"The Escaped Nun"

In 1886 a controversial lecture was given at Campbelltown’s Town Hall. It was well attended by a respectable and appreciative audience including the Presbyterian minister Rev. David Moore, the Congregational minister Rev. G. Rutherford and the Mayor of Campbelltown Mr Alex Munro.
The speaker was Edith O’Gorman – the “Escaped Nun” who spoke for nearly two hours, keeping her audience keenly interested and repeatedly eliciting vociferous applause.
The story of Edith O’Gorman is indeed a fascinating one. Born at Roscommon in Ireland on 20 August 1842, Edith O’Gorman emigrated to America in 1848 where she joined the Sisters of Charity in 1862, becoming Sister Teresa de Chantal and residing for the next six years at St Joseph's Convent in Hudson City, New Jersey. In January 1868 she left – or as she later claimed ‘escaped’ from - the convent and the following year she converted to Protestantism.
On August 18th 1870 she married William Charles Auffray, a Frenchman who had emigrated to New York. A son, William John Charles Auffray, was born in New York about 1876. In 1871 Edith published Convent Life Unveiled: The Trials and Persecutions of Miss Edith O’Gorman, which ran to numerous editions and was translated into several languages. In it, Edith recounted the many cruelties which she had allegedly endured during her time as a nun. These included being forced to eat worms for minor infractions of the rules and her attempted rape by a priest. Soon afterwards she began a series of Anti-Catholic lectures in which she detailed her blood-curdling experiences and railed against the horrors of convent life. She was billed as ‘The Escaped Nun’.

(Photo: 19thcenturyphotos.com/Edith-O'Gorman-126230.htm)

Edith took her lecture tour to New Zealand during the last few months of 1885. She arrived in Australia in March 1886 and embarked upon a lecture tour here.
On Friday 2nd July 1886, Edith gave her lecture at the Campbelltown Town Hall. It was reported that “a number of Roman Catholics were present at the lecture; and one man who was thought, by those who knew him, to be a bigoted Roman Catholic, was overheard to say – “every word she has said is the truth, for I know it”. * Her tour of Australia continued until December 1887. In many places her life was threatened, riots occurred, stones and eggs thrown and general disruption between Protestants and Catholics occurred. Edith and her husband then travelled to England where she continued lecturing. In England her tour attracted large audiences and mixed responses. While British Anti-Catholics applauded her condemnation of convents, small Roman Catholic minorities protested violently at her lectures and even threatened her with violence.

https://shadowsflyaway.wordpress.com/2016/04/29/edith-ogorman
-the-escaped-nun-of-west-norwood/comment-page-1/

Edith’s husband William died, aged 50, in Dulwich on 25 June 1893. Edith herself died on 25 May 1929, aged 86, and was buried alongside her husband in London’s West Norwood Cemetery. An imposing but now semi-derelict monument still marks their grave.


Written by Claire Lynch
Sources
Trove
Ancestry
www.19thcenturyphotos.com/Edith-O'Gorman-126230.htm
https://shadowsflyaway.wordpress.com/2016/04/29/edith-ogorman-the-escaped-nun-of-west-norwood/comment-page-1/

Cliff Mallam

It's State election time, so I thought I would look back at the life of a former New South Wales politician that served Campbelltown. I chose Heathcote Clifford (Cliff) Mallam. Cliff was the Member for Campbelltown from 1971 to 1981.

A search of the material related to Cliff Mallam in our archives left me staggered at the amount of work he got through during his three terms. His face became so well recognized by local people, due to the fact that he was featured in the local newspaper almost every week. I thought I could discuss some of his achievements, but it was difficult to know where to start as there were so many.

Cliff was born at Backwater near Glen Innes and was the son of a farmer. He worked on dairy farms after leaving school at a young age, before moving on to be a shearer and drover. On moving to the city, he became a taxi and bus driver. He was a long term member of the Transport Workers Union and joined the labor Party in 1926.

Former NSW Premier Jack Lang played an important part in Cliff's life. Between 1946 and 1976 he was an editorial assistant on Lang's paper, The Century. It was Jack Lang that made the decision for Cliff that he was to serve Campbelltown in 1971. On his retirement Cliff told the local media "I was reluctant to come here- but Jack Lang said 'go to Campbelltown where the Labor Party was formed'". Cliff told the story about how Lang and Henry Lawson would sit on the hill overlooking Campbelltown and sit there and discuss politics. This was in the days before he became New South Wales Premier in 1927. He would escape the bear pit of Parliament, boil a billy, and sit down with Henry Lawson for hours on the hill discussing politics. This hill is now the park on the corner of Macquarie Avenue and Broughton Streets.

The move to the seat of Campbelltown was far removed from his previous seat of Cook in Sydney's south. In 1971 he defeated the sitting Liberal member Max Dunbier. He retained the seat for the next three elections and retired in 1981.

As I previously discussed, Cliff had a reputation as a hard worker for Campbelltown. There are too many to list but one topic that kept coming up was his work to improve Appin Road. He was active in having the road improved, speed limits reduced and alternative roads re-opened, such as an old army road to Bulli, to ease the congestion on Appin Road.

Cliff said he was privileged to serve Campbelltown. "I hope you will remember me as one who gave good judgement" he said.  Barbara Fetterplace, wife of former mayor Gordon Fetterplace and good friend of Cliff and his wife Alice, said of Cliff "...he was a true blue Campbelltown man, he would do anything for Campbelltown, that's my take on him". She continued "he always made a fuss of my kids, well our youngest was a baby, and he'd always make a beeline for her if I had her with me, and Gordon said to me sometime later, what do you make of Cliff Mallam, and I said, well I know politicians often make a point of talking to babies and being seen holding babies, but Cliff has kept doing it, so I think he might be for real!".

Cliff Mallam passed away aged 96 on 18 February 2006.

Written by Andrew Allen

Sources:

Macarthur Advertiser September 16 1981 p1

Wikipedia

Barbara Fetterplace Oral History December 2017, held at Campbelltown Library

In the Footsteps of Fred

Very little physical evidence in Campbelltown, if anything, is left to reminder us of the brief life of Frederick Fisher. All traces of the house where he lived, a storeroom and brick building he built, his farm and the fence (or possibly bridge) where his ghost appeared have all disappeared. Even the location of his grave has been lost to history.

Records associated with the court case surrounding the murder of Fred Fisher give us some idea of where these sites were. There are also articles written about the appearance of the ghost in the years following the reported sighting. One such early article was written in 1836, only ten years after the murder. Although not entirely accurate (it refers to John Hurley as the man who claims to have seen the ghost of Fisher and not John Farley), it does offer us with some food for thought, especially considering it was written so soon after the murder and ghost appearance.

The article appeared in Tegg's Monthly Magazine. This publication was only in existence for a few months during 1836. The Tegg brothers were booksellers and publishers in London and came to Australia in 1834. There are some descriptions in Tegg's article that gives us clues about some of the Fisher sites. The article described how Hurley (Farley) passed Fisher's house 500-800 yards when he claimed to have seen the apparition of Fisher. Fisher's house was on the site of the old Bank of New South Wales. This bank, demolished around the late 1950s, was in Queen Street and a few buildings to the north of Dumaresq Street. It was located about where today's Romanoff Clothing Store is at 215 Queen Street. Therefore the location of the ghost sighting, according to Tegg's article, would be about 457-731 meters south of this location along Queen Street. It was on the western side of the street, the same side as his house. If this is accurate, it would mean the location is further south of one of the main candidates for the appearance of Fred Fisher's ghost- the old water course at the corner of Queen and Dumaresq Streets. Many people believe it was a bridge that Fred appeared on however, the first mention of a bridge didn't surface until 1859 when a John Lang wrote about the story. This was 33 years after the event.   

The Bank of New South Wales is the building to the right in this photograph. It stood on the site of Fisher's house. The photo was taken in 1893.

Tegg's article also gives a description of a building behind Fisher's house that was built by him: "The visitant to Campbelltown must have observed as he strolled through the village, a large unfurnished brick building, fast mouldering to decay, which seems to have been intended at the time of its erection for a store". Incredibly, this brick building was still in existence in the 1960s. There was also a stone storeroom behind it. Most of this building was demolished in the 1940s.

The sandstock brick building built by Fisher, still standing in the 1960s. (Campbelltown and Airds Historical Society, Alex Goodsell Collection)

Thomas Davies Mutch, a politician and historian in the first half of the 1900s, also provides opinions on where Fisher's sites were located, based on his research. Mutch pinpointed the site of the murder and the blood-stained rails from a contemporary sketch plan. The ghost, therefore, sits on the southern boundary of Fisher's farm, 55 rods westward from Queen Street. The southern boundary of Fisher's farm was in line with the southern side of Allman Street. Therefore, according to Mutch, the site would be about 276 metres (55 rods) west of Queen Street and directly in line with Allman Street.

The location of where George Worrall buried Fisher was researched by historian Verlie Fowler in about 1980. Using maps and descriptions from Worrall's trial, she was able to locate the sight. It is now where the railway line passes over the dry creek. (see photo below).

Fowler Collection, Campbelltown and Airds Historical Society)

The mystery of exactly where Fred Fisher was re-buried in St Peters Cemetery is, and always will be, a mystery. Theories have always been thrown around, but the truth is that we will never know the precise location.

Written by Andrew Allen

Sources:

THOMAS, Ivor G. 1948
Frederick George James Fisher
In Campbelltown and Airds Historical Society: Journal and Proceedings
Vol. 1, No. 1, pp84-89

Fisher's Ghost: A Legend of Campbelltown
In Tegg's Monthly Magazine
March 1836