In July 1859, William Voysey was committed for trial in Ipswich on a charge of stealing the goods of Reuben Treadwell. I told a version of this story on West Bremer Radio.

Voysey had been carrying on an illicit affair with Mrs Emily Treadwell who was Treadwell’s wife. On the day of the alleged theft, Mrs Treadwell left her home with a bundle of clothes, rings, etc and met Voysey where they had arranged in the bush just outside of Little Ipswich, Queensland, or West Ipswich today.

Voysey provided horses and a side-saddle for Mrs. Treadwell, and they started off on their new life together by way of Warwick, to New England in northern New South Wales.

But Voysey detoured to Toowoomba where he got work. Mrs. Treadwell wasn’t happy about the change so came back to her husband in Little Ipswich minus some of her clothing and rings. She had no intention of remaining, however, and very coolly told her husband that she intended to be off again in the morning.

As well as alleged theft of the clothes, jewellery, and presumably the wife, Voysey faced a charge of assaulting the husband. Voysey was talking to Mrs Treadwell over the fence, when her husband called her in. Voysey responded with obscene language and coming over and striking Treadwell in the head.

The court found Voysey guilty of both theft and assault, and imposed a small fine of £1 but an enormous twelve month good behaviour bond of £160.

To be sure that he would get his money back, Voysey moved far away from Mrs Treadwell and temptation, at first to Rockhampton where he set-up shop as a wheelwright and general blacksmith in the centre of town in Fitzroy Street.

He took his business further north to Mackay and that’s where a young man employed by Voysey died in a shockingly sudden manner. The man passed away from the effects of an emetic which he had taken to induce vomiting. He was dead within two minutes of being carried into Voysey’s house. The enormous quantity of blood which gushed from his mouth and nostrils indicated that one of his heart arteries had been ruptured. 

Voysey went back to Rockhampton and effectively drank himself to death. In February 1912 he was convicted of drunkenness for the seventh time. Eight months later he was dead and buried in the South Rockhampton Cemetery.

Meanwhile back in Little Ipswich, it was a very different story for Reuben Treadwell. He prospered as a bricklayer and builder. Despite all that happened in court, Reuben and his wife Emily reconciled and got back together.

They had three children at the time of the trials. Afterwards they had at five more children and remained married for a further forty-one years until Reuben’s death in 1900. He was remembered particularly for his sterling upright character.

Of their eight children, their two sons both served in the Boer War. One son Reuben Jnr was squadron sergeant-major with Queensland’s 7th Battalion in South Africa. He became a prison warder in Toowoomba. The other son George was a private with the 6th Queensland Imperial Bushmen and became a Toowoomba newspaper publisher.

Then there was a daughter Clara who really put the family on the map. She married the well-connected Darling Downs grazier Charles Rowdon Wippell. He was a member of the Balonne Shire Council for twenty-five years and was the shire chairman three times.

When he died in 1934 his estate was valued at £49,000 or over four million dollars in today’s money. He had inherited one million dollars from his cousin Mrs Eliza Rowdon Hall.

Mrs Hall was childless and a well-known philanthropist. Her estate was valued at almost seventy-six million dollars. Her husband had been a major investor in the stagecoach business Cobb & Co.

So despite the drama one hundred and sixty-five years ago of Voysey providing a side saddle to run away with Mrs Treadwell, and the public humiliation of the court cases that followed, it was the resilience and love of Ipswich’s Treadwell family that won out in the end.

Today Emily and Reuben Treadwell rest together forever in the Drayton and Toowoomba Cemetery. (Pictured top of page.)

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD ON WEST BREMER RADIO.

Photo credits:
Reuben and Emily Treadwell memorial, Drayton and Toowoomba Cemetery – Find a Grave, Anne – here lies, 2023.
William Voysey – Find a Grave, Frances France, 2015.
Emily Sarah Treadwell nee Probert and Reuben Treadwell – Family Search.
Eliza Rowdon Hall – By Frederick McCubbin, provided by the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research.