Beginning over 160 years ago, this bricklayer suffered a cruel stream of mysterious tragedies. I told a version of this story live on Ipswich’s West Bremer Radio.

Thomas Lovegrove was a native of Middlesex, England. In Ipswich, Queensland, in 1857 he married Sarah Luxford who was the offspring of two convicts and that’s when his misery started.

Thomas followed his father-in-law into business as a bricklayer and brickmaker at Little Ipswich which is West Ipswich today. He made the bricks for Ipswich’s old Court House. In 1864, Thomas was uncasing a brick kiln when his nineteen-month-old daughter Julia wondered around to the mouth of the kiln and stepped on embers and a hot brick. The burns to both her feet were so bad that the pain killed her.

It then got weird because the little girl’s funeral at the Ipswich cemetery was conducted in a really unusual manner. The coffin was carried by four girls dressed all in white, with wreaths on their heads and long veils, and more girls dressed the same followed close behind. The funeral was a big one and attended almost exclusively by women. And what’s more, Julia was buried in an unmarked grave in the Catholic section, which was well away from the rest of the family in the Anglican section.

Tragedy struck the Lovegroves again in 1877. Having given birth to ten children in eighteen years, Thomas’s wife Sarah up and died at their home on Herbert Street. She was just thirty-four years old. Their youngest children were aged just two, three and five, Thomas didn’t remarry, and so the raising of the children was left to their oldest daughter Mary Ann. There was one less child a year later in 1878 when the youngest Charles died at just three years of age. Typhoid was common at the time.

In 1882, Thomas’s youngest daughter Sarah was just seventeen years old when they discovered she was pregnant. It took six months before the family began to suspect something and the oldest sister Mary Ann took her to the doctor. Sarah was in denial, and when she got home she drowned herself in the underground tank.

The next thing was when the oldest son John was thrown from a horse on the Bremer Bridge in 1887. He was taken home where it was thought he was drunk and was left on the floor to sleep it off. In the morning, he was found cold and dead.

One good thing seemed to happen in 1897 when son Thomas Junior joined the goldrush to Charters Towers and found a twenty-ounce nugget of pure gold. Today it would be worth over $120,000. But despite these riches, Thomas Lovegrove Senior was bundled off to the poor house.

That’s where he spent at least the final four years of his life – amid the horrors of the Dunwich asylum on Stradbroke Island. In 1897 he witnessed a double murder for which the perpetrator was sentenced to death.

In 1901 Thomas died penniless at the asylum, although his remains were transported back to Ipswich to be buried with his family.

Just when you thought the misery over, something else happened. In 1905 it was the mysterious death of Thomas’s grandson and Mary Ann’s son George Graham.

George was a young athlete, just twenty-years-old, on the cusp of selection for Queensland rugby. He was already on the Queensland athletics team and in 1905 went to the International Athletics meet at the Sydney Cricket Ground.  It included superstars like Alfred Shrubb the English middle and long-distance runner who set twenty-eight world records, and the American sprinter Arthur Duffey who set the world record for 100 yards. 

The grandson won the high jump and 120 yards hurdles, but was then taken ill and rushed to hospital where he died on the operating table.

Competitors wore black armbands for the remainder of the meet. A memorial race was named in his honour. Unusually, his remains were then embalmed and taken back to Brisbane, in a sealed, lead-lined coffin, I think due to public health concerns.

Thomas Lovegrove’s tragic story began with a funeral of girls dressed all in white, and ends with a sealed lead-lined coffin, with a whole lot of unexpected deaths in between. It was all very strange – but probably not for Ipswich I suppose.

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

Photo credits:
The Lovegrove Curse – Harold Peacock with Copilot.
Ipswich’s unusual 1864 funeral – Harold Peacock with Copilot.
Lovegrove family, Anglican section Ipswich Cemetery – Anne – here lies 2018 Find a Grave website.
Arthur Duffey – Wikipedia Commons.