The Mystery of Eliza Donnithorne

Eliza Donnithorne is the Newtown recluse whose tragic tale became linked to Dickens’ Great Expectations

By Matt Murphy

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Eliza Donnithorne is one of the most famous people in Newtown’s history and the controversy about her life and its influence is worth investigating. 

Her story is not only contained in the pages of books or chapters concerning Newtown’s past but can often be seen in ‘historical features’ in metropolitan Sunday papers. There is even an opera named after her, Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot (a maggot being a kind of solo dance), which was first performed as part of the Adelaide Festival of Arts in 1974 and has recently been shown to audiences in London and Berlin. 

Her tragic life also featured in a 1987 children’s book (L. Gleeson’s I am Susannah), and she even scores a column in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, a series of tomes usually reserved for those having an impact on Australia’s history. Additionally, punching her name into Google reaps a bounty of matches. But what of her real story?

Eliza was the daughter of James Donnithorne, an East India Company Judge and Master of the Mint in Calcutta. In 1836 he arrived in Australia, bringing Eliza with him; his wife and other daughters having died of cholera. His two sons, both of whom had established military careers, stayed in India. 

James and young Eliza settled in Cambridge Hall on King Street (between present-day Georgina and Fitzroy Streets) and renamed it Camperdown Lodge. James Donnithorne built up a sizeable estate which Eliza inherited upon his death in 1852. It is about this time that the story starts to get a bit sticky. 

Eliz'a Wedding

Most sources agree that in 1856, at the approximate age of 30, Eliza prepared to wed. As Eliza was one of Sydney’s social elite, her wedding was to be a celebrated occasion. 

The banquet was laid out, the guests assembled, the coaches prepared to escort her the short distance to St Stephen’s church and a crowd had gathered to be entertained by the spectacle. But the groom never appeared. 

In one version from the 1930s he had a name, George Cuthbertson, but in earlier versions he is anonymous. Some versions, which keep Eliza’s father alive for a few more years than his headstone attests, insist that James did not approve of his only daughter’s marrying so beneath herself and either paid off or warned off the intended groom. 

Another version, again written many years later, has it that the groom fell off his horse on the way from Parramatta and yet another states that, as an infantryman, he was urgently shipped out to India. 

From here on, the various versions of the story roughly merge again. The invited guests and the throng of onlookers slowly dissipate and the bride-to-be is left in the house alone, except for two faithful servants and the prepared wedding feast. 

The story goes that she insisted that the banquet and the house remain in readiness for the arrival of her beloved. The door to the grand house remained ajar, held in place by a loose chain from where people could see in and Eliza could see out awaiting her fiancé’s arrival. But he never appears, the wedding table is never cleared and she remains in her wedding dress until her death in 1886. 

Eliza Donnithorne has since been credited with posthumous fame as the character of Miss Havisham in Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations, whose tragic story is eerily similar, with four different versions about how Dickens heard her tale. 

The four options are: 

1. Charles Dickens’ sons are in Australia and mention the story to their father in their despatches. This cannot be true as Great Expectations was published well before they arrived. 

2. Caroline Chisholm, in one of her many letters to Dickens, mentions Eliza’s tragic tale. It is true that Chisholm was a friend of Dickens and after returning to Australia from England did keep in regular contact with him during the 1840s, but by the mid-1850s she suffered terribly from a debilitating illness which prevented her from picking up a pen, and while many letters she wrote have been preserved there are none from this time. 

3. Dickens read about it in the English press. This is not really a plausible option as no press articles have been found in Australia, England or anywhere, that tell the tale until after Eliza died 30 years later.

4. Dickens heard the story from Eliza’s brothers who lived in the same town. While Eliza’s brothers were known to be longtime residents of Twickenham, Dickens only lived there briefly in 1838. This was long before the alleged nuptials in Newtown were to have taken place. 

The most logical story is in Eliza’s biography in the Australian Dictionary of Biography which suggests that after reading Great Expectations, many Sydneysiders identified Eliza as being similarly wealthy and reclusive as Dickens’s fictitious Havisham and that over time the story of who influenced who has been overturned. 

Eliza's Death

It wasn’t until Eliza’s death that the story of her supposed wedding started to be gossiped about and appear in the press. Even Dame Mary Gilmore waded into the story saying she had visited Eliza Donnithorne in 1889 (which is three years after Eliza had died) and that her father had known the intended groom well and that his career as an army officer was ruined by the ordeal. 

But what of the groom? While one telling of the story almost 75 years later refers to him as George Cuthbertson, in all the other accounts he remained anonymous. The births, deaths and marriages records have never heard of Cuthbertson. Where did he come from, and where did he go? 

All stories write that Eliza worshipped at St Stephen’s. Both Eliza and her father are buried there and she donated money towards the building of the magnificent Blacket-designed edifice that replaced the original church in 1874.

In view of this, it is a pretty safe assumption that her wedding, if there was to be one, was to take place there as well. The old St Stephen’s parish records are housed in the Anglican Diocese Archive in Sydney and, much to the surprise of the archivist, St Stephen’s was one of the very few parishes that actually kept a record of marriage banns. 

Marriage banns were formal announcements made to a congregation about an intended wedding. By law, the minister had to announce the wedding at least three consecutive weeks prior to the marriage, to give any who opposed the marriage an opportunity to have the nuptials cancelled. 

The St Stephen’s marriage banns register has a list of intending brides and grooms followed by three columns in which were written the dates that the banns were read out. A curious number of intending marriages were crossed out after one or two church announcements. But from 1845 to 1865 neither the name Donnithorne nor Cuthbertson appear. 1856 was also the first year of civil registrations of marriage in New South Wales but again neither of these surnames appear. 

In my opinion, there was no groom, there was no wedding. There was just a spinster, possibly eccentric, possibly living with her faithful servants. If the sources can be believed, she was an avid reader, as with the exception of the local clergy the only people she met at the front door were those selling books. 

Eliza's Enduring Legacy

In her will, she left everything to her maids, her church and her pets. Her three-line obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald mentions only that she was the daughter of Judge James Donnithorne and says nothing of her allegedly tragic life. 

More tellingly, no mention can be found in any newspaper of the intended upcoming upper-class nuptials, nor any gossip – at least not for the next 30 years - of the tragedy of Eliza being jilted.

Eliza Donnithorne’s grave at St Stephen’s is still the most sought after. In 2004, her headstone was broken (or vandalised), which made international news with England’s Dickens’ Society making a financial contribution to the National Trust of Australia to assist with its repair.