Mrs Fanny Finch: Chewton’s first business woman? by Marjorie Theobald Most historians are not interested in the presence of women on the early goldfields. They prefer a swashbuckling, macho version of alluvial mining, a world in which men enjoyed a kind of gypsy freedom unencumbered by women or the clergy. At the time, however, women were rather hard to miss. As early as December 1851, Governor Charles La Trobe, who rode on horseback from Melbourne to see the diggings for himself, was astonished at the number of women and children already at Mount Alexander. By the time of the Eureka Royal Commission in early 1855, women and children represented one quarter of the population on all the fields. Far from being discouraged, women were welcomed to the gold fields. Argus reporter Daniel Bunce in his tent/ office on Forest Creek wrote in March 1853: It is gratifying to observe a large number of respectable Females, who, there is little doubt, will have a beneficial effect in ameliorating and softening the tone of society at Forest Creek, and the diggings generally. They were also welcome for more pragmatic reasons. Diggers without women were commonly observed to ‘wallow in filth and misery’. The ubiquitous mutton chops were eaten with fingers straight from the frying pan, damper was sometimes attempted with mixed success, fruit and vegetables were known only by repute and a great deal of sly grog of dubious quality was consumed. I do not want to glamorise the life of women on the gold fields. They kept house in the bitter cold of winter and the heat and dust of summer in the most primitive of conditions, gave birth to babies in tents, and lost children to the depredations of inadequate drinking water and non-existent sanitation. The Pennyweight Cemetery at Moonlight Flat is a silent witness to their anguish as children were buried in alien ground. And women on the gold fields were, in the absence of an official safety net, one man’s heartbeat away from destitution. Yet they were not deterred. Among the early arrivals was Fanny Finch. She was born Frances Cecilia Jackson in London in about 1825. She was a woman of colour, presumably of the ethnic minority of African people in Georgian England, and this would have made her an object of curiosity on the gold fields. By 1844 she was in South Australia with her hus-
band Joseph Finch, as in that year the pair were tried for cashing a cheque which did not belong to them. At least two children, John and Fanny, were born in Adelaide; several more were born, and died, on the Victorian gold fields. Fanny’s first business venture was a boarding house and restaurant in the principal market place on Forest Creek, Post Office Hill Square. Bryce Ross’s business directory, published in May 1852, listed thirty-five businesses round the square, among them Fanny Finch’s boarding house. Most recollections of Fanny are of the ‘nudge-nudgewink-wink’ variety, implying that she was a common prostitute and sly-grogger, thus damning her boarding house by implication. There are still historians in Castlemaine who speak in this way whenever her name is mentioned. It is therefore surprising to come across this description of her Forest Creek boarding house in a letter to the Mount Alexander Mail in December 1855: Mrs Finch has … acquired great credit for the manner in which she conducted her restaurant at Forest Creek … at that time was the only one in which [indecipherable] … could get respectable accommodation. It was frequented by not only officials of the camp but by the [indecipherable] of the private world, the employees of the Port Phillip Mining Company, and all respectable diggers whose business brought them from any distance; and she has had the charge of the gold deposits to the amount of several thousand pounds for various persons, who speak highly of her probity, and attention to their interest and comfort. But my interest in Fanny Finch was first kindled when I found that she was one of two women who tried to vote, unsuccessfully, in the first municipal elections of 1856. When I went in search of her I found that she made several attempts to establish other legitimate businesses, all of which left behind evidence in rates books, advertisements, court records and business directories. In November 1854 she opened a bathing establishment with refreshment rooms and reading room attached (with the latest periodicals) in Templeton Street, Castlemaine. A year later she opened a dining and refreshment tent next to the Victoria Hotel in Urquhart Street. By now a note of desperation had crept into her advertisements, as she
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