Herbert Marsden Taylor was born in Islington, a suburb of London, in 1862. When he emigrated to Australia, he settled first in Ballarat.
By September 1888, aged 26, he was working as an accountant in the National Bank in Benalla.
That year, he married Martha Emmerson Shields, known as Mattie, a widow 10 years his senior. The two had four children, all of whom died very young.
Martha also brought five children by her first husband, Finlay Anderson, into the marriage.
Martha and Finlay had operated a drapery business called Finlay Anderson and Co. in Benalla for nine years. The business was a profitable one.
It employed five staff. When Finlay died in 1886, Martha continued the business.
In May 1888, six months before her marriage to Herbert, Martha sold it to Herbert and her employee, Albert Curtis.
She later gave evidence that she did not know how much the purchase price was.
All she knew was that the purchase price was to be paid to her in instalments, but she did not know whether any instalments had ever been made.
These facts seem incredible to 21st-century ears, but at the time, they were not unusual.
It was only three years before, under the Married Women’s Property Act of 1885, that Victorian women gained the right to hold property in their own right and receive income from a business.
Although the two men ran the business, they contributed no capital to it. Instead, Herbert asked Martha to guarantee the business by giving a bill of sale (a mortgage of personal effects).
Albert and Herbert were no businessmen. Within a year of their marriage, despite additional loans from Martha, Herbert told her that the business was unprofitable and would result in Albert and Herbert’s bankruptcy.
In an attempt to prevent this, Martha paid many of the business’s debts.
She also found herself required to find $3600 to repay the bill of sale. Nothing availed to put off the inevitable.
In October 1889, both men were declared bankrupt. Martha ended up an additional $2400 out of pocket.
One imagines that relations were tense for some time between the thrifty widow and her feckless husband.
At this time, bankruptcy would have meant that Herbert lost his job in the bank.
After his bankruptcy in 1889, Herbert earned his living as a commission agent.
He was also a commissioner of the Benalla Waterworks.
However, from then on, Martha was always careful to keep her business separate from her husband’s.
We do not hear of Herbert again until 1906. On a Saturday morning in April, he borrowed a double-barrelled shotgun from his stepson and went out shooting along the River Reserve about a kilometre from Benalla.
As he climbed through a wire fence into Myer’s paddock, he placed the shotgun against the wire of the fence. When he was through the fence, he pulled the loaded shotgun through after him.
Careless to the last, Herbert had cocked both hammers. A hammer caught on the wire of the fence. The loaded shotgun discharged into his chest.
His body was discovered by police who were out looking for him. Herbert was 44 years old. He is buried in Benalla cemetery.
Martha died at 69 in 1922. She is buried with Herbert and their infant children in Benalla cemetery.
– John Barry