- Margaret Patience Murray married Thomas A Bingham at Clunes, Victoria, on 1st May, 1895. They lived in the town of Allendale, where they would initially raise their family.
- Allendale was a busy mining town totally sustained by gold mines also known as the Berry Leads. At the time, her husband had a carrying business carting furniture and other items around the mines and a light daily service to Ballarat. He was a self-taught blacksmith and a jack of all trades.
- As a mother, she would bath the kids at night with a big fire next to the tub which keeps the water warm. The winter nights in Allendale were bitterly cold and the fire was important to keep them warm. Margaret’s Christian faith would allow her to sing the hymns in the burning light as she scrubbed the dirt from the kids toes. Hymns such as Onward Christian Soldiers, Marching as to War, With the Cross of Jesus’ and ‘I’m a little candle burning bright in the night.
- She tended to a garden of flowers and herbs and life was good. But when the gold mining stopped producing, they had to move to the work.
- Thomas went in searched for employment and came back and moved the family to Leeton NSW. The NSW Irrigation Trust was giving 50-60 acres of land, near Murrumbidgee River, to those who applied for it. The idea was that the farmer’s would grow peaches and other fruits to sell to the peach cannery at Leeton. When Margaret’s family arrived in Leeton, they lived in tents. One tent for the kitchen and the other for a bedroom. Life was getting hard during this period, but she prevailed.
- In Margaret’s spare time, she helped the Red Cross on market days in Leeton. It was normal for farmers to have no money so they donated pigs for sale. She would assist in cleaning and dressing them on the Friday to be ready for the next day.
- She was a very affectionate and religious woman and she liked going on picnics and often they would go to the Murrumbidgee for holidays. They camped with the aborigines and gave them fish. She was very disturbed by the aborigines not having many clothes, so she went around the farms and collected clothes. Huckerback waistcoats, which had been out of fashion for many years, were very popular with them.
- Thomas was disappearing for long lengths of time, presumably drinking, leaving her and the family to fend for themselves, she grew ill and her kids were concerned.
- The family moved to Melbourne where the kids would get better schooling and she would be closer to her sisters. They stayed for the first couple of nights at the Salvation Army Hostel in King Street and then lived with their Aunty Mary and Aunt Liz where the boys picked up small handyman jobs. They found a house with three rooms with a kitchen on the 2nd floor of No. 3 Dundas Place, Albert Park.
- At this stage, her husband was drunk every night and was violent to them. This was affecting her health. Her children, Tom, Jesse, Dave and Allen with their mother, decided to leave. They rented a house in Middle Park and moved while their father was at work. They loaded up and shifted all their stuff in one afternoon. Some days later, her son Tom recalled ‘I went to work in the afternoon and later on, when I came out of the Middle Park train station, my father was waiting for me. He said, “Don’t run away, I know where you live.” He came with me to our house and caused a bad scene. Margaret wanted to go back to him, but the kids threw him out and he never troubled them again.’ The children took over by supporting her until she died of liver cancer on the 18th of March 1929. She was remembered as a lovely person and a terrific mother. Every year, a service for her was held at a certain picnic table near Albert Park lake.
- Her husband died many years later at Swan Hill in 1957 and for closure, they paid for his funeral.
- Further life stories of the Binghams can be read in The Life and Time of Thomas Bingham.
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