21/08/2026
A Strange Career – Among the men brought up at the City Police Court on 25th July 1872, charged with gambling in a Chinese den, in Little Bourke Street, was one whose Australian career is well worth recapitulating. as showing the degradation into which men of high position fall when they once enter upon what is very truthfully though vulgarly termed " a loose life." Tichborne, if he of Wagga Wagga is Tichborne, had some strange experiences while he resided in this part of the country, but his life has hardly been as eventful as that of Henry Travers, alias Thomas Gerald Goding, alias Frank Hogg, alias Powell. Travers, who is said to be heir to an English baronetcy, seems to have spent his Australian life chiefly within the four walls of a prison cell. He first appeared in this country in the year 1865, having arrived by a ship called the Ulcoates, from Londen.
Ho described himself as Thomas Gerald Goding, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and for some time he led what is called a fast life in Melbourne. Towards the close of that year, he appeared to have run short of supplies, for on the 1st of February 1866, he was brought up at the City Court on two charges of obtaining money by false pretences, for which he was sentenced to three and six months' imprisonment at Pentridge. He was liberated towards the close of the year; but he was not at large more than two or three months before he had recourse to his old means of raising the wind. On the 21st of March 1867, he was apprehended on four charges of obtaining property by false representations, and received four sentences, extending over a period of sixteen months. He served this period at the stockade in Pentridge, but he was little benefited by prison discipline. He had tried all he could to raise money by fraud, but he had now got the length of his tether. A new idea, however, seized him, and he came out as a detective. He went about for a time personating one of these clever people, but the game did not answer; he was arrested, and once more sent to Pentridge for two years.
During this period, he met with an accident, which brought on paralysis, and when he was once more set at liberty, he had to seek shelter at the Immigrants' Home and the Benevolent Asylum. He left the Home, and took one of the female nurses with him, and the disgrace which he had brought upon himself at the charitable institutions impelled the managers of those institutions to close the door against him. Some time ago he sent a letter to his Excellency the Governor, asking his assistance, and in that letter, he represented himself to be the son of General Travers, then in India, and as there happened to be an Indian officer in Melbourne at the time, it is understood that his Excellency commissioned him to make inquiries as to the truth of the statement when he returned to join his army. Should these reports prove correct, Henry Travers will one day be a baronet, and we shall have another piece of romance to record. (The Age (Melbourne, Vic. : Fri 26 Jul 1872)
Gerald Thomas/Thomas Gerald Goding was born in France in 1841 – the son of Major Thomas Joseph and Catherine Goding. He attended boarding school in Surrey, England. He married Edith Widger in England in 1862, and records show he was convicted in 1864 for false pretences and was sentenced to 9 months. The following year is when he was said to have arrived in Australia. He married Mary Ann (nee Murphy) in Melbourne in 1868 while still being married to Edith.
His father’s uncle, James Goding was the founder of the Lion’s Brewery Co in Lambeth, London in 1836.
Gerald was living on Ipswich Road (14 Mile Camp) when he passed away on 13 November 1880. His occupation on his death certificate was “Schoolmaster”. He was laid to rest in the South Brisbane Cemetery on 16 November.
TO (FOSBC), Trove, Family supplied info.
