Photo of Ada Josephine Edmiston, 1883

This photograph is dated February 10, 1883, and has the initials 'A.J.E' on the reverse. She is Ada Josephine Edmiston, the niece of Allan Hughan. Her mother was Marion Agnes Hughan, Allan's sister. Unlike the other later cdv's of Allan's, which are on dark yellow/cream card, this photograph is the only one of his which I have that uses a pink card.
Ada was born in 1854, and so would have been 29 years old in this photo.

Photo of Roland 2

This photo of Roland seems to be a cropped copy of the one previously discussed.It is this photo that gives the year as 1881 and Roland's age as 15 ( he was born in Ballarat in 1866)

More Allan Hughan Photographs...

This is a photo of Allan Hughan's nephew, Roland Bishop( the son of Allan's youngest sister, Bertha Hughan Bishop). It was taken in 1881, when Roland was 15 years old. I have no record of Roland or any other members of his family going to Noumea to visit Allan and his family, nor of Allan travelling to Melbourne to visit them. Still...this photograph is proof that the meeting between Uncle and nephew, or photographer and subject, definitely occurred in 1881.

Phoebe Hughan's death certificate.

The copy that I have of Phoebe Berry Hall Hughan's death certificate is a very poor one- faint and in some places unreadable. the information that I have been able to obtain from it is as follows:
On 3rd August, 1900, at Bay View House, Tempe, Phoebe Hughan, female,(can't make out age); cause of death cerebral embolism, 3 days, cardiac failure 24 hours. Last seen by medical attendant A.J. Vause,2nd August.
Parents: Unknown Hall, unknown.
Informant: Certified by A.J Vause, manager, then written underneath 'Aline Laura Hughan,daughter', and an unreadable address.
Buried: 5 August, 1900, at Rookwood Cemetery.
Born: Warwickshire, England (NOTE: Incorrect-Phoebe was born in Cambridgeshire); twelve years in NSW.
Marriage details: Unknown place of marriage and age. Husband Allan Ramsen Cunningham Hughan (NOTE: Incorrect: 'Ramsay' not 'Ramsen')
Children of marriage: Minnie 30; Aline 28, three females deceased.

There is a faint notation on the left hand side of the certificate with corrections. One seems to be adding the middle name 'Berry' to Phoebe Hughan's name. Another states her age was 71 and not 72, and that Minnie's age was 33 not 30.It then states that the informant was Aline Laura Hughan.

Thus ends the long saga of the family of Allan Ramsay Cunningham Hughan. All that is left to do now is post a few photos that are marked with Allan Hughan's stamp, but which I perhaps doubt were actually taken by Allan. And then...finally...I come to the last child of the Hughan family...number nine, my great-great grandmother, Bertha Hughan.

Phoebe's stay at Bay View House.

Above is a copy of information on the first page of Phoebe Hughan's medical file from Bay View House. I would never have made it available here if it were not for the fact that no-one descended from Phoebe and Allan Hughan is alive today, thus diminishing the need for privacy re. medical records, albeit those from over 100 years ago.
It is interesting to note that the number of Phoebe's children is given as 'four' and not 'five', and that her religion was 'Church of England' when in reality she was a devout Protestant.
Notes on her admission are as follows:
" The patient is well developed of medium habit and nervous temperament, eyes clear and bright, countenance pale and anxious.
The physical examination of the vascular and respiratory systems reveals nothing unusual and the same may be said of the abdominal viscera. Pulse 78, small and firm.Tongue coated and indented. Skin warm and moist.No marks of violence.
This attack came on about three months ago when delusions of suspicion and fear developed themselves. She thought a brother-in-law with whom she was not on good terms was following her about with the intention of injuring her, when as a matter of fact the gentleman was not living in the neighbourhood.She asserted that certain destitute people were begging about the streets and were not what they represented themselves to be, but the brother-in-law in disguise.
She asserted that poison had been mixed with her food. And, while residing at P___ Hotel in Sydney she said that someone was concealed in a vault beneath the building and intended to blow the place up with gunpowder or dynamite. She actually refused to return to the hotel on this account.
She asserted that a price was set upon her head to the extent of some thirty thousand pounds by the Catholic Clergy and that paid spies were following her about from place to place and she would change her costume frequently in order to lead them astray.
Memory and understanding fair. No history of epilepsy. She has had two previous attacks, the first one occurring some twelve years ago.
History as to cause doubtful. Previous habits active and temperate. Family history reveals nothing.
No special treatment or restraint previously.

November 17: Very excitable and restless. Full of delusions of persecution.

November 24: Much the same.
December 1: The same.
December 8: The same
December 15th: Somewhat more tranquil.
January 23, 1890: About the same.
January 30th: No improvement mentally.
March 16: General health fair.No improvements mentally.
May 13: Much the same mentally. Somewhat indisposed bodily-constipation.
June 10th: General health good, no improvement mentally.
September 9: Much the same mentally.
1891:
February 18th:general health good, but very changeable in disposition. Very pugnacious, refusing food at times. Mentally not at all improved.
April 23: No mental improvement
June 7: No changes.
August 17: No changes.
October 25: No improvement.
December 22: Much the same.
1892.
July 2nd: No improvement mentally, at times violent and excited. Has been complaining of pain in her back of late and has remained in bed more than usual. Eats well, temp normal.
October 9: Much the same.
December 12: The same.
1893.
March 5: No change.
June 24: No change
September 19: the same
December 31: No change.
1894:
Feb 26: No change
March 1: Some congestion of right eye.
March 6: Eyes all right.
April 30: No improvement mentally.
July 7th: The same.
October 28th: Was very noisy last night and a patient named Emma Lewis sleeping in the same dormitory tried to make her keep quiet but she refused to do so. Two nurses were in the room and before they could interfere Lewis shook Mrs Hughan by the shoulders but not to hurt her, although Mrs Hughan was highly indignant and said Lewis had struck her. There was no sign of injury whatever. Mrs Hughan is frequently very excited and abusive. No further trouble occurred during the night.
November 12: General health good. No improvement mentally.
1895.
February 9: Much the same.
May 24: No improvement mentally, excited occasionally.
August 12: The same.
December 16: No change
1896.
March 10:Somewhat ___able.
June 18: the same.
September 24: Still very weak.
December 19: Somewhat strong physically. No improvement mentally.
1897.
January 9: About the same.
April 10: No improvement mentally.
July 19: The same.
September 5: No change
December 12: The same.
1898.
February 18: No improvement mentally.
April 19: No change
June 14: Much the same.
August 23: The same.
November 12: General health good. No improvement mentally.
1899.
February 12: General health fairly good. Fretful and irritable at times.
April 27: The same.
July 15: No change mentally, but general health not so good.
September 20: Rather weak and feeble.Mentally the same.
November 12: About the same.
1900.
January 15: Still very feeble physically and somewhat more tranquil mentally.
April 10: About the same.
July 28: No improvement mentally. Somewhat weak physically. Remains in bed as a rule until dinner time.
August 1st: Had an attack of vertigo during which she fell to the ground but without injuring herself beyond a slight bruise on left forehead. Nurse Kennedy was close by her at the time and attended to her. She was placed in bed and appeared to be doing well until next morning when symptoms of cardiac failure set in. There was difficulty in swallowing but no apparent paralysis. The patient gradually became worse. Pulmonary congestion ensued and the patient died at 5:30 a.m on 3rd August 1900 in the presence of Nurse Puddephatt. Nurse Freeman was also in attendance.
August 3rd: Died.
Cause of death: Cerebral embolism 3 days; cardiac failure 24 hours.

Back to Phoebe Berry Hall's story...

When I left Phoebe to go gallivanting after her brother Tom, she was acting as the governess for the Maudsley family in Lambeth, Surrey, aged 23.By the time she was 28,her only sister Kate had died and her brother Thomas had contracted tuberculosis and sailed with his wife for warmer climes in Australia.
As I mentioned in the previous blog about Thomas Prior Hall, I believe it was his presence in Melbourne that made Phoebe decide to immigrate herself.He was ill, his wife had given birth to a daughter and lost her three weeks later, and was pregnant with twins. Phoebe would have been a Godsend in this situation, and she arrived on the ship Swiftsure just prior to her twin nieces being born.
Within two or so months of her arrival in Melbourne, Phoebe had lost her brother to tuberculosis and one of the little twins, Annie. I can't find what happened to the other twin, Catherine. She does not appear in the death index in the Victorian BDMs, nor in the St. Kilda Cemetery Index like her father and sisters Annie and Maria.I also looked for her in England, figuring that she must have gone back with her mother, but cannot find her there either.
Phoebe Hall's sister-in-law Mary Ann must not have remained in Australia for long, as in September of the year following her husband's death, she remarried in England (another doctor, Frederick Mason).
Phoebe didn't marry Allan Hughan until August of 1859, and at that stage she was living in Emerald Hill, which was the old name for South Melbourne. I have to find out how she lived between April 1857 and August 1859. Her marriage cert states that her occupation at the time of her marriage was 'Professor of Music"- presumably she made a living by giving music lessons to Melbourne's more wealthy families.
Since Richard Poulett Harris had emigrated to Hobart with his small sons and daughter Charlotte in March 1857 and didn't marry until July 1858, I wonder if his sister-in-law Phoebe was called upon to help him care for the boys.
Whatever the case, Phoebe and Allan Hughan met and, despite an age difference of eight years in favour of the former, were married on August 8, 1859, at Emerald Hill, Melbourne, according to the "forms of the Presbyterian Church Phoebe was 30 years old, but gave her age as 28, and Allan Hughan was 22.At the time of their marriage, Allan was the "superintendent of a squatting station" which was Glenloth Station at Avoca, and his wife was a "Professor of Music" living at Emerald Hill.Witnesses to the event were Allan's sister Marion A. Edmiston and Somebody (can't decipher the signature!) Dodgson. The minister was Alexander Ramsay, who presided over several Hughan religious occasions in Australia.
Beneath the marriage certificate is a notation which reads :"I, Allan Hughan, do hereby declare that I am a member of the Protestant Denomination. Married at Emerald Hill, Melbourne.

I have dealt with Phoebe's married life until her husband's death in 1883 in my chapters on Allan Hughan...the birth of their first child Ruth in 1860; the 1867 death of their second daughter Marion on exactly the same day and in the same house as Phoebe laboured to give birth to her third daughter, Minnie; Phoebe's pearling trip with her husband and daughters Ruth and Minnie along the coast of Western Australia on Allan's schooner 'Pilot'; the ship wreck of said 'Pilot' near New Caledonia in 1870, and the family's decision to establish their lives at Noumea thereafter.
Phoebe took up teaching again in Noumea, both of music and the Protestant religion, and participated in musical concerts and performances.She gave birth to two more daughters, Aline and Rose, and suffered more heartache when baby Rose died aged only four months.
I wonder what she thought as a mother when her eldest daughter Ruth married a man the same age as her father in 1881? This sort of arrangement was far more common in that time period, so Phoebe very well may not have thought twice about the event.
In 2008, I was able to obtain Phoebe's medical records from when she was admitted to an institution in Sydney, NSW, and it stated that her first attack of "nerves' had occurred in c. 1877. I have no idea what - if anything- may have prompted this episode. The only thing I can find of importance which happened that year was the return to Sydney of 11 year old Barcroft Boake, the son of a photographer friend of Allan's who had been living with the Hughans in Noumea since 1875.
Another previous attack prior to 1889 was mentioned, but no year given.
In 1883 Phoebe Hughan lost both her eldest daughter Ruth and several months later her husband Allan..after 24 years of marriage, Phoebe was left a widow at the age of 54, with two of her five daughters left to comfort her- 12 year old Aline and 16 year old Minnie.
Phoebe and her girls remained in Noumea for several years after Allan's death, with Phoebe earning her living, I presume, by continuing to give music lessons. Sydney shipping records show that in 1882 Mrs and Miss Hughan had travelled from Noumea to Sydney on the ship 'City of Melbourne'( in different months-Phoebe in April and one of her daughters in May), and also on November 14, 1889, per the 'Birksgate'. This date is very significant, because on November 16, 1889, Phoebe Hughan was admitted to Bay View House at Tempe, Sydney, which was a private mental institution.

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.