LAYCOCK, Elias Connell (1845-1938)

Champion Sculler

Elias Connell Laycock was born in Penrith on 8 May 1845, the son of Mary J (nee Simpson) and John Connell Laycock. He was also the grandson of Margaret Laycock who was the daughter of John Connell, second landholder in what is now the Sutherland Shire.

In 1821, John Connell applied for and received a grant of one thousand acres, at Sylvania, formerly held by Gregory Blaxland. His holdings increased to 3,000 acres including parcels of land at Kurnell and to the west of the present-day Cronulla Beach. When her husband, Captain Thomas Laycock of Bringelly died in 1823, Margaret returned with her two young sons, John Connell and Elias Pearson Laycock, to live with her brother, John Connell Jnr.

Margaret Laycock died, aged twenty-six in 1824, and her father John Connell Snr, became guardian to his two grandsons. On John Connell’s death in 1849, his property passed to his grandsons, John C and Elias P Laycock, but unfortunate events led to the properties being acquired in 1861, at auction by Thomas Holt, a friend and business associate of John C Laycock.

As a professional sculler, Elias Laycock trained on the waters of Port Hacking and the Parramatta River at Gladesville. He was described by Banjo Patterson as being like ‘a gladiator…who could eat a dozen eggs for breakfast.’ In 1875 and again in 1879, he won the Championship of New South Wales. He also claimed the Championship of England when Edward Trickett, the holder, refused to meet him in a challenge race. Trickett was the first Australian to be recognised as a world champion having defeated James H Sadler on the Thames River in England for the world title in 1876. In a match race, Trickett defeated Elias Laycock in 1879 but lost his world title to Ned Hanlan, a Canadian, in England in 1880. It is interesting to note that there is a Laycock Avenue and a Trickett Street in Cronulla also a Laycock Street and a Trickett Street in Southport, Queensland, named after the Champion scullers.

In 1924, Elias assisted the Royal Australian Historical Society in deciding the site for the tombstone erected to mark the burial place of seaman Forby Sutherland, who died in 1770, when the Endeavour, Captain James Cook’s vessel lay at anchor in Botany Bay.  As a young boy growing up in Kurnell, an elderly Aboriginal woman named Sally Mittamong, who was a servant in Elias’ mother’s household and then aged well over eighty, claimed to have witnessed the funeral and indicated to him where the burial site was located.

In 1876, Elias Laycock married Lucy Elizabeth Gregory in Paddington. They had three children, Bessie Connell born 1877, Elias Connell born 1879, Maurice William born 1881, and John Connell born 1883. The Sands Sydney Directory in 1919, listed Laycock as a bee and boatkeeper, the business being located near the southern end of the site now occupied by the Cronulla Railway Station opposite Laycock Avenue. In a booklet, published in 1970 by Cronulla Rotary Club, a local man, Alan Lovell recalled purchasing fresh fish and honey there and the crossed sculls used as a decoration in the shop. Elias Connell Laycock died in Cronulla on 29 May 1938. His wife, Lucy Elizabeth predeceased him in 1928. Both were buried in Woronora Cemetery at Sutherland.

Colleen M Passfield

First published in  Sutherland Shire, Some Early Residents, 2006, by Botany Bay Family History Society. Compiled by Maree McKinley and Sue Hewitt.  

Click on the name LAYCOCK, Elias Connell (1845 - 1938) at the heading of this story. You will be taken to the database entry for Elias Laycock and his family.

 References:

New South Wales Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages

Hutton, Neve M – Sutherland Shire Studies No 1 – A brief history of the Sutherland Shire

Hutton, Neve M – Sutherland Shire Studies No 4 – The Development of Commerce & Industry

Kirby, David R – From Sails to Atoms – first Fifty Years of Sutherland Shire

Larkin, Maryanne – Sutherland Shire – a history to 1939

Lawrence, Joan – A Pictorial History of Sutherland Shire

Mackie, Robert D ed – The Sutherland Shire Golden Jubilee 1906 – 1956

Salt, Daphne – Gateway to the South

Walker, John – Sutherland Shire 1770 – 1970 (Cronulla Rotary Club)

Rowing Australia (www.rowingaustralia.com.au/athletes_history2html)