Goreys in Kalgoorlie
I discovered today that one of my relatives was the bareknuckle boxing champion of Kalgoorlie!
I was pretty sure that we weren’t the first Goreys to live in Kalgoorlie. Shortly after I arrived here I met the secretary of the Goldfields Family History Society to discuss setting up a regular historical feature, and I asked her to do a surname search for me.
She came back with the name of James Edward Gorey and the information he died in a mining accident at Marvel Lock in 1914.
I had to wait for my genealogical files to arrive with the furniture to confirm he was related, although the Christian names left me in little doubt. It turns out he was a nephew of my great-grandather Edward Gorey.
My reference was the book James and Elizabeth Gorey 1841-1991 by Dr John Gorey.
I found that James was a son of Edward’s brother John. He moved to Western Australia in 1900 and married a South Australian woman, Jean Drennan, at Kalgoorlie in 1911.
“His son Robert was years later told by friends of his father in Coolgardie that James was a big man known as Big Jim, and that he was the bare-knuckle champion of Kalgoorlie. James died accidentally at age 32 in a mine collapse in 1914, leaving his expectant widow and two boys, James Edward and Robert Emmett.”
Sadly the boys spent some years afterwards in an orphanage.
The book includes extracts from the Kalgoorlie Miner regarding the accident. James was killed instantly. His partners Frank Mazza and Michael O’Brien were entombed for four days before being rescued.
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Tags: Australia, boys, family, feature, History, Kalgoorlie, mining, PR, society, south australia, war
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Depending on how controversial you want your papaer to be, there still may be a bareknuckle fighter by the name of Gorey in town!
I don’t know about that, but there’s another Big Jim on the way in my youngest son James. He’s a stocky little bloke for a 2yo and he packs a punch.
James didn’t travel with a big oragantan named Clyde, did he?