Maker: Amelia Ruscoe

Panel number: 387

Petition sheet number: 469

Person honouring: Mrs [Mary] Brough

Relationship to maker: Husband’s great-great-grandmother

In later years, Mary Theresa was well known to the police and townspeople of Wanganui as a feisty woman. She was born in Ennistymon, County Clare, and travelled alone to New Zealand on the British Crown, arriving in Lyttelton on 15 August 1863, aged only 17.

She married Edward Tozer (from Devon, England) at Akaroa in 1865 and gave birth in quick succession to four daughters. But Edward was killed in a bush accident in 1871 while Mary was pregnant again; so at 26, she was left to raise five daughters by herself.

It didn’t take Mary long to improve her situation; she married fellow Irishman and widower Thomas Brough in Akaroa in 1873. Thomas was a publican and, by way of proposal, suggested to Mary that she would be more use to him on the other side of the bar, serving, instead of drinking away the profits. The couple later shifted to Wanganui, Thomas having purchased the Railway Hotel.

Although Mary had two children with Thomas they both died in infancy. After three years of marriage Thomas died, leaving Mary once again to fend for herself. Another daughter, Agnes Brough, was born in 1882 but sadly died of TB as a teenager.

Perhaps it is no surprise that Mary had problems with alcohol for more than a decade and in consequence was in trouble with the law. Nevertheless, she signed the 1893 petition, along with her daughter, Mrs Old [also sheet 469].

Mary lived to a ripe old age, dying in 1920 at 75 years.

Panel materials: The base is an old linen table runner, white cotton with a crocheted lace edge at both ends. Photo and signatures are printed onto silk. Artificial leaves and flowers, black lace, black braid, Perle thread cottons, buttons. Base given by a friend, all the rest found in my stash. I used white as the base, with purple and green flowers – suffragette colours. I used black to represent Mary spending so much of her life as a widow, and the children she lost. There are two double leaves for her two marriages and eight single leaves for her children – five at the top to Mr Tozer, two to Mr Brough, and one optional extra. 46 french knots down the side are for the other signatories. In the photo, Mary is first, then her eldest daughter Eleanor, my husband’s great-grandmother, then her daughter Emma [Mrs Old].