Ahh, back in the old days...
Source; https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/234793345?searchTerm=sydney%20%20king
Ahh, back in the old days...
Hmm.
Seems that a "missing wife" is more than just a missing woman.
Yeah, yeah, WE all know that but it seems the penny has just dropped for some law people in Australia; if Teacher's Pet has taught us anything it's that WE SHOULDN'T JUST RELY ON THE HUSBAND.
Just a small, slight consideration that hasn't jumped up and slapped a whole gender in the face, apparently.
I digress.
Pottering amidst the glories of archived news at Trove, I've often come across "missing wife" or "missing wife and children" headlines and sometimes I go looking to see if the wife and/or kids turned up in the births/deaths/marriages.
Most times, there's a further trace of them.
But sometimes there's not a speck.
One of the "missing wife and children" was one of those that never, ever showed a sign of life: hubby didn't report the disappearance for at least 4 weeks, and no follow-up news reports.
Likewise with searching "Missing girls" in the Sydney area during the early days of The Great Depression; I was following a hunch regarding a certain serial killer I'd been researching and, worryingly, I was unable to trace a good number of the reported "missing girls" - any number over zero is too fucking many.
But few police or news follow-ups, while casual trawling through the NSW Birth/Deaths/Marriages found gaps.
How many family trees have sudden stops on people's lives..."born 1922 disappeared 1945" ...
And the odd thing I've noticed is -
when a bloke goes missing in the news archives he usually turns up again, whereas women don't.
1797 Following much fighting between the European settlers and the Indigenous people in the Hawkesbury area Governor John Hunter sent a grou...