Life
Born 20 April 1848, Elizabeth and her family lived in the Kooringa creek dugouts (rooms cut into the high banks of the Kooringa creek) until a flash flood washed their home away in January 1852. With no home and having lost all their possessions, Elizabeth's father joined the Victorian gold rush and moved to Ballarat, the rest of family, along with their babysitter, joined him in October taking residence in a tent on the goldfields. Her mother disliked Ballarat and described it as "this horrid, sin stained colony of scoundrels and villains" and, following the death from dysentery of Elizabeth's younger sister not long after their arrival, moved to Adelaide with another man leaving Elizabeth to be raised by her father with help from his neighbours.
Following the Eureka Stockade rebellion in 1854, Elizabeth was traumatised after witnessing the death of her father's friend Henry Powell at the hands of police in an act of retaliation for the rebellion. A policeman slashed Powell across the head with his sabre while several more policemen then shot him as he lay on the ground. The policemen then trampled the body for some time with their horses. The following year seven year old Elizabeth was raped and left for dead by an itinerant Indian in an attack that left her both psychologically disturbed and unable to have children due to gynaecological damage. Her doctors gave her Opium for the pain to which she subsequently became addicted.
On 2 February 1857 her father died of consumption and Elizabeth was put into service with the family of a pharmacist in Melbourne which gave her easy access to the Opium she needed to feed her drug habit. At the age of 15 she left the household and moved into the Ballarat township, along with a large quantity of Opium she had accumulated, obtaining work in a guest-house. According to a journal written by her friend Hannah Blight, during this time Elizabeth supplied Opium to prostitutes for use as revenge on their more abusive clients in order to punish and rob them.
In 1865 after receiving news that her mother was alive and looking for her, Elizabeth travelled to Moonta-Moontera (Aboriginal for dense scrub) in South Australia and moved in with her mother and stepfather. To support herself she got work as a housekeeper, on weekends taught Sunday school and there is evidence she even managed to kick her addiction as, unlike the eastern states where they were freely available, opiates required a prescription in South Australia. In 1866 a relative of the family she worked for arrived from England and after moving into the household took over her job which led to Elizabeth's dismissal.
Read more about this topic: Elizabeth Woolcock
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