In 2024, Denis Burns donated the business plaque of Mrs Pilon’s Licenced Private Hospital to the Young Historical Museum.
According to Wise’s New South Wales post office directory, Sydney, 1914, Charlotte Pilon, of ‘Chelsea’, Young is listed as operating a private hospital.
It appears that she opened the hospital after she had borne 10 children and raised 8 of them to adulthood.
Charlotte was born c.1847 to William Levett and his wife Elizabeth Hannah Ann nee Wright.
Her birth is not registered.
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The family were from England and travelled through Maitland and Sofala before settling in Young. Charlotte married Henry Nathaniel Pilon in 1866.
Henry Pilon was born in London in 1834.
He came to Port Phillip, Victoria with his brother Stephen Whisson Pilon on 1 October 1852 on the Ferozepore.
Both men stated their occupation as ‘wine merchant’ on the passenger list.
The brothers moved around the Victorian goldfields before arriving on the Burrangong goldfield in 1862.
Stephen married Jane Roberts in 1868.
Both Pilon brothers took up land along Demondrille Creek and Stephen was a publican at the Demondrille Inn.
Stephen died from sunstroke in 1872.
Jane then married Matthew Pritchard in 1873 and moved to Auburn with her husband and children in about 1886.
In the meantime, Henry and Charlotte moved into the town of Young.
Charlotte was recorded as having collected subscriptions for Burrangong District Hospital for the year ending 31 December 1893.
Henry Pilon, of Main Street, appears in advertisements promoting Doan’s Backache Kidney Pills in 1908 which relieved pain caused by years of working underground in the mines.
In 1908, the first Private Hospitals Act was passed in NSW and the administration of private hospitals became a responsibility of the Chief Medical Officer and the Director-General of Public Health.
The Private Hospitals Branch managed licensing in compliance with the Act. According to some notes left by Miss Begg, Mrs Pilon’s private hospital was located along Burrangong Creek on a laneway off Main Street, approximately behind what is now the Young Federation Inn.
This matches the location of land owned by C. Pilon on historical parish maps.
Nurse Pilon is recorded as having saved the lives of two children who were accidentally poisoned in August 1916.
Henry died at their Spring Street home on 5 February 1919.
In April 1919, during the Spanish influenza epidemic, W. Vogt was given permission to build two W.B. (weatherboard) cottages for Mrs Pilon.
She is stated as living in Young in January 1920 when her brother James Levett died.
Some time between then and 1933, she moved to Auburn to live closer to relatives and was cared for by a granddaughter.
She died there on 23 April 1935.
Karen Schamberger – Young Historical Society
