People Australia

Leyshon or Leythen Davies (c.1840-1905) copper smelter

Birth: about 1840 in Taibach, Glamorganshire, Wales, son of Jenkin Davies (or David), copper man, and Ann, née Walter. Marriage: 25 February 1866 in the parish church at Michaelstone Super Avon, Glamorganshire, Wales, to Gwendoline or Elizabeth Morgan (1844-1914). They had two daughters and six sons. Death: 18 March 1905 at Shuttleton, near Nymagee, New South Wales. 

• In 1871 he was a copper smelter at Faibach, Margam, Glamorganshire, and in 1873 a miner at Rhymney, Monmouthshire, Wales.
• Arrived in NSW, as “one of the band of Welsh copper smelters who came out to Newcastle in the early seventies”.
• By 1883 he was an insolvent smelter at Nymagee, NSW. He later worked as a labourer.
• On Saturday 18 March 1905 “a gun report was heard in a house in the main street” of Shuttleton and “on investigation the body of an old man was found in a back room, with his head partly blown off, and a double-barrel gun lying by his side”. A coronial inquest found that Davies had died by his own hand.

Sources
Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 20 March 1905, p 6: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/236907152; Registers of Coroners’ Inquests and Magisterial Inquiries, 1902-1907, microfilm, NRS 343, State Records Authority, NSW.