Hi Liz,
Thanks for your return email and suggestions. To date we have found no shipping details for her trip to NZ from England or from NZ to Australia.
Will keep searching but I do need to keep the heat on with my Christchurch research. We believe Emily arrived in Australia early to mid 1900 ready for the birth of my father on 3 July 1900 in Sydney. She died on 26 January 1946 - so this tallies with 46 years in Australia (states unknown) stated on her death certificate. Until we find otherwise that is the information I am working with for now.
I am pretty certain my researcher from SAG, Sydney investigated the Sands Directories.
If you can think of any other information that could help that would be appreciated.
Emily was 38 when my father was born - he was born in the Women's Hospital at Crown Street, Sydney. A Dr Judith Godden has been commissioned to write the history of the hospital and after contacting her and telling her my story is including a paragraph on Emily Crooks as she was so taken by her story. Most women had their children at home in those days. Crown Street Women's Hospital had been set up 1n 1893 specifically for complicated births and was a teaching hospital in obstetrics. If this was Emily's first child then it would have been a very worrying time for her in case there were complications. I was hoping to find hospital records recording birth details but unfortuanatley none were available until 1904.
Why would Emily up and leave NZ? Why didn't she stay? Why wouldn't the father of her child marry her or did she run away to start a new life with her child???? Maybe the father couldn't marry her!!!! Do you see where I am going here? She recorded a William Crooks (goldminer) as the father. She used her mother's maiden name "Miller' as her own to disguise the fact she was a single woman having a child. She was living in Grafton Street, Woollahra, Sydney at the time the birth was registered.
Her bigamous marriage to William Henry Batson 1n 1889 conjures up the idea that maybe they got together again and she has used his christian name and his occupation but lied about the other details. Or has she just used his name and occupation to cover other details that would have been far more difficult to explain. e.g. if she had a liasion with a married man who was socially in a different class to her own and therefore there was no possibility of marrying.
That is why I need to know where whe was in the last year of her residence in NZ. I feel there is another story here. William Batson and his wife Emily Lucy Julia (Hicks) Batson did not have children of their own - they adopted two of his deceased nephew's children.
When Emily married William in Dunedin in 1889 they lived at Bluff according to the records where he was involved in searching for the silver that went down on the shipwreck ss"Tararua" Joan MacIntosh has written a book on the shipwreck and a few others on life in these southern towns of the South Island. Batson is mentioned in "A History of Fortrose". I want to buy a copy of this - do you know where I can get it? It was reprinted last year. If Emily was with him until his wife arrived in early 1891 you think she could have got pregnant then but I have found no records of such. I do not know exactly what happened in those first couple of years and will further investigate. Emily had inherited 500 pounds on the death in Feb. 1889 of her former employer Dame Mary Jane Flower, Baronet's widow of 24 Lowndes Square, Chelsea, London. That was a huge amount of money for a housemaid. Emily must have sailed for NZ as soon as she received the inheritance.
We then found that Emily Sarah Crooks and Emily Lucy Julia Hicks had been inmates in the same Hanwell School Workhouse. There is every possibility that Emily Crooks knew Emily Hicks. Did Emily abandon all caution and leave London for NZ with William Batson hoping to start a new life??? Speculation is all I have to go by.
Look forward to hearing more from you.
Regards,
Sue