Newspapers make history harder

Digging out headstone history can be a real brain-teaser.

This West End, Townsville cemetery gravestone is for an Emile Gustav Cravino, whose headstone reads that he was killed on the jetty works, but there were no newspaper reports for such a death.

There were, however, reports for a man variously named “Carandist” and “Cavanagh”, with identical stories telling of a man crushed between two waggons (sic) after he “got on the wrong line’’.  

The Mackay man died, leaving a wife and six children. And it seems that his brother Adolphe married the widow Eliza in 1888, but then committed suicide two years later.

The naming errors may have been due to attempts to Anglicise the name, or to vagaries of the use of telegraphs to spread news.

A newspaper story two years later makes it likely that the reports were about the Cravino whose headstone is pictured above.

Another man with the last name Cravino committed suicide at the Crown Hotel, Townsville, and reports of his death said that his brother was killed while working on the jetty two years ago. The following details make it most likely that this was Adolphe.

Reports of the second Cravino’s death in 1890 would certainly not be written today as it was then, seeming to take delight in the drama of the event and speculating on the cause.

Cravino, described as “a traveller”, committed suicide at the Crown Hotel by taking poison.

The groans of the man roused the house, but before the doctor arrived he had expired, after suffering great agony

the telegraph

“The deceased’s brother was killed while working on the jetty two years ago, and his first wife died from sunstroke at Rockhampton.

“He then married his brother’s widow.

Rockhampton’s Morning Bulletin provided more detail, saying he had arrived at the hotel in a despondent mood ten days beforehand.

He had borrowed two shillings, and it was assumed he used that to buy the strychnine which took his life.

“On Friday he had two or three drinks, and shortly before eleven o’clock, took a final drink of brandy.

“He complained of an internal disease, and was given a moderate dose of laudanum earlier the same evening.”

When his groans roused the house he was given emetics. He died before a doctor could arrive.

Shortly before he died Cravino took off two rings he was wearing and handed them to another man?

Cravino had been living in Charters Towers and had worked as a clerk.

“It is thought that ill health and financial troubles so prayed on Cravino’s mind that he sought refuge from the cares of this world, and hesitated not to choose perhaps the most painful way out of it.”

the telegraph

Those financial troubles would not have been helped by the addition of six children to his family. Eliza moved on from the death of her second husband, marrying again in 1891 (this husband died in 1897) and again in 1903.

Sources : The Telegraph, Tuesday 25 March 1890, p2

Queensland Times, Ipswich Herald and General Advertiser, Tuesday 15 November 1887, p7

The Australian, Saturday 19 November 1887, p15

The Week, Saturday 26 November 1887, p8

Morning Bulletin, Saturday 29 March 1890, p6