Hannah Seals

Signed family name

Seals

Signed given name

Hannah

Given address

King Street

Sheet number

Town/Suburb

Central Dunedin

City/Region

Dunedin

Notes

Biography contributed by Katherine Blakeley

Hannah Jane/Ann Jane Chamberlain was born on 2 December 1849 in Hobart, Tasmania – the daughter of William Chamberlain, a whaler and ship owner, and Susan Andrews.

She married Robert Seals, an accountant, on 14 May 1870 in Hobart and they had a daughter early the following year.

In February 1871 the family sailed for Melbourne where their daughter died, aged six months. They had a further three children in Victoria, two who died in infancy.

Robert was declared insolvent in 1877 and their lives seem to have fallen apart at this stage.

Robert disappears from the records around this time and, in 1878, Ann’s last child Arthur was born.

In June 1879 Ann was living in Dunedin and before the court charged with drunkenness, the case was 'remanded in order that some arrangement might be made for the woman’s removal to the Lunatic Asylum.' After three days in custody Ann was discharged as the police had been unable to find her husband.

The following September Ann was again charged with drunkenness. Her son Arthur was also in court charged with being a 'neglected child', he was committed to the Caversham Industrial School for seven years.

Arthur appears to have been looked after in later years by the Stothart family (See 57 Mrs J Stothart) and when he died in 1913 his death notice gave his name as Arthur David Feals-Stotdart.

In 1880 Ann was charged with vagrancy she was 'receiving money regularly from Hobart Town' she was to be kept in jail until the next instalment arrived 'when she might take her departure for that place'. Ann stayed in Dunedin.

In 1880 Ann 'a well-dressed woman' was charged with vagrancy. The police charged that she 'kept a brothel in Rattray street, known as Southsea Cottage, and that a man was living with her and sharing the profits of the place...She was the widow of a man who had committed suicide and since his death had lived entirely by prostitution.' She was discharged due to the fact that she was receiving money from Tasmania.

Over the years Ann was charged many times with similar offences, most of which resulted in short terms of imprisonment.

After a court appearance in 1885 Euphemia Neveson (See 58 E Neveson), the Matron of the female refuge, offered to take care of Ann in the newly opened Leavitt Home.

She does not appear to have stayed long as later that year she was in court accompanied by Elizabeth Tattersall (See 63 Elizabeth Tattersall).

When Ann appeared in court for the 81st time in 1890, she had 'been an inmate of the Rescue Home, but had run away and resumed her old life of dissipation', she had been found the previous night 'insensible from drink, while her clothes were soaking wet', she had 'reached the lowest state of degradation' and was advised to return to the Rescue Home.

By 1892 the Salvation Army were trying to help Ann and took charge of her after a court appearance.

When Ann signed the suffrage petition she was living in Great King Street, possibly in the Rescue Home - her friend Elizabeth Tattersall signed also and three signatures below is Marion Crawford who was working as a rescue worker, Bessie Davis and Annie Boyd Salvation Army workers. (See 63 Marion Crawford, 63 Bessie Davies and 63 Annie Boyd)

In October 1893 a notice appeared in the paper 'the notorious Ann Jane Seals has been taken in hand by a number of ladies and gentlemen in town and sent to the Magdalen Asylum, near Christchurch for reformation.'

She died at the Convent of the Good Shepherd, Mount Magdala on 19 July 1894 and is buried in the Mount Magdala Cemetery, Halswell, Christchurch.

Her death notice read 'after a life’s fitful fever she rests.'