Victorian dresses were nothing but an inconvenient, impractical nuisance to four-foot-nothing Bridget “Biddy” Goodwin, who wore moleskin trousers for much of her life.
The enigmatic Irishwoman was born anywhere between 1803 and 1827, in a county even she could not recall in later life.
The illiterate young woman left Ireland during the mass emigration of the mid-1800s and headed for the Australian goldfields.
In Ballarat she met two men, assumed a sort of command, and the three began working and living together.
They arrived in New Zealand in the 1860s, and after the Collingwood goldfields produced disappointing results, they trekked inland to the Buller River. For 20 years the trio worked the river, spending hours each day up to their waists in water, and they lived in a one-room hut near the Iron Bridge at Lyell.
The two men accepted Biddy’s leadership and organisation and were known as her first and second mate. The first, said to be her favourite, became ill in the 1880s. Biddy took him to the hospital in Quartzopolis (Reefton) where he died.
Golden Bay author Gerard Hindmarsh writes that “the little woman wept sorely at losing her companion”.
Her second mate, known as Old Bill, became sick a couple of years later and “just took to loafing around”, as Biddy said, so that when he died, “I wasn’t sorry a bit”.
After a lifetime of immensely difficult work in the harshest of conditions, Biddy was encouraged to admit herself to Reefton Hospital, but she decided instead to occupy a small cottage.
Her years had been spent searching for gold, often with little success, to spend on alcohol, so although she had now become a member of the Anglican church (likely because of the social services this provided), she by no means gave up the drink.
When Queen Victoria celebrated her Diamond Jubilee in 1897, many ladies of the parish visited Biddy’s cottage. One brought half a bottle of port, and a second dropped off a bottle of Scotch. Once the visitors had gone home, Biddy drank the whole lot and passed out on the floor.
The vicar, who happened to call by to chop some firewood for her, presumed she was dying and fetched the doctor. The doctor, after a brief examination, roared with laughter and pronounced her “dead-drunk”. The vicar declared that Biddy was to be gifted no more alcohol.
Alcohol was not her only vice, and she was a pipe-smoker to the very end, keeping the pipe in her mouth from morning to night, except when the vicar visited – then it was temporarily pushed beneath a cushion.
Biddy eventually passed away in 1899, at the reported age of 86, although her age has also been given as 72 and 96. She is buried in the Reefton Cemetery.
