Did Eliza Chubb or Sarah Ann Chambers spend time in the Victoria Hospital in Bournemouth?
In 1888 William McKay gave the military three months notice and was discharged on December 31. He had served for 25 years and 161 days. Henrietta had been with him for all but six of those years, the earliest ones, as he had enlisted at the age of 14 years and 7 months. In the time that William and Henrietta had been together, they had experienced a lot of ups and downs, most particularly the time in 1876 when he was tried for fraud and desertion. They had been in Weymouth, Malta, Portsmouth and Bangalore and along the way Henrietta had given birth to seven children. But their thought was not to reunite with family in England.
William's military record includes the information about the family's intended destination as the British liked to know where their well-trained men could be found in case they needed to be called upon in the future. Under the heading "Intended place of Residence on Discharge" was written: Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Had they spent so much time in the warmth of India that thoughts of resettling in England left them cold or was it something else?
Perhaps the news from England was discouraging for a couple with a young family. By that time, Henrietta's mother, Eliza Chubb, was living with Henrietta's sister, Sarah Ann Chambers and family. At this remove it is hard to tell if the Chambers family was rescuing Eliza or if she had moved in with the Chambers to help out. Perhaps it was a little of both.
While on Jersey, Eliza Chubb had run a shop at 32 Queen Street in St. Helier. She also lived at that address. A news article in the Jersey Independent and Daily Telegraph on March 14, 1885, recounted the story of repeated flooding of the shop because of a drainage problem. In 1886, a while after the article ran, Eliza joined her daughter, Sarah Ann, and son-in-law in Wareham, Dorset and was with them when they moved to Bournemouth. If Henrietta had thoughts of joining her mother and sister in Bournemouth, she probably thought twice about it when she found out about her sister's health. It appears that Sarah Ann was diagnosed with phthisis (tuberculosis) in 1886. That may have been the reason behind the Chambers' move to Bournemouth as it boasted a reputation as a place for rest and restoration.
Did Henrietta feel a pang when she and William and family went off in another direction to start over in New South Wales? I have found no records to indicate that she made her way back to England; sad really as she wouldn't have seen her mother or sister again. Eliza Chubb died in 1889 and Sarah Ann Conway Chambers died in 1890.
Sources:
Find My Past – British Army Service Records 1760-1915 Records of William McKay enlisted 23rd July, 1863
Find My Past – Newspapers & Periodicals: “Defective Drainage” Jersey Independent and Daily Telegraph, March 14, 1885
GRO certificates: 1889 April 5, death of Eliza Chubb at 7 Commercial Road, Bournemouth
1890 June 29, death of Sarah Ann Conway Chambers at 7 Commercial Road, Bournemouth
Streets of Bournemouth Health - https://www.streets-of-bournemouth.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Health.pdf
Images:
Victoria Hospital, Bournemouth, UK – line drawing By Creek and Gifford, Architects - The Building news and engineering journal v.58 :1(1890) circa p.123 - https://archive.org/details/buildingnewsengi5811unse/page/n127/mode/1upImage cropped from https://ia801304.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/7/items/buildingnewsengi5811unse/buildingnewsengi5811unse_jp2.zip&file=buildingnewsengi5811unse_jp2%2Fbuildingnewsengi5811unse_0128.jp2&ext=jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92370337
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