The above certificate of John Corvan's death arrived today, and contained exactly the information that I was hoping for.Baby John Corvan,first son and child number five for Anthony Edward Corvan and Mary Torsa Healy, died at the Corvan home, 73 Lisson Grove North, on Saturday, September 2, 1854. He was eight weeks old ( thus putting his birth as around the first or second week of July, 1854.
The baby's cause of death was given as 'marasmus', which is defined as "Severe malnutrition in children caused by a diet lacking in calories as well as protein. Marasmus may also be caused by disease and parasitic infection."
I have had this occur as cause of death in other babies while researching other branches of my tree, in particular two sets of twins who were born prematurely and just failed to thrive or had feeding disorders. You wouldn't think that John Corvan had died of starvation when enough money was found in the oncoming months to pay for passage to Australia for Anthony and then his wife and children.
Although, perhaps financially the family was destitute after Anthony's bankruptcy and imprisonment, and their baby son's death was the last straw and they looked upon emigration to another country as a new start. Anthony's elder brother John was still alive at this stage, and seems to have been relatively wealthy- the fare for passage to Australia may have been borrowed from him.
Anthony Edward Corvan registered the death of his baby son himself on Wednesday, September 6, 1854: "A.E Corvan, present at the death, 73 Lisson Grove North".
This piece of information greatly narrows the time frame in which Anthony could have left England for Australia....his wife and children left AFTER him in early January 1855, so he must have left between September and December, a period of only four months.
I have searched the Victorian shipping indexes for both assisted and unassisted passengers arriving in November-March 1854-55 to no avail- no entry remotely resembling Anthony Corvan stands out. The closest is an Antoni Conco who arrived in January 1855 per the 'Carntyne'...almost definitely not our fellow, but will have to be checked out anyway.
Anthony must have decided to set sail for Victoria before his family in order to secure them a home and himself employment before their arrival.The gold rush was in full swing at the time of his arrival, so I wonder if he headed directly to the goldfields of central Victoria rather than look for employment in Melbourne. The fact that he took over a week to respond to his wife's notices of her arrival in the Melbourne Argus newspaper suggests that he was some distance away. It is interesting that he didn't fall back on his old trade of baker to support his family- his occupation on the New Chum Gully diggings was 'store keeper' ( stores on the diggings were usually conducted from tents, so this isn't as impressive as it sounds!), and later his occupation was given as 'commercial traveller' or just 'traveller'.
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