# Caroline Leakey

Caroline Woolmer Leakey (8 March 1827 – 12 July 1881) was an English writer, whose poetry and only novel (The Broad Arrow, published using the pen name Oliné Keese) were influenced and based on her experience living in Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) for five years between 1848 and 1853.

## Life

Leakey was born in Exeter in the county of Devon, England. She was the sixth child of a large religious family of eleven children: her parents were James Leakey, an artist, and Eliza Hubbard Woolmer. Suffering from ill health most of her life, Leakey was an avid reader, and when her health allowed her, was active in charitable and religious activities.
In 1847, she sailed to the British colony of Van Diemen's Land, to join her sister Eliza, who had migrated to Hobart Town several years earlier with her clergyman husband, Reverend James Medland. Shortly after her arrival, her health deteriorated and she was bedridden for much of the remainder of her time in the colony. In 1851, she lived for twelve months at the convict settlement of Port Arthur. When she returned to Hobart, she fell ill again and her family urged her to return to England, which she did in March 1853.
Encouraged by Bishop Francis Nixon, whom she had lived with in Hobart, to publish her poetry, Leakey published an anthology of poems titled Lyra Australis, or Attempts to Sing in a Strange Land, which was published in London in 1853 and Hobart in 1854.
In March 1857, Leakey began writing a novel, which was published in 1859 in London and in 1860 in Hobart. The novel, The Broad Arrow: Being Passages from the History of Maida Gwynnham, a Lifer, was published under the pen name of "Oliné Keese". The Broad Arrow is considered a significant social document, and as one of the earliest novels to feature a convict as the main character, was a forerunner of, and influence on, the more well-known For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke, who used Leakey's novel as a reference for his book. After Leakey's death a heavily abridged version of The Broad Arrow was published. Her original, unabridged version remained out of print until 2019, when it was re-issued.
In 1861, Leakey established a house in Exeter to care for "fallen women". She wrote numerous religious tracts before she died after an eighteen-month illness in 1881.

## Genealogy

vteLeakey family tree :
James Leakey (1775–1865)Eliza Hubbard Woolmer (1793–1855)
James Shirley Leakey (1824–1871)Caroline Woolmer Leakey (1827–1881)9 others
Rev. Arundell Leakey (1853–1924)Rev. Harry Leakey (1868–1940)
Elizabeth Laing (1873–1925)Arundell Gray Arundell Leakey (1885–1954)5 othersHenrietta Wilfrida Avern (1902–1993)Louis Seymour Bazett Leakey (1903–1972)Mary Douglas Nicol (1913–1996)3 others
Nigel Gray Leakey (1913–1941)Robert Dove Leakey (1914–2013)Maj. Gen. Arundell Rea Leakey (1915–1999)Agnes Florence Leakey (1917–2006)Colin Louis Avern Leakey (1933–2018)Meave Epps (b. 1942)Richard Erskine Frere Leakey (1944–2022)Margaret CropperJonathan Harry Erskine Leakey (1940–2021)Philip Leakey (b. 1949)
Lt. Gen. Arundell David Leakey (b. 1952)Louise Leakey (b. 1972)Emmanuel, Prince de Mérode (b. 1970) :
Notes:
↑ O'Donoghue, F. M.; Remington, V. (revised) (2004). "Leakey, James (1775–1865), miniature painter". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/16244. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
1 2 3 "Eliza Hubbard Woolmer, wife of James Leakey". Artsandculture.google.com. Archived from the original on 6 April 2022. Retrieved 6 April 2022. Elizabeth Hubbard Woolmer was born on 20 December 1793. ... On 28 August 1815 she married the artist James Leakey (1775-1865) at St. Sidwell's Church, Exeter (2). They had eleven children. ... Caroline Woolmer Leakey (1827-1881)
1 2 3 "Serjeant Nigel Gray Leakey | War Casualty Details". cwgc.org. Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Archived from the original on 8 April 2022. Retrieved 8 April 2022. NIGEL GRAY LEAKEY ... Died 19 May 1941 Age 28 years old ... Son of Arundell Gray A. and Elizabeth Leakey, of Kiganjo, Kenya.
1 2 3 4 5 Lean, Mary (26 January 2007). "Agnes Hofmeyr, Worker for reconciliation in Africa". The Independent. Archived from the original on 22 September 2012. Retrieved 8 April 2022. Agnes Leakey, worker for reconciliation: born Limuru, Kenya 8 May 1917; married 1946 Bremer Hofmeyr (died 1993; one son, and one son deceased); died Johannesburg 1 December 2006. ... Agnes Leakey was born in Limuru, Kenya, in 1917, the youngest child of Gray Leakey, cousin of the anthropologist Louis Leakey, and his first wife, Elizabeth. ... in 1926, when Elizabeth died ... She married a South African colleague, Bremer Hofmeyr, in 1946. ... in ... 1954 ... Mau Mau fighters ... attacked her father's farm, killed her stepmother and abducted her father. ... [he was] buried alive, in a shallow grave on Mount Kenya. ... she lost her eldest brother, Nigel Leakey, in 1941 at Colito, where he won the Victoria Cross. Three years after Bremer's death, in 1993, their elder son, Murray, was killed in a car accident in Johannesburg. :