Born 6 February 1842 at Latheron, Caithness / Highland, Scotland.
Died 19 June 1874 in the Timaru District, aged 32.
Buried Timaru Cemetery, Row 0, Plot 25.
There are names in the cemetery that have long slipped from memory. Some lie beneath carved stone, others beneath nothing at all. Row 0, the old Free Ground, holds many of the latter. This is where people were laid to rest when there was no family plot, no savings for a headstone, and sometimes no one left to speak for them. Among them is a woman whose life was far more than the few lines she received in the newspapers of 1874.
Her name was Christina Ellis. Some knew her as Christie Gordon. She lived in a small timber hut on the Main South Road in Timaru, a place that offered shelter but little comfort. For eight or nine years she made her life there. She was a widow, alone, often unwell. Neighbours remembered her sitting outside on cold evenings, wrapped in what she could find, trying her best to get through another day.
The records show that Christina’s final week was a difficult one. A man had beaten her earlier that Monday, bruising her face and frightening her deeply. She told one neighbour it was a young hawker who sold rings and jewellery around town. She did not know his name, only that he was strong, and that she had refused something he demanded of her.
After that, her health declined quickly. She struggled to eat. She struggled to stand. She grew cold, then colder still. People did try to help her. Mrs Fisher brought her inside. Samuel Williams visited more than once, offering warm blankets, checking on her through the night, and giving her a little gin and water to ease her breathing. A carrier named Samuel Green found her shivering on the bank outside her house and helped move her indoors. Kindness came in small, practical acts from the few who knew her. It simply was not enough.
Christina died in her bed on Saturday 13 June 1874. The coroner’s jury found that she had died of illness, exhaustion, and exposure, worsened by the injuries she had suffered earlier in the week. They called it manslaughter, and the police did their best to find the man she had described. He was arrested soon after. The courts would take the case from there.
That could have been the end of her story. A small paragraph. A few bruises. A cold room. A line in an inquest. Then silence.
But Christina Ellis was a woman who lived in this town. She had neighbours who tried to help, and a name that deserves to be spoken. Her burial in Free Ground shows the reality of nineteenth-century life, when poverty, illness, and isolation left many without the means for a marked grave.
Today, Row 0 is where we raise a monument for those who rest in the Free Ground as a commitment to remembering people like Christina, whose lives were shaped by hardship but not defined by it. She was someone who mattered. She was someone others tried to comfort. By telling her story, we place her back among us. Christina Ellis now stands among the names we carry forward as we restore dignity to those who lie in Row 0. She will not be forgotten.
Family Members https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/166525993/christina-ellis
Parents:
- George Gordon - 1802–1890
- Christina Gilchrist Gordon 1817–1899
Siblings:
- William Gordon - 1840–1915
- Charles Gordon - 1843–1873
- Elizabeth Gordon Vincent - 1847–1932