Not Guilty

by Christine Gardner

  The following day he’d gone to work at Burnley as usual, returning home the next Saturday at the usual time. Only then did he tell Camellia the full story of the fire. This incident was in 1908 and it’s evident from that last sentence that Camellia and George were still attempting to keep their relationship secret at this stage. Perhaps the move to Bendigo was an effort to leave behind all those who knew that George had a wife and family elsewhere. Certainly their neighbours and acquaintances believed them to be a respectable married couple. On the other hand, Camellia suspected George never intended her and the children to follow him to Bendigo at all. Unfortunately this mode of living, the pretence of respectability in a middle-class area, most likely contributed greatly to Camellia’s loneliness and desperation.

  According to Camellia’s statement, George set fire to the factory in Ferntree Gully between one and two a.m. and as he left the area he ‘turned the pony round several times so as he would not be tracked’.

  He told me the place was insured in the Palatine Insurance Company Queen Street Melbourne and he subsequently told me the money was paid over but not to the extent it was insured for – The Monbulk land and the remains of the fire was afterwards sold to Peacock and Co and shortly afterwards the Monbulk business was closed at Burnley – McDonald then started a factory of his own at Capel St North Melbourne and bought on some of the plant utensils and pulp of the Monbulk place at Burnley – In the meantime he rented an orchard at Doncaster for the purpose of obtaining fruit where he took me to live, but we went there under the name of Mr and Mrs McDonald – In a few months from then he was offered a position by H. M. Leggo of Bendigo and he took it and at the present time he is managing a factory there for him.

  Camellia also stated that George was a shareholder as well as managing director of the Monbulk company. She doesn’t say why he accepted Leggo’s offer to relocate to Bendigo. Was his own business failing or was the move a further attempt at respectability as Mr and Mrs McDonald?

  Because of the lapse of time since the fire Detective Commons told her they were unable to find any evidence, but that he nonetheless believed her. Was this a reassurance offered to a woman he believed was suffering a mental illness, a woman who was a constant annoyance with her frequent visits to the police station inquiring about her husband’s mistress? A woman he saw as harmless and pitiful, but quite mad? Or was he telling the truth to a woman he had befriended?

  He had seen her with a black eye so had some evidence of her partner’s treatment of her. He’d also seen the photograph of Camellia taken a few years earlier and noted the marked change in her appearance. Reporters at the inquest noted that Camellia’s police escort seemed to be protective of her and perhaps her apparent frailty and faded beauty brought out the chivalry in these policemen. This chivalry may also have accounted to some degree for her treatment by both the press and the all-male jury.

  Camellia had expected it would be difficult to prove George’s involvement in the Monbulk fire, but told Detective Commons things had improved between her and George because Smith had gone away. Clearly her reason for reporting the crime was directly related to the injustice she felt was inflicted on her by George. She couldn’t have him arrested for having an affair or for neglecting her, so she tried to have him charged with arson. The story she told was very detailed and seems unlikely to be fiction but Camellia was not concerned about the crime itself. She didn’t care if George had burnt down a factory and got away with it – she simply wanted to punish the man who had betrayed her. With Maudie Smith’s departure from Bendigo she thought her situation would improve and the outcome of the report was no longer important to her.

  The reason Maudie had left Bendigo was because she had been sacked from her job at the factory after Camellia had gone there and made a scene when George refused to see her. He hadn’t been home to sleep for several days and claimed he was too busy. A work colleague of George’s witnessed him and Camellia ‘scuffling’ the day after Smith’s dismissal. George had said to him ‘This woman has a razor’, and asked him to take it from her, which he did. This kind of behaviour in public shows Camellia’s desperation was growing; she no longer cared what people thought. The veneer of respectability was dissolving under the strain of George’s disloyalty and her own loneliness. Her life was unravelling and so was Camellia.

  George stated that he returned from work one Saturday evening about eight o’clock and that he and Camellia were on ‘good terms’ for the evening. The following morning he told her he was going for a ride to Woodstock on his bicycle and, he said, she became angry. He was at work six days a week while she was at home with three children, two of them toddlers. On his one day off, instead of helping around the house, or taking her and the children out for the day, he was going out on his own. He often claimed to be working Sundays but his employer denied his factory was ever open on a Sunday and insisted George admit this in a letter to the local paper.

  Truth writes:

  According to a statement by his employers, there is no work of any kind done at the jam factory on Sundays: there is a half-holiday in each week, and on other days work ceases at 5.45 p.m.

  Camellia also suspected he wasn’t planning to spend that day alone at all, but rather with Maudie Smith, who had returned to Bendigo. Camellia warned George if he went out without her he should be prepared for what he might find when he returned. She had threatened his life for months, and her own. Fearing, as he’d always done, that she might commit some violent act, he walked around the block a couple of times before finally leaving.

  According to the Bendigo Advertiser:

  [George] had always thought the woman’s threats were meaningless, but at the same time he would never take any risks. Therefore, as a precaution, he always carried his razor in his pocket, never leaving it at home on a single occasion, and always made certain that the woman’s anger had subsided before he left the home. She was a very jealous woman, but he had never dreamt of her committing such a terrible deed.

  Camellia warned him at least once that she would kill herself and the children, but George, although afraid for his own life to the extent that he took to carrying his razor around with him, presumably after the incident his work colleague witnessed, did not believe she could injure their children.

  That Sunday morning in August, 1910, Camellia McCluskey murdered her three children, Dolly, Ida and Eric, with a tomahawk and a knife.

  CHAPTER THREE: Retribution

  ‘You will say I am mad, but I am not ... not no such thing. I am desperate.’

  After George left the house Camellia spent the morning writing letters and destroying much of the furniture. She wrote to the insurance company with whom the Monbulk factory had been insured, telling them George was responsible for the fire. Her statement to police about the fire was clear and detailed; according to her George told her all about it the following day. He had, she said, ‘lit the fire in the jam room with small thin cases that the tins used to arrive in and oiled rags that they wiped the pulp tins with’, between one and two in the morning. She also told of his driving his horse and buggy around a different way to that he would usually go, in an attempt to avoid detection. She even named a well-known local man he saw that night and managed to avoid.

  More recently George had apparently told Camellia that if she ever told anyone about the fire that she wouldn’t be believed and that ‘it would take a better woman than [her] to put him away’. Camellia’s statement declares the reason she is ‘putting him away’ is that ‘he has the bad taste to prefer Mrs Smith to [her]’.

  In addition to this letter Camellia wrote two notes to George that morning:

  Sunday

  F. G. McDonald

  Now you will be satisfied you double died traitorous hound. Yes, you tell me your lies and excuses as you have been this past few months. May your life be a curse to you, yes I curse you, you dog, and the day I ever took up with you, that is all. May every misfortune befall you. You will say I am mad, but
I am not ... not no such thing. I am desperate. There is this bill and Hewitts and the Bakers and Hargreaves the milkman.

  George gave Camellia two pounds a week out of his six pound salary, out of which she had to pay ten shillings rent as well as all the household expenses. Her wage at the Monbulk factory had been thirty shillings a week, but the basic wage for a man was two pounds, two shillings. Two pounds a week then was considered sufficient for a working man to provide for a family in 1910, but working class families would presumably have lived in more modest dwellings and not paid ten shillings a week in rent.

  It doesn’t appear that Camellia was extravagant, although she was well-dressed when she appeared in court. She certainly found it difficult to manage the household on the amount provided and claimed it wasn’t enough to buy clothes for the children. George admitted to providing income support at some time for his mistress and he may have spent more on her than he acknowledged. He lived with Maudie until Camellia and the children arrived in Bendigo—did he continue to pay the rent on her house after he moved out? He claimed he couldn’t afford a horse and buggy and instead rode a bicycle. Although he had a wife and five children they were all adults by this time and his wife ran a boarding-house; there’s no suggestion he provided for them but of course it is possible he may have given some assistance.

  The other note Camellia wrote to George relates to the Monbulk fire:

  Now then McDonald, I just posted a letter to the Palatine Insurances and to the Superintendent of Police. You blamed me before, now I have done it and told them everything fully, and clearly and it will soon take effect after being searched into. So look out. You can hand over those two tin trunks in the children’s room to my father, with their contents.

  Also my lord you will get your desserts, as you deserve them.

  CMC.

  Camellia had reported George’s alleged involvement in the Monbulk fire months earlier and been told that too much time had passed and no evidence could be found, so this appears to have been an empty threat. Perhaps she hoped it would give George at least some anxious moments or perhaps she believed the insurance company would be more inclined to take action than the police had been. The reference to the tin trunks gives one of the few indications that she really did intend to take her own life, and not just those of her children. If she did die she wanted to make sure Maudie didn’t get any of her belongings.

  Her statement shows that after George left that Sunday, Camellia wrote to Leggo, George’s employer, and to the Superintendent of Police, telling them she was going to ‘destroy’ herself and the children. The ‘Crippen’ Camellia compares George to in this letter was convicted in 1910 of killing his wife in England. The case was infamous for the brutality of the murder and Camellia’s use of Crippen as a comparison to George is somewhat ironic given the brutality of her own crime:

  Dear Sir

  My life is no longer any use to me so I am going to destroy myself and my little children whom I love and whom I will not leave to the world. The rotter who is their father F.G. McDonald, is another Crippen. Yes, if he dared he would cut my throat. He only told me this morning he would like me to cut my throat because I told him I knew that his two women Smith and Wilson (Wilson was Maudie Smith’s mother) were in Bendigo as I had seen them and more than that his excuses when he is absent are so transparent to me.

  It seems that Camellia suspected George was involved with not only Maudie Smith but also her mother, Mrs Wilson. Perhaps the fact that he was so much older than her made the mother as likely a mistress as the daughter, who was presumably a young woman, as she had a young child. George’s statement mentions Mrs Wilson only as his mistress’s mother and this seems the most likely scenario. Camellia’s letter continues:

  He is never at home on Sunday his excuse being he is working at the factory. I have chopped up all the furniture so he shall not have it to present to the others, he is cold-blooded enough to do that. I am not mad. Of course he will say I am. He has left this morning with the excuse that he is going to Woodstock on his bike. I know perfectly well that he is not going alone or even with a man. I can’t even get money for necessary clothes for the children from him. He allows me the princely sum of two pounds and I have to pay ten shillings rent out of it.

  Will you kindly see that my father receives the two large tin trunks in the children’s room and their contents as they are absolutely mine. Also the bedclothes, curtains are mine, knives and forks, crockery and glassware, which I brought from my mother’s house.

  He is also a felon, a criminal, he set the Monbulk factory at Ferntree Gully on fire and why shouldn’t he get his desserts, he has given me mine. Why should he be allowed to go on his way making lives miserable and destroying them. I told him before he went I would destroy myself and the children and he said he wished I would. Of course it would be a load off his shoulders. It didn’t affect him much because he has gone off on his jaunt to Woodstock all the same. I wish you to publish this letter, let the world know him for what he is and bring him to justice over the Monbulk fire.

  I am

  Dear Sir

  Yours Truly

  C. McCluskey

  P.S. Would you kindly send word for me to Carnegie and Sons, Elizabeth Street, Melb, to take the piano away, as there is a few pounds still owing on it and it is in my name, or rather Camellia McCutcheon.

  After she wrote the letters Camellia went to a post-box in a nearby street, leaving the children at home. She was seen along the way both by a neighbour and by a work colleague of George’s. The neighbour, a woman who lived on the opposite side of the street, was on her way home from church around twelve-thirty and saw Camellia heading towards Bendigo with a letter in her hand. She said she was dressed in a grey skirt and a jacket and was wearing a hat. This seems to indicate that Camellia was in a sufficiently calm frame of mind to dress respectably for the short walk to the letterbox.

  The other witness, a salesman who worked at Leggo’s factory, described Camellia and her behaviour differently and indicated her state of mind to be quite the opposite. He claimed he saw her walking towards the city at around twelve fifteen, carrying two letters, and stated that she was ‘walking at a fair pace’. He also noticed that ‘her hair was ruffled, her skirt was only half on; her coat was drawn around her tightly. She looked very queer – she appeared to glare at [him] as if there was something wrong with her.’ This witness, who was the same person who had taken the razor from Camellia at George’s request, also stated he had seen Camellia and George arguing on several occasions. His description of Camellia is at odds with that of the neighbour and there could be several reasons for this. He knew Camellia and had seen her behaving violently more than once, so he may have considered her an irrational person, while the neighbour may have only known her as the ‘respectable married woman’ who lived across the road.

  So both witnesses’ views may have been coloured by their preconceptions. The salesman may also have passed closer to Camellia, while the woman may have been on the other side of the street when she saw her neighbour that day. It’s also possible the man’s account was embellished somewhat, as he’d have been aware by the time he made his statement just what Camellia had done immediately after she posted the letters. He mentioned she didn’t appear to recognise him and that alone might give us some clue as to her emotional state. Her efforts at respectability would surely not have allowed her to totally ignore an acquaintance if she was calm and rational at the time. On the other hand if she did recognise him as the man who took George’s razor from her she may have deliberately ignored him.

  When she returned to the house she wrote the notes to George and smashed as much furniture as she could before she turned to her children:

  I then destroyed the children. I first killed the twins and then the girl Dorothy. She was crying and running away around the back of the house. I did it with the tomahawk which was always in the kitchen, also the carving knife. I then brought the carving knife into my bedroom and
tried to cut my neck but my nerve was gone. ... After trying to cut myself with the knife I gathered up two small cakes of camphor that I had in the house and mixed it up in a glass with water and drank the lot. I thought it would poison me, but it didn’t take the slightest effect on me.

  After this unsuccessful suicide attempt Camellia set fire to the chair which George had brought from the Monbulk factory and in which their affair had begun. She then went to the police station and gave herself up. It was about three-thirty when she arrived and Senior Constable Daniel O’Callaghan was on duty. He asked her what her trouble was and at first she said she couldn’t tell him. She started crying and then held up her hand, saying ‘Look at that.’ O’Callaghan saw blood on her hand and asked her where she lived and again what her trouble was. The Senior Constable’s statement (at the inquest) continues with her answer:

  ‘Oh, I killed my three children today and tried to cut my throat but the knife wasn’t sharp enough. If I could have found his razor I would have finished myself.’ I (O’Callaghan) said ‘Why did you do it?’ She said ‘Because that man went to Woodstock this morning.’ I said ‘How did you kill the children?’ She said ‘I hit them on the head with a hammer.’ When she spoke of the knife not being sharp enough, she said ‘Look at my neck,’ and I noticed blood marks on the right side of her neck.

  Camellia gave two quite different accounts on the subject of her attempt to end her own life. In her own statement she said she lost her nerve, while Senior Constable O’Callaghan reports her as saying the knife was too blunt. It seems more likely that, although she may have fully intended to kill herself, she found it more difficult to cut her own throat than she did to kill her children, ‘losing her nerve’ when it came to that final act.