painter and governess, was undoubtedly the Mademoiselle O. Girard (sic) catalogued as showing an oil painting at the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition. Omérine Giraud, a qualified governess, had been sponsored by London’s Female Middle Class Emigration Society. She landed at Melbourne from the Dover Castle on Saturday night, 9 June 1866, to find that letters from the society announcing her arrival, her letters of credit and her teaching certificates were still at sea. Fortunately, she had friends in Melbourne and was able to stay with them until taken into the society’s interim 'Home’ in Flinders Lane (formerly the Prince of Wales Hotel) on the strength of a note she had with her signed by Jane Lewin, the society’s London secretary. She was still awaiting her money and certificates on 24 June when she related her sad fate to her sponsors.
Giraud’s subsequent career is unknown, apart from the evidence of her misprinted name in the October exhibition catalogue which indicates that she was living at St Kilda by the end of the year and still subject to misfortune. Her name was simply omitted when the exhibition commissioners produced a second edition of the catalogue in response to complaints about the inaccuracies of the first.
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- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1999
- Last updated:
- 2011
