I was recently sent this photograph of H Cramer and Co, Saddle, Collar and Harness Maker. To find out a bit more about the business I started to search. A sad tale indeed unfolded. In Kalgoorlie in 1901, a young couple married, Margaret Theresa Angus and Henry Timothy Cramer. They moved to Coolgardie where Henry […]
The people of the Goldfields
The Goldfields of Western Australia was and still is made up of many people, from poets to politicians, from saints and sinners and everything in between. I hope to tell you the stories of some of these people either famous or infamous or just the ordinary folks. Sometime the most ordinary people do the most extraordinry things
The Money or the Wife ??? –
Kalgoorlie Western Argus 23 October 1900, page 25 MATRIMONIAL MISFITS : A lady, who after 17 years of connubial bliss, took it into her head to elope with a jockey, was charged with larceny of £70 from her lawful husband. The latter, it appears, was reconciled perfectly to the loss of his better half, but, […]
St Anthonys Convent – pupils 1897-1925
Earlier this year you may recall, we were fortunate in being granted access to the admission records for St Anthony’s Convent In Coolgardie. Because of the privacy laws of the Catholic Church records we were given permission to access up to 1925, which fortunately for us is the pertinent period for the town. The archives […]
My Own Dear Boy:-
Murchison Times and Day Dawn Gazette 29 July 1897 SUICIDE AT SMITHFIELD Last Saturday week a miner, Thomas McKileen (MacKileen), living by himself in a tent at Smithfield, committed suicide by blowing his brains out. At an inquest held on Monday afternoon before the acting-Coroner, Mr E. O. Butler, J.P. it was elicited that on […]
A Gentleman of the Road-
Four years after the establishment of the Department of Mines, it bore little resemblance to the tiny Mining Branch which had started operation within the Department of Lands and Surveys in Perth WA. Mr Patrick Pelly, a clerk with the Department, was remembered as ‘a reserved, courteous and obliging old fellow’, however he was without […]