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impersonal hospital staff! This would not have been the custom in Avegno where the
people who came to your aid were nearly always relatives or close fiiends. During her
confinement at Kew, Kate gave birth to one twin prematurely while the other remained
in her utems. The survivmg second child was bom four months later and named
Antonio John, after his deceased brother. Antonio was transferred to Mt Prospect
after two weeks and put into foster care. On 4 October 1879, Kate, aged 39, suffered
a cerebral haemorrhage and died about three weeks later. She was buried at the
Melboume General Cemetery.
Gaetano was by this stage 49 years old and left with four young children in his
care: James aged twelve, Elizabeth aged nine, Celestino aged six and Antonio aged
two. During Kate's confinement, he had applied to have Lot 153 dealt with under
Section 31 of the 1869 Land Act,^' which aUowed holders of occupation and
cultivation licences to revert to mining. Again facing language difficulties, he had
found it necessary to employ agents to write his business letters, these informal
assistants ~ usually ItaUan-speaking friends with good English skills ~ performing a
role similar to the earlier letter-writers of the goldfields. Vincenzo Perini, whose story,
foUows in a later section of this chapter, found many of his less literate compatriots
dependent on him for this reason. Besides farming and mining his land, Gaetano now
also found it necessary to spend more time in the home completing the domestic
chores: just as some widows in the previous stories had assumed the roles of their
husbands, so too did Gaetano take over from Kate. Before her death, he had begun
making clothes for the children: underwear ~ 'Lizzie's drawers' ~ and 'half-mast'
pants for the boys. The shortness of the trousers reflected Gaetano's peasant
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