Samuel Le Maitre, the son of Frederick and Sophia Le Maitre, reached the colony of Victoria in the early 1850s. If a reference in his poem 'Ireland' may be taken literally, he had already 'roamed thro' many distant lands'. Although his efforts as a digger were unsuccessful, he was closely associated with the Bendigo press from its earliest years.
'Songs of the Gold Fields', his first book of verse, was published in Sandhurst, as Bendigo was then called, in 1866. Frank Cusack (q.v.) suggests in his introduction to the 1991 edition that it 'would appear to be the first book of verse printed and published on the Victorian Goldfields.' (Morris Miller cites nothing earlier. Laughing a Crime, or Twenty Pounds No Comedy...' by 'A Gold Digger', published in 1853, emanated from Ballarat but was published in Melbourne).
According to Cusack, Le Maitre published a second booklet of verse, Specimens from Bendigo, in 1870, but no copy has been located.
The poet's later years were poverty stricken, although he made a meagre living as a 'fossicker'. He was forced to seek refuge sometimes in the local Benevolent Asylum. Le Maitre was buried in the Bendigo General Cemetery.
