McEWEN, Ethel Jane née BUSHBY
Born 15 June 1873; died 2 December 1918; buried 3 December 1918; age 43
Ethel was the first child of Englishman Walter BUSHBY, a labourer, who married his ‘adopted daughter’, a Tasmanian minor, Annie Eliza THOW on 22 September 1872 [i]. Annie was probably born on 11 July 1852, a native of Tasmania. Her marriage to Walter took place at the home of Richard and Susan Tennant in York Street, Launceston, Tasmania in a ceremony conducted by Joshua Smith according to the rites and ceremonies of the Primitive Methodist Church. Their daughter, Ethel, was born on 15 June 1873 and registered in the Longford district of Launceston, Tasmania.
Ethel’s parents brought her to New Zealand as a pre-schooler, as her sister Emma Louisa was born here in 1875. Other siblings included Beatrice Annie born in 1877 in Rangitikei and brothers – Nelson Alfred born 1879 (buried in Bolton Street Cemetery in January 1880), Frederick born 1880, and Leonard Walter born 1883; a further sister was born in 1889 [ii] but her birth does not appear to have been registered at least under the surname Bushby.
Ethel attended Newtown School, Mt Cook Girls’ School, and Te Aro School while her family lived in Newtown, Courtenay Place, Grainger Street (Te Aro), Elizabeth Street (Mt Victoria), 97 Taranaki Street, and Francis Place (Te Aro), before moving to Taitville (at the top of Aro Street) by 1885. There is a suggestion that Ethel took up ‘dressmaking’ as an occupation on leaving school [iii] but possibly this was code for a more adventurous and random approach to income generation, as seems to have been the case according to newspaper reports on various members of the Bushby family and the notoriety Ethel, in particular, brought to it.
As a youngster of 15 she began a series of court appearances starting in 1888. Described as having a ‘notorious character’ she received 7 days’ gaol for having ‘no lawful means of support’ as a result of her first appearance [iv]. Other charges or convictions included ‘vagrancy’ [v], ‘drunkenness’ [vi], larceny [vii], and being named as a co-respondent in an adultery action by the wife of Samuel Berg, bootmaker, while Ethel was living in Webb Street [viii]. Court reports informed newspaper readers that Ethel had got to know Berg when he had earlier visited ‘a house of ill fame’ in Abel Smith Street where she then was living [ix]. ‘Riotous behaviour’ charges [x] were followed by prosecution for ‘disorderly conduct’, ‘use of obscene language in a tramcar’ and ‘assault of a little girl’ [xi] which her defence counsel told the court arose from Ethel’s ‘loss of temper through a misunderstanding’.
Three other siblings of Ethel’s also faced the rigours of court hearings – her brothers ‘F and L’ Bushby aged 15 and 13 (probably Frederick and Leonard) were charged with stealing fowls and imprisoned for 3 and 1 months respectively ‘with a view to being transferred to the Burnham Industrial School’ [xii]. Then in 1897 Frederick faced theft charges [xiii] and her sister Beatrice, was named in divorce proceedings after a very short-lived marriage to William Marshall MERRIGOLD, a Blenheim fishmonger [xiv].
The Bushby parents may also have faced challenges when Ethel’s sisters Beatrice and Emma both had two daughters each in 1896, 1898, and 1900 as single parents.
After 1903, Ethel Jane Bushby appears to have changed her ways judging by the disappearance of her name from the newspapers and in 1907 she married labourer William McEWEN, a resident of Rintoul Street, Newtown. He was Dunedin born [xv]. The couple moved to Herald Street in Berhampore and by 1911 to Derwent Street, Island Bay where they appeared on the electoral roll.
By 1914 the familiar territory of Aro Street drew Ethel back to this part of town, and number 155 provided a home for her with William until her death (electoral roll for Wellington Central).
Ethel and William had no children. It would seem that there was not much contact between her father and her husband if we can conclude this by the incorrect first name for Walter (misnamed Frederick) on Ethel’s death record. Ethel was sick with influenza for 10 days and bronchopneumonia for 4 days when she died at home in Aro Street on 2 December 1918. There were no newspaper notices of her death or any subsequently published memorial notices either. Ethel was buried in the Anglican 2 section of Karori Cemetery the day after she died. Her headstone simply reads:
In Loving Memory of Ethel Jane McEWEN who died 2 Dec 1918 at 43
'Life's sorrows are o'er'
Ethel’s widower, William, remained living at 155 Aro Street for a time [xvi] (1919 electoral roll) and it was from here he purchased the burial plot for Ethel on 19 May 1919 after meeting her funeral costs of £12/2/6 in full in cash on 4 December [xvii]. In 1923 he married again, this time to a Wellington-born divorcee, Sarah Jane (Matilda) MARYCHURCH née DAY, and moved across town to 18 Earls Terrace on Mount Victoria. William’s new wife brought three adult children to the marriage and William and Sarah either had or adopted a son, named Ronald Albert McEwen. William died in 1951, in Silverstream, leaving his 1906-built property at 22 and 24 Charlotte Ave in Brooklyn to his son, Ronald and a share of his nearly £16k assets (approaching $100k in 2017 values) spread between both the Marychurch descendants of his second wife and his own McEwen siblings, as well as his son Ronald.
The lives of Ethel’s parents diverged after 1896 when they were both enrolled as voters while living in Taranaki Street. In September 1897 [xviii] Annie, described in news reports as having a ‘weak intellect’ and perhaps experiencing dementia, had been sleeping rough in the street with her well-cared-for youngest 7-year-old daughter. On a vagrancy charge, Annie was referred by the courts to gaol for assessment and shortly after taken into the Benevolent Home in Ohiro Road, Brooklyn [xix]. Ethel’s young sister was sent to an industrial school for care and protection. Annie was not long at the Benevolent Home. On 18 October 1897 she was referred to the Mount View Asylum (then sited on the grounds of what is now Government House, in south Wellington). Within a further few months she was very unwell with delusions and dementia and transferred in a helpless state, requiring a special diet and hand feeding, to the Porirua Asylum where she died just before Christmas in 1899. She could do nothing for herself. The coroner found her cause of death to be ‘general paralysis of the insane’. The medical superintendent commented in his report to the coronial enquiry on Annie looking older than her given age of 48. He also recorded that she had last been visited by a daughter in April 1899 (though it is not clear which one) [xx].
Born 15 June 1873; died 2 December 1918; buried 3 December 1918; age 43
Ethel was the first child of Englishman Walter BUSHBY, a labourer, who married his ‘adopted daughter’, a Tasmanian minor, Annie Eliza THOW on 22 September 1872 [i]. Annie was probably born on 11 July 1852, a native of Tasmania. Her marriage to Walter took place at the home of Richard and Susan Tennant in York Street, Launceston, Tasmania in a ceremony conducted by Joshua Smith according to the rites and ceremonies of the Primitive Methodist Church. Their daughter, Ethel, was born on 15 June 1873 and registered in the Longford district of Launceston, Tasmania.
Ethel’s parents brought her to New Zealand as a pre-schooler, as her sister Emma Louisa was born here in 1875. Other siblings included Beatrice Annie born in 1877 in Rangitikei and brothers – Nelson Alfred born 1879 (buried in Bolton Street Cemetery in January 1880), Frederick born 1880, and Leonard Walter born 1883; a further sister was born in 1889 [ii] but her birth does not appear to have been registered at least under the surname Bushby.
Ethel attended Newtown School, Mt Cook Girls’ School, and Te Aro School while her family lived in Newtown, Courtenay Place, Grainger Street (Te Aro), Elizabeth Street (Mt Victoria), 97 Taranaki Street, and Francis Place (Te Aro), before moving to Taitville (at the top of Aro Street) by 1885. There is a suggestion that Ethel took up ‘dressmaking’ as an occupation on leaving school [iii] but possibly this was code for a more adventurous and random approach to income generation, as seems to have been the case according to newspaper reports on various members of the Bushby family and the notoriety Ethel, in particular, brought to it.
As a youngster of 15 she began a series of court appearances starting in 1888. Described as having a ‘notorious character’ she received 7 days’ gaol for having ‘no lawful means of support’ as a result of her first appearance [iv]. Other charges or convictions included ‘vagrancy’ [v], ‘drunkenness’ [vi], larceny [vii], and being named as a co-respondent in an adultery action by the wife of Samuel Berg, bootmaker, while Ethel was living in Webb Street [viii]. Court reports informed newspaper readers that Ethel had got to know Berg when he had earlier visited ‘a house of ill fame’ in Abel Smith Street where she then was living [ix]. ‘Riotous behaviour’ charges [x] were followed by prosecution for ‘disorderly conduct’, ‘use of obscene language in a tramcar’ and ‘assault of a little girl’ [xi] which her defence counsel told the court arose from Ethel’s ‘loss of temper through a misunderstanding’.
Three other siblings of Ethel’s also faced the rigours of court hearings – her brothers ‘F and L’ Bushby aged 15 and 13 (probably Frederick and Leonard) were charged with stealing fowls and imprisoned for 3 and 1 months respectively ‘with a view to being transferred to the Burnham Industrial School’ [xii]. Then in 1897 Frederick faced theft charges [xiii] and her sister Beatrice, was named in divorce proceedings after a very short-lived marriage to William Marshall MERRIGOLD, a Blenheim fishmonger [xiv].
The Bushby parents may also have faced challenges when Ethel’s sisters Beatrice and Emma both had two daughters each in 1896, 1898, and 1900 as single parents.
After 1903, Ethel Jane Bushby appears to have changed her ways judging by the disappearance of her name from the newspapers and in 1907 she married labourer William McEWEN, a resident of Rintoul Street, Newtown. He was Dunedin born [xv]. The couple moved to Herald Street in Berhampore and by 1911 to Derwent Street, Island Bay where they appeared on the electoral roll.
By 1914 the familiar territory of Aro Street drew Ethel back to this part of town, and number 155 provided a home for her with William until her death (electoral roll for Wellington Central).
Ethel and William had no children. It would seem that there was not much contact between her father and her husband if we can conclude this by the incorrect first name for Walter (misnamed Frederick) on Ethel’s death record. Ethel was sick with influenza for 10 days and bronchopneumonia for 4 days when she died at home in Aro Street on 2 December 1918. There were no newspaper notices of her death or any subsequently published memorial notices either. Ethel was buried in the Anglican 2 section of Karori Cemetery the day after she died. Her headstone simply reads:
In Loving Memory of Ethel Jane McEWEN who died 2 Dec 1918 at 43
'Life's sorrows are o'er'
Ethel’s widower, William, remained living at 155 Aro Street for a time [xvi] (1919 electoral roll) and it was from here he purchased the burial plot for Ethel on 19 May 1919 after meeting her funeral costs of £12/2/6 in full in cash on 4 December [xvii]. In 1923 he married again, this time to a Wellington-born divorcee, Sarah Jane (Matilda) MARYCHURCH née DAY, and moved across town to 18 Earls Terrace on Mount Victoria. William’s new wife brought three adult children to the marriage and William and Sarah either had or adopted a son, named Ronald Albert McEwen. William died in 1951, in Silverstream, leaving his 1906-built property at 22 and 24 Charlotte Ave in Brooklyn to his son, Ronald and a share of his nearly £16k assets (approaching $100k in 2017 values) spread between both the Marychurch descendants of his second wife and his own McEwen siblings, as well as his son Ronald.
The lives of Ethel’s parents diverged after 1896 when they were both enrolled as voters while living in Taranaki Street. In September 1897 [xviii] Annie, described in news reports as having a ‘weak intellect’ and perhaps experiencing dementia, had been sleeping rough in the street with her well-cared-for youngest 7-year-old daughter. On a vagrancy charge, Annie was referred by the courts to gaol for assessment and shortly after taken into the Benevolent Home in Ohiro Road, Brooklyn [xix]. Ethel’s young sister was sent to an industrial school for care and protection. Annie was not long at the Benevolent Home. On 18 October 1897 she was referred to the Mount View Asylum (then sited on the grounds of what is now Government House, in south Wellington). Within a further few months she was very unwell with delusions and dementia and transferred in a helpless state, requiring a special diet and hand feeding, to the Porirua Asylum where she died just before Christmas in 1899. She could do nothing for herself. The coroner found her cause of death to be ‘general paralysis of the insane’. The medical superintendent commented in his report to the coronial enquiry on Annie looking older than her given age of 48. He also recorded that she had last been visited by a daughter in April 1899 (though it is not clear which one) [xx].
Ethel’s father, Walter, moved at different times from labouring in Wellington to work as a farm labourer in Pahiatua and Marton. Before July 1921 he was in Marton in the Rangitikei district where there were members of the wider Bushby family. At 76 and in failing health, Walter moved back to Wellington to live at the Te Aro Boarding House at 38 Taranaki Street. He was not there long. After 49 years in New Zealand, he suffered a stroke and heart failure on 25 September 1921 and died the next day in hospital leaving his assets of under £1k to his executor and youngest son, Leonard Walter Bushby, then a farmer in Whananaki, Northland. No other child was mentioned in his will now held by the Wellington Branch of Archives New Zealand. Walter was buried in an unmarked plot in the Public 2 section of Karori Cemetery [xxi].
Researched and written by Jenny Robertson
Grave Information:
Section: CH ENG2
Plot: 165 E
Sources:
[i] The marriage record describes Annie Eliza Thow as a minor and as ‘laborer’s adopted daughter’ at the time of the marriage.
[ii] Age by implication from report in Evening Post 2 September 1897.
[iii] Evening Post 4 December 1893.
[iv] Evening Post 12 April 1888.
[v] New Zealand Times 16 March 1889.
[vi] New Zealand Times 23 August 1890.
[vii] Evening Post 5 July 1893.
[viii] New Zealand Times 19 October 1893.
[ix] Evening Post 4 December 1893.
[x] New Zealand Times 5 December 1900.
[xi] Evening Post 3 March 1903.
[xii] Evening Post 25 July 1896.
[xiii] Evening Post 20 December 1898.
[xiv] New Zealand Truth 30 September 1911.
[xv] Stated in probate of his second wife Sarah Jane McEwen, Archives New Zealand, Wellington
[xvi] 1919 electoral roll.
[xvii] E Morris junior funeral register for 1918 in Turnbull Library.
[xviii] Evening Post 5 July 1893.
[xix] Situated in a part of Central Park in Brooklyn which is now a council reserve, partly used as a dog exercise area with another part given over to community gardening. “……opened on the 28th of January, 1893. The land occupied comprises an acre of freehold and four and a half acres leased from the City Council. The site is high, and affords a fine view of the City and Harbour.”
The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Wellington Provincial District], 1897.
http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Cyc01Cycl-t1-body-d4-d20.html
[xx] Archives New Zealand, Wellington, Coroner’s report 99/972, 19 December 1899
[xxi] Under the name BUSBY on the cemetery’s online database
Researched and written by Jenny Robertson
Grave Information:
Section: CH ENG2
Plot: 165 E
Sources:
[i] The marriage record describes Annie Eliza Thow as a minor and as ‘laborer’s adopted daughter’ at the time of the marriage.
[ii] Age by implication from report in Evening Post 2 September 1897.
[iii] Evening Post 4 December 1893.
[iv] Evening Post 12 April 1888.
[v] New Zealand Times 16 March 1889.
[vi] New Zealand Times 23 August 1890.
[vii] Evening Post 5 July 1893.
[viii] New Zealand Times 19 October 1893.
[ix] Evening Post 4 December 1893.
[x] New Zealand Times 5 December 1900.
[xi] Evening Post 3 March 1903.
[xii] Evening Post 25 July 1896.
[xiii] Evening Post 20 December 1898.
[xiv] New Zealand Truth 30 September 1911.
[xv] Stated in probate of his second wife Sarah Jane McEwen, Archives New Zealand, Wellington
[xvi] 1919 electoral roll.
[xvii] E Morris junior funeral register for 1918 in Turnbull Library.
[xviii] Evening Post 5 July 1893.
[xix] Situated in a part of Central Park in Brooklyn which is now a council reserve, partly used as a dog exercise area with another part given over to community gardening. “……opened on the 28th of January, 1893. The land occupied comprises an acre of freehold and four and a half acres leased from the City Council. The site is high, and affords a fine view of the City and Harbour.”
The Cyclopedia of New Zealand [Wellington Provincial District], 1897.
http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Cyc01Cycl-t1-body-d4-d20.html
[xx] Archives New Zealand, Wellington, Coroner’s report 99/972, 19 December 1899
[xxi] Under the name BUSBY on the cemetery’s online database