STRACHAN, Matilda née WILKINS
Born 1883; died 28 November 1918; buried 30 November 1918; age 35
Matilda was brought to New Zealand from England as a young child. Growing up in Wellington, she married a Scotsman with whom she had had five sons. She died once the flu epidemic had peaked.
Her parents were Matilda MANN, b1862 in Leamington, Warwickshire, and George WILKINS b1857 in Northampton, England. George was a bricklayer. They had married on 21 January 1883 in Leamington Priors, St Mary, Warwickshire.
Matilda was their first child and the only one born before they emigrated to New Zealand as assisted migrants on the Ionic, arriving on 20 December 1884. Travelling with them were Matilda’s maternal grandmother Elizabeth Mann (née HITCHCOCK), a laundress born in Coventry and a widow at 59. She was accompanied by her unmarried children, William 19, Rose 17, and Kate 14 (i).
Matilda’s parents produced four more daughters and six sons between 1886 and 1901 after they had settled in the Wellington area. Two siblings did not survive infancy. Matilda’s sister Kate Elizabeth (born in Featherston) died at 15 months old in July 1892 and was buried in the Church of England 2 section of Karori Cemetery, plot 214. Her little brother John also died (at 22 months old in Wellington) when he fell into a copper of hot water and was badly scalded while playing with a cat in February 1898 (ii).
Matilda’s father George continued his trade as a bricklayer and the 1890 and 1896 electoral rolls show the family living in Elizabeth Street, Mt Victoria. Matilda’s mother enrolled to vote in 1893, once New Zealand introduced female suffrage. In 1903 (iii) the Wilkins family lived at 42 Elizabeth Street, but by 1905/06, they had moved to Rolleston Street, Mt Cook. The family lived at different numbers in this same street for many years.
Matilda attended school at Clyde Quay (iv) and on 7 October 1903, giving her age as 21, married William Valentine STRACHAN, a Scottish seaman who at 35 was nearly 15 years older (v). They were married at the Presbyterian Manse at 25 Pirie Street, Mt Victoria.
Born 1883; died 28 November 1918; buried 30 November 1918; age 35
Matilda was brought to New Zealand from England as a young child. Growing up in Wellington, she married a Scotsman with whom she had had five sons. She died once the flu epidemic had peaked.
Her parents were Matilda MANN, b1862 in Leamington, Warwickshire, and George WILKINS b1857 in Northampton, England. George was a bricklayer. They had married on 21 January 1883 in Leamington Priors, St Mary, Warwickshire.
Matilda was their first child and the only one born before they emigrated to New Zealand as assisted migrants on the Ionic, arriving on 20 December 1884. Travelling with them were Matilda’s maternal grandmother Elizabeth Mann (née HITCHCOCK), a laundress born in Coventry and a widow at 59. She was accompanied by her unmarried children, William 19, Rose 17, and Kate 14 (i).
Matilda’s parents produced four more daughters and six sons between 1886 and 1901 after they had settled in the Wellington area. Two siblings did not survive infancy. Matilda’s sister Kate Elizabeth (born in Featherston) died at 15 months old in July 1892 and was buried in the Church of England 2 section of Karori Cemetery, plot 214. Her little brother John also died (at 22 months old in Wellington) when he fell into a copper of hot water and was badly scalded while playing with a cat in February 1898 (ii).
Matilda’s father George continued his trade as a bricklayer and the 1890 and 1896 electoral rolls show the family living in Elizabeth Street, Mt Victoria. Matilda’s mother enrolled to vote in 1893, once New Zealand introduced female suffrage. In 1903 (iii) the Wilkins family lived at 42 Elizabeth Street, but by 1905/06, they had moved to Rolleston Street, Mt Cook. The family lived at different numbers in this same street for many years.
Matilda attended school at Clyde Quay (iv) and on 7 October 1903, giving her age as 21, married William Valentine STRACHAN, a Scottish seaman who at 35 was nearly 15 years older (v). They were married at the Presbyterian Manse at 25 Pirie Street, Mt Victoria.
Wedding photo of Matilda Wilkins and William Strachan, 1903
(probably accompanied by her younger sister Rose Wilkins and William’s witness, another seaman, James Miller)
Photo with kind permission of Mary-Ann Norton, granddaughter of Matilda and William Strachan
(probably accompanied by her younger sister Rose Wilkins and William’s witness, another seaman, James Miller)
Photo with kind permission of Mary-Ann Norton, granddaughter of Matilda and William Strachan
William’s paternal grandfather John Strachan and his son Isaac (William’s own father) earned their living in merchant shipping, which would have brought long periods of absence from their families ashore (vi).
Working on sailing ships and steamships, William seems to have come to New Zealand between 1892 and 1897. In the latter year, he worked as a trimmer on the Waihora and the Rotohama; in 1902 he was employed as a fireman on the Talune (vii).
Matilda and William made their home at 9A Dock Street in Te Aro (viii), an area now known as Rugby Street, adjoining the Basin Reserve. The street was home to other seamen too, one of whom, James Miller, from number 28 was William’s marriage witness in 1903 (ix).
William was 5’ 8 ½” tall with a dark complexion, brown eyes and a scarred, large nose. Like many seamen, he had tattoos on both forearms. One portrayed a Scotsman with a flag and a woman, with NELLIE inscribed as well as a basket of flowers and a tombstone with IN MEMORY OF MY SISTER. His left arm portrayed a woman with a scroll, with AYE READY. A coat of arms adorned the back of his left hand.
How do we know this detail? These identifying marks were described in the Police Gazette when as ‘Walter’ Strachan, he was jailed for a month for assault in March/April 1901, before his marriage. His future bride may have been unaware of this offending, but a subsequent conviction for obscene language in April 1913 while in Tory Street would have been known to her – William was fined either £2 or £3, fingerprinted, and spent 6 days in jail, albeit with the fine paid (x).
By 1913 the Police Gazette shows William was greying and bald. No doubt the financial penalty put a strain on the family budget as by this time, Matilda was not only bringing up three sons (William James b 14 September 1904, Isaac George b 23 June 1907, and John Valentine b 4 April 1910), but was also pregnant with her fourth child, David Henry, to be born on 11 October 1913 (xi). Their father’s behaviour and the swift police retribution may have also proved challenging for her to accept, along with her husband’s unnecessary absence from earning a living.
Matilda’s father George Wilkins died early in 1910 at 60 Rolleston Street, aged 52 (xii). Her mother remarried in 1914 to Welshman Thomas Richard EVANS, a driver and a cook, who helped her bring up the youngest of Matilda’s siblings. He also served in World War I.
The Strachans lived for a time at 18 Frederick Street, Te Aro, this address being listed for William V Strachan, mariner in the 1911 Wise’s street directory. However, it is the last entry in such a directory for William and by 1912 he seems to have come ashore to work in stevedoring on the wharf or as a labourer while the family lived at 162 Taranaki Street. They stayed there for several years.
It was from here in 1918 that Matilda was taken to St John’s Temporary Hospital in the Sunday school room of the old Presbyterian Church in Dixon Street with influenza. She died on 28 November after the peak week of flu deaths in Wellington and was buried 2 days later in plot 238 E in the Public section of Karori Cemetery. The plot already held the remains of her father and her baby brother John (xiii).
Working on sailing ships and steamships, William seems to have come to New Zealand between 1892 and 1897. In the latter year, he worked as a trimmer on the Waihora and the Rotohama; in 1902 he was employed as a fireman on the Talune (vii).
Matilda and William made their home at 9A Dock Street in Te Aro (viii), an area now known as Rugby Street, adjoining the Basin Reserve. The street was home to other seamen too, one of whom, James Miller, from number 28 was William’s marriage witness in 1903 (ix).
William was 5’ 8 ½” tall with a dark complexion, brown eyes and a scarred, large nose. Like many seamen, he had tattoos on both forearms. One portrayed a Scotsman with a flag and a woman, with NELLIE inscribed as well as a basket of flowers and a tombstone with IN MEMORY OF MY SISTER. His left arm portrayed a woman with a scroll, with AYE READY. A coat of arms adorned the back of his left hand.
How do we know this detail? These identifying marks were described in the Police Gazette when as ‘Walter’ Strachan, he was jailed for a month for assault in March/April 1901, before his marriage. His future bride may have been unaware of this offending, but a subsequent conviction for obscene language in April 1913 while in Tory Street would have been known to her – William was fined either £2 or £3, fingerprinted, and spent 6 days in jail, albeit with the fine paid (x).
By 1913 the Police Gazette shows William was greying and bald. No doubt the financial penalty put a strain on the family budget as by this time, Matilda was not only bringing up three sons (William James b 14 September 1904, Isaac George b 23 June 1907, and John Valentine b 4 April 1910), but was also pregnant with her fourth child, David Henry, to be born on 11 October 1913 (xi). Their father’s behaviour and the swift police retribution may have also proved challenging for her to accept, along with her husband’s unnecessary absence from earning a living.
Matilda’s father George Wilkins died early in 1910 at 60 Rolleston Street, aged 52 (xii). Her mother remarried in 1914 to Welshman Thomas Richard EVANS, a driver and a cook, who helped her bring up the youngest of Matilda’s siblings. He also served in World War I.
The Strachans lived for a time at 18 Frederick Street, Te Aro, this address being listed for William V Strachan, mariner in the 1911 Wise’s street directory. However, it is the last entry in such a directory for William and by 1912 he seems to have come ashore to work in stevedoring on the wharf or as a labourer while the family lived at 162 Taranaki Street. They stayed there for several years.
It was from here in 1918 that Matilda was taken to St John’s Temporary Hospital in the Sunday school room of the old Presbyterian Church in Dixon Street with influenza. She died on 28 November after the peak week of flu deaths in Wellington and was buried 2 days later in plot 238 E in the Public section of Karori Cemetery. The plot already held the remains of her father and her baby brother John (xiii).
Matilda’s stepfather Mr T R Evans, then working in the Government Life Office, met her considerable funeral costs, paying cash. William notified the death of his ‘beloved wife’ on 29 November 1918 in the Evening Post and her mother and stepfather also inserted a notice. In later years members of her birth family including Matilda’s sister Ellen and her mother continued to insert memorial notices (1920, 1921, 1922, 1923) expressing the family’s sadness at the loss of ‘Till’ as she was affectionately known. She had clearly meant a lot to them all.
Extract from E Morris junior funeral register for second half of 1918 (MSY-3711)
Held by the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington
Held by the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington
William Strachan found himself unable to provide daily care for his five sons, who were aged from 14 to a year old, (Stanley Thomas Strachan, b 5 October 1917). He does not seem to have remarried.
Family sources indicate that William put the older boys into orphanage care, although it is not yet clear which orphanage, where it was located or how long they remained there. Baby Stanley was sent to a couple in Nelson to raise.
No doubt William still needed to be working to continue to support himself and the boys, for whom he remained responsible.
Family sources indicate that William put the older boys into orphanage care, although it is not yet clear which orphanage, where it was located or how long they remained there. Baby Stanley was sent to a couple in Nelson to raise.
No doubt William still needed to be working to continue to support himself and the boys, for whom he remained responsible.
David (left) and Jack (John Valentine) Strachan in their orphanage years in Wellington
Photo with kind permission of Jack’s daughter, Mary-Ann Norton, granddaughter of Matilda and William Strachan
Photo with kind permission of Jack’s daughter, Mary-Ann Norton, granddaughter of Matilda and William Strachan
The ensuing years were hard ones for the family. In 1919 William appeared before the Magistrate’s Court for disregarding the provisions of a maintenance order and allowing arrears of £9 to accumulate, perhaps from the time he first put the children into orphanage care (xiii). He was sentenced to a month’s imprisonment, with the warrant suspended if arrears were paid off at the rate of £2 a week.
Within 6 years of Matilda’s death, her eldest two sons were also to die in Wellington Hospital: Isaac George on 31 October 1920 from gastroenteritis (from 162 Taranaki Street according to his death record, but after his father had moved to 16 Martin Square according to the funeral register of E Morris jnr), and then his older brother William who died on 11 March 1924 aged 19 years when he was living at 160 Taranaki Street. William junior’s death record said he was 20, with ‘no occupation’, perhaps implying he had been sick for some time. The cause of death was infantile paralysis or polio and heart failure. Full parents’ names were recorded, the likelihood being that his father was in contact with him and the hospital.
The brothers joined Matilda, and her father and brother, in Karori Cemetery (xiv). Baby Stanley died at 15 years old on 2 October 1933 in Nelson and was buried in Wakapuaka Cemetery block 01, plot 246.
At some point Matilda’s husband William moved to the Ohiro Benevolent Home, then sited on what is now reserve land with community gardens associated with Tanera Park, Brooklyn. It was his last known address and one at which he appeared on the 1928 electoral roll, by which time he would have been around 60.
The home had been established in 1893, housing many of Wellington’s colourful characters. Intended to be a self-supporting institution, it was eventually taken over by the Wellington Hospital Board. It lasted until the 1960s in a rather run-down condition, housing long-stay elderly and often destitute men and women. (In 1908, for example, it housed 66 men and 28 women.) It had a reputation at times for being more like a prison than a rest home (xv).
Matilda and William’s two remaining sons, Jack and David, lost contact with their father. Family sources report the shock with which they received news of his subsequent death. This most likely took place on 9 August 1929 at Porirua Mental Hospital where William had been referred in May 1928 when he developed epilepsy, at one time thought to be a mental disorder.
The coroner’s report into this death in 1929 recorded him as a single man with the occupation ‘labourer’, naming him William ‘Strachon’ but the name William ‘Strachan’ is used in the death record. The clinching middle name ‘Valentine’ is missing from both sets of records. The given cause of William’s death was influenzal broncho-pneumonia and syncope. Both records show there were no known relatives, but as the original medical practitioner who referred William to Porirua Hospital was Dr R Bryson, who also provided medical attention to the residents of the Ohiro Benevolent Home, there is a good chance that this was Matilda’s widowed husband who was buried at Porirua (probably in the hospital cemetery) on 12 August 1929 (xvi).
Matilda was buried in the Public section of Karori Cemetery, plot 238 E.
Researched by Beverley Hamlin, with input from Greg and Mary-Ann Norton (née Strachan), and Jenny Robertson. Written by Jenny Robertson
Sources:
(i) Passenger record on Family Search https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:S3HY-DT1S-L2W?i=4&cc=1609792 The burial record for Terrace End Cemetery in Palmerston North shows that Matilda’s grandmother Elizabeth Mann died on 12 August 1910 at 85. She was buried in Wesleyan block 55, plot 52 with little Basil Mann who died on 24 November 1916 at 3 ½, the plot purchased by W Mann. Elizabeth’s 16 May 1842 marriage record to James Henry Mann, a woodman in the 1861 census who was born in Stratton around 1819 shows her father was Edward Hitchcock. James Mann died on 11 August 1881 in Leamington. An Ancestry family tree https://www.ancestry.co.uk/family-tree/person/tree/27239955/person/12806062900/facts?ssrc= details the 10 daughters and 3 sons that Elizabeth and James Mann had between 1843 and 1870.
(ii) Evening Post 21 February 1898
(iii) Information given by Matilda’s witnesses in 1903 marriage record.
(iv) NZSG KiwiDisk v2 2015 includes school inspector returns for Matilda Wilkins for 4 years from 1882 to 1895 and it is possible she attended for more years, the records for which are not yet digitised. Her sister May (Celia) while living at 60 Rolleston Street attended Mt Cook Girls School from January 1910 until 13 May 1915 after time at Mt Cook Infants School.
(v) Born around 1868 according to information given on his marriage record in 1903.
(vi) William’s parents had married in 1866 in Greenock, Scotland when his father was 27 and his mother 26: his mother Elizabeth SKIRVING worked as a dressmaker. The 1901 census shows the Glasgow Strachans still in Greenock with their mother and only Marion 23, Agnes 19, and James 17 still at home. At the time of the 1891 census, William had three sisters, Mary Ann, Marion, and Agnes at home with Elizabeth as family head, and a brother, James aged 7 and an uncle, Peter Skirving, 62, living with the family in Greenock, Renfrewshire.
(vii) Information sourced from family.
(viii) 1905/05 electoral roll for Wellington East.
(ix) From the marriage record, Matilda’s marriage witnesses were her father and her sister Rose Wilkins, while William’s witness was James Miller, another seaman from 28 Dock Street.
(x) The New Zealand Times 26 April 1913, page 2 gives the fine as £2 imposed by WG Riddell in the Magistrates Court, but the report in the Dominion on the same date reports the fine as £3 for having used certain language in Tory Street.
(xi) The Police Gazette 1913 has a much fuller description of William’s tattoos but there is sufficient in the 1901 Police Gazette (page 111) to be sure that ‘Walter’ was the same person as William Valentine.
(xii) New Zealand Times 13 January 1910, page 4.
(xiii) Evening Post 14 July 1919, page 8.
(xiv) The E Morris jnr funeral register, MSY-3711, shows that the £8.15.0 funeral bill for the burial of Isaac in 1920 was unpaid, while that of £3.17.6 for William in 1924 was met by the hospital.
(xv) Article by Chris Rabey in Brooklyn Tattler in November 2015.
(xvi) The name of Dr R Bryson is given in the register of the Ohiro Benevolent Home recording expenditure there from around 1930. Archives New Zealand reference ABRR 7563 1/ W4990 Journal Stores Book, Ohiro Benevolent Home. Both the practitioners who committed William Strachan to Porirua (Dr R Bryson and Dr BE Wright) are listed in the register of Medical practitioners in New Zealand 1840 to 1930 accessible on
https://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/external/WrightSt-Clair-HistoriaNuncVivat.pdf. While the death record for William Strachan in 1929 gives his age as 66, instead of 61, it is possible William had over-reported his age to ease his access to state support as he aged and found working in a physical labouring job too demanding. BDM also lists another William Strachan dying in 1940 at 74 and although the age of this person does not tie up exactly either with a birth in 1868, the death certificate would need to be reviewed to see if it contained further identifying information such as a Wellington residency. However, since the last electoral roll record for William Strachan was 1928 in the Ohiro Benevolent Home, it would seem his death in 1929 is more likely. The Coroner’s 1929 report into the death of William is in Archives New Zealand, Wellington Office see Coroners Inquests - Case files - Wellington - Strachon, William [Use MICRO U 5543].