Caroline Barker and Rosa Catlin worked together in 1855 in the new Church of England building in Chapel Street Prahran. They were the teacher and assistant in the Infants’ Section. Their employment is recorded in the Blue Book of government statistics of 1855, with 41 boys and 36 girls in their care and salaries of eighty pounds and sixty pounds respectively. At this time, Caroline was a trained and experienced teacher, and Rosa was a mere sixteen years old.
At age fourteen, Rosa had arrived in Melbourne on the “SEA” in May 1853, with her younger brother, John, aged eleven. Two years earlier, in 1851 they had been living with their elder brother Edwin in the boarding house of their aunt, Mary Bushnell, in 22 Portsea Place, St John, Paddington, Middlesex. Edwin was thirteen, Rosanna was twelve and John was nine. Supposedly, they had been orphaned. They had all been baptised at St George the Martyr Southwark, children of John and Eliza (nee Cattle), a victualler of Dover Road. Rosanna’s baptism was 16 January 1839. Did her father die in 1840, as mother Eliza is found in the 1841 Census with relatives George and Mary Catlin, stable keeper of Catlin’s Yard, Southwark, with the four years old Edwin and seven weeks old baby John. Meanwhile Rosanna, at 2.5 years old, was with fishmonger Thomas and Jane Hellyer in Mount Street St George Hanover Square. Rosa’s independence and capable nature was forged early.
In Australia in 1856, Caroline transferred to the Church of England School, View Street, Bendigo and continued to teach for more than twenty years. She has an explicit record with the Board of Education, whereas Rosa does not. But recordkeeping in these early years was not consistent, and as was frequently the case for young female teachers who did not continue, usually because of marriage, their professional endeavours became lost to history.
It was an innocent statement about a choir in a letter to the editor of the Bendigo Advertiser (2 December 1908) from which the connection is made. John Fly was responding to a reminiscence by choir member Faul, when he named many members of the very first Church of England choir in Bendigo. Of these, many had found partners and wed, among them John Fly and also his brother William, who “married Miss Rosa Catlin (assistant to Mrs Barker at the school).” Rosa was not in Bendigo from Caroline’s arrival, but was probably called to join her within a few months when other assistants proved not to be as capable as she was known to be. Rosa worked until her marriage to William in 1858, so the two educators worked together perhaps for three years, but their mutual love of music would have fostered their friendship for many years after.
Articles from Trove point to William’s work as a builder in Bendigo until at least 1866, and then building schools in the Ballarat area from at least 1876. The couple had eight children before Rosa passed in 1883. The rest, as they say, is history.
May they rest in peace.
Walkers through time 