page_title: Edward De Lacy Evans
section_title: Sandhurst
hierarchical_section_title: Edward De Lacy Evans / Sandhurst
caption_attribution_description: English: Court house in en:Bendigo, Victoria
context_page_description: Edward De Lacy Evans was a servant, blacksmith and gold miner, who immigrated from Ireland to Australia in 1856, and made international news in 1879 when it was revealed he was born a woman.
context_section_description: Evans also left Blackwood in 1862, moving to the central Victorian city of 'Sandhurst' (now known as Bendigo), and, describing himself as a widower, he married a 23-year-old Irishwoman, Sarah Moore. Over the next five years he held various occupations including carter, miner, blacksmith and ploughman and lived with Moore in several nearby towns. He also owned shares in a number of gold mines and paid property rates in Sandhurst and the adjoining district of Eaglehawk. When he was found in a servant's bedroom at a local hotel he was jailed for trespass for seven days.
  In 1867, Moore died of pulmonary tuberculosis and the following year Evans met, and married, a friend of his former wife's sister, 25-year-old Julia Marquand. Marquand was a French dressmaker's assistant who lived with her sister and brother-in-law, the prominent Sandhurst businessman, and owner of the 'City Family Hotel', Jean Baptiste Loridan.
  In the early years of their marriage Evans and Marquand often lived apart but the couple reconciled by 1872. Evans progressed in his mining profession and their Sandhurst home was a cottage that he had built. A formal studio portrait taken at this time may be significant in its representation of how they saw themselves and their 'establishment of a stable and traditional family unit'.
  In 1877, Marquand gave birth to a daughter the couple called 'Julia Mary'. Evans later supported Marquand when she brought a child maintenance suit against her brother-in-law Jean Baptiste Loridan for the child but he gave his name as father on the birth certificate. Around this period Evans' was injured at work and, while he 'welcomed the child as his own' he was also 'deeply disturbed by the circumstances in which his wife became pregnant'.
  On 21 July 1879, Loridan took him to the Bendigo Hospital as he was 'dangerous to others', but, when told to take a bath, he refused and escaped. The following day he was arrested at home and brought to the Police Court where the magistrates agreed with the medical assessment that Evans was suffering from 'softening of the brain' and ordered him to be involuntarily committed to 'the lunatic wards' of the Bendigo hospital.
caption: Bendigo Court House where Edward De Lacy Evans was sentenced to the 'Lunatic Ward' of the hospital in July 1879.
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