Thomas Prior Hall-brother-in-law of Allan Hughan

Despite Thomas Prior Hall being in no way related to me, and his featuring in this story being due to the tenuous link of him being the brother of Allan Hughan's wife Phoebe, I found his tale a very interesting one to research, and so will include it here.
I believe that Thomas contracting tuberculosis whilst in his early thirties could have been the catalyst that prompted Phoebe's emigration to Melbourne.Thomas was a surgeon in Melbourne, married with babies appearing at close intervals, and his failing health could very well have been the reason for Phoebe deciding to leave England and set sail for Melbourne herself.
But..to start at the beginning. Thomas Prior Hall was born in 1823 at Cambridge, to brewer father William Hall and his wife Charlotte Prior.In the 1841 census, at the age of 17, Thomas Prior Hall was noted as living in the home of Doctor Isaac Newton in High Street, Knaresborough, Yorkshire, as his apprentice.
The following census in 1851 had Thomas at East Burgholt in Suffolk with the Bruce family, and stated that he was a graduate of London University.The London Times newspaper of November 1, 1853,stated the following:
"Royal College of Surgeons: The following gentlemen, having undergone the necessary examinations for the diploma, were admitted members of the college at the meeting of the Court of Examiners on the 28th ult:-....Mr Thomas Prior Hall..."
The following month, Thomas married the widow of another surgeon. The Times reported the event thus: " Marriages: On the 26th inst., at St. Pancras Church, by the Rev. C. Hart, assisted by the Rev. R.D. Harris, brother-in-law of the bridegroom, T.P. Hall Esq, to Mary Anne, widow of the late Francis Drake Esq, of East Bergholt, Suffolk."
Mary Ann was the daughter of James Hardy Nunn and Mary Ann Bridge (married 1815, Toppesfield, Essex)James was the owner of 800 acres of land in Essex, around Great Yeldham, and in the census returns of 1851 and 1861 stated that he employed around 50 labourers.Other siblings of Mary Ann included Anna, Thomas, Maria, Eliza and William Francis.Maria married the Reverend Benjamin Puckle in 1850, and her eldest brother Thomas Partridge Nunn studied at Oxford and became a Reverend, marrying Julia Emma Claxton in 1846. It was Thomas Partridge Nunn who officiated at the marriage of his youngest sister, Eliza Nunn, when she married George Edward Tompson Esq, of Stratford St. Mary, Suffolk,a solicitor, in 1847.

Mary Ann Nunn's first marriage was to Francis William Drake, the son of well-known doctor and author Nathan Drake and his wife, Ursula Rose, from Hadleigh in Suffolk. Mary Ann and Francis were married in 1843, and their son, Francis Nathan Drake, was born the following year. He was born on May 26, 1844, at East Bergholt, Suffolk, and from that moment becomes a bit of a mystery.
I cannot find him in the census return of 1851...by then his father had died, and his widowed mother was living back at home in Toppesfield, Essex, with her parents.She was 31 years old, and her son Francis would have been almost seven.
When Mary Ann's mother-in-law Ursula Drake died in December of 1851,aged 77, she made mention of her grandson Francis in her will:-"My grandson Francis Nathan Drake, son of my late son Francis William Drake dec." She gives direction for "the mother of the said Francis Nathan Drake" to be given money to go towards his 'maintenance and education', without mentioning Mary Ann by name.Francis Nathan Drake pops up in the 1861 census, staying with his aunt and uncle Harris( his mother's sister, Anna, married solicitor George William Harris of Hampstead).Francis was employed by his Uncle George's firm, 'Messrs Harris and Morton" as an articled clerk, and in 1867 the London Times reported that he had passed his final examinations at the Incorporated Law Society and received a prize. The 1871 census showed Francis as a visitor at the Harris home in Colchester Rd, Halstead, unmarried and aged 26. The last trace I have found of Francis Nathan Drake is his death in the March 1/4 of 1876, at Bath, Somerset.Incidentally, his maternal grandfather, James Hardy Nunn also died in Bath in 1863, as did his mother and her second husband in 1888.The latter was born in Bath, and after their marriage he practised as a surgeon in Walcot.
Mary Ann Drake married her second husband, Thomas Prior Hall on December 26, 1853, at Old Church, St. Pancras, London.The notice in The Times of Thursday December 29, 1853, read:
"Marriages: On the 26th inst. at St. Pancras Old Church, by the Rev. C. Hart, assisted by the Rev. R.D Harris, brother-in-law of the bridegroom, T.P Hall, Esq, to Mary Anne, widow of the late Francis Drake Esq, of East Burgholt, Suffolk."
The previous month there had been a notice in The Times to the effect that the Royal College of Surgeons had, following him undergoing the necessary examinations for the diploma, admitted Thomas Prior Hall as a member of said College.(November 1, 1853, 'Times')
I imagine that Thomas Hall had met Mary Ann Drake while he was at East Bergholt (remembering that he was living there in the 1851 census, and that Mary Ann and her first husband had lived there after their marriage).
According to the death certificate of Thomas Hall, he had been in Australia for only 15 months before he succumbed to t.b, and had been diagnosed with the disease two years previously. He died in April 1857, so the diagnosis of tuberculosis would have been made in about 1855, and his arrival in Melbourne c. January 1856. There was an entry for one family in the shipping records which got me excited... Thomas and Mary Ann Hall coming into Victoria per the ship 'Medway' in January 1855.The entry is for Thomas, 36; Mary Ann 34 and Charlotte 1. There is no mention of a Charlotte in Thomas's Australian family, although it would have made sense if a daughter born back in England was named 'Charlotte' after Thomas's mother. The ages are about right, but the ship arrived 12 months before Phoebe Hall, who was the informant on the death certificate, stated that they arrived.

Thomas and Mary Ann Hall had three daughters- Maria Louise Hall, born in Windsor, Prahran, on February 21, 1856, and twins Annie Louise and Catherine Maria on March 13, 1857, at St. Kilda. Unfortunately, baby Maria died aged only three weeks, of exhaustion and dysentery, on March 21, 1856.
Thomas's sister, Phoebe Berry Hall, arrived in Melbourne on the ship 'Swiftsure' in March 1857, and within weeks was faced with a tragic situation. On April 30, 1857, her brother, Thomas Prior Hall,finally fell victim to pulmonary phthisis at the age of 34, after fighting it for two years.He was buried in the St. Kilda Cemetery.
Living with the family in St.Kilda, Phoebe would have been able to help her sister-in-law cope with the shock of losing her husband, and with the other sadness which was to come.Four days after Thomas Hall passed away, the elder of his twin daughters, Annie Louise,gave up her tenuous grip on life and died, aged 21 days. the cause of her death was 'general debility since birth', and she was also buried in the St.Kilda Cemetery.Phoebe Hall acted as informant on the birth certificates of the twins, as well as registering the deaths of both her brother and niece.
I have been trying to discover what happened to Thomas Prior Hall's wife, Marianne/ Mary Ann Nunn, who had been the widow of surgeon Francis William Drake at the time of her marriage to Thomas Hall in 1853. I couldn't find her or surviving twin daughter Catherine Maria in shipping records as having returned to England after Thomas's death, but finally found a reference in a "Gentleman's Magazine" of 1858 which had the entry: " September 16: At St. James, Piccadilly, London, Frederick Mason, Esq, of Bath, to Mary Anne, widow of T.P Hill Esq and daughter of James Hardy Nunn Esq. of Great Yeldham, Essex." I know that Mary Anne was the daughter of James Hardy Nunn of Essex, so I presume that "T.P Hill" is a misprint of "T.P. HALL". Like her other two husbands, Frederick was a doctor. There is an entry in the Vic shipping records for a Mrs and Miss Hall leaving Melbourne for Liverpool in May of 1857 on board the ship 'Great Britain', but nothing else even comes close to being Mary Anne and her baby.