Signed family name
Pidgeon
Signed given name
Matilda E.
Given address
Don Street
Notes
Biographical information provided for the He Tohu exhibition:
Matilda Elizabeth Burch was born in Cranbrook, Kent, in 1859, and came to New Zealand as a domestic servant in 1874. In the same year she married James Henry Pidgeon and they had at least six children, of whom at least four survived infancy. In 1893, they lived on Don Street in Invercargill. James Pidgeon died accidentally of inhaling phosphorus fumes while mixing rabbit poison in 1895. Matilda remarried Jacob Owen in 1898 and they moved to Mataura in Southland. She eventually sued him for divorce in 1911 – under her previous married name of Pidgeon, with which she also married her next husband, George Bishop, in 1913. Matilda died in 1949, aged 89, in Waimate.