The Perils of Childbirth in the Colonies

When Mary Ann Deighton PARKER died in April 1901, the circumstances of her death were considered tragic enough to be reported in several newspapers in Queensland and New South Wales. She had apparently birthed twenty-one children in her twenty-two years of marriage, including six sets of twins. She had become ill after the birth of her last set of twins, and, while her husband rushed her to St George in a horse and cart, she died at the Warro Hotel, on the Surat Road at Bindle, about forty kilometres north of St George.1

A SAD CASE.

News was brought into town on Tuesday evening, the 7th instant, that Mrs. Fred. Cavanough had died at Bindle while being brought into St. George (says the "Standard"). The deceased was the wife of Mr. Fred. Cavanough, a rabbit board boundary rider, living on the Tartulla Creek, and only a short time ago she gave birth to twins. Mrs. Cavanough was attended at the time by Mrs. Garland, the wife of a kangaroo shooter, in the locality, and after her confinement both mother and children appeared to be doing well, when a change for the worst was observed. Her husband at once started in with his wife to St. George, for medical assistance, but the unfortunate woman was only able to travel as far as Bindle, where she died. We believe the deceased has been the mother of 21 children, having had no less than six sets of twins. During the first three years of her married life she had three sets of twins. The twins of the last birth are reported as being alive. On the news of the unfortunate woman's death reaching here, one of her daughters, who resides in town, started at once for Bindle. The Rev. Mr. Fuller also departed for the purpose of rendering the last sad rites at the graveside.2

Mary Ann was born 13th May 1861 in Milang, South Australia, to Robert PARKER and Sarah TURNER.3 She was named after Sarah’s mother Mary Ann DEIGHTON, who had migrated from England to Tasmania on the Royal Saxon with her husband James TURNER and their daughter Eliza in 1842.4 Sarah was born in Launceston, Tasmania in 18435 and then (at some point still to be confirmed) the family moved to South Australia where she met and married Robert PARKER in February 1860.6

Mary Ann had an unsettled childhood: the family relocated to western New South Wales around 1868 and moved from Wentworth to Wilcannia to Menindee over the next few years, where Sarah TURNER died in 1876 when Mary Ann was only fifteen.7 She had to grow up quickly, being responsible for six younger siblings. Her father remarried the next year and moved the family again to south west Queensland, to run a pub in Stoney Creek, now Windorah.

Mary Ann was married early, aged seventeen, to twenty-two-year-old Frederick Robert CAVANOUGH, in Thargomindah in 1879.8 Fred was employed as a boundary rider for the Rabbit Board. The Rabbits Board Act of 1891 established a number of boards in Warrego, Maranoa, Mitchell, Gregory North, and Leichhardt to erect and maintain fences and lay poison and pit traps to keep rabbits from spreading into valuable southern Queensland grazing country. About a dozen wild European grey rabbits had been released for game-shooting and sport on wealthy estates in Victoria in 1859. They bred like rabbits and soon reached plague proportions, causing huge environmental devastation. They spread quickly across Victoria and New South Wales and, by the 1880s, threatened to enter Queensland.9 It remains illegal to keep rabbits as pets in Queensland to this day.

Fred likely worked for the Mitchell Board since Tartulla Creek where he and Mary Ann lived is halfway between Mitchell and St George in central southern Queensland. Their family grew quickly, with Mary Ann birthing three sets of twins before she was twenty, and at least six sets of twins by the time of her death at thirty-nine. I say ‘at least’ because the maths of trying to squeeze twenty-two children into a twenty-two-year time span indicates at least that many multiple births, and more likely seven or eight. While the news reports state Mary Ann had given birth to twenty-one children, her death certificate records twenty-two, and that seven male and six female children had died before her death from a “cold after childbirth” in April 1901.10 It was fairly common in those days in remote areas to not register the births or deaths of children who were stillborn or had died very soon after birth, and only the nine still living were named on her death certificate (Alice Jane 21, Amelia Esther 18, Charles Henry and Mary Elizabeth 16, Frank 14, George Samuel 9, Richard Robert, 2, Amy Flora and Archie, 12 days).11 For that reason I have only been able to find the records of sixteen of Mary Ann’s and Fred’s twenty-two children. The twins she had recently given birth to died soon after her death,12 meaning that only seven children survived to adulthood.

The news report above states that her oldest daughter, who lived in St George, raced to Tartulla Creek upon hearing the news. Alice had married in 1898 and had just given birth to her second child,13 so she must have taken care of the newborn twins, while Amelia took on the responsibility of their other younger siblings. Fred must have been devastated, losing his wife and then the newborns on top of all the other losses. He never remarried and was recorded in several later electoral rolls working in the Mitchell area as a drover and stockman and living with or close by his sons, Frank and Charles, and their wives.14 Fred died in Charleville in July 1931, aged 74.15

Mary Ann Deighton PARKER was the eldest sister of my three times great grandmother, Fanny PARKER, about whom I wrote here:

Fanny Parker's Secrets

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April 9, 2025

Frances Sarah Ellen ‘Fanny’ Parker lived a short, tough life, full of scandal, violence, and secrets. Born in 1870 in Wilcannia, New South Wales, she lost her mother Sarah when she was only six. Her father Robert quickly remarried, and the family moved to Stoney Point (later Windorah) in south-west Queensland, where they lived in and worked at the Royal…

And of Lizzie and Alice PARKER, about whom I wrote here:

A Western Elopement

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March 26, 2025

The gentle stamp of hooves and snorting alerted Alice as she and Lizzie crept silently toward the rendezvous point. She froze in the darkness, listening for other noises which might indicate they’d been found out. Lizzie collided with her and whispered fiercely, “Keep going, you goose, we’re nearly there.”