E.A. Pullen

Signed family name

Pullen

Signed given name

E.A.

Given address

Napier

Sheet number

435

Town/Suburb

Napier

City/Region

Hawke's Bay

Notes

Biography contributed by Kate Riddick.

Elizabeth Ann Pritchard was born in February 1856 in Howick, Auckland, youngest daughter of John James Pritchard and Mary (nee Tyler), married in 1842 in Herefordshire, England.

20 year old John enlisted in 1826 with the 54 Regiment of Foot, Gloucester. From 1828-1840 he was based at Trichinopoly (Tiruchchirappalli), Tamil Nadu, India.

John, Mary, and 3 children sailed from London to Auckland in 1847 on the Minerva as Fencible Settlers. In the 1848 Auckland Directory, John J. Pritchard is listed as a Wagoner, and in 1855 as a Labourer.

In 1861 the Pritchard family moved to Shakespeare Road, the main route from Napier CBD to Ahuriri port. In the 1870s John was described as variously bellringer and chimney sweep. John died in 1876, Mary in 1902, both buried in the Bluff Hill Cemetery.

In 1869 Elizabeth, aged 14, worked as a nurse in the household of Henry Parker, a butcher and married father of four, in Waitangi (near Clive). Henry promised Elizabeth a silk dress and hat, and seduced her while his wife was away. Frances Pritchard was born in July 1870.

The Supreme Court awarded James £125 damages in November 1870 “for losses sustained by him through the alleged seduction of his daughter by the defendant." The judge commented that "a person who was sufficiently physically advanced to bring forth a child, could hardly herself be called a child.”

Elizabeth married Henry Games Warren in 1873 and had William (who died in infancy around 1874) and Mabel in 1876. Nothing further is known about the Warren family.

Elizabeth had several children with James Benjamin Pullen, who she married in 1889:

George (born 1880)
James (1882)
Sophie/Sophia (1885)
Elizabeth (1888)
Emily (1890)
Wilfred (1894)

Sophie and Elizabeth later married brothers, David and Reuben Trow. Emily married a Matthew Campbell.

James was custodian of the Napier Theatre Royal from October 1886, where the family lived. Local papers report James doing scenery construction and painting, and assisting with an 1890 theatre fire.

James died in 1893 aged 39, leaving Elizabeth pregnant with young children. They were in a "penniless condition" and a significant amount of money (over £25) was collected by the local newspaper for the "Pullen Fund".

Elizabeth died aged 90 in Palmerston North, where her late daughter Frances Clapham lived, in 1947. She was buried in the family plot, Bluff Hill Cemetery, Napier.