From Australia’s Jewish past

Sarah Saqui – great-aunt to May Saqui, and a most interesting lady

At the end of April, you may remember the story of May Saqui – the “forgotten actress”.  This week’s story relates to Sarah Saqui, who was born in England on 20 May 1838.  Sarah was one of seven children of Isaac and Maria, and the great-aunt of May.

Isaac was a music professor who taught piano, organs, and singing.  It is not clear if Sarah arrived in Victoria at the same time as her brother Abraham, who wasted no time in changing his name to Austin, meeting up with a fellow musician, violinist George Peck, and touring on the north-eastern Victorian gold fields.  The Murray Advertiser mentions that ‘Messrs. Peck & Saqui will nightly enliven the inhabitants of the township and the environs with their polkas and waltzes, in the dancing room of the El Dorado’.  Abraham remained in the area well into the 1860s.  It was noted in May’s story that he became a bookmaker and a racehorse owner – his horse Warrior having won the 1869 Melbourne Cup.

Sarah arrived in Victoria in 1855, and by the 1860s, through her brother, who had an interest in a hotel in St Kilda, Sarah had acted as a barmaid and attracted customers.  She appears to have found work in the ’sex sector’, although how this came about no one knows, except to say that she was a well-known courtesan who entertained Prince Alfred, Queen Victoria’s son, and the Duke of Edinburgh on the first royal visit to Australia in 1867.  Australian writer Steven Harris specifically named Sarah as the Duke’s main Australian consort – she was also known as “the Psyche,” which was a play on the name ‘Saqui’.  Contemporary papers like “The Truth” also identified her as his consort.  John Christie, the Duke’s detective, alluded to the duke’s many amorous pursuits in Melbourne’s red-light district in his notes, although he did not identify Sarah by name.

Mrs Fraser, who ran an establishment in Melbourne, was quoted from The Truth: “I don’t know where Sarah flourished between her music hall days and the advent of the Duke of Edinburgh, but she developed, as I have said, into a very beautiful woman. She had not put on the heavy flesh that Jewesses usually do as they gather years. However, she took up her abode at Mother Fraser’s while the Duke was in Melbourne. The bagnio was barred to all others.  When the Duke reached Sydney, Sarah Saqui was before him and resided in a cottage in Castlereagh Street, up a flight of steps, owned by John Starkey.  Here, the late Detective Broomfield shadowed the Duke.  I have seen the entries in his diary, which his daughter lent me on the old man’s death. The Duke remained there a couple of hours on more than one occasion.  When the Duke returned to the Colonies, after the shooting at him by O’Farrell, at Clontarf, down Sydney Harbor, Sarah Saqui was transferred to the Hon. Eliot York, an officer of the British royal household and a pimp. Last time I saw Sarah Saqui, she was waiting at the intersection of Park and Castlereagh streets, where she had an appointment with one of the ugliest bookmakers of his day. It was racing time at Randwick. I saw an announcement of her marriage to a well-known Melbourne musician. Sarah had her faults, but she was not a bad sort. The Duke of Edinburgh was the meanest man she had ever struck.’’

Steve Harris’s book – The Prince and the Assassin – is the engrossing real-life story of how Queen Victoria’s favourite son, Prince Alfred, undertook the most ambitious royal tour, only for Australia’s overwhelming joy of having the first royal on its shores jolted by his decadent behaviour, then shocked by an attempted assassination by a man trained as a priest.

Sarah had her turn on the stage too. She had a very presentable appearance, a good voice, and winning manners. In the fifties, there were several places of entertainment in Melbourne and the suburbs. Sandridge, now Port Melbourne, had a number, amongst them being The Ship and The Chusan. At both venues, the “Divine Sarah” took her nightly turn.

She married twice and left Melbourne for New York after marrying a visiting US musician and composer, Charles Eugene Pratt, on 13 September 1875.  The couple had a daughter who, unfortunately, became very ill in 1907 and died of cancer at the age of twenty-seven.  Charles’ claim to fame was when he published, amongst others, the popular ‘Bring Back My Bonnie to Me’ (aka My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean, which is said to be an adaptation of a traditional Scottish folk song).  No evidence is known whether May ever met, or even knew about her notorious grand-aunt, and given the age difference and their known histories, it seems unlikely.  Unfortunately, there is little more known about this interesting woman.  She died on 14 July 1894.

The Saqui Family is noted for having produced many musicians of considerable repute.  Abraham and Sarah’s father, Isaac, was a well-known teacher of the piano and organ, as well as singing.  At the age of fifteen, Abraham was one of the piano performers at the London Exhibition of 1851, and played before Her Majesty the Queen at the opening of the first World Show.  Abraham used to say that he was the only aristocratic Jew in Australia, and this was endorsed by his son, John.

The AJHS acknowledges the following references in the preparation of this story:

Forgotten Australian Actors – Nick Murphy; Murray Advertiser, April 1855; Ovens and Murray Advertiser, 6 June 1857; John Shrimski, a second cousin of May Saqui; Steve Harris (2018) The Prince and the Assassin: Australia’s First Royal Tour and Portent of World Terror. Melbourne Books.

 

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