| Thomas Bunbury Gough
Lieutenant
Born c. 1844
Died 30th. January, 1905.
By Shirley Joy.
Thomas Bunbury Gough was born in Londonderry, Ireland c. 1844, the son of Benjamin Gough, Clergyman and his wife Letitia Gough, née Friend.
He came to Australia in about 1873 where he married Evelyn Anna Walker Rigg at St. Peter and St. Paul’s Catholic Church, Emerald Hill on 4th. June 1873.
Thomas Bunbury Gough’s grandson, Guy Boyd of Black Rock, Victoria, a member of the famous artistic Boyd family, made a public appeal in The Advertiser (Sandringham-Brighton), on Wednesday 9th. October 1985 for HMVS Cerberus to be restored. Guy pledged one of his bronze sculptures, valued at $10,000, to raise money for the restoration of the Cerberus, “provided the Federal Government comes to the aid of the 19th. century monitor.” However, this appeal to the Federal Government was not successful.
In The Advertiser report of 9th. October, 1985, Guy Boyd states his “grandfather Bunbury Gough captained the Cerberus during the latter part of the 19th. century.
Brenda Niall in her book the boyds, published by Melbourne University Press in 2002, refers to Thomas Bunbury Gough on two occasions.
Page 145 -
“The youngest of the six children of journalist and editor Evelyn Gough and naval officer Thomas Bunbury Gough, Doris grew up in an unusual household, in which her mother’s buoyant spirit, radical politics and Christian Science faith contrasted with her father’s conservative background and temperament. When Gough’s naval career failed to prosper, and he lost money in the 1890s. crash, Evelyn went out to work as co-founder of a feminist newspaper “The Sun : A Society Courier”.
Page 187 –“the naval officer’s ceremonial sword which had belonged to their Gough grandfather (and) was used to poke the fire”.
Thomas Bunbury Gough and his wife Evelyn had six children -
Evelyn Mary Bloomfield Gough - born 1874.
Beatrice Maud B. Gough - born 1875.
Hilda Mary Bloomfield Gough - born 1878.
John Guy Maxwell Gough - born 1884.
Letitia Louise Gough - born 1886.
Doris Lucy Eleanor - born 1889.
The youngest of the Gough children, Doris Lucy Eleanor Gough married William Merric Boyd in 1915. They were the parents of Guy Boyd, sculptor, who made the plea in 1985 to restore the Cerberus.
Thomas Bunbury Gough, the former naval officer, took his own life at Milton Street, West Melbourne on the 30th. January, 1905. He was buried in the St. Kilda Cemetery. |
