Ellen Davitt is best remembered as a pioneer educationalist in her role as the first superintendent of the Model School, East Melbourne, which once stood on the island site now occupied by the Royal College of Surgeons. She and her husband, Arthur, who held the senior position of principal, resided and worked at the school from its foundation in 1854 until 1859.
Ellen Davitt (c.1812-1879) was the daughter of first cousins, Edward and Martha Heseltine. Her exact birthdate is not known but she was baptised on 4 March 1812 at Holy Trinity Church, Hull. Edward Heseltine was a bank manager of less than reputable character. On his retirement in 1852 it was discovered that he had embezzled at least £5000 and was forced to flee to France where he died three years later. Martha had predeceased him in 1840 as the result of a railway accident and Edward remarried in 1842. Ellen’s sister, Rose, married the writer, Anthony Trollope.
It seems Ellen had a good education, she claimed to have studied under ‘Masters in England’ and at ‘fashionable schools in Paris’. She had honours in History, Modern Languages, Composition and Elocution. In 1845 she married Arthur Davitt in Jersey. He at that time was a Professor of Modern Languages at the Sorbonne in Paris. By 1847 the couple were in Ireland where Arthur had been appointed Inspector of Schools. Ellen taught drawing in the Model School for Girls in Dublin. It was the Irish National Schools Board who recommended the couple to take charge of Melbourne’s new Model School.
The appointment was unsatisfactory for all concerned. There was constant squabbling between the school and the National Board of Education and between members of staff. In an era when women were expected to be quiet and get on with it Ellen was not given to submission. She was able nonetheless to keep up her own interest in art and one of her paintings was included in the first exhibition held by the Victorian Society of Fine Arts in 1857. The critics were damning. In 1859 the Davitts positions were terminated.
Arthur died in Geelong in 1860 of long standing TB and Ellen was left to fend for herself. She went back to teaching for a time but took up public speaking in 1862, a rare choice for a woman at this time. She spoke on subjects of art, literature, history and ‘female heroism’ and was well received, but soon she turned her mind to fiction and started a career in writing.
It is not well known but Ellen has cemented herself an important place in the history of crime fiction. Her whodunit, Force and Fraud: A Tale of the Bush was serialised in the ‘Australian Journal’ in 1865, three years earlier than Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone, which is commonly acknowledged as the first detective story. In 1993 Lucy Sussex rediscovered Ellen’s story and it was only then that it was published as a book.
Ellen wrote a number of other books, all serialised, and she apparently managed to make a living out of her writing but in 1874 she applied to rejoin the education system. She was accepted and sent to Kangaroo Flat but again bickering and disputes were almost a constant, and eventually her health failed. She made an application for compensation but it was refused. She died of cancer and exhaustion at her home in Fitzroy on 6 January 1879. She was buried with Arthur in Geelong.
In 2001 the Davitt awards were established for Australian crime fiction by women.
Ref:
Ellen Davitt, Force and Fraud: A Tale of the Bush, with an introduction and notes by Lucy Sussex. Mulini Press, Canberra, 1993.