MARGARET TURNER CLARKE

CLARKE, MARGARET TURNER (née McLACHLAN later WILIE) (b. Hobart, Tas, 1836; d. Woollahra, NSW, 8 Aug 1887). Charity worker.

A daughter of Charles McLachlan, manager of the Australian Company of Edinburgh and Leith, shipping agents, Margaret McLachlan was educated in England, where she m. John Lunan Wilkie, captain in the 12th Regt. She accompanied him when his regiment was stationed in NSW and then sent in 1861 to quell the anti-Chinese riots at Lambing Flat (Young). Widowed in Feb 1862 and with independent means, she returned to England and entered Florence Nightingale's new nursing school at St Thomas's Hospital, London. She was unable to complete her training because of ill-health. Returning to Lambing Flat in mid- 1865, she nursed miners irrespective of race and formed a Visiting Relief Society for those hit by ill-fortune and drought. In 1866 she m. George O'Malley Clarke (1836-99), senior gold commissioner of the southern fields, but continued her private philanthropic work. While in England in 1863, she had encouraged the Rev W H Pownall (q.v.) to go as a missionary to the goldfields, and she gave generously to the building of the first Church of England at Young, consecrated in Aug 1865 and known till its replacement in 1893 as the Wilkie Memorial Church. In 1866 she raised funds for a Church of England denominational school and parsonage at Young, in 1879 she supported the building of the public school in Young and in 1873 of the Anglican church in the nearby village of Wombat.

In 1882 Mrs Clarke removed to Sydney, when her husband was appointed a stipendiary magistrate for the metropolitan area. Here she helped found the Sydney Home and Training School for Nurses, she continued her charitable works privately and also formed a ladies' visiting relief committee. She died childless leaving legacies to the Sydney City Mission and the Church Society of the Diocese of Goulburn.

R T Wyatt, The History of the Diocese of Goulburn (Sydney, 1937); Burrangong Chronicle, 31 May 1882; Burrangong Argus, 19 Aug 1887; Judith Godden, ‘Philanthropy and the Woman's Sphere’, Macquarie University PhD, 1983

RUTH TEALE