The story of Francis Gorin
The story of Francois Gorin/Frank Gordon
Given his upbringing and family background, it is not surprising that Francois Gorin/Frank Gordon led a colourful, eventful and unconventional life. This page, which was first added to Jerripedia in 2016, was updated in 2023 to include more detail
Timeline
- 1831: Father Brandan Olivier Gorin born in St Brandan, Brittany
- 1832: Brandan's mother dies
- 1859: Brandan marries Marguerite Le Roy, also from Brittany, in Jersey
- 1860: Daughter Marie born
- 1863: Francois Eugene born
- 1864: Brandan deserts family
- 1866: Louisa Maria Selina, sister of Marie and Francois, born and dies at 5 months
- 1874: Francois enters Jersey Industrial School
- 1875, January: Brandon marries bigamously in France
- 1875, August: Marguerite dies
- 1879: Frank starts Merchant Navy apprenticeship
- 1880: Runs away and joins Royal Navy
- 1883: Navy discharge on health grounds
- 1888: To Australia for first time
- 1890: Settles in Australia
- 1896: Marries for first time
- 1913: Deserts family and goes to Australia
- 1914: Bigamous second marriage
- 1915: Bigamous third marriage
- 1921: First wife marries again
- 1924: Dies weeks after the death of his last son
Life history
Parents
Francois Eugene Gorin was born in St Peter on 20 December 1863 and baptised in St Helier on 10 January the following year.
His father, Brandan Olivier Gorin (known as Olivier) was a carpenter born in St Brandon, in the department of Cotes d’Armor in north Brittany, and his mother, Marguerite, nee Le Roy, a charwoman. His godparents were Heloise Tanguy and Richard Eugene.
Olivier’s mother had died when he was just a year old. He married Marguerite Le Roy at the Registrar’s Office in St Helier in February 1859. Olivier was recorded as a carpenter and labourer and his wife as a seller/merchant. Margueritte also came from Cotes d’Armor. She was born in the commune of Plouha on 29 August 1835. The couple met in Jersey, perhaps in the weekly gathering of Breton immigrants in Hilgrove Street, popularly known as French Lane.
According to Francois’ admission record at the Jersey Industrial School in 1874 Olivier abandoned the family when Francois was just four months old and his elder sister Marie was four years old. But he must have continued to have contact with his wife because he is shown as the father of Louisa Maria Selina, who was born to her in July 1866 and died less than six months later, of convulsions.
Marie, Francois and their mother moved to her mother’s former home in Bath Street, St Helier. The grandmother had died of cancer.
Olivier went back to France and was recorded in the 1872 census living at Manneville, Calvados, Normandy, and working as a carpenter. On 13 January 1875 he bigamously married Alma Justine Marie (1836-1901). His first wife, Marguerite, died of tuberculosis on 10 August 1875; Marie was 15 and Francois 11.
Industrial School
Perhaps because his mother had become too ill to care for him, Francois had been admitted to the Jersey Industrial School at Haut de La Garenne, in St Martin, on 3 March 1874. His admission record (as Francis) strangely shows his birth date as 10 December 1873 – ten years out.
The record shows his mother as a charwoman and notes that she had been abandoned by her husband when Francis was four months old. Nothing had been heard of him since.
Francis is described as ‘a street Arab, clever and intelligent, hated constant work but could remain days reading’. He remained at the Industrial School until he was apprenticed in the Merchant Navy to Capt John Wright on 8 February 1879 at the age of 15, goiing on board the Albatross three weeks later. He did not stay long, running away to Plymouth to join the Royal Navy the following year.
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From August 1880 to July 1883, known variously as Frank Gordon and Francis Gorin, he worked on four ships crossing the Atlantic to the Caribbean – HMS Impregnable, Assistance, Duke of Wellington and Dido. At the age of 16 he was only 5ft 3in tall. His character was described as 'Very good'.
While serving on Dido he was discharged on health grounds to Goslar Naval Hospital, Portsmouth. He had met Jessie Earle while in Plymouth and wanted to marry her, but her parents refused. Over 20 years later he named one of his daughters after Jessie.
Arrives in Australia
The results of family members' research are confusing, because they have not been able to positively associate Francis Gorin with maritime records for Frank Gordon. It seems that he rejoined the Merchant Navy and was on the ship Whampoa that departed Hong Kong approximately mid-October 1886, taking about seven weeks to sail to Melbourne via Darwin and Sydney.
He appears to have returned on the ship to London and to have arrived again in Australia, at Sydney, in April 1889, working as an able seaman on the ship Lumberman's Lassie. Back in London at the end of Novemberhe spent five days in hospital at Greenwich with tuberculosis contracted while on the ship Queen of the North.
The following June he was back in Australia, where he deserted from the ship Volga, along with several other crew members. He moved to New Zealand and worked for the Kauri Timber Company. He returned to sea as a cook and at a picnic while on shore leave at Napier at the age of 33, he met and married 18-year-old Mabel Bernice Robson on 29 December 1896.
First marriage
He was working as a gold miner at this time and their baby girl Belle Georgina Ruth Gordon arrived in April the following year, to the fascination of the Maoris in Hawke's Bay, many of whom wanted to see her. Their son George Frederick Robson Gordon arrived in 1900, by which time his father was working as a fish dealer. He was a labourer in the outback when another daughter, Victoria Mabel Gordon, was born in 1902.
He will undoubtedly have had no idea that his father died in Lisieux, Calvados on 13 April 1903.
Frank and his family moved from place to place in New Zewaland and were in Dannevirke when daughter Jessie was born in 1904. Frank now described himself as a poultry expert and the couple's fifth child, Frank Gordon jnr was born in Palmerston in March 1906.
In 1907 the family were in Wellington, Frank working as a 'manufacturer'. This probably had something to do with his involvement with poultry, which included inventing a special feeder, which he patented, and writing a book about poultry farming. In 1911 he was living in Taranaki building poultry houses for the New Idea Poultry Farm.
Desertion
Things went badly wrong for Frank in 1913. He lost a widely publicised court case before Napier Supreme Court and was condemned to pay thousands of dollars. He was next seen leaving New Zealand on the ship Ulimaroa for Sydney. Australia, having abandoned his family.
Second marriage
He began a relationship with Euphemia Hutchison, who was born in Goven, Scotland in 1891 – 28 years his junior. This must have been a stormy relationship because, in 1913 he complained to police that she had stolen a tea service, gold and pearl broach, umbrella and revolver and cartridges from him. She was arrested but then released.
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Third marriage
Euphemia then went to Tasmania, but returned on 15 February 1914. Two weeks later she and Frank were married in Sydney! They were not together for long, because the following year Frank was living in Brisbane, where he met 18-year-old Dorothy Monaghan, who was born in Queensland in 1896. Frank was now 51, and described himself as Frank Albert Ernest Gordon.
Death
Dorothy had a daughter, Doris, born in 1913 and not Frank's biological daughter. It was 1922, when Frank was 59, that they had a son together – Edward Arthur Gordon. He died in hospital in Melbourne in January 1924 and Frank died suddenly of a heart attack six months later. They are buried together in Springvale Cemetery, Melbourne.
Frank's New Zealand family never knew about their father's two bigamous marriages in Australia. Details of his extraordinary life only emerged which their descendants started researching his history in the 21st century.
His first wife, Mabel, married for a second time in 1921 in New Zealand to George Robert Bumstead. This was a few months before Frank's death. It is not clear whether this was a bigamous marriage or whether, because of Frank's disappearance eight years earlier, she obtained permission to remarry.
Family tree
