Taphophile Tragics # 13 - Sleeping like an Angel

Anastasios was not quite four years of age when he slipped off this mortal coil. His father 35. It took his father, Dimitrios, another 40 years to join his son. Look at the photograph of the young lad. The apple of everyones' eye, no doubt. Well cared for, religious, middle class, from a close, loving family. Devastation all round. Son, brother, nephew, and uncle already. But all categories of families are devastaed when a child dies. What sets this family apart is that they had the income to attempt to put their tender mourning into art.


For me the eye-catching element of this marker is the prone angel. Eye-catching literally. I was stomping out the rows going down a rather steep incline with a rough path beneath my feet. Out of the corner of my eye I caught this sheen of whiteness and was stopped in my tracks.


Although this is Section 15 General in Botany Cemetery, it is rife with the memorials to departed Greeks. It seems to me, that Botany is riddled with departed Greeks, with as many Greeks as there are Anglos. Maybe the Greek markers are just more obvious. This black style is replcated in many other rows and sections. The Greeks however, are obliged to tend to their departed on a regular basis. And one of their methods is to leave copious flowers. So maybe I am simply seeing more Greek markers because they are tended more assiduously.


There is no initials on this marker. No Mason company. No number. No nothing. Next time I am there, I will ask at the office if his sort of information is held in their system.

This is my contribution to the Taphophile Tragics community.

Taphophile Tragics # 10 - In the Arms of an Angel

The marker was bordering on taciturn:

Sacred to the memory of
Kate Reynolds Fiaschi
Born Ireland 1850
Died Sydney 1913
A loving wife and a devoted mother
Rest in peace

And yet the statue atop the marker was startlingly beautiful in its celebration of sensuality. Originally, I had thought this to be a straightforward post about a beautiful statue, until from deep in the bowels of Ancestry. com came an altered reality: Catherine Ann Reynolds AKA Sister Mary Regis.

There were three public trees that other researchers had fleshed out, telling me that Kate Reynolds married Thomas Henry Fiaschi in 1876 at Bethel House in George Street North, bore him five sons (one of whom died in infancy) and two daughters, before dying at the relatively young age of 63 (but I would use that adjective, wouldn’t I!).

Sister Mary Regis. Had she been a nun or something?

Searching Ancestry.com would take longer than I had the patience for, so I googled the string of both names as set out above, and BINGO. I chanced upon an article presented by Jonathan Auld at the Hawkesbury Family History group meeting on 9th March 2005 as part of Women’s History Month.

Both Kate’s parents died when she was 14. She was of a devout family and had been promised to the church. She was sent to live with an aunt in Sydney and joined the Sisters of Charity at St Vincent’s Hospital, where she was known as ... yep. As luck would have it, young Thomas Henry Fiaschi was a doctor where Kate was a nursing nun. This is where the sensuality of the carving strikes to the very core of humanity. They fell in love, eloped, and were excommunicated. Kate was the only nun to have ever left the Sisters of Charity.

As the surname hints, he was Italian (born there), their first child being born in Florence when Thomas Henry returned for a short while to complete his medical training. Upon their return to the colony, Thomas Henry set up his practice in Windsor, where they hoped anonymity would be preserved. Children arrived regularly: 1877, 1879, 1889, 1884, 1885, and 1893. The child who died in infancy was second last, explaining the gap. And twenty years later, she was gone.

They had established a vineyard at Sackville called ‘Tizzana’ which Kate ran whilst Thomas Henry was overseas in both the Abyssinian and Boer Wars. Yet their address upon her death was Darling Point, so theirs was a most comfortable existence in terms of goods and chattels.

The statue expresses what words were incapable of. To circle around it, as my camera and I did, is to become dizzy from the sheer ecstasy of love and acceptance; to be in the presence of, indeed, in the arms of, an angel.

Here is one of the most beautiful songs of the modern era, written by the enchanting Sarah MacLauchlan, 'In the arms of an angel'

In the arms of an Angel, fly away from here
From this dark, cold hotel room, and the endlessness that you fear
You are pulled from the wreckage of your silent reverie
You're in the arms of an Angel; may you find some comfort here.

I am indebted to Jonathan Auld's 2005 paper for the 'Hawkesbury Crier' for the unlocking of the 'AKA Sister Mary Regis' reference that I discovered deep within the heart of Ancestry.com.

This is my contribution to the Taphophile Tragics community.