sketcher, arrived at the Swan River Colony (Western Australia) on board the Ganges on 15 October 1841 with her second husband, George, a Church of England clergyman whom she had married in Ireland on 9 July 1840, their daughter Emma and a child from her previous marriage. Three more children were born to the Kings at Fremantle and Albany, in 1843, 1845 and 1847. George King, who had been sent out as a missionary by the English Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, built St John’s Church of England at Fremantle and established a school for Aboriginal children there. Jane helped supervise the 18 pupils and 'assisted considerably in clothing and provisions from her own domestic economy’. They opened a lending library in 1847.
Jane King drew several views of early Fremantle (Mitchell Library). One, Fremantle from the Canning Road 1841 (apparently a page from a small sketchbook), is dated 16 November 1841 and inscribed verso: '(Jail round house) next on the hill the Court House. The arch underneath is a tunnel cut thro’ a sandstone about 300 feet [109 metres] which leads to the jetty and government stores’. A pencil sketch of four Fremantle Aborigines in kangaroo-skin cloaks (British Museum) was drawn in 1843, while an engraving of A Group of Swan River Natives was published in the April 1845 Quarterly Paper of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (London) after a sketch she had made in 1842.
Due to her husband’s ill health the Kings left Western Australia in the Ranee in December 1848 and settled in Sydney. There Bishop W.G. Broughton placed George in the city parish of St Andrew. He died at Homebush on 20 March 1899. Jane King died the following year. She was survived by two of her five daughters and one of her two sons.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
