Jessie Mainland Sinclair

Jessie was the eldest child of Thomas and Mary Sinclair, born in Dunrossness, on the 2^nd April 1852.¹ She spent her childhood in Dunrossness, where she went to the local school. The 1861 census recorded her as a ‘scholar’ living with her family at ‘Husbrake’.² The ‘Husbrake’ in the census is probably a reference to Hughsbrake, a postal delivery place in the parish of Dunrossness.³

She was 11 years old when her parents brought her and her younger brothers and sisters to Western Australia. The voyage was largely uneventful, apart from a fall she suffered during rough weather.

Jessie never married and lived most of her adult life with her mother Mary or other family members. She was probably living with the family in Guildford or on the old York Road when her father was working as a convict warder, remaining with her mother after her father’s death in 1868. Margret Sinclair believes that she may have worked for Barker and Gull’s Store in Guildford in the 1870s and that she gave evidence at the inquest of WB Clarkson.⁴

The featured photograph in this post is of Jessie and her brother James, a copy of which is held at the Library of South Australia. It is a studio photograph which was probably taken in Esperance rather than in South Australia. The library holds it as part of the Searcy collection, but it is unclear how it became part of that collection. The collection is a large one, extending to several thousand frames, and it appears to have been put together from a wide range of sources. In my opinion the Sinclair photograph’s inclusion in the Searcy collection is not an indication that Jessie was ever in South Australia.

After Guildford Jessie moved to Esperance, either moving directly there or through Albany where her mother operated a boarding house. The name Jessie Sinclair occurs frequently in the Esperance newspapers in the 1890s but it is not always possible to tell whether the references are to this Jessie or to her young niece,⁵ who was also named Jessie Mainland Sinclair.

The Sinclair family seems to have done well in the local races, for example taking out the Maiden Plate, Esperance Cup and Ladies Bracelet in 1897.

In 1925, the year her brother James died, she was living at 49 Rookwood Street, Mount Lawley, with her widowed sister-in-law Margaret and nephew Malcolm. Bessie Sinclair, Malcolm’s wife, was also living in the house. They moved to a property in Maylands, where they were at the time of the 1928 electoral roll. Jessie then moved on her own to a house in Highgate (207 Lincoln Street), across the road from Hyde Park.

When she was older, Jessie became a resident of the Salvation Army Home (Eventide) in Fremantle.

She seems to have been a well-read and articulate woman. Her younger sister Margaret said that she ‘lived to old age, not only got and read the “Shetland Times” every week, but kept them all “on file”’.

When her mother Mary Sinclair died in 1915 Jessie wrote a letter of thanks in the West Australian newspaper.

Sir, – As it is impossible for me to communicate with them personally and promptly, I am taking this means, both for myself and the members of our family, to say how sincerely we appreciate the kind thoughts of those many friends whose expressions of thoughtful sympathy have reached us from so many quarters touching the bereavement we have sustained by the death of my dear mother. Especially do I wish to make grateful acknowledgement of the numberless sets of neighbourly kindness of which my mother was the recipient at the hands of our friends of Esperance, where she resided for the last twenty years of her life. May I also take the opportunity of saying how truly I, myself, appreciate the kindness of my many old friends in and around Perth who, after my long years of absence, have called on me since I arrived in the city, or have sent kindly messages of remembrance. I cannot say how much I feel the genuineness of those evidences of their regard. – Yours, etc., JESSIE M. SINCLAIR.⁶

Jessie Sinclair died on the 6^th of February 1933 at the Salvation Army Home in Fremantle. She is buried in Karakatta Cemetery.

Endnotes

1. Baptism of Jessie Mainland Sinclair, Old Parish Register, Dunrossness, North Isles Family History, accessed 4 July 2024. ↩︎
2. Entry for Jessie Sinclair, 1861 England, Wales and Scotland Census, Findmypast,co.uk, accessed 4 July 2024. ↩︎
3. WR Duncan, Shetland Directory and Guide, Oliver and Boyd, Edinburgh, 1861, p 159. ↩︎
4. Margret Sinclair, ‘Half a world away: Thomas Sinclair’s family story’, unpublished manuscript, Bentley, Western Australia, typescript, 2010. ↩︎
5. Jessie Mainland Sinclair (1880-1959) was Laurence Sinclair’s daughter. ↩︎
6. ‘Letter of Thanks’, The West Australian, 17 July 1915, p 5. ↩︎