Toowoomba had scarcely recovered from the excitement caused by a mass elopement of prisoners from the lock-up in 1861, when a fresh shock was given to the nervous system of the town by the elopement of quite a different kind having taken place on the very same day. I told a version of this story live on Darling Downs radio 4AK.

A blooming young damsel had been smitten with the attractions of a married man who was considerably her senior, and on Tuesday the 9th of April 1861 absconded with him during the night, to great discredit and an erupting scandal.

A warrant was issued for her apprehension at the insistence of the gentleman with whose Toowoomba family she resided as domestic servant.

The man at the centre of the scandal was John Riddle, aged about forty-five, married with a wife and two children and soon to have a third. He eloped with a young girl named Priscilla Head. She was a well-dressed, attractive young woman from Northamptonshire, England, the oldest daughter of a respectable Toowoomba man, and at most just sixteen-years-old.

Riddle took all his money and left his wife and family destitute. The mailman met the eloping couple on the road to Ipswich and was told they were on their way to Sydney.

Priscilla’s father Stephen Head took the unusual step of advertising on the front page of the newspapers pleading for any clergymen to decline to marry the absconding couple.

Riddle and Priscilla were passing themselves off as a married couple by the name of William and Elizabeth Teale. The real Mr and Mrs Wilfred Teale in Toowoomba had taken Priscilla’s Head family into their home, and Mrs Teale in particular had been more than a mother to the girl. The public considered it very poor form on the girl’s part to assume that family’s name under such outrageous circumstances.

The elopers arrived in Brisbane and went to Fortitude Valley where Riddle sold his horse to a former convict called Henry Rosetta. Riddle made the mistake of signing the receipt in his real name, and so Rosetta alerted police. Rosetta was notable because of his strangely named son called Christmas Gift Rosetta.

Riddle and Priscilla were arrested by the Chief Constable Thomas Griffin. Griffin himself was later convicted and executed for a sensational double-murder of the Clermont gold escort.  In any case, Constable Griffin charged Riddle with deserting his wife and family, leaving them with no means of support, and Priscilla with absconding from her hired service.

The couple were defended by the city solicitor James Garrick who was one of only four solicitors in Brisbane at the time. They picked a good one because he later became Sir James Garrick, member of both the Queensland Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council, with ministries as Colonial Treasurer, Postmaster-General, and Attorney-General. And what’s more, Garrick weaved his magic and Riddle and Priscilla were remarkably both discharged due to lack of evidence.

The truth of the matter is that while forty-five-year-old John Riddle had run off with sixteen-year-old Priscilla Head, she was in fact his half sister-in-law. Upon being discharged, the couple went to Goondiwindi where Riddle got work as superintendent on the Welltown property, and Priscilla gave birth to seven children over the next thirteen years. When Riddle died, Priscilla this time got married and had three more children for a total of ten. Her heart-broken father Stephen never lived to see his only living daughter get properly married.

Priscilla passed away in Goondiwindi in 1925 aged seventy-eight. She’s buried in the Goondiwindi cemetery, where she took her Toowoomba elopement story to the grave.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO A VERSION OF THIS STORY TOLD ON 4AK

Photo credits:
Priscilla Runaway Girl of Toowoomba – Copilot.
Elopement warning – Moreton Bay Courier, 13th April 1861 page 1.
Thomas John Augustus Griffin – State Library of Queensland.
Sir James Francis Garrick 1875 – State Library of Queensland.
Priscilla Head Riddle Cameron, Goondiwindi Cemetery – Susan Horridge Donaldson Hartwell 2022 via Find a Grave website.