One Pheasant Too Many

It is 1853, on a field of the Idsworth estate in east Hampshire. A young farm labourer lies still in the hedge — a rabbit already in his pocket, a pheasant stepping closer — until a gamekeeper’s hand closes on his collar. That young man was George Silvester, and one pheasant too many would help set the course of his life.

This is the story of George Silvester (1834–1919) and Ellen Menia Stewart (c.1839–1919) — a Hampshire labourer’s son and a young woman most likely out of Ireland — who married at the Scots Church in Sydney in 1855 and raised nine children across sixty years in Newtown. It follows George from poverty and the game laws of Hampshire, across the world in the gold-rush years, to a home of his own at 113 Bedford Street.

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This story rests on careful family research. Where the evidence is firm we say so; where it is not, we say that too. Family tradition is named as such, the pictures are artist’s reconstructions, and nothing here is invented.