it not like treachery, and am I to have no redress?
Kacey Sinclair:
I'd only seen a reference to this letter. The page was missing from the State Library's copy.
Bill Garner:
The State Library lost it.
Kacey Sinclair:
I found it at the Castlemaine Historical Society. I couldn't believe it. It made me shout out Ecstasy. In the archive I cried. In the week following Fanny's appeal a long letter appeared in the mail under the pen name Constant Reader. Its writer insisted Fanny was being persecuted.
Bill Garner:
Mrs Finch has a family to maintain and provide for and should be allowed every legitimate means of doing, and should be allowed to use every legitimate means of doing so as well as any other person. Means have been taken to entrap her into a violation of the law and I believe I state correctly when I say that war is declared against her.
Alice Garner:
Someone finally says it in public, was it Gus? Gus Yander was often at my tent.
Bill Garner:
Even 40 years later, Gus remembers her with affection. The good times at Forest Creek. Would you be free for this dance, Mrs Finch?
Alice Garner:
With pleasure, Mr Yander.
Singers:
Two slide rock detectives have come up from town. They both roam about in disguise. For several retailers have rugged and brown with reason to open their eyes.
Bill Garner:
I hope that other persons will corroborate my statement so that the persecuted party may no longer be under a stigma, as public opinion biased by the police report may tend to injure her business and family.
Kacey Sinclair:
The support was important. Fanny steps up her public presence and when the first Castlemaine municipal elections are held the following month, Fanny is determined to vote. Castlemaine held its first municipal elections in 1856. As the law was then, Fanny, as a rate payer, was entitled to vote. Her nemesis, Edmund Jackson, was one of the candidates.
Alice Garner:
It's a pleasure to put a line through his name.
Kacey Sinclair:
But election officials refused to count Fanny's vote or that of a female companion.
Alice Garner:
They threw out our votes. We are rate payers. They say we have no right because we are women.
Kacey Sinclair:
Oh Jesus. Parliament subsequently ruled that henceforth, only male rate payers would be eligible to vote, thrown out or not. Fanny's vote was one of the first cast by a woman in Australia. Her voting slip is on display in the Castlemaine Art Museum. Someone kept it.
Singers:
When leaders were sought in a colony there was one candidate, white, unlabely. The men of the town all had their say. A woman showed in blue satin on polling day.
Bill Garner:
Then, just a few months after, Fanny tried to vote the bailiff raids her place. They trash everything. Fanny writes to the paper again.
Alice Garner:
Sir, I have no doubt that you will not allow an oppressed woman to be treated with the cruelty I have experienced a few days since. Imagine, sir, the sheriff sending down the bailiff to seize upon my goods and, after almost ruining me, quietly saying that he had mistaken me for a person of another name. Surely, sir, there must be some protection for a woman in Devran to support her children in decency.
Kacey Sinclair:
She continues to suffer police persecution and money is clearly getting tight.
Alice Garner:
Notice, whereas a pretty little spaniel dog followed me home Saturday week. The owner can have it back by paying me one pound and the expenses of this advertisement. If he does not pay me by Monday, I shall sell it, as I was offered five pound for it and I cannot afford to keep it.
Bill Garner:
The owner lodges a complaint against Fanny for illegally detaining his dog.
Kacey Sinclair:
She opens a restaurant in Ammest, but it burns down and she loses everything.
Alice Garner:
My little John died there. He was 12.
Kacey Sinclair:
Fanny went back to Castlem aine. Records show her in the company of a number of Castlem aine business women who ran so-called gay houses. It was not a fresh start.
Alice Garner:
We were getting by me and the children. Then I go into hospital with that cough and you tell me I die.
Bill Garner:
That's right, 1863.
Alice Garner:
I'm what 48? What a life.
Kate Follington:
Kacey's historical research has been able to shine a really important light on how Fanny was raised and educated. A young black woman in England, and what she discovered was an enlightening moment for Bill and Alice, connecting them unexpectedly to African slavery.
Kacey Sinclair:
On her death certificate. Fanny's father is Captain Francis Jackson, navy. Her mother is Cecilia Hotham, but actually her mother was Lydia Holloway, a servant, and her father was a footman named John King. They were unmarried and their babies accepted into the London Foundling Hospital, a philanthropic orphanage. But her name wasn't Fanny, it was Louisa King. Louisa, and we even know when and where she was conceived.
Bill Garner:
I don't even know where Alice was conceived.
Kacey Sinclair:
Bill. It was the night of the illuminations. Monday August 1st. In the summer of 1814, london celebrates a century of Hanoverian rule and the defeat of Napoleon. The city is jumping. It's a huge event. There are fireworks and theatrics and amazing scenes all over London. People place candles in their windows, servants are given the night off. It's all very exciting and Lydia and John have sex in one of the public gardens.
Bill Garner:
I did that in Kew Gardens there in 1967.
Alice Garner:
We don't want to know Bill. In the middle of the day, the grass was rather prickly. Kacey, do you mean details
Kacey Sinclair:
Incredible, isn't it? The process of admission involves full disclosure by the mother of all the circumstances of the birth. Fanny's mother, Lydia, has to tell them everything. The race of the parents? No, the Foundling Hospital has a policy of being colourblind.
Bill Garner:
So who does Fanny's colour come from?
Kacey Sinclair:
Well, she seemed to think that both her parents were of colour.
Bill Garner:
Now this is London. In the early 1800s, are Alice and I connected to slavery.
Kacey Sinclair:
You most probably have an ancestor who was enslaved.
Bill Garner:
Something to think about.
Alice Garner:
If the archive is colourblind, how do we know that Fanny thinks both her parents are of colour?
Kacey Sinclair:
The girls in the Foundling Hospital all sew samplers. On Fanny's embroidery there are two people of colour. One standing on each side of a house. I've seen a picture of it. On the back it says Francis Coombe, foundling Girl, 15 years of age, 1830. Coombe, another name. Baby Louisa King was rebaptised Francis Coombe by the Foundling Hospital. It was standard practice. Fanny just made up Captain Jackson and Cecilia Hotham and they're still there in the family tree, but not Fanny.
Bill Garner:
How long was she in the orphanage?
Alice Garner:
I was there for 15 years. That must have been hard. How else would I have learned to read and write?
Kacey Sinclair:
The Foundling Hospital took pride in educating children for a useful life. At 15, Fanny started an apprenticeship in household management. Six years later she gained a labourers free passage to Adelaide. Music and singers. Frances Coombe arrived at the tent out of Adelaide in 1837.
Singers:
Music and song, Adelaide South Australia.
Kacey Sinclair:
Four children survived seven pregnancies. After she left Joe, Fanny declared him alive or dead as it suited her purpose. For her debt. He was alive. A social matter. She was a widow.
Alice Garner:
I tell people Mrs Finch begs to inform the local inhabitants that henceforth she will carry on business for her children. I am a woman in Devron to support my children in decency.
Bill Garner:
By running a brothel looks like.
Alice Garner:
You try raising four kids on your own and see what you do.
Kacey Sinclair:
Respectability was out of reach for Fanny, but maybe not for her daughter, Mary Julia. In 1858, when she was 15 or 16, Mary Julia met a public servant named Oliver Warren Collins, your great grandfather.
Alice Garner:
He spouts Latin. The father's a rector in West Yorkshire. There's Church of England ministers in the family going back 350 years.
Bill Garner:
He's firmly in the family tree.
Kacey Sinclair:
Two years later, Mary and Oliver are married at the most fashionable church in Melbourne. Fanny records her written consent. There's no mention of her in the wedding notice.
Alice Garner:
Maybe I'm across the street watching.
Kacey Sinclair:
Joseph Finch gets a mention but it says he's dead. Joe didn't actually die for another 35 years. In 1853, he was convicted at Bunning-Yong of robbery in company and sentenced to 10 years on the roads, the first two in chains. At the time of the wedding, Joe Joe is a ticket of leave man stuck in Gippsland.
Bill Garner:
Oh great, some people come out as convicts. In our family they come out and become convicts.
Alice Garner:
So Fanny takes Joe and herself out of the picture. She's constructing a new family.
Bill Garner:
A white one.
Alice Garner:
The one we thought we were.
Bill Garner:
I find it hard to believe that someone who was so vividly present in her own life would erase herself like that.
Kacey Sinclair:
That's my family history, Bill. Look, I think it's great that some white people don't see shame in connection to a coloured heritage. But it becomes more complicated when you look at it from the other side.
Bill Garner:
At least you know who you are, Kacey? No, I don't.
Kacey Sinclair:
You think colour makes it clearer, Bill. My Indian and Sri Lankan heritage might be evident in my skin, but, just like yours, my family history was whitewashed. It's the only reason my mother and father's families were even accepted into Australia. They had to prove they possessed as much white blood as they did South Asian. I have white privilege, just like you, and it was leveraged for gain, just as it was for you.
Bill Garner:
butacey, K Yand K Kbut Yeahndeah haven't Alice lived haven't haven't A Y Yeahnd aIAlice and and Alice and I haven't lived as persons of colour as you have. I mean, the danger for us, quite frankly, is to be self-congratulating about finding African heritage. But I mean, can you be charged with appropriating your own family history?
Alice Garner:
Yes, Ah, Well, there's one thing we do agree on Fanny Finch was an extraordinary woman. She defended women and children. She insisted on her right to vote. She spoke up against corruption and abusive power. I haven't heard anything like that about any of our other ancestors.
Bill Garner:
Nope, no one. And frankly, it's a relief to embrace a brothel keeper after all that Anglican respectability.
Kacey Sinclair:
We're all freer to claim Fanny now, but we lost her for a long time.
Alice Garner:
I'm here, young William.
Bill Garner:
I'm so happy to have you in my family.
Alice Garner:
I'm happy you're in mine. I'm a great, great, great, great grandmother now, I believe.
Bill Garner:
I'm so happy I found out about you before I died.
Alice Garner:
Turns out, you can find out lots of things after you've died.
Bill Garner:
But it's not just a family story.
Kacey Sinclair:
You were famous on the Goldfields, Fanny Finch, probably the first woman to publish in the local press, tone he othe first woman to cast a vote in Australia. They threw out my vote. You were unfailingly kind too, and supportive of other women. And yet until recently, and perhaps in some people's minds, the taint of sex work clouds your reputation. I was a rate payer. Your story isn't finished. They tried to drive me out. There are still so many gaps, ambiguities, mysteries.
Alice Garner:
I was lying in an unmarked grave. With a headstone. Now what does it say?
Bill Garner:
Brave, outspoken, Castlemaine's first businesswoman Really A pioneer of the district.
Kacey Sinclair:
I can't tell you how important it is to find you. Thank you.
Alice Garner:
Thank you for looking for me.
Singers:
Rise and fall on a London high tide. A future uncertain, courage, a guide, raven curls in the salty breeze, the gulls in the rick and cry. Francis, you're free. A sailor's bride in i Adelaide adelaide In your strong, fertile mind, bigger plans were laid. Mine is throng to the mother. Lord Packed your wheelbarrow and headed up the road. Fanny Oh, fanny, queen of the main, you fed them and gave them a fine place to stay. You sat at the table, but they wouldn't let you play. So you took what was yours and showed us the Castlemaine's way. Castlebane's streets sparkled with gold and plenty of men to buy what she sold A hearty meal, a roof over their heads and all kinds of comfort and all kinds of beds Standing for folks whose luck had been blown. A sly woman's slight grog of head, troubles of her own, fire and debt and a great deal of shade. She made a good living Trading on a name of Fanny, queen of the main. You fed them and gave them a fine place to stay. You sat at the table, but they wouldn't let you play. So you took what was yours and showed us the way. When leaders were sought in the colony, it was one candidate, quite unabiliy. The men of the town all had this say A woman showed in blue satin on polling day On the valor, the grit and the gold, to march down the street and stand in that hall. You don't get no ballot if you don't got no balls, dear. She said well, I got the right now. Sign it right here. Oh, fanny, queen of the main, you fed them and gave them shelter from the rain. You sat at the table, but they wouldn't let you play. So you took what was yours and showed us the way. Oh, fanny, queen of the main, you fed them and gave them a fine place to stay. You sat at the table, but they wouldn't let you play. So you took what was yours and showed us the way. Yeah, you took what was yours and showed us the way.
Kate Follington:
That's the end of the stage play Finding Fanny Finch Originally performed at the Victorian Archives Centre in 2023 for International Archives Day, but stick around to hear a Q&A with the performers, historians Kacey Sinclair and descendants, Bill and Alice Garner, who are going to be answering more really insightful questions from the crowd. The first question goes to the folk duo Friends of Wendy Cotton, who are the singers for today's performance, and they were asked about the song you just heard Queen of the Main.
Singers:
As mentioned earlier, it was surprisingly difficult to find an existing song with a suffrage theme. So we had this excellent opportunity to custom build one of our own for Fanny and we had this amazing information that K Kasey had researched. There's some great stuff in there. We sat down and talked about what we wanted to include. There's the voting and there's the gold rush, there's fires, there's bad neighbours, there's a wheelbarrow. When I was thinking about how to describe Fanny in a song, I had this image of a strong, courageous leader who looked after the people around her, someone that they'd go to for guidance, someone who got around in big, fancy dresses so a real queen, a queen of a time and place, queen of the Main, as in Castlem ain aine And we're pretty excited when the others liked the song and it got included in the play. I'm particularly pleased when we played it at a rehearsal and Casey . I remember tearing up myself when I was writing the bit about Fanny turning up to vote. I was so grateful for her boldness in doing that and angry and sad that she might not have been met with the kind of respect that she deserved at the time. I feel like having that emotional collection to something when you're writing. It is going to make that emotion a bit more communicable when you go to share it with an audience. That's been such an amazing pleasure to help tell Fanny's story over the last couple of years.
Audience member:
Hi, thank you Phenomenal. So my question is I'm curious about what the husband, Joe, that she married I was curious about, what was his background and his race and the kind of the racial dynamics of that time for him, for her marrying.
Kacey Sinclair:
Sure, thank you. Joe was an Anglo man who was five foot eight, fair skin, green eyes, had a tattoo of Fanny on the side of his arm. He didn't have a hole in his face. His son had a hole in his face. So he was an Anglo man. So he was from a poor farming family from Hampshire. It seems as though his family released their first four children, because they disappear from the records, and then from there they have another four children who continue to live in Hampshire and have families, and I can trace them to the 1910s. In fact the youngest son, George Finch, goes looking for Joseph in the late 1890s and says my brother, Joseph Finch, who I never met, emigrated to South Australia in 1836 and we never heard from him again. Does anyone have any information?
Bill Garner:
A couple of survey ships came out with Colonel Light and he was on the other ship and they were anchored at Kangaroo Island. First of all, and while they were there, Joe went off hunting by himself. After a couple of days he didn't come back and they sent out search parties for him and they couldn't find him. And after another day or so they gave up and they were rowing back. They rode back to the ship. They were unfurling the sails when they saw some blackfellows on the shore waving frantically. They lowered the longboat, went back to the mainland ashore and there was Joe. The local Ghana people had found him. He'd attempted to light a fire using gunpowder this actually tells you a lot about Joe and he'd blown himself up. He was badly burned but he survived. And in the longer version of the show, Alice thanked the Ghana people for finding him and bringing him to the shore, because otherwise we wouldn't be here.
Kacey Sinclair:
I was researching William Wyatt. William Wyatt, with his wife, Julia Wyatt, brought Fanny out from London so she was their personal servant. In researching William Wyatt, who became the first protector of Aboriginals at that time. That story came up through William Wyatt so I wasn't even specifically searching for Joseph Finch at the time, I suspect. So any contact that European people had with Aboriginal people at that time had to be recorded in some way through William Wyatt. Joseph obviously had to go to William and explain what had happened and then it was published in the paper and it's possible that through that interaction Fanny and Joseph met.
Alice Garner:
Just on that note. Did you find out anything about the employers of Fanny's parents?
Kacey Sinclair:
Yes, I did so. I know that Fanny lived. Lydia Holloway was the servant to a man called Joseph Mabally who was solicitor personal solicitor to Macquarie, so he was quite high up. He was also a personal solicitor to a man named James Morley who was also associated with the colonial campaign. Curiously, and I can't work this out if anyone wants to have a crack at it, let me know if you have any luck but Lydia lives with James Morley when she gives Fanny to the Foundling Hospital and I just find that to be a really interesting coincidence. James Morley was a bricklayer. I can't find anything about him. So yeah, Lydia lived in a pretty high standing house when she fell pregnant with Fanny. John King was the footman to a solter, which was quite a high social standing at the time. So there's two pieces of evidence that I have to support the fact that she was African heritage. Fanny is the DNA of the descendants who I've connected with through multiple lines. So I've connected with the descendants of Fanny's eldest daughter and her family are big on testing and they've consistently had West Coast results. Bill, also your cousin, he had West Coast, she had West Coast. The other piece of evidence is that a poem is written on board the John Renwick, which is the ship that Fanny sailed on from London, and on board was an artist by the name of Theresa Chauncey. She's quite a famous sculptor. With her sister Martha, she wrote a poem and she refers to Fanny as an African woman. So they're the two pieces of evidence that I have.
Audience member:
Thank you all. That was really remarkable. So TC, do later suffragettes acknowledge Fanny in any way. And secondly, do you have any understanding of how the ballot slip is at the Castlemaine Art Museum? Is that Naomi? Yes, yes, I work there.
Kacey Sinclair:
Okay. So no, no, in short, they did not, don't think they really acknowledge women of colour or the efforts of working class women at all. So no, unfortunately not that. I've found the fact that the ballot survive is really interesting. It was retained by David Preashore, who was a doctor in Castlemaine at the time and started the Castlemaine Hospital. I suspect that the reason that the ballot survived is because those early pioneers thought they were pretty cool. They were like we've started this town, we need to celebrate ourselves, and so they were actually data collecting from really early on, and so the fact that the first municipal election collection was saved is unsurprising because of the pedestal that they kind of put themselves up quite early. No other collection of ballots have been saved. From my understanding, this was the one and only. Fanny voted alongside another woman who was unnamed in the Argus. I can't find her name in those ballots, largely because most of them are illegible. I have a feeling most people were drunk when they voted. A lot of the signatures kind of go off the page. So if that woman is there, I can't read her name. I haven't identified it. Marjorie Theobald has a few theories about who that woman was, based on the rate books. At the time there were only three or four women paying rates that Marjorie thinks would have been bold enough to cast a vote. Her name was Catherine Gorman. I believe she was the publican of the Taradale.
Audience member:
Bill and Alice. You said that Fanny's been written out of your family tree. Who's sitting there instead?
Bill Garner:
Francis Jackson and Celia Hoffman are sort of penciled in. One of the reasons I started investigating this part of our family history and that led me to Kacey was that I knew that my great-grandmother had been born in South Australia. Quite early on there was an indication of that, but no information. It was penciled and then nothing. I do know that my mother fastened on the name Hoffman because Hoffman was, of course, the name of the governor at the time, which is quite possibly why Fanny actually chose that as the name for her mother. The family in general. I discovered, rather like this notion, that they might have sort of you know advice real sort of connections. This is not unknown in family history. It turns out to be, of course, completely false. I think one of the things that's interesting is that this secret was kept in the family for you know 150 years and they had social reasons for being secret, whatever they'd known. And it's a great coincidence that the research that Kacey's done has arrived at a moment when a family is capable of taking it on board. Yes, thank you.
Alice Garner:
Thank you, Thank you everyone.
View the records mentioned in the podcast
Castlemaine Municipal Council voting paper 1856
First Castlemaine municipal voting slips with Fanny Finch's signature. Castlemaine Art Museum
Historian Kasey Sinclair wrote about these two records discussed in the podcast episode in an article for The Conversation in a series about hidden women of history in 2019.
The first one is the Municipal Council voting slip which was fortunately kept with Fanny Finch's signature viewable at the bottom. The record can be viewed at the Castlemaine Art Museum.
Sinclair said of the archived voting slip 'On 22 January 1856, in the gold rush town of Castlemaine, two women took to the polls and cast their votes in a democratic election and one of them was Fanny Finch. Two days later, Melbourne newspaper The Argus wrote “two women voted – one, the famous Mrs. Fanny Finch”. Fanny Finch was a London-born businesswoman of African heritage, a single mother of four and is the first known woman to cast a vote in an Australian election.
Victorian women over the age of 21 (excluding Indigenous women) would not receive full unconditional suffrage until 1908. (Victorian Indigenous women were not enfranchised until 1965.) But Fanny Finch, as a local business owner who paid rates, was able to exploit a loophole in suffrage law that was yet to discriminate against gender or race.'
The embroidered sampler from London Foundling Hospital
The tapestry attributed to Frances Coombe (sic) from the London Foundling Hospital
A cross-stitch sampler attributed to Frances Coombe (sic) in 1830 at the age of 15 suggests she understood both her parents to be free people of African racial heritage (although the UK did not free slaves unconditionally until 1838.) The London Foundling Hospital, where Fanny was accepted as an orphan, provided her with some protection against slavery as well as an otherwise inaccessible education and access to an apprenticeship scheme in “household duties”. (Sinclair)
You can listen to the podcast Finding Fanny Finch as part of Look history in the eye on Spotify, Google Play and Apple Podcasts.
Material in the Public Record Office Victoria archival collection contains words and descriptions that reflect attitudes and government policies at different times which may be insensitive and upsetting
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