1800s - Saints and Sinners

Tom Tunaley was not the first in his family to emigrate to Australia. According to Phil Tunaley's website, a distant cousin from Derby called Thomas emigrated in 1868. Tom's uncle, Matthew Henry Tunaley, emigrated in 1881, followed by his aunt Catherine Tunaley (Matthew's sister) in 1885.

• The tale of these three Tunaleys is not directly relevant to my grandfather Tom's emigration to Australia in 1911, although two of them are his close relatives. It's "rabbit hole" I went down because I couldn't resist trying to solve the mystery of why two of them disappeared (or tried to) soon after their arrival (a mystery that remains unsolved as my research came to nought!)

Thomas (1868)

The first Tunaley known to emigrate was Thomas Tunaley (b.1832) a silk dyer from Derby, who sailed to Australia in 1868, aboard the Suffolk, (pictured).

"The Suffolk" sailing ship, circa 1860.

We don't know why Thomas Tunaley decided to emigrate to Australia but his family situation was somewhat unusual.

Thomas was born out of wedlock and when he was baptised on 25th July 1832, his surname was recorded as "Sparkes or Tunally" and his parents were listed as "Thomas Tunally" and "Susannah Sparkes". ("Tunally" was a common misspelling of "Tunaley" in the 18th and 19th centuries). His father Thomas Tunaley Jnr (b. 1796) did not marry his mother Susannah Sparkes until 1846.

Research by Dr Jane Holmes shows that in the 1841 census Susannah Sparkes (b. 1811) lived alone with her three children - Mary Anne (b. 1829), Sarah (b. 1831) and Thomas (b.1832) - at 32 Bath Street, St Alkmund Parish Derby - and they all carried the surname Sparkes. Elsewhere in Derby, the children's father Thomas Tunaley Jnr (b.1796), was living with a 35-year old woman called Elizabeth Silark at 7 Derwent Street, All Saints, Derby.

Thomas was in his early teens when his parents married on 23rd December 1846.

When Thomas was 18 years old, the 1851 census reported the family living together: Susannah Tunaley and Thomas Tunaley Jnr were in a house in St Peter's, Derby, with their children, Mary Anne, Sarah and Thomas - now all Tunaleys - and a fourth child Elizabeth (b.1846). The household also had two live-in servants.

By 1861, Thomas Tunaley had left home and moved fifty miles away to Cheshire. The 1861 census records a 27 year old silk dyer from Derby called Thomas Tunaley living as a lodger with John and Margaret Powell at Princes Court, 6, Trafford St Oswald, Great Boughton Cheshire. Back in Derby, his three unmarried sisters were still living with their parents at 74 Osmaston Street with a live-in cook and a house servant.

Thomas Tunaley Jnr (b.1796) seems to have been reasonably well-off and a respected local citizen. According to newspaper reports, he was elected to the borough Council during the 1840s and was involved in charitable causes. The 1861 census reports that he employed "5 men, 4 boys and 4 females" in his silk dyeing business. When he died in April 1868, his "effects" were valued at under 2000 pounds", according to probate records (picture).

Probate for Thomas Tunaley Jnr. (b.1796, d.1868).

Thomas Tunaley was not an executor of his father's will - the executrixes named on the probate record (pictured) were his mother and two of his sisters. A few months after his father died, Thomas Tunaley's eldest sister, 39 year old Mary Anne also died and was buried on 26th August 1868.

• After the death of her husband, Susannah managed the silk dyeing business. In the 1871 census, her profession was "Silk Dyer", from which she had "retired" by the 1881 census. Susannah died aged 80 in 1890. Thomas's sister "Sarah Sparks Tunaley" (b. 1831) married Benjamin Mannwell on 17th May 1882, according to a newspaper report. However by 1891, she was living as "Sarah Tunaley" with her sister Elizabeth and her husband Joseph Corney and their family, where died "a spinster" in 1903. Thomas' youngest sister Elizabeth Corney (b.1846) died in 1923.

For reasons unknown, in 1868, Thomas Tunaley decided to emigrate to Australia on a cheap ticket, leaving his mother Susannah Sparkes (b. 1811) and two surviving sisters behind in Derby.

According to Australian immigration records, Thomas Tunaley disembarked in Melbourne in 1868, but nothing is known of him thereafter.

In the 1860s, conditions on sailing ships carrying emigrants to Australia were notoriously bad, particularly for passengers like Thomas in steerage class, "housed between decks in cramped, noisy, damp conditions".  Over the three month journey, many passengers died of diseases. Perhaps Thomas Tunaley was unwell when he arrived in Melbourne and died soon after. If so, it is odd that there's no record of his death, unless he was murdered and his body was disposed of.

Another possibility is that after he disembarked in 1868, Thomas Tunaley (b.1832) changed his name and lived the rest of his life under a new identity.

His family in England seem to have assumed that he was dead, or at least that he was never coming home. According to Phil Tunaley's research, Thomas is not mentioned in his grandfather Henry's will of 1874, although his surviving sisters Sarah and Elizabeth both are.

Matthew Henry (1881)

The story of Matthew Henry Tunaley of Manchester - Tom Tunaley's uncle - is even more mysterious. According to research by Jane Holmes and Phil Tunaley, Matthew Henry may have been a bit of a scoundrel.

Matthew Henry Tunaley (b. 1848) was the eldest of eight children born to John Tunaley (1813 - 1863) and Sarah Wood (1822 - 1888) who were originally from Derby. John Charles Tunaley (Tom's father) was born two years after Matthew in 1850, followed closely by another son, Thomas Gronow Tunaley, born in 1851. The three boys were followed by five girls: Elizabeth Tunaley b. 1854; Sarah Gronow Tunaley b. 1857; Mary Thomason Tunaley b. 1857; Catherine Tunaley b. 1860 (see below) and Alexandra Edith Tunaley b. 1863 (the year her father died).

The first four children were born in Derby, but by 1857 when Sarah was born, the family had moved to Manchester. "Gronow", given as a second name to both Thomas and Sarah, was the maiden name of the children's maternal grandmother (ie. Sarah Wood's mother).

Matthew Henry Tunaley was a joiner by trade, (his father and brother were joiners too). In 1871, when he was 23 years old, Matthew Henry was declared bankrupt, although this was later annulled.

A year earlier, in 1870, Matthew had married Mary Stafford from Manchester. She gave birth to four children over the next eight years. The first two - Louisa (1871-1882); and Florence (1873-1873) - died young. Then Annie was born in 1877 followed by Joseph Henry in 1878. Three years later, Matthew Henry emigrated to Australia, in 1881, leaving his wife and two daughters behind.

At the age of 34, Matthew Henry Tunaley sailed to Australia in 1881 on the SS Lusitania, a steamship of the Orient Line, pictured below (not the famous SS Lusitania that was torpedoed in 1915).

After Matthew arrived in Sydney on 25 May 1882, he moved north. By 1891 he was living in Casino, an inland town near the Queensland border (thanks to Jane Holmes for this research). In 1897, Matthew Henry Tunaley married a woman called Mary Mason in Drake NSW, 74 kilometres west of Casino. Two years later, Matthew Henry Tunaley died at the age of 50 lin Toowoomba, some 250 kilometres away in Queensland

Jane Holmes found notices in Australian newspapers indicating that Matthew Henry's family were looking for him for many years. These continued even after he was declared "deceased" on his daughter Annie’s marriage register entry in 1897.

In 1906 a Missing Persons advertisement placed by Annie finally elicited a response. In response to a plea for information about Matthew H Tunaley placed in Lloyd's Newspaper that was circulated in Australia, the Adelaide Observer reported on 12 May 1906 (p.43), "Mr. J. Knsetzsch, in New South Wales, kindly sends tidings of Matthew A. Tunaley (sic), asked for by daughter Annie, in Manchester (December 24)". Through this connection with the Knsetzsch family, who lived around Casino, in New South Wales, Annie probably received the news that her father had died seven years earlier. In all likelihood, Annie would also have been told about her father's marriage to Mary Mason in Casino in 1897.

What would Annie have done with these two pieces of news? The news of Matthew's death would presumably have been passed onto Annie’s immediate family (her mother and brother). Annie may also have informed Matthew's two brothers and five sisters, one of whom - Catherine - had made the the astonishing decision to travel alone to Australia in Matthew's wake thirty years earlier (see below).

The news of her father's Australian marriage on the other hand (assuming that Annie was informed of it by the Knsetzsch family) may have been too sensitive to share. There's no evidence that Matthew Tunaley and his English wife Mary Stafford were ever divorced. Matthew was still married to Mary Stafford when he married Mary Mason in Australia in 1897. Mary Stafford lived until 1914.

Except for her marriage record to Matthew Tunaley, the mysterious "Mary Mason" has been impossible to trace.

Catherine (1885)

The first woman in the Tunaley family to arrive in Australia was Matthew Henry's sister Catherine Tunaley (Tom's Tunaley's aunt). As a 25-year old single woman, Catherine 'emigrated' to Australia four years after her brother Matthew had left England.

Twelve years younger than Matthew, Catherine Tunaley (b.1860), came to Australia in 1885, possibly to join (or to find?) her brother. She travelled on the SS Iberia as an emigrant, but returned to England within a few years. We know this because she was a witness at the wedding of her younger sister in 1888 (Phil Tunaley's research found Catherine's signature on her sister Alexandra Edith's marriage certificate in Birmingham in 1888).

Catherine never married. With her elder sister Sarah Gronow Lidyard, she became a nurse and served with distinction during a 1897 Typhoid epidemic. Phil Tunaley reports that Sarah Tunaley's gravestone indicates that Catherine and Sarah Gronow trained as nurses at the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary before moving further south from their original Manchester home.

Catherine died in 1926 at the age of 66. On 12 November 1926, the Buckinghamshire Advertiser published her obituary (below). The article summarises her life and nursing career, as well as providing the names of mourners who attended her funeral (thanks again, Jane Holmes!).

In the obituary, Catherine's three surviving sisters are listed first among the mourners at her funeral under their married names: Elizabeth Tunaley (Mrs Smith - Bill Smith's mother); Mary Thomason Tunaley (Mrs Powditch); and Alexandra Edith Tunaley (Mrs Wain). Mr. T. Tunaley was probably Catherine's nephew Thomas Gronow Junior (b. 1883). Phil Tunaley provided this information and also pointed out that although Catherine was cremated, her ashes were buried with her mother in the Uttoxeter New Road Cemetery, Derby as indicated below.