Objects of Substance- The Mackinlay Honour Board

James Robert Dickson and family, Toorak House, Hamilton, ca. 1872 StateLibQld 1 89640

Sadly, this marriage was far from conventional. Dickson’s 13 children appear to have been less than pleased with his choice of spouse. The daughters – Alice, Edith, Ada, Agnes, Annie, Lucy, and Grace – attended Girls Grammar, with Annie, Alice, Agnes, and Ada being pupils during Mary’s tenure as Lady Principal. Mary, now a married woman, was expected to give up her employment. For the next twenty years in his governmental roles, James Dickson travelled widely, but there is no evidence that Mary accompanied him on any of these trips, or on any of his official engagements – although there are quite a number of newspaper reports that his daughters accompanied him on such occasions. James Dickson had been a regular visitor to Toowoomba and the Darling Downs in the early part of his marriage to Mary and she must have been familiar with the town, having accompanied him on visits there. When the house, Braemar on Long Street became available to rent in 1887, Mary took the opportunity to move in and establish her independence. She created a preparatory school for boys and, in 1888, Mary, as Mrs J. R. Dickson, purchased Jeanfield , and ran the school from this premises from 1889. Sadly, Lady Mary Dickson died alone and infirm, in 1902. She suffered an illness which had caused the local Magistrate, Richard Moore, such concern that the week before she passed away, he mentioned her condition to the Home Secretary, Mr Foxton, with the suggestion she might have to be admitted to the Asylum. On her death, Moore, whose duty it was to organise the funeral, wrote a scathing letter to the Under Secretary for the Home Department, W. H. Ryder. In the letter the breakdown of her marriage was apparent, along with the fact that she did not appear to have the