A Tale of 3 Husbands!
Every so often we are delighted to receive family stories from members or researchers. When we do, they are added to our files and help to expand the knowledge of the families who lived in our town. Here is an excerpt from one such researcher who has sent his family story from Hull in England.
“I decided to investigate the stories of Percy Edmund and Ethel Maud Beadnell, with whom she shared a house for a time in Cairns Street, Brisbane, and this is where the story became complicated, but interesting!
Percy Edmund was the son of Edmund Farren Gee, a solicitor, who had married Eva Maria Trott in England in 1880. It seems the marriage had not lasted and Eva Maria Gee travelled with her young son on an assisted passage to Maryborough, Queensland, on board the Selkirkshire, arriving in Australia on 18th December 1886. Her parents, Thomas Dousling and Mary Trott had arrived in Australia with the rest of their family in 1882 and had settled in Calton Hill, Gympie. No doubt, after the breakdown of her marriage to Edmund Gee, Eva Maria had decided to re-join her family in Australia. However, her life in Gympie was far from straightforward.
In 1890, on 25th May, she married Francis William Rorison “of Goora, son of the late Major J.G. Douglas Rorison, Indian Army”. He was almost thirty years her senior. This marriage was doomed to failure from the start. Eight months after the wedding, the Gympie Times and Mary River Mining Gazette of 1st January 1891 reported that Francis William Rorison had been arrested some days previously at the Great Western Hotel, Lennox Street, Maryborough, and charged with bigamy.
Francis William Rorison had been married in 1859 to Julia Mary Russell in Bathurst, NSW. They had at least seven children together and he seems to have deserted his wife and family after losing his job as a teacher at a school in Brewangle, Bathurst, in 1885. He was sentenced on the charge of bigamy in April 1891 and his marriage to Eva Maria Trott annulled. Little did the authorities know that Eva Maria was also married to a husband in England.
It wasn’t long before Eva Maria Trott married for the third time. In December 1891, only a few months after her marriage to Francis Rorison had been annulled, she married John William “Jack” Beadnell in Brisbane. Thus, unknown to the authorities and maybe to her new husband, she was committing bigamy for the second time. However, it appears that this marriage was a success and her son, Percy Edmund, eventually adopted the surname Beadnell after his stepfather. Eva Maria Beadnell died in 1905. It is worthy of note that Edmund Gee remarried in 1893, thus, also becoming a bigamist. The story of his rise and fall is fascinating but, alas, beyond the scope of this narrative.”
This story was compiled by Denise Juler from correspondence with descendant who wished to remain anonymous but agreed to the publishing of this article.
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