Design and Art Australia Online

modeller in wax, teacher and author, was born in Sydney, daughter of W.W. Thwaites senior and Jane née McLean, and younger sister of W.W. Thwaites junior and of the twins Isabella and Hector Thwaites. She grew up travelling around Australia with her parents and finally settled in South Australia. In 1868, when aged about 23 – evidently with her father’s support – she set up as 'Lady Superintendent’ of a boarding school for young ladies in Grove House, Kent Town, which had been rented in the mid-1860s by a Miss Bird as home and school. The students at Miss Thwaites’s school were instructed in English grammar and composition, writing, arithmetic, English history, geography, mapping, music, French, German and dancing – and also in Latin grammar, an unusual subject for girls at the time. In the arts she offered oil and watercolour painting, pencil drawing, embroidery as well as plain needlework, leatherwork, and craftwork including the making of wax flowers. She also trained young ladies 'for business’ – apparently the first to do so in SA – and offered a prize for bookmaking, according to advertisements cited by Young.

Sophia Jane Thwaites exhibited a composition of wax flowers entitled Perserverance in the 14th annual exhibition of the South Australian Society of Arts, which opened on 15 December 1870. With Mrs J. Harrison and Miss Ellen L. Gray, she was one of three competitors in the wax modelling section (No.58), all judged 'of such equal excellence that a prize was given to each’, and shared the prize of two guineas offered by W.G. Gerke Esq., J.P., for 'flowers, no less than eight varieties, natural size’.

At the end of 1873 Sophia Jane married the American-born Charles Andrew Murphy, several years her junior, an agent, newspaperman and publisher (at least from 1877) of the satirical Adelaide magazine the Lantern (1874-1890), who was appointed American Consul in South Australia after Sophia Jane’s death. Their Church of England wedding took place in Miss Thwaites’s private residence in Kent Town and the groom moved into the school after the marriage. As 'Mrs. Chas. A. Murphy’, 'Principal and Lady Superintendent’, she continued to advertise her school in the Adelaide press. Later she ran smaller schools at Brighton and in Lewisham Villa, Semaphore, seaside areas west of Adelaide, while Charles worked as an agent nearby. In 1878 her English grammar book for use in schools was published from the newspaper offices responsible for the Advertiser , Chronicle and Express .

The Murphys were living in Barton Terrace West, North Adelaide when Sophia Jane died in October 1884, soon after the birth of their third child and second daughter. An obituary was published in the Lantern .

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1999

Last updated:

2011