Pod Insights ABC Rewind Finding Fanny Finch About this episode When Bill Garner began exploring his family history, a puzzling gap in the family tree led him to discover a most extraordinary ancestor: Fanny Finch https://www.castlemainecemetery.org.au/fanny-finch. Finch was a well-known and controversial figure during the Victorian gold rushes. A London-born woman of African heritage, she pushed a wheelbarrow from Melbourne to the goldfields in 1852, where she became a sly grogger and restaurateur. She actively resisted police corruption https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/202631049, supported women and children against domestic violence and in 1856, cast a vote https://sheshapeshistory.com.au/fannyfinch in municipal elections, decades before women were granted suffrage. And yet her story was not passed down to her descendants.
When Bill met historian Kacey Sinclair https://theconversation.com/hidden-women-of-history-australias-first-known-female-voter-the-famous-mrs-fanny-finch-112962, who had been researching Finch’s life, a fascinating and sometimes challenging conversation began.
In Finding Fanny Finch, Sinclair joins Finch’s direct descendants, Bill and his daughter Alice, in a theatrical reconstruction and reflection on the life and legacy of an unforgettable woman.
Credits
Written by Bill Garner and Sue Gore
Based on research by Kacey Sinclair
Performed by Kacey Sinclair, Bill Garner and Alice Garner
Music by ‘Friends of Wendy Cotton’: Briony Phillips, Stephanie Carson, Nicole Simirenko, Christine Webb, Anthony Webb
Original music recordings by Casey Rice
Sound engineering by Angie Grant
Additional music mixing by Brendan O'Neill
Adapted for radio by Miyuki Jokiranta
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music and more.
0:09 Speaker 01 What if the most remarkable person in your family was someone you'd never heard of? Fanny Finch was a woman with African heritage, a Goldfields pioneer and one of the first women to vote in Australia. Finding her challenges some long-held prejudices. Father and daughter Bill and Alice Garner are direct descendants of Fanny Finch.
0:33 Speaker 02 Not that we knew, Bill.
0:34 Speaker 01 Not a clue. Bill and Alice are actors. They're also both historians.
0:40 Speaker 02 But Casey is the expert.
0:42 Speaker 01 Casey Sinclair is completing a history PhD on Fanny Finch.
0:46 Speaker 02 Like Fanny, I'm a woman of colour and, 150 years after she did, I also moved to Castle Main.
0:53 Speaker 01 Castle Main is 120 kilometres north of Melbourne, in the central Victorian Goldfields. Hello, I'm Kirsty Melville and today on the History Listen, we're finding Fanny Finch.
1:09 Speaker 02 Early in 1852, a woman pushing a wheelbarrow joins a long line of diggers on the track to the central Victorian Goldfields. Fanny Finch, then 37, is a big, strong woman. She's heading for a camp packed with thirsty miners, where grog prices are sky-high.
1:32 Speaker 02 Fanny had come out to South Australia as a domestic servant in 1837, just one month after Colonel Lytth surveyed the site for Adelaide. There, she married Joe Finch, a chainman from the survey party. But leaving him behind in 1850, Fanny took their children with her to Melbourne, children she now had to board out before leaving for the Goldfields. It took Fanny four days to get to the Forest Creek diggings, where she set up a tent that soon became popular.
2:03 Speaker 03 The head centre and general resort of everybody. The only place of entertainment on the creek.
2:09 Speaker 04 Long after she's gone, someone writes, "If anyone would hear Fanny's name now, no doubt they'd remember the many memorable nights had by her tent."
2:28 Speaker 04 That's Castle Main Band, Friends of Wendy Cotton. They're coming with us.
2:38 Speaker 02 Slag rocking, or selling alcohol without a licence, was illegal. It was profitable, but risky. The punishment was a hefty fine. But first, the tent was burnt down. Fanny's tent was destroyed twice in one week.
2:51 Speaker 04 Each time the police burn it down, the diggers put up another one.
2:56 Speaker 02 Fanny prospered at Forest Creek. In 1854, she moved her business into Castle Main, expanded it, and placed a notice in the local paper. Baths. Baths. Baths.
3:08 Speaker 04 Baths, baths, baths. What are you...
3:11 Speaker 02 What does Fanny sound like? What's her voice?
3:15 Speaker 04 You're an actor.
3:20 Speaker 03 Mrs. Fanny Finch begs respectfully to inform the inhabitants of Castle Main, and diggers generally, that she has taken the under-mentioned extensive premises, which she has furnished as a bathing establishment.
3:35 Speaker 04 Yeah, that's good. May I?
3:38 Speaker 03 Please.
3:39 Speaker 04 In offering this great summer luxury to her friends, Mrs. F begs to assure them that no expense has been spared and that every regard has been paid to the comfort and convenience of bathers, and hopes to meet that encouragement and support which such an undertaking deserves.
3:57 Speaker 03 A refreshment and reading room is attached, where all the leading periodicals will be found. Ladies and children carefully attended to by Mrs. F personally.
4:08 Speaker 04 Note the address. Templeton Street, next door to Mrs. Pye & Company's Lemonade Manufacturing.
4:43 Speaker 02 The bathing establishment proved costly. Then she got a heavy fine for selling grog. She boldly proposed a solution for her money worries in a letter to the Mount Alexander Mail.
4:54 Speaker 03 If those who are in my debt would come forward, each with one-third, I would be relieved of all debts, have a good home for my family and cash to put in my pocket. I also beg to state that in spite of what enemies I may have, I intend to keep throughout the winter, ready-cooked ham, beef soups à la mode etcetera, from seven in the morning till seven at night.
5:20 Speaker 04 She does not miss a chance.
5:23 Speaker 03 She's not shy. Listen to this. A coloured lady attired in bright blue silk and artificial flowers. How good would it be to find a picture of that?
5:35 Speaker 04 Any picture of her.
5:37 Speaker 02 Fanny Finch must have been brave. Late one night, walking home from her restaurant, she heard screaming coming from inside a shop.
5:45 Speaker 03 She bursts in and makes her way through to a bedroom.
5:48 Speaker 04 She sees a man attacking a woman. She drags him off, she pushes him out of the room.
5:52 Speaker 03 She bounces him on the counter. She holds him until the police get there.
5:59 Speaker 02 The story appeared in the Mount Alexander Mail. Everyone in Castle, Maine heard about it. Fanny was known to be a defender of women and children. Even back in Melbourne, in Burke Street, where she witnessed the continuing abuse of seven-year-old Mary Anne Bamford at the hands of her drunken parents.
6:18 Speaker 03 Don't murder your child. You neglect her sufficiently without being so cruel to her.
6:24 Speaker 04 She offers to pay for medical attention for Mary Anne.
6:27 Speaker 03 I'll carry her to the hospital myself. I'll get the police if you don't help her.
6:32 Speaker 04 By the time the parents take her to a doctor, it's too late.
6:38 Speaker 02 Fanny testified at the inquest and then at the mother's trial for murder.
6:42 Speaker 03 To see children abused, I will say my piece.
6:48 Speaker 04 A strong-minded woman with a genuine tenderness of heart which led her to be ever-ready to serve another in distress, and that too without the slightest ostentation.
6:59 Speaker 03 Someone said that?
7:01 Speaker 04 It's your obituary. No face was more welcome at the Castle Main Hospital and not anyone perhaps was more charitable to its inmates. She was continually supplying them with creature comforts and regularly as Christmas came round, she furnished a whole female ward with a first-rate tea with all the necessary concomitants.
7:23 Speaker 03 Not that it helps me when I end up there. I don't know where all the subscription money goes because the place is filthy. Oles in the floor, mice running everywhere. The matron is a monster, but nothing compared to that quack in charge.
7:40 Speaker 04 What was wrong with you?
7:43 Speaker 03 A disease I won't mention. And then I go back in with a cough and they keep me there for more than two months. Inflammation of the lungs, they say. I don't know how I recovered.
7:57 Speaker 04 You didn't. You died.
7:59 Speaker 03 Not yet. I've just got started.
8:02 Speaker 02 Fanny Finch died at the Castle Main Hospital in 1863.
8:06 Speaker 03 That quack killed me.
8:09 Speaker 02 She was buried at Campbell's Creek, but without a headstone.
8:14 Speaker 03 Like a pauper?
8:15 Speaker 04 There's a proper headstone now, a beauty, paid for by the government.
8:20 Speaker 03 On my grave?
8:21 Speaker 04 Yes.
8:22 Speaker 03 The governor did that?
8:24 Speaker 02 Not the governor, the government, the Minister for Women.
8:28 Speaker 03 There's a Minister for Women?
8:32 Speaker 02 While running her business at Forest Creek, Fanny kept her daughters in boarding school in Melbourne.
8:37 Speaker 04 But later the kids are with her in Castle Main. Did they help with the sly grog?
8:42 Speaker 03 It is a restaurant.
8:44 Speaker 04 Sorry, restaurant?
8:47 Speaker 03 Thank you, young man.
8:49 Speaker 02 Fanny Finch was big on correcting the record. A notice in a local paper said she was required to apologise for insulting Miss Miller.
8:57 Speaker 03 I never.
8:58 Speaker 04 She belts out a letter to the miners' right.
9:02 Speaker 03 Sir, in the first place, I am not acquainted with a Miss Miller. In the next place, I am not in the habit of using any expression likely to injure the character of any female, as even to require a private, let alone a public apology. So I will thank you to rectify the assertion to my satisfaction in next, Fanny Finch.
9:27 Speaker 04 She's defiant.
9:29 Speaker 03 They cause me endless trouble.
9:33 Speaker 02 There was a sustained campaign against sly grogging during the 1850s, not because it was considered such an evil. The £50 fine provided substantial revenue.
9:43 Speaker 03 And the troopers get a cut.
9:46 Speaker 04 She's charged with sly grogging again.
9:49 Speaker 02 Apart from a heavy fine, Fanny faced four months' jail for failure to pay.
9:53 Speaker 03 I had a lawyer.
9:55 Speaker 04 She always had a lawyer.
9:56 Speaker 02 Fanny was tried in the police court.
9:58 Speaker 04 The Melbourne Argus calls Fanny "The notorious Mrs. Fanny Finch".
10:03 Speaker 03 It's not just the sly grog charge.
10:06 Speaker 04 The Mount Alexander Mail says, "The fair Fanny invited two policemen into her tent."
10:13 Speaker 03 They were acting under orders, of course they were. We're playing four in hand, and the police join in. Goes on for three and a half hours. They're playing for lemonade at first, then they ask for a couple of nobblers, brandies. I know their game.
10:33 Speaker 02 The police said Fanny produced a bottle from under the sofa. That wasn't a crime, as long as she received no payment. Her lawyer insisted that Fanny wouldn't be so stupid as to take money for grog from police in uniform.
10:47 Speaker 03 They swore they paid me after everyone else had left.
10:53 Speaker 03 They were lying.
10:55 Speaker 02 The bench accepted the police story.
10:57 Speaker 03 I appealed, immediately.
11:00 Speaker 02 At her appeal, Fanny was represented by her friend, Maurice McDonagh.
11:05 Speaker 03 I loved Maurice. A real fighter in court. Very good comic actor, too. Drank himself to death, very young.
11:15 Speaker 02 McDonagh's main line of argument was entrapment. He asked the police who sent them on the job. The judge told them not to answer.
11:23 Speaker 03 Jackson.
11:25 Speaker 02 The judge was likely protecting Edmund Jackson, the licensee of the Victoria Hotel, next door to Fanny's restaurant.
11:32 Speaker 04 He pays people to dob in sly groggers.
11:36 Speaker 03 Maurice says, "How can police spies be compared with someone of my good reputation?" He accuses them of being Vandermonians.
11:45 Speaker 04 We call them Tasmanians now.
11:48 Speaker 03 Why?
11:49 Speaker 04 To clean up their reputation.
11:51 Speaker 03 Vandermonians?
11:53 Speaker 02 Fanny insisted a police constable had told her, "If they couldn't get her on the sly grog charge, they'd start a row and get her for keeping a disorderly tent."
12:03 Speaker 03 My tent is never disorderly.
12:06 Speaker 02 A disorderly tent was code for a brothel.
12:09 Speaker 03 They want to drive me out of Castle Main.
12:14 Speaker 03 If my word is not to be believed, and the police continue to perjure themselves, then all I can do is appeal to the people of Castle Main.
12:24 Speaker 04 She writes to the Mount Alexander Mail.
12:27 Speaker 03 "Sir, I can scarcely tell you what I want to say. But write this letter as coming from myself, making notice of the time, which is since the diggings first opened, my having house, and at one time the only one either the commissioners or diggers could be accommodated in. I have held a licensed refreshment tent ever since the diggings commenced, and can prove by any of my former neighbours that there never, and I believe the only, tent that there was never, even a quarrel in, and always conducted by myself. My neighbours on my right and at the back say they do not wish for a better neighbour,
13:11 Speaker 03 as does every neighbour that I have had before, and are willing to prove it."
13:17 Speaker 04 Except the neighbour on your left.
13:20 Speaker 03 Everyone knows that.
13:22 Speaker 04 Edmund Jackson.
13:24 Speaker 02 Jackson's preferred target was unprotected females.
13:28 Speaker 03 His own lawyer sues him for unpaid legal fees.
13:33 Speaker 04 For prosecuting sly groggers.
13:35 Speaker 03 To whom must I look for protection? I am compelled to seek it from someone but cannot tell who. The head of police should certainly see into these sort of affairs and not allow, if two or three have a spite against an individual, to be crushed just as they please. For I positively deny ever taking one shillen from the two constables for grog in any shape.
14:02 Speaker 02 In the week following Fanny's appeal, a long letter appeared in the mail under the pen name Constant Reader. Its writer insisted Fanny was being persecuted.
14:13 Speaker 04 Mrs Finch has a family to maintain and provide for and should be allowed every legitimate means of doing so as well as any other person. Means have been taken to entrap her into a violation of the law. I believe I state correctly when I say that war is declared against her.
14:34 Speaker 03 Someone finally says it in public. Was it Gus? Gus Yandle was often at my tent.
14:43 Speaker 04 Well, he remembers Fanny with affection. The good times at Forest Creek. Would you be free for this darts, Mrs Finch?
14:57 Speaker 04 And, and, round.
15:05 Speaker 04 Who's leaving?
15:06 Speaker 03 Oh, Mr Yandle, I'm leaving.
15:21 Speaker 04 I hope that other persons will corroborate my statement, as public opinion biased by the police report may injure her business and family.
15:32 Speaker 02 With such support, Fanny stepped up her public presence. In 1856, at the first Castle Main municipal elections, she and another woman, whose name we don't know, filled out ballots. Although women as a class couldn't vote in the colonies, as a ratepayer, Fanny was eligible to vote in local elections.
15:53 Speaker 04 Edmund Jackson's on the ballot.
15:56 Speaker 03 It's a pleasure to put a line through his name.
16:00 Speaker 02 But election officials refused to count Fanny's vote, or that of her female companion.
16:05 Speaker 03 They threw out our votes. We're ratepayers. They say we have no right because we're women.
16:13 Speaker 02 Parliament then ruled that only male ratepayers were eligible to vote. But thrown out or not, Fanny's vote was one of the first ever cast by a woman in Australia. Her voting slip is on display in the Castle Main Art Museum. Someone kept it.
16:56 Speaker 04 A few months later, the bailiff raids Fanny's place.
16:59 Speaker 03 They trash everything.
17:01 Speaker 04 She writes to the paper again.
17:04 Speaker 03 Sir.
17:06 Speaker 03 I have no doubt that you will not allow an oppressed woman to be treated with the cruelty I have experienced a few days since. Imagine, sir, the sheriff sending down the bailiff to seize upon my goods, and after almost ruining me, quietly saying that he had mistaken me for a person of another name.
17:32 Speaker 02 Mistaken identity was a ploy to intimidate Sligh Groggers, even if charges were later withdrawn.
17:38 Speaker 04 How could anyone mistake the notorious Fanny Finch for somebody else?
17:45 Speaker 03 Everybody knows who I am.
17:51 Speaker 03 Notice: Whereas a pretty little spaniel dog followed me home last Saturday week, the owner can have it back by paying me one pound and the expenses of this advertisement. If he does not pay me by Monday, I shall sell it, as I was offered five pound for it, and I cannot afford to keep it.
18:13 Speaker 04 The owner lodges a complaint against Fanny for illegally detaining his dog.
18:19 Speaker 02 In December 1858, police identified two haunts of prostitutes in Castle Main, Mrs Blossman's and Mrs Finch's.
18:27 Speaker 04 The goods and chattels at Littleton Street are auctioned off to pay back rent.
18:31 Speaker 03 Sold up on Christmas Eve!
18:34 Speaker 02 Klaus the chemist sued her for non-payment of goods.
18:37 Speaker 04 During the proceedings, his lawyer said he would become jealous if Mrs Finch continued making private remarks to the judge.
18:46 Speaker 03 I would rather Adele talk to the judge than to him.
18:50 Speaker 04 Bet that got a laugh in court.
18:52 Speaker 03 It did.
18:53 Speaker 02 Following a new gold rush, Fanny went to Amist, but her new restaurant there burnt down. She lost everything.
19:01 Speaker 03 My little John died there. He was 12.
19:05 Speaker 02 Fanny went back to Castle Main. Records show her in the company of a number of Castle Main businesswomen who ran so-called gay houses. It was not a fresh start.
19:15 Speaker 03 We were getting by, me and the children. Then I go into hospital with that cough and you tell me I die.
19:25 Speaker 04 That's right, 1863.
19:28 Speaker 03 I'm what, 48?
19:31 Speaker 04 But what a life!
20:00 Speaker 02 On her death certificate, Fanny's father is Captain Francis Jackson, Navy. Her mother is Cecilia Hotham. But actually, her mother was Lydia Holloway, a servant. Her father was a footman named John King. They were unmarried and placed their baby in the London Foundling Hospital. But her name was not Fanny, it was Louisa King.
20:21 Speaker 04 Louisa?
20:22 Speaker 02 And we even know when and where she was conceived.
20:24 Speaker 04 I don't even know where Alice was conceived!
20:27 Speaker 03 Bill!
20:28 Speaker 02 The process of admission to the Foundling Hospital meant Fanny's mother Lydia had to tell them everything. Although Fanny was of African heritage, there was a policy of colour blindness, so no record was made of her parents' race. Fanny seemed to think they were both coloured. The girls in the home all sewed samplers, and embroidered on Fanny's were two persons of colour, one on each side of her house. On the back was written, "Francis Coombe, Foundling Girl, 15 years of age, 1830."
20:59 Speaker 04 Coombe?
21:00 Speaker 02 Baby Louisa King was rebaptised Francis Coombe by the Foundling Hospital. It was standard practice. Fanny just made up Captain Jackson and Cecilia Hotham.
21:10 Speaker 04 Yet they're in the family tree.
21:13 Speaker 03 But not Fanny.
21:15 Speaker 04 How long was she in the Foundling home?
21:18 Speaker 03 I was there for 15 years.
21:20 Speaker 04 Couldn't have been happy.
21:22 Speaker 03 How else would I have learned to read and write?
21:25 Speaker 02 The hospital took pride in educating children for a useful life. At 15, Fanny started an apprenticeship in household management. Six years later, she gained a labourer's free passage to South Australia.
21:59 Speaker 02 Frances Coombe arrived at the tent town of Adelaide in 1837. She was 22. Two years later, she married Joseph Finch. Four children survived seven pregnancies. After she left Joe, Fanny declared him alive or dead as it suited her purpose. For a debt, he was alive; a social matter, she was a widow.
22:22 Speaker 03 I tell people, Mrs Finch begs to inform the local inhabitants that henceforth, she will carry on business for her children. I am a woman endeavouring to support my children in decency.
22:36 Speaker 04 By running a brothel, it seems.
22:39 Speaker 03 You try raising four kids on your own and see what you do.
22:44 Speaker 02 Respectability was out of reach for Fanny, but maybe not for her daughter, Mary Julia. In 1858, at the age of 15 or 16, Mary Julia met a public servant named Oliver Warren Collins.
22:58 Speaker 03 He spouts Latin. The father's a rector in West Yorkshire. There's Church of England ministers in the family for 350 years.
23:18 Speaker 02 Two years later, Mary and Oliver were married at the most fashionable church in Melbourne. Fanny recorded her written consent, but there was no mention of her in the wedding notice.
23:29 Speaker 03 Maybe I was across the street, watching.
23:33 Speaker 02 Joe got a mention, but it said he was dead. Joe didn't actually die for another 35 years. In 1853, he was convicted at Bunningong of robbery in company and sentenced to 10 years on the roads, the first two in chains. At the time of the wedding, Joe was a ticketed leave man stuck in Gippsland.
23:55 Speaker 04 Oh, great. Some people come out as convicts. In our family, they come out and become convicts.
24:02 Speaker 03 Fanny takes Joe and herself out of the picture. She's constructing a new family.
24:10 Speaker 04 A white one.
24:11 Speaker 03 The one we thought we were.
24:14 Speaker 04 I find it hard to believe that someone so vividly present in her own life would erase herself like that.
24:23 Speaker 02 That's my family history, Bill. Look, I think it's great that we live in a time where not all white people see shame in connection to a coloured heritage. But it becomes more complicated when you look at it from the other side.
24:35 Speaker 04 At least you know who you are, Casey.
24:37 Speaker 02 No, I don't. You think colour makes it clearer? My Indian and Sri Lankan heritage might be evident in my skin, but just like yours, Bill, my family history was whitewashed. It's the only reason my mother and father's families were ever accepted into Australia. They had to prove they possessed as much white blood as they did South Asian. I have white privilege, just like you, and it was leveraged for gain, just as it was for you.
25:03 Speaker 04 Alice and I haven't lived as persons of colour. The danger for us is a temptation to be self-congratulating about finding African heritage. But can you be charged with appropriating your own family history?
25:20 Speaker 03 Yes. Well, there's one thing we do agree on. Fanny was a remarkable person. She defended women and children. She insisted on her right to vote. She spoke up against corruption and abuse of power. I haven't heard anything like that about any of our other ancestors.
25:40 Speaker 04 No, no one.
25:44 Speaker 04 Frankly, it's a relief to embrace a brothel keeper after all that Anglican respectability.
25:50 Speaker 02 We're all freer to claim Fanny now.
25:53 Speaker 04 But we lost her for a long time.
25:56 Speaker 03 I'm here, young William.
25:58 Speaker 04 I'm so happy to have you in my family.
26:02 Speaker 03 I'm happy you're in mine. I'm a great, great, great, great grandmother now, I believe.
26:10 Speaker 04 I'm so happy I found out about you before I died.
26:14 Speaker 03 Turns out you can find out lots of things after you've died.
26:19 Speaker 04 Not just a family story though, is it?
26:28 Speaker 02 You were famous on the Goldfields, Fanny Finch. Probably the first woman to publish in the local press. And one of the first women to cast a vote in Australia.
26:37 Speaker 03 They threw out my vote.
26:39 Speaker 02 You were unfailingly kind too, and supportive of other women. And yet, until recently, and perhaps still in some people's minds, the tane of sex work clouds your reputation.
26:50 Speaker 03 I was a ratepayer.
26:52 Speaker 02 Your story isn't finished.
26:53 Speaker 03 They tried to drive me out.
26:56 Speaker 02 There are still so many gaps. Ambiguities. Mysteries.
27:01 Speaker 03 I was lying in an unmarked grave.
27:04 Speaker 04 With a headstone now.
27:08 Speaker 03 What does it say?
27:10 Speaker 04 Brave? Outspoken? Castle Main's first businesswoman.
27:17 Speaker 03 Really?
27:18 Speaker 04 A pioneer of the district.
27:21 Speaker 02 I can't tell you how important it is to find you.
27:25 Speaker 03 Thank you.
27:28 Speaker 03 Thank you for looking for me.
27:41 Speaker 01 Finding Fanny Finch was adapted from the stage play based on research by Casey Sinclair, written by Bill Garner and Sue Gore, and performed by Bill Garner, Alice Garner, Casey Sinclair and Castle Main Band, Friends of Wendy Cotton. Original music was recorded by Casey Rice. It was produced for radio by Miyuki Okiranta. The sound engineer was Angie Grant with additional music mixing by Brendan O'Neill. I'm Kirsty Melville, thanks for your company. Join me again next time on the History Listen. See you then.
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