William Studds
William was the son of Thomas Studds and Martha Weston.
William, aged 14 years, accompanied his mother, Martha, and sister, Mary Ann, from England to Victoria, arriving in the ship Zenobia in 1869. Nothing else is known of William except from his death certificate. In early June 1877 he developed typhoid fever, and in subsequent weeks he developed acute nephritis and eventually entered a coma. According to the Creswick Hospital Inpatients Register he was admitted on 4 July 1877. The register states that he was single, age 21, a labourer and residing in Bullarook. He died three days later on 7 July 1877 in Creswick Hospital, Victoria (just north of Ballarat). He was buried at "Mount Prospect" which is approximately 10 kiloometres east of Creswick. The death record confirms that he was unmarried and the names of his parents were recorded as unknown.
This suggests that his mother (who had re-married and was now Mrs Price) and sister did not know of his illness and were not known to the staff of Creswick Hospital, whose Secretary was the official informant of the death. William, a young single man, may have been working in a mine, became ill, and died in hospital with no one aware of any relatives who might be notified.
William's death certificate was obtained because records have been compiled into a database using modern computer technology. However, in the 19th century, records were not so easily traced. It is quite possible that contact from William just stopped and his mother never knew what became of her son. William's sister, Mary Ann, named her next-born son William, born in 1881, perhaps suggesting she was aware of her brother's fate or, perhaps, simply aware that he was lost.
