Chapter 1 - Pt 4

Building a Colonial Practice

Chapter 1 - Pt 3

MANSFIELD'S ORIGINAL OCCUPIERS

Chapter 1 - Pt 2

BRUNSWICK, VICTORIA, TO DARLINGFORD

Eliza and Samuel Reynolds arrived in Hobson's Bay in the late summer
of 1853. It was hot and smoke from bush fires drifted down the coast.
Eliza, six months pregnant, exhausted after the long, rough voyage had
only one wish – to be on land. As their ship lay at anchor in a forest of
masts and they waited to go ashore small row boats arrived and men
climbed on board, some seeking workmen among the immigrants, some
with gold to sell, all of them with some story about gold discovery.

The Reynolds came into the rough, tough, vital, uncomfortable, noisy
Melbourne of the '50s and were thankful to find accommodation a few
miles out of the town at Brunswick. Brunswick was a small settlement
among orchards, farms and vineyards, the low hills thickly covered with
gum trees and wattles. Much of the land had been subdivided into large
blocks of eighty-nine to one hundred and thirty acres and sold in 1839
to successful business men. There were Collins Street farmers from very
early days. The bluestone quarries and brick works brought many men
seeking work and the place, it was said, was full of rumours of gold
discoveries, bushrangers and robberies. Since it was the natural starting
point of the road to the fabulous gold fields of Bendigo it attracted
hundreds of miners and prospectors. The roads were appalling and
Sydney Road a quagmire until, with the establishment of Pentridge Gaol
in 1850, prisoners were employed to pave the road with bluestone. In
spite of the roads there was a regular mail coach to Sydney.¹

The Reynolds found accommodation with a Mrs McPherson who was a
midwife and she assisted Samuel when Eliza's baby was born on
12 February 1854. The baby was called Minny. The Reynolds stayed in
Brunswick for some months until Eliza recovered her strength and felt
equal to making the trip to the gold fields on which Samuel had set his
heart. Wherever Samuel went he heard talk of gold and particularly of
the wonders of Forest Creek. Gold had been discovered there in 1851
and the procession of men going up to try their luck was endless.
Samuel, thorough in everything, set about preparing himself for mining.
He had his cabbage tree hat, the almost universal wear of the miners
and so called because it was woven from narrow strips of the cabbage
tree palm of coastal Queensland and New South Wales, his Bedford
cord trousers, flannel shirt, neck scarf and heavy coat. It was all an
adventure to them but not to be taken lightly.

In his pocket Reynolds carried a small surgical kit which he kept
throughout his life. On their second last night in London when Eliza and
Samuel dined with their people at Plaistow, Richard Strangman, Eliza's
brother, presented Samuel with this kit. A black morocco leather wallet
lined with plush held scissors and lancets mounted in tortoise-shell.
Miners were advised to have at least £25 with them and to take an iron
shovel with a short handle, a small pick, strong rope, washing dish,
12

bucket, tub, tent, axe, fry pan and tin mug. Since the Reynolds had
decided to try their luck first at Forest Creek Samuel took little gear. It
would all be available in the many stores at the settlement. On a spring
morning in 1854 Samuel, Eliza and the baby Minny travelled to the
Melbourne Post Office to join a convoy proceeding to Forest Creek.
Samuel and a friend he had made in Brunswick had bought a light cart
and two horses; they travelled in this with their gear. Eliza and her baby
and the wife of the friend went by coach and waited at staging places
and Inns for the slower cart. For security and companionship gold
seekers moved in convoy. They were going into a tough and un-
predictable world. They had been warned to think every man a rogue
‘until you prove he is honest’. They knew the special dangers of the
Black Forest through which they must pass, notorious for its appalling
tracks and its bushrangers. Gold hunger was stronger than fear and the
convoy moved off.

A wild scene, William Craig² wrote of his convoy. The heavily laden
drays, the struggles of horses and bullocks, the yells and oaths of the
drivers, the numerous parties with handcarts and wheel-barrows, all
their worldly gear, swagmen bending with the weight of seventy or
eighty pounds on their shoulders. . . . Nothing so plainly attested the
heavy traffic over the direct routes to Bendigo and Forest Creek in the
winters of the 'fifties than the skeletons of horses and bullocks that had
succumbed to the strain imposed upon them through bad weather,
overloading and dearth of sustenance.

This was specially so in the Black Forest; rains turned it into a peat bog.
Teamsters turned in every direction trying to find solid ground; every-
where there were broken and upturned drays and carts and the skeletons
of animals lying as they had dropped from exhaustion. This immense
sacrifice of animal life, before the construction of roads, induced a sharp
business man to start a bone mill in Bendigo. It proved more profitable
than gold mining.

There were coffee shops along the track, usually a tent and log shed
or bark hut where people crowded in at night to escape the cold; sly
grop shops in plenty and inns, some of them surprisingly good. The
Bush Inn in sight of Mt Macedon was well known. Young Mrs Ellen
Clacy came this way in the 'fifties going with her brother and some
friends to try their luck on the Bendigo fields. In the vivacious diary³
which she kept and published as soon as she returned to England in 1853
she describes the journey to Forest Creek. She rode in the back of a dray,
a bag of flour for back rest, a big cheese for foot rest, notebook on her
knee and she noted everything: the cost of meals at Bush Inn, five and six
shillings per meal, seven and sixpence for a bottle of ale, one shilling
for half a glass or nobbler of brandy. She recorded the excitement, the
confusion, the sly grog selling, the fear, the laughter, the beauty of the
13

bush. She was thankful she kept such good health since doctors at the
diggings charged ten shillings for a consultation in their own tent and
one to ten pounds for an outside visit. She found the diggings remarkably
orderly. She cooked for her men folk over the open fire, made damper,
put mutton in the camp oven; escaped bushrangers in the Black Forest;
kept her housekeeping accounts as if she were in her pleasant London
home, and with her brother, who had put aside his Euclid and Homer to
come gold seeking in Australia, she shared the work of puddling and
cradling and rightly shared in the bag of nuggets which they took back
to London. She returned a bride, on the arm of her young husband, and
in the highest of good spirits, which delight us to this day, she wrote A
Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852, very properly
adding Written on the spot by Mrs Charles Clacy.

Forest Creek, sprawling, bare, a shanty and canvas town, never for a
moment free of activity and noise, was home to the Reynolds for two
years. It was a rich field and some miners made fortunes:⁴

The surface and shallow workings at Forest Creek were undoubtedly
very rich. Three persons got in 19 days 360 ozs of gold; one party of
five washed 2 ½ lbs in one day; another party of four weighed 11 ozs as
the produce of labour from morning until 3 o'clock in the afternoon
and another set of three got $1000 worth of gold in fourteen days. A
great many, however, were unsuccessful. They knew not where to sink
and as hopefully put down a shaft on the side of the hill as in the
valley, and as carefully washed the slate as if it had been auriferous
earth.

Reynolds did well enough to believe that the better day would come. It
never did. It was soon known that he was a doctor and if a miner were
injured or sick he did what he could. On these crowded gold fields there
were a good many doctors; there were in fact many professional men try-
ing their luck. Life was hard for a doctor on the gold fields. Francis
Myers, who as Telemachus wrote so vividly about the colony in the
seventies and eighties met a Dr Norris when he toured the Upper Goul-
burn gold fields. Dr Norris told him, ‘In the old days on the diggings
they used up a doctor in three months; if he did not break his neck on
the roads he burned up his liver with whisky’. Reynolds, though not an
abstainer, had a horror of excessive drinking; the diggings did not destroy
him and he kept excellent health.

In an article on these digger doctors in the Medical Journal of Aus-
tralia Dr E. Alan Mackay wrote:⁵

With the gold rush squatters and farmers lost their labour. Medical
men in practice were perhaps better able than others to accommodate
themselves to the new conditions. If his patients went to the diggings
the doctor could follow. He would at least have the nucleus of a

14

practice and with a horse and tent, a leather case with a few instru-
ments and some straightforward drugs such as laudanum and calomel
he could carry on and in his spare hours do a little prospecting.

Dr Mackay told the story of a pioneer Melbourne doctor who had a
reputation as a great blood-letter. He went off to the gold fields and a
quip spread among his fellow doctors – ‘Dr Blank had gone to the
diggings to open veins with a pick axe.’

There was plenty of work for the doctor on the diggings. Accidents
were frequent; a form of dysentery known as English cholera was
common; bad water, flies, summer heat, dust and primitive sanitary
conditions spread disease. All kinds of home remedies were tried for this
malady. William Craig recalled that the cook of his party made up a
‘potion of raw flour, stewed gum leaves and a little iron rust’. Babies and
young children died far too frequently of gastro-enteritis and when, at
nine months of age, their own little daughter Minny died the Reynolds
decided to leave Forest Creek and go to Mt Blackwood. Blackwood gold
fields, on the upper tributaries of the Lerderderg River were said to
provide easier conditions for alluvial miners.

Samuel had patience, perseverance, and still some small capital so once
again he and Eliza put their goods in a cart and went over the hills to
the pleasant Blackwood country. Gold had been discovered there in Janu-
ary 1853 by Edward Hill.⁶ They stayed two years finding little gold but
gaining two sons. Samuel Francisco, born on 24 July 1856, was always
known as Frank; later generations never did discover why he had been
called Francisco. William, given no teasing second name, was born on
31 June 1858.

Wherever diggers gathered they shared an abiding interest in rumours
of gold fields. No matter how jealously a new find might be guarded
sooner or later someone heard of it; that was enough to start a rush. On
the Blackwood diggings in the sixties stories were coming through of
rich finds on the upper Goulburn. The Reynolds had left Blackwood to
try their luck at the Junction near Yea and Yea was full of rumours.
In July 1860 Mr F. M. Hill, post master, reported that four hundred
men had gone through the town headed for Darlingford and Jamieson.
Their hopes had been fired by a report from Superintendent Cobham of
Benalla who had visited Jamieson early in the year and reported good
gold discoveries on the upper Goulburn, ‘with room for any number of
diggers’. He was severely criticized by the Argus⁷ for raising such hopes
‘just now when the mining population is in such an unsettled state and
ready to rush in numbers from one end of the country to the other on the
mere rumour of such a discovery let alone one bearing the weight of a
semi-official endorsement’. Cobham was a police superintendent. It was a
dreadful winter for those who got into the mountains; the weather was
bitter, supplies ran out but still on the prospectors came . For most it was
15

disaster but for the few who were able to hold on, eventually the reward
was rich.

The Reynolds decided to move up to Darlingford. They now had three
small boys for Richard had been born at The Junction, near Yea, on
8 June 1860. Once again they were part of a convoy, the slow familiar
journey, though this time without the dangers and appalling roads of a
Black Forest, rough enough travel all the same. They had heard of the
beauty of Darlingford and above all things Eliza wanted a home, how-
ever small, and some comfort.

Darlingford, now drowned beneath Lake Eildon, was beautifully
placed on the Big River, a mile from the junction with the Goulburn. It
was sheltered in thick bush, fern, musk, blanket wood, hazel, light wood,
black wood, sassafras, gum, messmate and peppermint, Hills and moun-
tains walled in the valley and by the river there was a long wide sweep
of rich land. Here the gardeners and the orchardists were busy, as others
were busy over the hills and up the river at Jamieson. The rapidly
growing mining population of the Upper Goulburn needed supplies and
the Darlingford and Jamieson River flats were already market gardens.
The Reynolds came to Darlingford in the summer of '61 and here, in
a reasonably comfortable timber and shingle house; they made their home
for the next four years. In spite of the difficult track to Jamieson there
was a mail service and Reynolds arranged his medical registration at
Jamieson. He was No. 739 on the Old Register of the Medical Board of
Victoria. He continued with his mixed practice of miner and doctor.
Darlingford was a busy town, a depot and centre for the packers and
carters who took incredible loads over the mountains:⁸

From the Big River at Darlingford Harry Woods and Christie Docken-
dorf despatched horse and mule teams to all the upper streams.
Wherever diggers went storekeepers followed to the remotest parts,
supplying on mules and horses places further and further out until on
every track up river and across hill the sound of bells made music day
and night.

A prettier site for a town could hardly have been chosen, wrote a man
from the Wood's Point Times and Mountaineer.⁹

The hills descend with a long and gradual slope leaving low table and
flat lands along the river for buildings and gardens. The township
must be looked upon at the present time as a goods depot but it has the
appearance of going ahead. It has six streets, Gaffney, Christy, Coutts,
Goulburn, Chenery and Peppin Streets. There are nine stores, four
hotels, a school house, a post office and a number of private dwellings
occupied mostly by persons engaged in packing goods into the Big
River, Raspberry Creek and Matlock ranges. The streets are on
opposite sides of the river and are connected by a foot bridge put up by
private subscription.

16

Darlingford people had a grievance. They had paid £500 for the land
on which they built their homes and they wanted the government to
build two bridges; one over the Big River so that they could go to Yea,
and another at Peppins on the Goulburn so that they could go to Jamie-
son. Peppin kept a boat at his farm and foot passengers to Jamieson –
hardy folk – were ferried at one shilling a head but a traffic bridge was
badly wanted. Darlingford lacked not only a bridge; it had not even ‘got
the protection of a common policeman’.

Their troubles, the people thought, came about because they were in
a very odd situation indeed. They had never been placed on an electoral
roll, nor was the town marked on any known electoral district. ‘Darling-
ford is neither in Dalhousie nor in the Murray boroughs’ the reporter
from The Mountaineer wrote. ‘Sands, the member for Dalhousie, doesn't
know them and Orr, the member for Murray won't. In the words of
Aunty Smith, nobody seems to care “whar they come from, whar they're
going to or who they belong to”. So,’ said the young reporter looking
round at this picturesque but lost no-man's land, ‘The people themselves
must improve their position.’

Ultimately that was just what happened. Take the example of Kelly.¹⁰
In the early days of Darlingford a boy named Kelly who had left school
as a very young lad earned enough money to join with a friend and buy
a team of pack horses. He persuaded his partner, Dunn, that to pack
butter up the mountains would be the most paying proposition. They
hawked butter to Wood's Point and sold it at high prices. With their
profits they set up a general store in Darlingford and then extended their
business as butchers, bakers and hotel keepers. Kelly bought land and
began breeding live stock; he became one of the chief and most respected
land owners of the district, and finally it was he who persuaded the
government to build a bridge over the Big River, to erect a police camp
and to build a handsome school house.

The streets of Darlingford recalled pioneers. Gaffney Street was named
after Terence T. Gaffney who had a ‘station and store’ at Darlingford
before gold was discovered. Terence Gaffney crossed over Flourbag
Creek and worked his way up the Goulburn to the junction of the creek
which subsequently bore his name and where so much gold was to be
mined. To get to the Creek at all was incredible enough:¹¹

The track from the Big River to Gaffney's Creek was so precipitous on
both faces that horses could not even be led, let alone ridden. They had
to be left to pick their own way up or down. At the top of the range
3700 feet above sea level a shanty known as the Mia Mia was built and
gave its name to the track. Of this place of rest and refreshment for the
thousands who passed by during the succeeding years only the ruins of
its stone chimney now remain. . . Cutting the first track to Gaffney's
Creek was an epic of engineering. It was impossible to follow the river
itself. The valley was choked with jungle growth and fallen trees and

17

the perpendicular bluffs overhanging the numerous bends of the river
would have meant too many crossings. They walked, crawled, climbed
twelve miles from Jamieson Camp, crossed the river at Ten Mile and
camped for the night at the flat at the mouth of Flourbag Creek. Here
two shanties and a butcher's shop were erected. The long steep climb
up the Flourbag Hill followed to the top of the range and then the
steep descent to Wright’s Crossing; here another shack provided rest
and refreshment. They then followed a track along steep hill sides
above Gaffney's Creek to Drummond's Point and three miles on to
Raspberry Creek.

Terence Gafiney was not the only claimant to the reward for discover-
ing gold at Gaffney's Creek. There were some who considered William
Jones as the real discoverer:¹²

Another important actor on the scene, other than Dempsey and
Gaffney, led his tilted cart on to the Jamieson flat on 11 January 1860.
He had a large powerful chestnut horse and he looked like an anti-
quated goat. This was William Jones, or Bill the Welshman. True it
was that Gaffney had taken a race of water from Gaffneys Creek but
Jones was the true discoverer of its gold in payable amount. Since that
time Gaffneys Creek diggings have been steadily advancing until
Dempsey and party discovered an incredibly rich reef there. They
are good hearted fellows and deserve success. The reward for the
discovery went to Terence Gaffney. Though for some years little news
reached the outside world of the gold in these remote mountains, miners
and prospectors working in the upper Goulburn heard quickly. They
humped their swags and tramped off; it had to be by foot.

They hewed their way and other men followed their rough tracks. A
party of men working their way up the Yarra track in winter snow only
survived, it as said, by catching and eating a wombat. They were making
for Jericho. It took them three weeks and at the end of that time only
one of them felt decently enough clothed – he wrapped a piece of blanket
round himself – to stagger into the town for food and clothing for his
mates. Prospectors were explorers.

These men were distinctive. So thought a writer to the Cyclopedia of
Victoria.¹³ Isolation, privation, hardship and years of depression he said
had made it essential for them to cultivate if not cheerfulness at least
stoical patience or calm resignation to evil fortune. They learned to take
life as easily as they could; they ignored inequalities of class and distinc-
tion. Remote from law courts they preferred to settle their arguments by
fisticuffs. On the whole the sheer instinct of self preservation made these
men law abiding. Richard Mackay who knew the mountains and the
miners thought there was more to it than self preservation. The majority
of alluvial miners and quartz reefers were fine men.

Inevitably, of course, there were crimes and drunkenness, violence and
dishonesty, ruthlessness and jealousy but these men of the '60s and '70s
18

working their way up the impossible mountains to Gaffneys Creek,
Raspberry Creek, Ten Mile, Drummond's Point, Enochs point, Woods
Point, Matlock, Jericho, overcoming the most challenging difficulties
emerge as strong men of character and courage.

Darlingford was the centre for the packers, the men who shifted goods
not by horse and cart but by horse and mule alone. Everything, food,
produce, mining machinery, clothes, furniture, all had to be taken in by
the pack train. Every morning the street was filled with mules and horses,
bells jingling, as they were loaded. P. H. Smith, reporting to the Mining
Board in August 1861 described the scene:

The little township about ten o'clock every morning presents a most
busy and animated appearance for then the packers are preparing to
start. The horses are generally accoutred with old military or troopers’
saddles loaded each with about two hundredweight and each with a
bell round its neck which jingles whenever it moves.

It was a hazardous life for packers and horses and sometimes for the
goods they carried though it was amazing how much arrived in good
order. But not always. There was the luggage, for instance, of the
unfortunate Mr and Mrs Harkings. The Harkings, prospecting in Gipps-
land, set out from the springs near Grant to take their family and
possessions to the Evening Star Reef on the Upper Dargo.¹⁴ Their
packer supplied a train of horses and when half way over the Dargo
plains, just at sundown, two of the horses took fright and bolted into the
bush. Mr Harkings and the packer rode after them but the bush was
thick and darkness came down. They returned to the track to wait for
daylight. They found Mrs Harkings sitting by the road in great alarm
for she had discovered that one of the horses was loaded with her
travelling bag containing clothes, her jewellery, family portraits and about
£15 in money. The other horse was ‘freighted with brandy and wine
sufficient to open a new house of business’. The next morning the two
horses were found but the only article attached to them was the hoops of
a crinoline.

In Darlingford at evening the sound of bells grew louder as the pack
horse trains came down the hills and along the river. The packers were a
particular breed of men. Men like the Perkin brothers had a saying,
‘Where the diggers can go we packers can go’. In the early '60s when the
miners were pouring in it was estimated that five hundred pack horses
were carrying supplies to the upper Goulburn. The packers were strong,
tough, resolute and they had a sixth sense; they were great news
gatherers. The beginning of many a rush lay with a chance word they
had overheard or a piece of interesting activity they had seen as they made
their way up and down. When they came in at night, if it was not too
late, they were surrounded by people anxious for news of what was going
on up the mountains. They brought messages down for wives and
families and they took messages back.

19

In 1857 this kind of bush telegraph spread word of the discoveries of
John Nolan, John Dempsey and Jim Armstrong at Enoch's Point. Nolan,
a short, strongly built man nicknamed Codbanger because he came from
Newfoundland, Dempsey and Armstrong had set out to find five men
missing in mountain country who in their turn had set out to find two
miners, Harry Monk and Dick the Liar known to have set out to prospect
the unknown Buckland Valley. The five found Harry and Dick at the
foot of Mt Buller and were told they had discovered good gold in the
Jamieson valley. This was enough for the five; they set off to explore.
Nolan, Armstrong and Dempsey heard what was happening and they
promptly set off to Jamieson Flat too. It proved disappointing so these
three pushed on up through the wild mountain country above Darling-
ford and came upon rich alluvial gold at Enoch's Point. The place got
its name from Enoch Hall who discovered the first gold. Enoch could not
read or write and so never saw the Mining Gazette announcing rewards
for gold discovery. When finally friends applied for him it was too late;
the reward had been made earlier.¹⁵ In 1857 the reward for the
discovery was awarded to Dempsey, Nolan, Burns and Cregan.¹⁶

Enoch's Point was later to attract Samuel Reynolds but in the mean-
while he worked round about the nearer hills and creeks. He spent some
time exploring and working a creek running into the Goulburn between
Jamieson and Kevington which was subsequently named Doctor's Creek.
He had become something of a loner preferring to leave ‘rushes’ to others
and to find his own way. He never stayed long away from home and
mid-1862 he gave up mining for some months to be near his Liz who
was expecting her fourth child. This gave him time to know his Darling-
ford friends. He particularly enjoyed his friendship with Ralf Todd. Ralf
and his wife Elizabeth Mary had come from the county of Armagh
in Northern Ireland and taken up a selection at Darlingford on the
junction of the Howqua and Goulburn Rivers. Todd, expert in garden-
ing, grew produce and fruit on his river flat. Deeply interested in horti-
culture, he had succeeded in grafting five different kinds of apples on to
the one tree and had been successful with grafts on rose trees. Reynolds
was most interested in Todd's experiments. He was not alone in his love
of gardens. No matter how remote miners might be some of them tried
to establish a ‘bit of a garden’ round tent or shanty. John and William
Jones from Wales had gone up into the hills as far as Raspberry Creek and
there had opened up a rich run of alluvial gold. Subsequently it was to
become famous as the A.1 Consolidated Gold Mine. The Jones brothers
built their house high on a spur and Bill Jones followed his hobby of
propagating gooseberries and apple trees. The bushes flourished for years.

In October 1862 to their great delight a daughter, Mary Frances, was
born to Eliza and Samuel. Under the much better conditions of Darling-
ford life Eliza recovered quickly and when Samuel expressed a wish to
try his luck up at Enoch's Point she agreed. By now both Frank and
20

Willy were attending school so that by day she had only the care of
Richard, aged two, and her baby daughter.

Samuel had continued his practice of mixing mining and medicine.
He became well known for his skill in setting broken bones, frequent in
mining accidents, and often enough a call went our for him. The grand-
son of an early settler in the Darlingford district recalls being told of a
man riding up to a group of men working a small mine and shouting,
‘Where's that doctor miner?’ A miner jerked his thumb towards a
mound of earth. ‘Try that hole!’ The man called down. No doctor there.
‘Try  the top of the hill,’ he was told. Here was better luck. Reynolds
climbed up the rope ladder, mounted the horse brought for him and the
two men rode away.

Reynolds joined a group of men making their way to Enoch's point,
following the Big River ail the way through steep, thickly timbered
country. Though only fifteen miles from Darlingford it was rough travel.
They never went far without meeting some miner working a lonely
claim or tramping back down the mountains. There always seemed time
for a yarn and a smoke-oh and this companionship meant a great deal to
Reynolds. Between Railway Creek – the very height of optimism in that
name – and Enoch's Point he joined a small group of miners, two of them
old friends from earlier days, and they began working. Reynolds was
troubled by the appearance of one of these men who was clearly sick.
He suspected a heart condition and began discussing with his mates what
they could do. Hospital and rest was essential if he was to live, Reynolds
said. The nearest hospital they knew was at Wood's Point, an impossible
journey for a sick man. Some of them thought it likely that Mansfield
now fifteen years old and the centre of big land holdings would have a
doctor and hospital and it was decided to try to get the sick man there.
They put the patient on horseback and with Reynolds, still in his miner's
garb, walking one side, and another miner on the other side, they set off
on the rough road to Mansfield. Here again the distance was not great,
approximately forty miles. It was the kind of country that made it a slow
hazardous trip. They proposed to come down the Big River to the
Goulburn, to follow it up to the ford where later Fry’s Bridge was built
and to go on to Mansfield by way of Howes Creek. It so happened that
just at this time a man working on Robert Forsyth’s property at Mainton-
goon was badly injured; his leg appeared to be broken. It was known that
a miner doctor was working somewhere between Darlingford and
Enoch's Point and Forsyth sent one of his men on horseback, leading
another horse, to try to find this doctor and bring him back.

In the meanwhile, since news travelled fast in the bush, it was learned
that this doctor was actually walking down through the hills with a sick
man and it was believed they were making for Mansfield. Two of Mans-
field's pioneers, James Walker of Ratho, Scotland who had come out with
the Scottish Company, and Alfred Chenery of Delatite, decided to ride
21

out to meet him and as a small deputation try to persuade him to give up
mining and settle in Mansfieid. They needed a doctor very badly. When
Forsyth heard of this he decided to join them and the three men set out.
They had agreed with several other land owners to each make a donation
so that they could guarantee this doctor a living for his first year.

The station hand from Maintongoon met up with Reynolds and his
little party and the doctor agreed to go to Maintongoon to see the injured
man provided the miner was taken on to Mansfield. Reynolds learned
that there was no doctor and no hospital in Mansfield but even so he felt
they must take the sick man on. The little procession moved on and
twelve miles from Mansfield they were met by Forsyth, Walker and
Chenery who explained they had come to beg him to settle in Mansfield
as their doctor. They knew nothing about him as a doctor except for
stories told from one to another in the bush of his skill in mending
broken limbs. They asked nothing about his qualifications and probably
would have been more than surprised to find what qualifications this man,
standing there in his dusty miner's clothes, really had. They wanted a
doctor on any terms. Walker and Chenery accompanied the sick man to
Mansfield. They explained to Reynolds that while there was no hospital
there was a Mrs Leticq who from time to time looked after sick people
and they were sure she would look after his friend, and they themselves
would pay her to do so. Reynolds and Forsyth rode on to Maintongoon.
It was the beginning of a long friendship. The doctor set the man's broken
leg and next morning, again accompanied by Forsyth, rode to Mansfield
where a warm welcome awaited him. He agreed to come to Mansfield and
later that day began the journey back to Darlingford to tell Eliza of still
another change in their lives. They would live in Mansfield.

1.           R. K. Cole. The New Sydney Road, What's Brewing, June, 1954.

2.           William Craig, My Adventures on the Australian Goldfields, Melbourne, 1913,
p. 207.

3.           Mrs. Charles Clacy, A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia 1852-1853, first
published London 1853, Melbourne, 1963. p. 63.

4.           R. Brough Smyth, The Goldfields and Mineral Districts of Victoria, Melbourne,
1869, p. 63.

5.           Dr E. Alan Mackay, ‘Medical Practice during the Goldfields Era in Victoria’,
Medical Journal of Australia, 26 September 1936, pp. 422, 423.

6.           Vic. P.P., Mining Surveyor Reports, vol III, 1869, p. 483.

7.           The Argus, 15 June 1860.

8.           Richard MacKay, Recollections of Early Gippsland Gold Fields, Traralgon, 1916;
reprinted Gippsland 1971, p. 21.

9.           The Woods Point Times and Mountaineer, 15 July 1865.

10.       Delatite Free Press, 11 August 1883.

11.       H. J. Stacpoole, ‘Discovery of the Woods Point Goldfields', Victorian Historical
Magazine, February 1966, p. 50.

12.       The Ovens Constitution, 6 February 1861.

13.       The Cyclopedia of Victoria, vol. 3, Melbourne, 1903-5, p. 471.

14.       The Gippsland Times, 9 February 1867.

15.       Letter in The Age, 9 February 1867.

16.       Vic. P.P., vol. 3, 1864, p. 65.  (Board appointed to consider applications for rewards
for the discovery of gold fields.)

22

Next >

Chapter 1 - Pt 1

1

Towards a Medical Career

SUFFOLK AND LONDON

On 21 March 1825 Elizabeth, wife of the Reverend Osborne Shribb
Reynolds, rector of Debach and De Boulge, Suffolk, England gave birth
to her sixth son and her eleventh child. She was thirty-three years of age.
The boy was christened by his father on the day of his birth and was
given only one name, Samuel. Equally simple names had been given to
his five sisters and five brothers, Elizabeth, Sarah, Mary, Emma and
Ann; Osborne, Robert, William, Henry and John. Robert and William
had died in their infancy.

Osborne Shribb Reynolds had succeeded to the Debach-De Boulge
living – the two livings were consolidated in June 1761 – in September
1817 when his father the Reverend Robert Reynolds had retired to Wood-
bridge. There had been Reynolds clergymen, or clerks as they were
usually named, at the village of De Boulge for many generations. John
Reynolds who matriculated from Jesus Cambridge in 1614 and obtained
his Bachelor of Arts in 1617 and his Master's degree in 1623 was rector
somewhere about 1621.

A Mr Reynolds, spelt then Raynolds and sometimes Raynolldes, clerk
of De Boulge, is shown in the Ship Money Returns of March 1640 as
paying three shillings to this tax which had been revived by Charles I to
pay for his navy. Unlucky Mr Raynolldes. Later that same year the whole
Ship Money Tax was to be repealed by parliament thanks to the brave
stand taken by John Hampden, a more courageous man it seems than
Mr Raynolldes.

Robert Reynolds who had acquired the living of Debach on 6 Septem-
ber 1779 was a man of independent means. As a curate in Kelsale he had
married Sarah Shribb who had inherited a considerable amount of land
1

from her father Robert Shribb of Kelsale. In those days the parson’s
stipend provided a good income. By 1855 the Debach stipend was £300, a
considerable sum. In 1795 Robert Reynolds purchased the Debach Manor
and became lord of the manor. With a good income and ownership of
land Robert Reynolds and later his son, Osborne Shribb who succeeded
him, lived very comfortably. A name was coined for the parson who
owned land; he was called a squarson.

Robert and Sarah Reynolds had five children, two daughters, Sarah
and Eliza and three sons, Osborne Shribb and the twins, Robert and
Joseph. The twins died shortly after their birth.

Like most Suffolk men Robert Reynolds was a keen gardener and
there still stands today, in the garden of the Old Rectory, now privately
owned, a fine stone potting shed which he built and in the keystone
above the door he placed his monogram, the initials RR and the date
1801. He planted some of the great elms, cedars and beeches which
shelter the Rectory and the small flint stone church, All Saints, Debach.
All Saints stands at the boundary of the Rectory property where a church
has stood for six hundred years.

When Robert Reynolds acquired the living of Debach and De Boulge
the parish population was very small and no one could call his duties time
consuming. He enjoyed visiting and it was probably more social than
parochial, he superintended the family education, sending young Osborne
to good schools at Long Melford and Ipswich, and above all he worked
in his garden. It was necessary that the Rectory family be as self support-
ing as possible. Robert saw to his orchard, his kitchen garden, his vine
house and potting shed and stables, and superintended the building of a
fine stone wall in that special Suffolk construction known as crinkle-
crankle in which the stones are set to form a continuous S and the walls
require no buttress support. Portions of the high and low crinkle-crankle
wall still stand in the garden.

At seventeen years of age Robert's eldest son Osborne Shribb was
admitted as a pensioner at Caius, Cambridge University. Cambridge was
the natural choice of Suffolk men and Reynolds men had studied there
for many generations. Some, like Osborne, were admitted as pensioners
and 'paid for their own commons', some were scholars, members of the
College foundation and holders of scholarships, and some were admitted
as sizars receiving an allowance from the College. Over the years
Reynolds' students were admitted to Caius, Trinity, St. John's, Queens'
and Christs'. After matriculating in 1800 Osborne obtained his Bachelor
of Arts in 1804 and his Master's degree in 1807. In 1805 he was ordained
a deacon at Norwich and a priest in 1806. It seems as if the long history
of Reynolds' sons taking up holy orders was not always a call to a
vocation but an imposed choice since other than entering the army, and
none chose that, there were few professions for academic men of small
income. Accepting, or inheriting, a living in one of England's many
2

beautiful villages or towns could also be very pleasant, as the Reverend
Osborne Shribb Reynolds found when he inherited the Debach living
from his father.

He was a tall, handsome, young man, a fine preacher, a lively talker
with an intense interest in people, musical, a great reader, a good chess
player, a decided acquisition to a parish and very popular with young
women. He remained unmarried till the age of twenty seven and then he
fell in love with pretty Elizabeth Geater Stearn who was not quite fifteen
years old. They were married by his father in August 1809 in All Saints'
Church, Debach, after Elizabeth's mother, Mollie Stearn widow of
William Stearn and designated in his will as the mother guardian, had
signed a bond that Elizabeth, a minor, 'might lawfully solemnize
marriage with Osborne Shribb Reynolds'. A girl when she married,
Elizabeth soon had the cares of motherhood; her first child, Elizabeth was
born a year after her marriage, Mary two years later and Robert a year
later, just six weeks after the family had moved to the Debach rectory.
The baby died a few weeks later.

Robert Reynolds had retired from the parish and with his wife Sarah
had moved to Woodbridge. Families did not move far away from each
other and Woodbridge was just five miles from Debach, considered then
an easy enough walking distance for they were great walkers. Certainly it
was no problem with carriage and horse. Robert died at Woodbridge in
1820 aged sixty-eight years but his widow Sarah lived to be eighty-three
years of age. For many of these years she had the companionship of her
son's mother-in-law, Mollie Stearn, who lived in Woodbridge, and died
in her eighty-fifth year.

With the rapid increase of his family Osborne Reynolds was compelled
to add to the rectory; he built a two storey wing at the back of the house.
It in no way spoiled the charming building which rated a note in White's
Suffolk Directory of 1855: 'Debach five miles N.N.W. of Woodbridge is
a small scattered village and parish containing only 104 inhabitants and
about 500 acres of land mostly the property of the Reverend Osborne
Reynolds. The church, All Saints', is a small ancient fabric and near it
is a neat rectory house which was much improved in 1813. The church
has lately been restored and refitted with old oak benches.'

The 'neat rectory house' with its blue slate roof and walls of that
pleasant yellow Suffolk brick which turns grey with age, had further
additions through the years but it is today still basically the home it was
for Osborne and Elizabeth Reynolds and their lively family. Three giant
recessed arches at the front of the house reach to the full height of the
second storey and hold large windows; the rooms are large and finely
proportioned. Stairs and archways lead to different levels of the house and
must have echoed constantly to children's footsteps. The kitchen had that
typical Suffolk addition, a back kitchen called a 'back 'us' with a brick
bread oven in one corner. The rectory was remarkably self contained. The
3

cellar held stone brine tanks for hams and bacon with a 'smoking
chimney' in an out house to complete the curing. Two large coppers filled
another out house, one for washing clothes, one for brewing. Now known
as The Old Rectory, it is the home of Commander John Simpson of
Debach and is listed as 'of special historical or architectural interest'.

The garden so much improved by Robert Reynolds was still further
improved by Osborne. He built a large L-shaped pond which induced a
later owner to call the house Moat House and as such it is mentioned by
Nikolaus Pevesner in his Suffolk volume of the Buildings of England.
Commander Simpson happily returned the house to its proper name, The
Old Rectory. Commander Simpson has described the garden as it must
have been in the Reynolds' day:¹

The grounds originally amounted to over ten acres, including a paddock
each side of the garden which with the orchard amounts to 5.7 acres.
They were planted with everything the family could need, mulberry
trees, quince, three vines, fig trees, plums and peaches – a green house
was built round a peach tree – and there were apples of every kind,
Blenheims and Russets, eating apples, cooking and cider apples and
pears, and round two sides of the orchard, walnut trees and many
varieties of hazel nut. Two huge elms, framing the house, are visible
three miles away.

Many years later in his Australian home Samuel Reynolds told his own
children and his grand children of his young days in this busy, lively
home. He was always considered the quiet one and as he was the second
youngest he spent much time with the youngest child, Robert, who was
three years his junior. Even as a very small child Samuel loved this
garden and many years later his great wish to make a Suffolk garden in
the town of Mansfield, Victoria, came as nearly true as he could make it in
that very different climate.

The family grew up with a love of music. The father had a fine voice,
the older girls, taught by their mother, played the piano, Samuel played
the flute and an elder brother the violin. They all joined in pleasant family
concerts.

Osborne, the eldest son, was the first to leave home and on 25 Septem-
ber 1832 he was admitted as a pensioner to Trinity, Cambridge. Seven
weeks later sorrow came to the rectory. Elizabeth, the mother, died aged
only thirty-eight years. The rector was left with ten children, Elizabeth
the eldest, twenty-two years old and Robert the youngest not quite four
years of age. Samuel was seven. There were many friends to help in
running the rectory and in the care of the younger children and as
remembered by Samuel it was a warm, happy home, its numbers
inevitably decreasing as older brothers went up to Cambridge or out to
earn a living and sisters married.

Three years after his wife's death a new interest came into the lives of

4

the father and the children. Edward Fitzgerald, poet, essayist, man of
letters, came to live in Boulge. Reynolds died before the translation of
Omar Khayyam made Fitzgerald famous but he was fortunate to share
thirteen years with this delightful, warm hearted, gifted and amusing
man. The Fitzgerald family occupied Boulge Hall and their son Edward,
with ample means of his own lived in Boulge Cottage outside the gates of
the Hall. His friends, many from Trinity, included the two Tennysons,
Frederic and his famous brother Alfred, Thackeray, Carlyle, William
Donne, descendant of John Donne, James Spedding, the editor of Bacon,
Maria Edgeworth the novelist, Charles Keene, Samuel Laurence, artist,
commissioned by Fitzgerald to paint portraits of many of his friends, and
John and Fanny Kemble. He had other Suffolk friends belonging to a
smaller, more homely circle, Bernard Barton, the Quaker poet of Wood-
bridge, a collector of snuff boxes, and a good friend of Charles Lamb,
Thomas Churchyard, Alfred Smith, George Crabbe, eldest son of the
poet and vicar of Bredfield, and Osborne Shribb Reynolds, vicar of
Debach and De Boulge. 'My parsons Fitzgerald called them . . . 'My
garden is covered with yellow and brown leaves, and a man is digging up
the beds before my window and my parsons come and smoke with me.'
The friends met in their own homes and more often at Boulge
Cottage, by day to walk and talk in Fitzgerald's garden, to learn about
his latest picture for he was an ardent collector, and to share his simple
luncheon though sometimes it was a grander affair. 'Bring up with thee'
he wrote to Barton, 'a pound of Derby cheese for a toast and some oysters.
I have a fowl hanging up and if my father's cook arrive as I think she
will she shall handsell her skill on my fowl.' Of all dishes Fitzgerald liked
toasted cheese best.

When the friends met in the evening they had no trouble persuading
Fitzgerald to play the pianoforte for he was a good musician . . . 'I plunge
away at my old Handel of nights and delight in the Allegro and Penseroso
full of pomp and fancy . . . With my parsons' son and daughter and not
a voice among us we go through Handel's Coronation Anthem!' he wrote
to Frederic Tennyson. In more lighthearted mood they sang glees.
Fitzgerald was a compulsive and enchanting correspondent and the
pictures he gives of Suffolk gardens and village life explain why Samuel
Reynolds was to know such nostalgia in Australia for his home. Here
he is writing to a friend about a sunny day in the garden.²

Glorious, sunshiny day; all morning I read about Nero in Tacitus lying
at full length on a bench in the garden, a nightingale singing and some
red anemones eyeing the sun manfully not far off . . . Then at half
past one lunch on Cambridge cream cheese, then a ride over hill and
dale, then spudding up some weeds from the grass and then coming
in I sit down to write to you, my sister winding red worsted wool from
the back of a chair and the most delightful little girl in the world
chattering incessantly. So runs the world away.

5

And again to Frederick Tennyson:

We have had such a spring, bating the last ten days, as would have
satisfied even you with warmth. And such verdure, white clouds
moving over the new fledged tops of oak trees and acres of grass
striving with buttercups. How old to tell of, how new to see!

Fitzgerald visited London frequently, staying at 19 Charlotte Street.
Not that he liked London. He agreed with Thomas Carlyle who had
written to him, 'The town is getting terribly throng.' From London he
wrote to Bernard Barton 1l April, 1844:³

A cloud comes over Charlotte Street and seems as if it were sailing
softly on the April wind to fall in a blessed shower upon the lilac buds
and thirsty anemones somewhere in Essex or perhaps at Boulge, Out
will run Mrs Faiers [his housekeeper] and with red arms and face of
woe haul in the struggling windows of the cottage and make all tight.
Beauty Bob [the parrot] will cast a bird's eye at the shower and bless
the useful wet. Mr. Loder will observe to the farmer for whom he is
doing up a dozen of Queen's Heads that it will be of great use, and the
farmer will agree that his young barleys wanted it much. The German
Ocean will dimple with innumerable pin points and porpoises rolling
near the surface sneeze with unusual pellets of fresh water . . . Oh
the wonderful, wonderful world and we who stand in the middle of it
are all in a maze.

From his window he looked down on Charlotte Street and decided that
the people in London Streets, clever, composed, satirical, selfish, well-
dressed were not a patch in looks on Mr. Reynolds, the vicar of Boulge.⁴

When Fitzgerald was away in London or at any of the three houses his
parents owned he liked to hear news of his Suffolk friends and so counted
it good fortune that one day in June 1841 he chanced to meet Reynolds
in Lowestoft and learnt that his good friend Barton was no longer angry
with him. They must have had an argument, He wrote to Barton:⁵

I met Reynolds in the street here today. We shook hands and spoke of
you. I said that you have given up writing and were I supposed in a
rage, if Quakers can rage except in verse . . . Reynolds says you are not
angry. He was off to some school or missionary meeting. He tells me
Miss Barton is well. Present her my congratulations.

Fitzgerald married Miss Barton in later years but after a brief, unhappy
period they parted.

Reynolds shared with his family much of the good talk he enjoyed
with Fitzgerald and his friends so that the vicarage children had a
pleasant familiarity with fine writers and poets. In this atmosphere Samuel
developed his four life long pleasures; books, music, chess and gardening.
In choosing a career he showed no interest in the church or in teaching.
His eldest brother Osborne, a Fellow of Queen's from 1838-45 had been
6

ordained, had taught school at Belfast and was about to become head
master of the Grammar School in Dedham, Essex. His brother, Henry,
studying for his Master of Arts degree at Queen's was destined for the
ministry. Samuel wanted none of this. He wished to study medicine and
as he had an excellent school record his father set about having him
apprenticed. On 26 August 1842 at the age of seventeen years he was
apprenticed for five years to Samuel Gissing and John Stearn Gissing,
surgeons and apothecaries of Woodbridge, Suffolk. They had 'first satis-
fied themselves of his ability to study and his moral character'. The
conditions of indenture were strict:⁶

The said apprentice, Samuel Reynolds, his Masters faithfully shall serve,
their secrets keep, in lawful commands everywhere gladly do. He shall
do no damage to his said Masters nor see to be done of others but to
his Power shall tell, forthwith give warning to his said Masters of the
same. He shall not wasre the goods of his said Masters nor lend them
unlawfully to any. He shall not commit fornication nor contract
matrimony within the said Term. He shall not play at Cards or Dice
Tables or any other unlawful games where his Masters may have any
loss with their own goods or others during the said Term without
license of his said Masters. He shall neither buy nor sell. He shall not
haunt Taverns or Playhouses nor absent himself from his said Masters
service day or night unlawfully. But in all things as a faithful appren-
tice he shall behave towards his said Masters and all this during the
said Term.

To this indenture the two doctors, the apprentice and his father put
their hands and seals. The wording of these indentures first established
in the early eighteenth century remained unchanged until the late
nineteenth century. At the end of five years Samuel received a certificate
that he had carried out his apprenticeship with satisfaction to his Masters
and a testimony to his moral character. He made plans to go up to London
to continue his medical studies but before he left Boulge there was a
happy family gathering, the last occasion on which they were all
together. His brother Osborne officiated at a double wedding in All
Saints' Church of his two sisters, Mary and Ann, who married their
cousins John Cooper Stearn and Samuel Geater Stearn. By now all the
daughters had married and the sons had careers of their own or were
still students. Robert, the youngest son, had decided to follow Samuel's
lead and was apprenticed to the doctors in Woodbridge. At the end of
this year, 1848, Osborne Shribb Reynolds died and in memory of his
thirty years as rector his family presented a memorial stone font to the
church. The living was inherited by his eldest son Osborne who had been
ordained in 1839. He stayed only eighteen months in the rectory and then
returned to Dedham Grammar School where he had been appointed
headmaster in 1846. In 1880 he became rector of Rockland St. Mary in
Norfolk.
7

Samuel was admitted to the London Hospital as a student practitioner
and continued his studies for the examination of the L.S.A. (Licentiate
of the Society of Apothecaries) which would qualify him in medicine, and
his M.R.C.S. (Member of the Royal College of Surgeons) which would
qualify him in surgery and midwifery. To enter for the membership
examination a candidate had to prove that he was over twenty-one, give
proof of a suitable preliminary education, of having completed three
years' study in a recognized school of surgery (his five years' apprentice-
ship would have counted as equivalent), of having completed twenty-one
months' work in a hospital, having spent two winter sessions on dis-
section and completed two courses of six months' lectures in anatomy
and physiology, two courses of six months' lectures in surgery, and one
course of six months in chemistry, practical physics, midwifery, materia
medica and twenty-five lectures on forensic medicine.

He came before the Court of Examiners of the Society of Apothecaries
on 22 October 1849. He was deferred and again faced the examiners one
month later. On this occasion he obtained his L.S.A. and later in the same
year he obtained his M.R.C.S.

He intended now to continue his studies for his M.D. (Doctor of
Medicine) but like many other young doctors he volunteered to help in
the appalling epidemic of cholera which had broken out in London. In
crowded slum areas scarcely one family escaped. The disease moved with
fatal rapidity; children in particular died within six to twelve hours of
its first onslaught. In Eastcheap, Shoreditch, Pudding Lane and Swan
Lane, Love Lane, Mulberry Court, Bell Alley, Crooked Billet Court,
Holywell Place and Jane Short Court, so pleasantly named, so filled with
misery and poverty, the people sickened and died. A report from
Holywell-lane recorded:⁷

On May 2nd at 12 Holywell-lane, a book binder's son aged 6 years,
Asiatic cholera, 9½  hours, 26 persons lived in this house, 8 slept in the
garret in which the child died. Extreme poverty, bad ventilation,
noxious effluvia arising from the gorged state of the cesspools. Another
child died in the same room... At Pear Tree Court, charwoman,
cholera, 19 in house, very dirty and poor being inhabited by the lowest
class of costermongers and sellers of water cresses.

The occupations of the victims and their families were varied and
brought in little money – hawker, painter, dustman, cabinet maker,
labourer, costermonger, printer, brush maker, book binder, tailor, dairy-
man, grocer, tea dealer. When the bread winners died, too often the
wives and children followed. Poverty-stricken, near starvation, they had
no hope of fighting illness.

There was a dreadful shortage of doctors and appeals were made for
doctors to volunteer as 'house inspectors'. Samuel Reynolds became a
house inspector. He began the day with a visit to a dispensary to get such
8

stock of medicine as might be of some help. He then visited that section
of the slums allotted to him entering 'hovels of unimaginable poverty'
to find the sick. The volunteer doctors tried to give some help with their
medicines but mainly they were concerned to get the victims away from
the house. St Bartholomew's Hospital was chronically overcrowded with
cholera cases and 'houses of refuge' had been set up. Those well enough in
the home to carry the patient tried to get the cholera victim to one of
these houses in the hope of even a foot of space being vacant. That life
could be saved was unlikely but there was a chance that the sufferer might
meet with some kindness and care. It then became the task of the doctor
to try to get the home cleaned up, the walls whitewashed, the appalling
cesspools cleared. The doctors worked officially from nine in the morning
till six in the evening but often till midnight or later. They were required
to take a break for a midday meal. Many went without. It was not surpris-
ing that The Lancet of the day said 'they perilled their health and lives in
the service of their suffering fellow creatures'. The pay was small. One
Dr Johnes engaged by the Board of Guardians at Lambeth worked for
three months in the epidemic, attended fifteen hundred victims, ruined
his health and was paid £68.5.0.

Samuel Reynolds, blessed with a strong constitution all his life,
suffered no physical harm but the experience left him with several deep
convictions. His medical training had taken him among poor homes but
never had he seen such appalling conditions as in these slums. The
contrast of the way these people lived and the life of the rich and privi-
leged which could be seen every day and night in the affluent streets of
London horrified him. He became, like many other doctors, a crusader
for the poor. He told his family years later that this experience proved to
him the wickedness of poverty. He could not and never would accept
the belief, current among the more fortunate, that in some way poverty
was ordained. In working among these cholera victims he had seen, too,
not only the ravages of that disease but many other illnesses and com-
plaints which should have had treatment. No one, he decided, however
poor, should be denied medical treatment. How this could be achieved on
so wide a scale he had no idea but he took one small step himself by
resolving to work among the poor and needy in London. Living in
College House, Stepney Green he became a medical officer for the Stepney
Union, a Poor Law Union. He was Physician Accoucheur for the Trinity
Lying-in Charity, and Medical Officer for the Refuge for the Destitute. He
supplemented a small income as an Assistant Apothecary for the London
Hospital, and he continued his studies for his M.D.

Early in 1851 he met Eliza Ann Strangman, nineteen years of age, shy,
gentle, a delightful speaking voice commented on by all who met her, a
gentle true singing voice, and hidden beneath the shyness, great strength
of character. Not beautiful in the accepted sense but blessed with fine
grey eyes, a high colour, and curling brown hair she had a lively intelli-
9

gence. Eliza Ann was the daughter of Thomas Strangman, provision
merchant and shipper of wine, a 'comfortable' man but in the snobbery of
those days 'in trade'. Samuel was a professional man though the gentry
did not consider a doctor of much social standing either. Little this
worried Samuel. Whether his 'dear Liz' was in trade or not made no
difference to him; he fell deeply in love with her and she with him. On
2 May 1851 they were married in the Parish Church of South Hackney by
the Reverend Malcolm Macdonald and they left for a brief holiday in
Scotland. It was typical of Samuel that this also included a further step
in his medical career. He wanted to take his examination for his M.D. at
St Andrews and two days after his wedding he presented himself to the
University at College Gate for examination. The type of examination is
described in University records.⁸

Samuel Reynolds having submitted certificates that he had had a liberal
and classical education, that he had had four years attendance in some
University or celebrated school of medicine and of two years hospital
practice was admitted to examination on all branches of medicine by
Professors Day and Spalding, Dr. John Adamson and Dr. Anderson of
Glasgow on 7th May 1851. Having satisfied the Senatus he had
delivered to him on 8th May a medical case with questions subjoined to
be answered in writing, the answers to be defended before the mem-
bers of the University, the whole proceedings being then submitted to
the consideration of the Senatus and their being satisfied the degree of
M.D. was conferred on 9th May, 1851 on Samuel Reynolds by the
Rector in the Hall of the Public Library of the University.

There was no long delay waiting for results. Samuel and his Liz
returned to London and he resumed his work as Medical Officer for the
Refuge for the Destitute at Cuper's Bridge, Lambeth and Accoucheur for
the Trinity Lying-in Charity. There were many of these charitable institu-
tions in London, the provinces and the villages. A great many people
were concerned by the sufferings of the poor and there was a long
tradition of charity, and while this charity, spartan but practical, reached
only the fringe of the thousands in need, it did give decent shelter and
nourishing food to many.

The Lambeth refuge where Samuel Reynolds served as medical officer
had been founded in 1806 by voluntary contributions:⁹

It provided a place of refuge for persons discharged from prisons, or the
hulks, unfortunate and deserted females and others who from loss of
character or extreme indigence cannot, though willing to work, procure
an honest maintenance and in cases of very urgent necessity to afford
temporary relief until parochial or other assistance can be obtained.
. . . The penitent criminal, the deserted female, the helpless labourer
and the famished stranger may here find employment, support and
instruction.

10

This Refuge was severely practical and was kept in well scrubbed
cleanliness. The dining hall was floored with stone and lights came from
windows in the high ceiling. The only furniture was made up of long
tables and benches but there was a fireplace at each end of the room and
fires were lit in winter. Men and women had separate residences; the
men were employed splitting wood, working in the garden and in
carpentry; the women in 'slop work, washing, baking, knitting, spinning
and making the household linen'. If their conduct was exemplary and
their morals had improved they were awarded a portion of their earn-
ings. It was a firm rule that 'lenient, persuasive and encouraging measures
are to be adopted to lead the residents to a proper course of life although
the strictest conformity to regulations for the maintenance of order is
enforced'. For those who acquired 'a due sense of religion and such
habits of industry as may render them useful members of society, efforts
were made to find suitable employment or to reunite them with their
families. In those harsh years and in the slums of Lambeth this refuge
was not ill-named.

In these years Samuel had the pleasure of his young brother Robert’s
company. Having finished his apprenticeship Robert had come to Charing
Cross Hospital, London. From here he obtained his L.S.A. and his
M.R.C.S. in 1852. He returned to Essex where the family had many links
and for over forty years was a general practitioner at Steeple Bumstead, a
beautiful village in pleasant country.

Samuel chose a different life. After nearly four years of working in the
slums of London he discussed with Liz the idea of going to Australia.
Young cousins of the Reynolds who had gone to South Australia wrote
enthusiastically of their new life. The papers were filled with stories of
gold discoveries and there was decidedly something of the adventurer and
the gambler in Samuel. He was tempted to try his luck. He suggested to
Liz that they go to Australia for a few years and then return home;
best to do this while they were young and, as a well-qualified doctor, he
would always find work. Liz agreed: Whatever Sam wished she would
do.

1.      Commander Simpson in a letter to the author.

2.      A. C. Benson, Edward Fitzgerald, London, 1905, p.21.

3.      Letters and Literary Remains of Edward Fitzgerald, vol. 1, London, 1889, p. 128.

4.      Peter de Polnay, Into an Old Room, London, 1950, p. 106.

5.      F. M. Barton, Some New Letters of Edward Fitzgerald, London, 1923, p.38.

6.      Details of Indentures, L.S.A. and M.R.C.S. from the Keeper of Manuscripts, Guildhall Library. London.

7.      Report of the Mortality of Cholera in England, 1848-1849, H.M. Stationery Office, 1852, pp. 190-191 from the Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine, Euston Road, London.

8.      The Archives, University Library, St Andrews, College Gate, Scotland.

9.      Pietas Londinenses, History of Design and Present State of Various Public Charities in and near London, 1814, pp. 264-269, the Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine.

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