Isaac Aaron, his wife and two children arrived in
Australia on the barque Hashemy on 25th January 1839.
By June 1839 he was residing in Raymond Terrace. His
wife Martha gave birth to a daughter there on the 2nd of June 1839. He
commenced his medical practise in Raymond Terrace and was listed as a
qualified Medical Witness in this year.
Martha died of cholera aged 37 in January 1840 and was buried in
Christ Church burial grounds, Newcastle.
His second marriage to Charlotte Mary Croker of Motto
Farm took place at St. James Church, Sydney in November 1840.
In June 1841 Isaac Aaron moved from
Raymond Terrace and advertised his 1/2 acre allotment in Port Stephens
Street for sale. The property consisted of a substantial weather boarded
cottage with four rooms, a detached kitchen, store, stable, bricked
well, and a building used as a hospital.
Isaac Aaron died in 1877. The Sydney Morning
Herald printed his obituary: -
A man passed away from amongst us last week
whose career is deserving of a brief notice. Mr. Isaac Aaron, who
for the last eleven years filled the office of surgeon at
Darlinghurst gaol, was a man who in his day took a worthy part in
same of the historical struggles of English liberalism. In the years
of the great struggle which agitated England from sea to sea, in
1830, 1831 and 1832 for the Reform Bill of lord Grey, Mr. Aaron was
a member of the council of the Birmingham Political Union, in
company with Thomas Attwood, George Frederick Muntz, Joshua
Scholefield, and George Edmunds, men a great political influence at
the time. He was one of the speakers at the great reform gathering
at Newhall Hill, when not les than 200,000 men assembled, and the
story of which is so graphically told in Harriet Martineau's History
of the Thirty Years Peace. The vast movement set on foot by the
Political Union undoubtedly carried the Reform Act, and all through
its existence the late Mr. Aaron was one of its most active leaders.
At a later period, during the agitation for the abolition of Church
rates, Mr. Aaron was one of those who, on the ground of principle,
refused to pay the rates; and on one occasion 5000 or 6000 people
assembled in the street before his house, when his chairs and
tables, which had been seized for Church rates, were offered for
sale, and nobody in that large crowd was found unpatriotic enough or
bold enough to bid for them.
Mr. Aaron emigrated to NSW in 1838 and he
brought a considerable sum of money to the colony; but we believe he
embarked in some speculations soon after his arrival by which he
lost very heavily. He never took a very prominent part in public
affairs here, though in the year 1848 he actively exerted himself in
securing the election of Mr. Lowe for Sydney and he took part in the
movement for the abolition n of transportation. Mr. Aaron combined
with a sound knowledge of his profession a varied stock of political
and general information, and he was one of the men who could always
give a reason for his political belief. He was a bold and energetic
speaker and a man of high spirit, whose usefulness was to some
extent impaired by personal haughtiness and an ill concealed scorn
for many who assumed to be his superiors. Such as he was, the
community could ill afford to lost him.
