Patricia McPherson

Heytesbury, 1918. A young women signed the marriage register ‘Patricia Maureen Livesay Henniker Mackay’. Who she really was remains a mystery to this day.

Though Patricia’s true identity is unknown, her bridegroom is well documented. He was Lieutenant Werner McPherson, a young officer from Adelaide who had attained his commission in Egypt and had been awarded the Military Cross for gallantry in France.

The couple is believed to have met in France, where Patricia was serving as a nurse on a casualty clearing station with the British Army. Their wedding was a military affair: Patricia was given away by another Australian officer, Captain Harry Gurd, and dressed in uniform for the occasion.

Patricia spent much of the rest of the war in London before accompanying Werner on his return home to Australia in 1919. The couple then settled in Fiji, where Werner resumed his pre-war employment with the Colonial Sugar Refining Company. She enjoyed a comfortable middle class life as an overseer’s wife in Lautoka, complete with a servant and regular first-class travel back and forth to Sydney.

In 1928, the couple’s marriage broke down after returning to Australia, leaving Patricia destitute in Sydney on the eve of the Great Depression. She sought relief from the Repatriation Authorities but soon found herself an inmate in Long Bay Gaol after a drunken escapade while employed as a housemaid at the Hotel Kurrajong in Canberra.

By 1930, she had begun working as a housekeeper for a widowed railway fettler, George Gibson, residing at Guagong-Siding near Condobolin. She bigamously married George in a quiet ceremony at the All Saints’ Rectory in Condobolin the following year. The couple’s daughter, Barbara Gibson, who was my maternal grandmother, was born at the Crown Street Women’s Hospital in Sydney in 1932.

Tragically, George died by suicide at Gresham near Newbridge in 1934. The four children from his first marriage to Isabel Longmore were taken in by his sisters in Bathurst, and Patricia took Barbara back to Condobolin. By the end of the year, Patricia and Barbara had left Condobolin for Sydney. Alone and destitute, Patricia struggled to care for her daughter.

In 1938, Barbara became a state ward and never saw her mother again. Her only remembrance was a portrait of her mother given to the NSW Child Welfare Department as a memento. Sadly, Patricia later believed that Barbara had died as a child whilst in the care of Tessie Doherty.

Patricia endured a difficult life, repeatedly incarcerated at Long Bay Gaol for alcoholism and larceny. Her only solace was a relationship with returned soldier Henry Johnston, which lasted until his death in 1951.

Amid hardship, Patricia proved particularly adept at navigating the Australian welfare system. She claimed a civil widow’s pension as George’s widow while simultaneously receiving a small war pension as Werner’s estranged wife. After Werner’s death in 1952, she was granted a war widow’s pension, which further enabled her alcoholism and led to years of institutionalisation as an inebriate.

Throughout her life, she variously claimed to have been born in Canada or England, gave multiple birth dates, and more than a dozen possible maiden names. She also consistently claimed to have trained as a nurse at St Guy’s Hospital in London and to have served with the QAIMNS on a casualty clearing station in France.

Despite ten years of research, none of her claims can be verified, suggesting that the forenames ‘Patricia Maureen’ were entirely fabricated. The one confirmed fact is that she had a child around 1914, only known from the medical records of Barbara’s birth.

Patricia, who was my great-grandmother, died in Sydney a few days after Christmas 1967, taking the secrets of her origins to the grave at Rookwood Catholic Cemetery.

Photo: Lieutenant Werner McPherson and Patricia McPherson, Heytesbury, 1918. Courtesy of Jane Sykes.