Death by Despair – Leonora Snapshots

In the last edition of the ‘Leonora Cemetery Snapshots’ we looked at ‘all the little children’. This edition looks at suicide which was a sad but common cause of death in the early days of the Goldfields. Sometimes it was a release from certain and horrific death by thirst or heat. Other times it was […]

Cemetery Snapshot Leonora – all the little children

Back in August 2017, I had just finished transcribing the first section of the Leonora Cemetery records. I had finished the first decade when I published the first ‘Snapshot’ focusing on the number of deaths of children under the age of 5 years. As you may know, the first five years of a child’s life […]

Ripping Yarns and Tragic Tales – 8 August 2021

I hope your week has gone well. We have had a slight increase in temperature here, (Kalgoorlie-Boulder), which has been lovely. I hope wherever you are, this has been the case. We recently had a reader join us who lives in Boulder, but in Colorado USA. She said how odd it was that her descendants […]

Edward ‘Doo Dah’ Sullivan – grave tales

SULLIVAN Edward alias ‘Doo-dah” or “Dido” died 2 Jul 1896 age 36yrs – buried 2 miles north of Leonora. For some years his old barrow and some of his equipment were reposed by his grave, but gradually they disappeared. Sir John Forrest later arranged to have a headstone and fence to be erected. A pioneer […]

Born of Grief and Despair:

On the 23rd of September 1903 in Gwalia Street, Leonora Western Australia an event would take place that would start a string of family tragedies. The event was the death of a little girl, Eileen Margaret Doyle. She died of Tonisilitis and Bronchitis and was only 2 ½yrs old. She had only been ill only […]