Summary

This photograph depicts a funeral procession (or cortège) travelling from the Royal Hotel, St. George Street, to the Georgetown Cemetery. There are several buggies, horses, and people assembling and all are well-dressed, including the small boy peering over the neat, painted picket fence to right. This funeral is most likely that of Mrs. Margaret Eleanor Gillett, respected wife of Benjamin Gillett (licensee & proprietor of the Royal Hotel from 1898-1908). Mrs. Gillett (née Daley) was only 50 years old when she died unexpectedly Monday, 24 February 1908 after contracting dengue fever. Mrs. Gillett fell ill shortly after attending the marriage of her only daughter, Miss Mary Elizabeth (Minnie) Kean, to Mr. Peter Richmond Sloan on Sunday, 16 February 1908 in Georgetown.

Margaret Eleanor Gillett was born in 1858 to parents William and Mary E. Daley in Evans River, NSW. Margaret and James Kean, a publican and tenor in a local church choir, were married in Grafton, NSW in 1877. They had four children together: Edmond John Kean (born 1878), Joseph Kean (born 1879), Gregory James Kean (born 1880), and Mary Elizabeth Sloan (nee Kean; born 1881). James Kean died of unknown circumstances in their Grafton home on Christmas Day, 25 December 1882. Margaret later married Benjamin Gillett, of Croydon, in Casino, NSW in 1899, after which they moved to Georgetown.

Georgetown is located roughly 400 kilometres south-west of Cairns and 145 kilometres east of Croydon. Originally named Etheridge in 1869, the town was renamed Georgetown in 1871, in honour of a gold commissioner from Gilberton, Howard St. George. The rural town is the administrative centre of the Etheridge Shire and lies along the Etheridge River. The Etheridge Shire was over 38,000 km2 and included the townships and goldfields of Cumberland, Georgetown, Charleston and Einasleigh. Due to the sporadic nature of the ore and the difficulties in mining it efficiently, goldfields in the Etheridge Shire were often designated "poor man's fields," even though well over 500,000 oz. of gold was reportedly mined there by the start of the First World War.

The photographs in this collection were taken by the Reverend Frederic Charles Hall (1878-1926) during the period 1902-1909 when he was the Anglican Curate appointed to Georgetown in North Queensland. Hall's foremost hobby was photography. He used both a half-plate camera with tripod made by J. Lancaster & Son, Birmingham and a quarter-plate Austral No. 3 made by the Australian company, Baker & Rouse. Glass negatives from Ilford and Austral were used; developing was done by the photographer himself and printing by exposure to sunlight.