The Stickens
Between 1850-1900 the population of Australia rose from 405,000 to 3.7 million, the majority of whom came from emigrants from the British Isles. One of these was Mary Jane Newman (1851-1905), eldest surviving daughter of Samuel John Newman (1826-1886) and Mary Jane Pollard. At the age of 17 she undertook the fourteen week voyage, probably disembarking at Melbourne in March 1868.
Three years later she married Michael Sticken, a Hanoverian settler some 19 years her senior, who had arrived during the Gold Rush. Mary Jane and Michael had eleven children before she left him for Frederick Olsen, by whom she had a further 3 children.
Although Mary Jane never returned to England, two of her sons Harry (Henry Thomas Sticken 1880-1947) and William John Sticken (1887-1967) visited their Newman relations at the beginning of the twentieth century and Harry married a relation of one of his relatives. Other sons of Mary Jane Newman also proved to be colourful characters. The Melbourne Argus 1918 lists Samuel Newman Sticken (1889-1967) as being tried for having escaped from the McLeod Reformatory on French Island; whilst Ernest August Sticken (1883-1956), described as a professional boxer, was charged and acquitted of counterfeiting coinage, but not before he had attempted to escape from police custody by leaping from a moving railway carriage and being pursued for over a mile.
