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Hart, Lucy

English immigrants, Lucy and John Hart worked for a while in Adelaide, struggling to get ahead. As the goldfields opened up, Lucy encouraged her husband to try his luck on the diggings. He sent for her to join him within a few months and soon they felt successful enough for Lucy to write to her mother: ‘Should I have been so well off in England NO – work hard and be half starved. Australia is the place to live…’. Hart’s letter to her mother is held in the Manuscript Collection of the State Library of Victoria.

Caitlin Mahar

References
Anderson, Margaret, 'Mrs Charles Clacy, Lola Montez and Poll the Grogseller: glimpses of women on the early Victorian goldfields', in Iain McCalman, Alexander Cook and Andrew Reeves (eds), Gold: forgotten histories and lost objects of Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001. Details

See also

Women