Robert Rutter Corbould was the third child of William Corbould and Julia Augusta Signall, who immediately after their marriage in Bath England in 1858, emigrated to Ballarat in Australia, some 10 years after the gold rush began in the Ballarat region. Robert Rutter was William and Julia's first child to survive infancy.
Birth certificate: here
He was a tailor, draper and haberdasher.
Robert Rutter moved from Ballarat to Mildura at the end of 1890, three years after the Chaffey brothers had founded the new inland irrigation settlement on the Murray River. He was a prominent member of the Mildura business community. He lived firstly in Deakin Avenue (his home was sited where the current Mildura council offices are now located) and later at 12 Langtree Parade, in a house that is now subject to a heritage order (built c.1918, photo c.2006).
Photograph: Robert Rutter's storefront - Mildura c.1900.
Robert Rutter returned to live in Ballarat c.1925, where he stayed until he died in 1940. His son Harold Signell Corbould remained in Mildura and raised his family in the home at 12 Langtree Parade.
Robert Rutter is included in the family website for two reasons:
Firstly:
In an era when a woman's property usually became her husband's on marriage, Robert Rutter entered into a contract of settlement with his wife-to-be's father William Moxon Bean on 21 May 1885 to ensure that Clara Louisa Bean's personal effects remained Clara's property. A copy of that agreement or contract can be read here (4.6MB). It could be considered a fore-runner of the modern day pre-nuptial agreement. A plain text version of the agreement can be read here (47kb). It is intruiging in retrospect that Clara's father would go to so much trouble to have a formal agreement drawn up and executed when the amount of personal property involved was not particuarly large. Did William Moxon Bean not trust the 23 year old Robert Rutter?
Secondly:
Robert Rutter corresponded for several years with Edward Henry Corbould RI, the London artist, whose life and work is covered elsewhere in this website. There are over thirty letters that Edward Henry Corbould wrote to his distant relation Robert Rutter in Ballarat and later Mildura. All of the letters are available on this website.
Individuals page |
