Barcroft Boake

Barcroft Henry Thomas Boake
Poet and Author of 'Where The Dead Men Lie'

Born in Sydney on the 26th May 1866, Barcroft worked as a surveyor and a boundary rider, but is best remembered for his poetry, a volume of which was published five years after his death.
 

Barcroft was eldest son of Barcroft Capel Boake and his wife Florence Eva, née Clarke.
In July 1886 Barcroft joined E. Commins, a surveyor, and had experience as a field-assistant, working for some time in the Monaro (NSW) disinclined to return to the city, took service as a boundary rider, and worked in NSW and Qld.
In May 1890 Barcroft joined W. A. Lipscomb, a surveyor, and remained with him until the end of 1891. About this time he began to send verses to The Bulletin which was published.
His last five months were the gloomiest. He returned home at the end of 1891 to find it a place of grief. His father was practically bankrupt, having lost the last of his money in Melbourne land speculations. Boake contributed his savings, some £50, to cover immediate household expenses.
His father sums up the position: 'His grandma was invalided and confined to her bed and his eldest sister had found marriage a failure and was domiciled with me her husband being a helpless creature was dismissed from the Railway Dept., I myself was hopeless about everything and quite unfit to cope with the fiend melancholia that I plainly saw was oppressing him'.
He mentions a blow that Boake received: 'about this time he received a letter from the country, and in reference to it said to one of his sisters: “I hear that my best girl is going to be married”.  
A return to the outback might have saved Boake, but he seemed to have lost the capacity to make up his mind about anything.
A few attempts to find work in the city proved futile and he sank into brooding inactivity.
On 2 May 1892 he left the house. Eight days later his body was discovered in the scrub at Long Bay, Middle Harbour, hanging by his stockwhip from a bough. Barcroft is believed to have committed suicide
Barcroft was only 26 when he died. 
According to Cecil Hadgraft, "Modern drugs might have postponed Boake's suicide for years."

Ref: http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/biogs/A030178b.htm

Reviewed January 2011