Vivian Hall Cadden

1895–1895

Born on the Kimberley goldfield where his father was the mounted constable, named for the town, and buried there at three months under a slate stone his father seems to have cut himself.

A thin grey slate headstone, cracked across, cut with the words In loving memory to our dear son Vivian Hall Cadden, born 22 Sept died 29 Dec 95, and a verse in script below. — Vivian’s slate headstone in the Old Halls Creek Cemetery, signed ‘JMC’.

Born: 22 September 1895 · Hall’s Creek, Western Australia
Died: 29 December 1895 · Hall’s Creek
Lived: 3 months

Vivian Hall Cadden was born at Hall’s Creek, in the East Kimberley, on 22 September 1895 — the fourth child of John Mitchell and Annie Cadden, and the only one born in the far north. His father was then a mounted constable of the Western Australian Police in the Hall’s Creek–Wyndham district; his mother had come up by boat from Perth the year before with three small children, and been driven the long road inland to Hall’s Creek in a borrowed buggy.¹² His second name is the town’s.

He lived three months and a week. He died at Hall’s Creek on 29 December 1895, and the death was registered in the Kimberley district early the next year.¹ He was buried in the cemetery of the old gold-rush town, abandoned when the settlement moved in the 1950s.

His grave is marked by a thin slab of slate, cut in plain capitals with a scrolled flourish — ‘In loving memory to our dear son Vivian Hall Cadden, born 22 Sept. died 29 Dec. 95’ — and, below, a verse in a flowing hand: ‘Dearest Vivian how we miss you, more than tongue can tell; God thought it best to take you to Him; Dearest Vivian a sad farewell.’ It is signed ‘JMC’. In a place hundreds of miles from any stonemason, it looks like the work of his father, who had been a tinsmith before he was a policeman.³

The stone has since broken in three and been set flat in a concrete surround, and the grave is cared for still. In the family’s papers Vivian survives only as a name — ‘Vivian H. (deceased)’ on his father’s death certificate, and one of the ‘deceased 2 males’ on his mother’s.⁴

A broken slate headstone set flat in a concrete surround on dry grassy ground at the Old Halls Creek Cemetery. — The grave today, Old Halls Creek Cemetery — the slate re-set in concrete.

The Record

Sources & References

1
Birth and death registrations

WA BDM birth index, reg. 2403/1895, Kimberley: Vivian Hall Cadden, father John Mitchell Cadden, mother Annie Pearce. WA BDM death index, reg. 995/1896, Kimberley: Vivian Hall Cadden, aged 3 months, father John M. Cadden, mother Annie Pearce. (A cemetery index gives 29 October 1894 and ‘female’ — both wrong.)
2
The North West, 1894

Report of Annie Cadden’s funeral, Perth press, June 1936: ‘in 1894, with a young family, accompanied her husband to the North West. For some years she lived at Wyndham and Hall’s Creek.’ Sunday Times (Perth), 9 July 1950, p. 7: the buggy lent by Michael Durack. See John Mitchell Cadden’s page.
3
The headstone

Photographs of the grave, Old Halls Creek Cemetery (family collection): an older print and two recent colour photographs. Inscription: ‘In loving memory to our dear son Vivian Hall Cadden born 22 Sept. died 29 Dec. 95’; verse in script; signed ‘JMC’.
4
In the parents’ papers

WA death registration 2513/1954: John Mitchell Cadden — children include ‘Vivian H. (deceased)’. WA death registration, 1936: Annie Cadden — ‘deceased 2 males’ (Vivian and Jack).