THE LARGEST FAMILY
Updated: Jul 13, 2022
In this post:
JOHN HENRY (1874-1955)
EMILY HENRY (1876-1953)
The Henry family one of the largest family to have ever lived Corio Bay Villa. John and Emily Henry lived there for three or four years from 1909 to 1912, with eight or nine children in tow. Being only a small cottage, it's difficult to understand how they all fit.
The father of this family was John Henry who was born in New Zealand to James Henry (1829-1908) and Sophia Christina Elisabeth Lampp (1854-1930). He came to live in regional Victoria with his family shortly thereafter. Around the age of 22 he met local girl, Emily Murphy (1876-1953) who was about 20 years old. They met in Omeo, in Eastern Victoria, where they soon had a son and got married, in this order. Usually when the woman got pregnant, a couple would marry as soon as possible to ensure the child was born within wedlock. However, John and Emily's slightly delayed marriage was probably due to Emily's existing martial situation. When John met Emily she was no Emily Murphy, she was by now Emily Klug.
Emily was already married to Frederic Charles (Carl) Klug who shortly after after marrying her, disappeared. He was charged with desertion, as described in the Victoria Police Gazatte below. However, unbeknownst to Emily at this time, Carl was never to return, having died in NSW. Poor Emily (or perhaps fortuitously for Emily) was widowed at aged 19. She went on to marry John Henry two years later in 1897, aged 21, and become Emily Henry.
Image: Excerpt from page 308 of the Victoria Police Gazette, 2 October 1895.
Emily was the first woman to live at Corio Bay Villa who had been deserted by her first husband. However she was not the last. In fact there were more two women who arrived at Corio Bay Villa with similar back stories to Emily, and they were Margaret Farney and Olive McCullough.
After the birth of their first son, Emily and John went on to have thirteen children. Similar to another Emily discussed elsewhere on this blog, Emily Turnbull, this Emily was pregnant and/or breastfeeding almost continually for twenty years. Emily and John moved around lot, perhaps searching for work. John mostly worked as a carpenter, but while he was at Corio Bay Villa, his profession was listed as 'commission agent', although what he sold, I do not know. It must have been difficult to find employment that would pay well enough to feed so many mouths. The growing family moved from Omeo in Victoria, to Broken Hill in New South Wales, to Sheffield in Tasmania, before moving back to Victoria.
By the time they arrived at Corio Bay Villa in Surrey Hills during 1909, they had the following children:
Reginald John (1897-1953), aged 12
James Malcolm (1899-1973), aged 10
Christina May (1901-1982), aged 8
Emily Ellen (1902-1978), aged 7
Euphemia Elizabeth, aged 5
Rita Janet (1906-1972), aged 3
Charles Murray (1908-1986), aged 1
Like many parents of this era and before, Emily and Henry lost at least one child in infancy. The child mortality rate in Australia, for children under five, was 11% in 1910.[1] This means that one in ten children did not make it to their fifth birthday. With so many children it was therefore statistically likely that Emily and Henry would loose at least one. It happened in the same year they moved into Corio Bay Villa. Emily and Henry sadly lost their one day old son Robert. In the next few years, while living at Corio Bay Villa, Emily went on to give birth to two more children who enjoyed long lives: Leonard Melvyn (1909-1995) and Lorna Jean Henry (1912-1984).
Corio Bay Villa was modest home, with four main rooms made with double brick. It must have been a squeeze with nine children. There was probably additional buildings or structures out the back where the cooking, washing and bathing was done. With no electrical appliances, everything was washed by hand. Children would have had to bunk together with multiple children in one bed. As it was one of the only houses in the street, any animals owned by the Henrys would have been free to wonder and graze on an area larger than the land actually owned by their landlord Charles Emberson. That was a small concession for what was otherwise a very crowded existence for the Henry family.
With so many mouths to feed, finances must have been tight. In 2012 Emily and Henry's oldest son, Reginald now 16 years old, placed an add in the local paper, the Box Hill Reporter, offering his services. The advertisement which appeared on 19 January 1912 on page 7 and read:
"LIGHT EMPLOYMENT WANTED, near Surrey Hills for delicate lad, 16, now working motor works; honest, bright, willing and mechanical; very small wages for light job. Corio Bay Villa"
There were no house numbers in the street at that time which is why Reginald gives the house name instead, followed by the street name which was been removed for the purposes of this blog. From this advertisement we can surmise that Reginald was still a slight lad, was already working with cars and looking for additional small jobs for some extra cash
Predictably, the Henry family quickly outgrew their lodgings at Corio Bay Villa. In 1912 the family moved to another house in Surrey Hills. The family continued to move around a lot, no doubt in search of larger accomodation, as the family continued to grow, both in size and number. Emily and John went on have another three children, of which only two survived infancy. They lived in the nearby suburbs of Camberwell and Box Hill, and even further afield in Williamstown.
Having such a large family must have been challenging for for Emily and John. By the mid-1920s Emily and John, now both aged around 50 years old, went their seperate ways. Their youngest child, Alan, was approximately eight years old. He and some of his siblings would still be dependant on their parents and it is not clear if they lived with their mother or their father. Most likely, however, they remained with Emily, while John continued to work full time.
John Henry continued working as a carpenter and resided Camberwell for the next decade or so. Emily moved in with some of her older children, first with Charles and his wife Alma, and later with her daughter Emily. Emily senior spent her later years in Essendon, while John retired in Caulfield. Both Emily and John lived until the mid-1950s.
Emily Henry died aged 77 in 1953, while John Henry died a year or two later, aged 80. Together they established a very large family, a legacy that will go on for generations to come.
REFERENCE:
[1] O'Neill, Aaron, "Child mortality in Australia 1860-2020", Statista, accessed 28 April 2022, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1041779/australia-all-time-child-mortality-rate/