Welcome to Dearest, are you in Melbourne?

The Blewetts and Morgans came to Melbourne in three waves in the 1850s. In the space of a single short generation, all but one of the adults had died in awful circumstances or disappeared, leaving Elizabeth Morgan and her surviving children to pick out a life on the streets of the inner city. As Melbourne galloped towards its late-century ‘marvellous’ reputation, many of its citizens were left behind. The remnants of the Blewett and Morgan families, alongside so many in the poor inner suburb of Collingwood, struggled to survive, their lives circumscribed by courts, prison cells, asylums and hospitals. Their experience would have far-reaching consequences, well into the twentieth-century. Their story shows what happens when family support fails, when gender controls your opportunity and when welfare becomes an exercise in judgement.

The working title for my project, Dearest, are you in Melbourne?, is taken from an advertisement in the Missing Friends column of a Melbourne daily newspaper in 1905: ‘Dearest, are you in Melbourne? Let me know, love, as I would like to write’.

About me

I'm a writer, art historian, archivist, mother, knitter, raveler, researcher, philatelist, sometime Francophile, newly-minted family historian (jam first) and snapperup of unconsidered trifles.

This site supports my research into a nineteenth century immigrant family from Cornwall and their disastrous encounter with 'Marvellous Melbourne'. Not only an alternative view of the city, but a reflection on personal connection with the past, the role and nature of records as a research tool, and the value of the forgotten stories of ordinary people.

I began this research too late for the one who would have appreciated it most.

Dedicated to Peter, Bill, Gabriel, Fanny, Thomas, Elizabeth, Ruth and Gabriel again.

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