Charles Fendick
Grandfather of William George Fletcher
Born:
17 Feb 1867 Syston, Lincolnshire, England
Baptised:
3 Oct 1867 St Mary Magdalene Church, Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen, Norfolk, England
Died:
31 May 1899 Tambo, Queensland, Australia. Age 32
Cause of death:
Typhoid fever
Buried:
1 Jun 1899 Tambo Cemetery, Tambo, Queensland, Australia
Timeline
Feb 1867
Oct 1867
1867-1868
1869-1871
1873-1876
1879-1887
Apr 1887
May 1887
1895-1896
May 1899
Jun 1899
Born at Syston Park, Syston in Lincolnshire, England [1]
Baptised in mother's home parish of Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen, Norfolk [2]
Departed England aboard theWaroonga, bound for Australia [10]
Arrived Rockhampton, Queensland on the Waroonga [10]
Died in Tambo, Queensland of typhoid fever. Working as a shearer at the time of his death [13]
Buried at Tambo Cemetery, Tambo [13]
Biography
Early years
Map of Syston Park and Syston village
On a crisp February day in 1867, Charles Fendick was born in the vast estate of Syston Park, in Syston, Lincolnshire. Born to Charles Fendick senior, a gamekeeper for the Thorold family, and Sarah Ann Riches [1].
Syston Park, with its woodlands and small lake, was the family seat for the Thorold family. The Fendick family would have lived in a gamekeeper's cottage within the estate. It was a rural woodland kept under his father's watchful eye, ensuring there was adequate game to hunt for the Thorolds [15].
​​
When Charles was two, his family returned to Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen in Norfolk, his mother’s home parish. The village, with its flat fields and fenlands, was a land transformed by human hands—drained marshes giving way to fertile fields of wheat, oats, and beans [16]. Charles' father took up farming of a 30-acre plot and Charles, the eldest boy, would have been expected to help on the farm, even at a young age [4] [5].
Village of Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen
By the time he was eight, Charles and his family moved again, this time to Kings Langley in Hertfordshire, where his father resumed work as a gamekeeper [6].
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In 1879, at the age of 12, Charles returned to Norfolk with his family, this time settling in Tilney All Saints where his father took up a 120-acre farm. It was here, amongst the managed farmland that made up the Norfolk landscape, that Charles would spend the rest of his youth. His father not only managed the farm but also operated The Shore Boat, a public house on their property on Lynn Road [8] [9] [28] [29].
Shore Boat Inn
​Charles attended school [8] and would have worked on the farm with his father and younger brothers, William, Henry and John. The family were no stranger to hardship, with Charles losing a sister and two other brothers to childhood diseases [30] [31] [32].
​
As Charles left his teenage years, he and his brother William developed an interest in Australia. The Australian colony of Queensland was offering free and assisted passage to help meet the huge demand in labour required to develop its economy.
​
Australia was remote and Queensland towns particularly remote, even by Australian standards. The colony had only started welcoming non-convict European settlers from 1842 and most of northern and western Queensland was still primarily inhabited by its native indigenous population. However, as European colonisation encroached, often violently, small townships were erected while squatters moved to claim land on which to run cattle and sheep [17] [19].
​
Farm labourers were particularly desirable by Queensland, with the colony offering free and assisted passage to single agricultural workers [19]. The local papers in Norfolk, such as the Downham Market Gazette, ran regular ads promoting the passage to Queensland. In 1885, William left for Australia and two years later, at the age of 20, Charles followed [10] [35]. ​​
Example of an ad run in the Downham Market Gazette in the 1880s
On the 5th April 1887, Charles boarded the Waroonga steamship in London, to embark on the two-month voyage to Australia. The ship was filled with fellow emigrants, all hoping for a better life in the new colony. He was placed in steerage, the lowest class of accommodation on the ship. The area would have been dark, crowded and close to the water line [10] [11].
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Steerage quarters had berths lining the walls and a long dining table in the middle. Passengers were organised into messes of eight to ten people prior to embarkation and then cooked, ate, washed and cleaned within their mess and to a timetable specifying when each mess could do their chores [11].
The typical daily routine in steerage began at 6am with washing, dressing and tidying up before breakfast. Emigrants would then clear away and begin their chores: cleaning berths, scrubbing decks, and doing washing. Single men were expected to help out with extra tasks. Tea was about 5pm, with lights out at 10pm. Between meals and chores, steerage passengers used their leisure time to relax, play deck games and sports, read, sew, and write letters or journals [11].​​
SS Waroonga in dry dock, Brisbane, Queensland
After weeks of open ocean, the ship finally arrived at Queensland at the end of May and then began the slow crawl down the coast, stopping at each major port. First Thursday Island, then Cooktown, Townsville and Mackay. At Rockhampton, Charles was one of only two male steerage passengers to disembark, the other passenger an Irish labourer from Tipperary whose passage had been paid by someone in Australia. They were joined by five young women, all domestic servants, and a married couple from first class [10].
​
Nine people, from Ireland and England, looking at Australia and Rockhampton for the first time.
East St, Rockhampton, Queensland c1897
Horsedrawn carts and carriages in front of the Kent Brewery, Rockhampton c1895
Journey to outback Australia
Charles had arrived in a place very different from the quiet, cultivated fields of England. Rockhampton was on the rise, its economy fueled by the gold rush at nearby Mt Morgan and the flourishing wool trade [18].
We don't know how long Charles stayed in Rockhampton but he moved west, probably by railway that linked the stations of western Queensland to Rockhampton. By the 1890s, he was working as a shearer in the Tambo area. The heat and dust of the shearing sheds were a far cry from the cool, damp fields of Norfolk, but Charles adapted, joining the ranks of men who clipped the thick wool from thousands of sheep by hand each season. Given the seasonality of the work - several weeks over winter - shearers tended to be nomadic, carrying swags and travelling hundreds of miles on foot or bicycle between sheds. They had a generally unsavoury reputation. The first shearers in New Zealand were from Australia and they were described as a "set of scoundrels", known for their drinking and colourful language [23] [24]. ​​
Loaded carts in front of Whitman's store in Tambo, c1888
It appears Charles worked for the Oakwood Pastoral Company, south of Tambo, close to Chinchilla, but he probably also worked at the many other stations in the area, such as Minnie Downs or Lansdowne [34].
During shearing season, Charles would have worked in a gang in the shearing shed. He handled the bucking sheep, using manual blade shears and a scissor action to shear then pushing the shorn animal through the port hole next to him through to the pens outside. The work was exhausting and shearers were incentivised to get through as many sheep as possible, being paid four shillings per 20 sheep [22] [23] [24] [25].
​
Working conditions for shearers were consistently poor. Accommodation was often in drafty huts, usually built of slabs without any windows, with a bare earth floor and rough board bunks built in tiers around the walls, with a dining table down the centre and a fireplace at one end. Sanitation was primitive, often flowing into the only water source, causing disease. As a result, many shearers joined unions to campaign for better conditions. By 1891, unrest was brewing in the shearing camps until tensions between workers and station owners reached a boiling point. When a station manager at Logan Downs asked shearers to sign a contract limiting their union power, it sparked outrage [20] [24].
Queensland blade shearers, 1890s
On the 5th January 1891, the shearers' unions gathered Barcaldine and declared a strike that spread like wildfire across Queensland. Armed camps of strikers gathered outside towns, and rumors of sabotage spread through the region. Charles likely witnessed, or even participated in, the strike as it spread to Tambo and surrounding regions. The conflict between union and non-union shearers, derogatorily called "scabs," escalated throughout the year, culminating in arrests and marches. At Oakwood Station, several shearers were arrested for arson and rioting. In Barcaldine, a march took place attracting well over 1,000 people, with leaders wearing blue sashes and carrying the Eureka Flag. Cheers were given for "the Union", "the Eight-hour day" and "the Strike Committee" [20] [21] [25]. ​​
Soldiers on horseback riding through Hughenden during the 1891 Shearers Strike
Despite the efforts of the union, the strike was eventually broken. The summer had been unseasonably wet, and the strike was poorly timed for maximum effect on the winter shearing season. By May the union camps were full of hungry penniless shearers. However, it left an indelible mark on the Australian labour movement, paving the way for the formation of the Australian Labor Party [20].
​
Charles’ personal life during these years was as transient as his work. In 1894, he fathered a son, Charles Joseph, with Elizabeth Legg, an impermanent relationship that likely reflected the impermanent nature of his life in the outback, where seasonal workers drifted between jobs and towns [35]. While in Tambo, he lived at the Royal Carrangarra Hotel, a typical lodging for single men who only needed temporary accommodation [12] [13]. ​
Royal Carrangarra Hotel, Tambo c1936
The unforgiving and unsanitary environment typical of western Queensland eventually took its toll on Charles. In April 1899, he contracted typhoid fever, a common affliction in Queensland, found from Brisbane to the remote stations. Typhoid, a bacterial infection spread through contaminated food and water, was a feared disease with a 15% mortality rate. For five weeks, Charles battled fever, pain, and the gradual decline of his body, treated by the local doctor in Tambo, Dr. Nicoll. But despite his best efforts, Charles succumbed to the disease on the 31st May 1899. He was just 32 years old [13].
​
Charles was laid to rest in Tambo’s cemetery, far from the green fields of Norfolk where he had spent his childhood [13]. In his short 32 years, Charles Fendick crossed continents and oceans, participating in the shaping of two very different worlds—first as a farm boy in the breadbasket of England and later as a shearer on the harsh frontiers of Queensland. Though he died young, Charles’ journey was one of resilience and adaptability, one of the hundreds of thousands who left everything behind to seek a new life in the unknown.
Source information
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Charles Fendick, England & Wales Birth Certificate, Registered 1st Quarter 1867 in Newark Union, Record no: 151, General Register Office [www.gro.gov.uk]
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Charles Fendick, Baptismal record, St Mary Magdalene Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen Parish Register [Church of England], 3 Oct 1867, Record no: 532, Ancestry [www.ancestry.co.uk]
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William Fendick, England & Wales Birth Certificate, Registered 3rd Quarter 1868 in Newark Union, Record no: 370, General Register Office [www.gro.gov.uk]. Birth certificate of Charles' brother William, which gives location of family
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​Kate Fendick, England & Wales Birth Certificate, Registered 1st Quarter 1870 in Downham Union, Record no: 280, General Register Office [www.gro.gov.uk]
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Charles Fendick [1871], Census return for Farm House, Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen, Norfolk, The National Archives of the UK, Ancestry [www.ancestry.co.uk]
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Henry Fendick, England & Wales Birth Certificate, Registered 1st Quarter 1873 in Hemel Hempsted, Record no: 444, General Register Office [www.gro.gov.uk]. Birth certificate of Charles' brother Henry, which gives location of family
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Frank Fendick, England & Wales Death Certificate, Registered 2nd Quarter 1876 in Hemel Hempsted, Record no: 183, General Register Office [www.gro.gov.uk]. Death certificate of Charles' brother Frank, which gives location of family
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Charles Fendick [1881], Census return for Tilney All Saints, Norfolk, The National Archives of the UK, Ancestry [www.ancestry.co.uk]
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Charles Fendick [1891], Census return for Lynn Rd, Tilney All Saints, Norfolk, The National Archives of the UK, Ancestry [www.ancestry.co.uk]. Record for Charles' father, Charles senior. The fact the family are still living in Tilney All Saints supports that Charles very likely lived in Tilney All Saints until he departed for Australia in 1887
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​James C Fendick, Register of immigrants: Waroonga [1887-1888], DR39554, 1887-1888, Register of passengers on immigrant ships arriving in Queensland - No. 9 [11 Jan 1887 - 6 Apr 1888], page 5, QLD State Archives [www.archivessearch.qld.gov.au]. Full document here. Although in name of James C Fendick, I do think this is Charles Fendick. There's no record of a James Fendick in Queensland and this arrival would fit what we know of Charles' arrival - his presence in the 1881 UK census and absence in the 1891 UK census indicates he left the UK and arrived in Australia between 1881-1891. This is the only record of a Fendick arriving in Queensland, with the exception of his brother William.
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Class distinctions, Shipboard: the 19th century emigrant experience, State Library of NSW [sl.nsw.gov.au]
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​Charles Fendick, Electoral district of Barcoo, 1895, Australia Electoral Rolls, FindMyPast [www.findmypast.co.uk]
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Charles Fendick, Electoral district of Barcoo, 1896, Australia Electoral Rolls, FindMyPast [www.findmypast.co.uk]
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Charles Fendick, Queensland Death Certificate, 31 May 1899, Record no: 1899/C/4431, QLD Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages [www.familyhistory.bdm.qld.gov.au]
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Syston, Last updated 9 Aug 2023, Genuki [www.genuki.org.uk]
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Wiggenhall St Mary Magdalen, The Post Office Directory of the Counties of Norfolk, Edited by E. R. Kelly, 1879, Ancestry [www.ancestry.co.uk]
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Moreton Bay Penal Settlement, Last edited 29 Jul 2024, Wikipedia [en.wikipedia.org]
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Rockhampton, Last edited 28 Aug 2024, Wikipedia [en.wikipedia.org
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How Did Poor People Emigrate from the British Isles to Australian in the Nineteenth Century?, Eric Richards, Journal of British Studies, Jul 1993, Vol 32, No 3, page 256, JSTOR [www.jstor.org]
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1891 Australian shearers' strike, Last edited 13 Aug 2024, Wikipedia [en.wikipedia.org]
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The late strike, The Brisbane Courier, 15 Aug 1891, page 6, National Library of Australia [trove.nla.gov.au]
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Sheep shearing, Australian agricultural and rural life, State Library of NSW [sl.nsw.gov.au]
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Williams, Des, Shearing, 24 Nov 2008, TeAra: The encyclopedia of New Zealand [teara.govt.nz]
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Reflecting on the 1891 Shearers' Strike, Hughenden [visitinghughenden.com.au]
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The Employers' and Shearers' Conference, The Western Champion, 21 Jan 1890, page 4, National Library of Australia [trove.nla.gov.au]
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Barclay, Enid, Fevers and stinks: some problems of public health in the 1870s and 1880s, Queensland Heritage, Vol 2, No 4, 1971, page 3
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Tout-Smith, Deborah, Typhoid epidemics in Victoria, Accessed 13 Sep 2024, Museums Victoria Collections [collections.museumsvictoria.com.au]
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Charles Fendick, Tilney All Saints, Kelly's Directory of Norfolk, 1879, Ancestry [www.ancestry.co.uk]. Records Charles Fendick senior as being at the Shore Boat.
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Shore Boat Tilney All Saints, Norfolk Public Houses [www.norfolkpubs.co.uk]. Records Charles Fendick senior as having the license of the Shore Boat from 1879-1904
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Harriett Fendick, England & Wales Death Certificate, Registered 3rd Quarter 1867 in Downham, Record no: 331, General Register Office [www.gro.gov.uk]
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Frank Fendick, England & Wales Death Certificate, Registered 2nd Quarter 1876 in Hemel Hempsted, Record no: 183, General Register Office [www.gro.gov.uk]
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Arthur Fendick, England & Wales Death Certificate, Registered 4th Quarter 1882 in Wisbech, Record no: 246, General Register Office [www.gro.gov.uk]
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William Fendick, Queensland Assisted Immigration 1848-1912, Chyebassa 1885, FindMyPast [www.findmypast.co.uk]
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Charles Fendick, Intestacy File, Public Curator Office Rockhampton, 1900, State Library of QLD [www.archivessearch.qld.gov.au]. Included in list of assets was a cheque from the Oakwood Pastoral Company, likely for work there.
Personal map
Map of places from Charles's life
