Anne Maria Barkly (1838-1932) was the second wife of Sir Henry Barkly, Governor of Victoria from December 1856 to September 1863. Barkly’s first wife, Elizabeth Helen Timins, accompanied him to the colony of Victoria. However, only four months after their arrival, she died. It has often been asserted that she and her newborn son died in, or as a result of, a phaeton accident on the Princess Bridge, or that she died of a post-partum inflammation. However, the Argus reported unequivocally that in the nine days following the birth of her son - her sixth baby - she ‘suffered from a nervous excitement, producing depression of spirits, fits of hysteria, and at length a complete nervous exhaustion, terminating in death’. The Argus implied that she was little-known, owing to the ‘uncertain state of her health, together with prostration of spirits, and a foreboding anxiety by which she was oppressed ever since she last quitted the shores of England’. However, when Augustus Tulk announced her death to the many readers in the Public Library on 18 April the institution was closed for the rest of the day by general agreement. It was only in November that the Age ran the story of the phaeton accident, contributed by a columnist for the Australian and New Zealand Gazette, who wrote that the affair had been hushed-up because Lady Barkly did not want the driver of the omnibus that hit her charged. Later, it was reported that she chose her own burial site, knowing she would not survive confinement. Her infant son joined her in her grave. All in all, public sympathy for Barkly ran high and there was general rejoicing when in July 1860, the 45-year-old governor married 22-year old Anne Maria Pratt, daughter of Major General Pratt, commander of the troops in the Australian colonies and New Zealand. The wedding, at Christ’s Church South Yarra, was discreet, the party comprising only the bride and bridegroom, Barkly’s daughter Blanche – the bridesmaid – Major General Pratt and Mrs Pratt, and Captain Foster, ADC to the Major General. The Argus reported ‘The church was handsomely festooned with flowers, and notwithstanding the secrecy preserved two or three hundred spectators, mostly ladies, were present . . . The nuptial knot was tied by the Bishop of Melbourne . . . The bride wore a white moiré antique dress, covered with white lace, and a rich white veil . . . The honeymoon will, we believe, be spent at Toorak [on account of] the immediate departure of Major General Pratt for the scene of war, in New Zealand.’ A commemorative verse published in the Age in August 1860 referred to Pratt’s departure for the first ‘Taranaki war’: Thy beauteous bride receives Our warmest love. Soon for an absent sire she grieves For now the trumpet blows
