Samuel Hewitt, a butcher, stated that Camellia was a customer of his from some time in June and had lived next door to him in Forest Street for about 3 months. This house still stands and is attached to its neighbour, so it would have been impossible to avoid overhearing noisy arguments or screaming children. He had seen her on one occasion with a black eye and she had told him she had fallen and hurt herself, but Hewitt had heard Dolly say a day or two earlier that ‘her dadda gave her mamma a beating’ so he knew she was lying. He said she was always ‘well-conducted and appeared fond of her children.’ He also felt she appeared to ‘always look lonely’ but was the kind of person who kept things to herself. In spite of this she did tell him that she and her husband ‘did not get on too well’. Although they were neighbours he did not know George at all, having seen him only at a distance. All his dealings were with Camellia. He concluded his statement ‘She was always very fond of her children.’
John Fly also testified that he knew Camellia. He was a grocer and also the landlord of the house they lived in when she first moved to Bendigo, in Forest Street, from March 22 to June 8. She came to his shop for her groceries and brought the children with her, but, like Hewitt, he had never seen George, although he was their landlord. He considered Camellia to be a ‘very respectable woman’ who was very fond of her children. He had heard rumours that George was ‘paying his attentions to another woman’ and on one occasion when he went to the house he thought she had been crying.
He remarked to her that she did not look well or asked her if she had some trouble and she replied ‘Yes I am worried to death’. Mr Fly states that she seemed to be a woman who kept her troubles to herself and added that she still owed nine shillings and ninepence for groceries.
When Camellia told Fly she was ‘worried to death’ did he shrug his shoulders and leave, presuming she wouldn’t want to talk about her worries, because she seemed to ‘keep her troubles to herself’? Surely such a statement is an indication that she wanted to talk to him, but perhaps he was not able to cope with a distressed woman and simply didn’t know how to reply. She seems to have been surrounded by people who saw she was unhappy but didn’t feel they could or should try to help her.
When Detective Commons testified at the inquest, he said that before making her official statement Camellia had asked him what they’d done with the children. He told her they’d been taken to the hospital and she said she was glad about that. He warned her to be careful about what she said as it would be entered into evidence and she replied ‘Oh, what does it matter now, I don’t care what becomes of me.’ He noticed that she had five cuts on the right side of her neck and some blood on the collar of her blouse, as well as a cut on the front of her left wrist. He asked her if the cuts were where she had tried to ‘do away with’ herself and she said they were and that she was unable to cut her neck so then tried to cut her wrist. There were a lot of blood stains around her left hand as well as some on her right hand.
Commons’ statement continues:
[Camellia] was then brought round to the watch house [from the Detectives’ Office] where she was charged – I then said to her ‘Have you any property?’ She then produced a letter (now marked as Exhibit ‘T’). I said ‘You open it,’ and she did so – I said ‘This letter is dated July 8th.’ She said ‘Yes, I have been carrying it about with me for a long time, I have been thinking of going away, burn it.’ She was taken to the gaol that night – On the road to the gaol I said ‘Where did you live before you went to Ferntree Gully?’ She said ‘At Sassafras. It was there I practically first met McDonald – he had some ground there.’ At the gaol she gave me the skirt and blouse and a lace collar produced Ex. ‘U’. She had previously said she was wearing these when she destroyed the children – On the front of the blouse was some brain matter similar to that we had seen in the house in Don Street.
The statement continues with Commons explaining how he knew Camellia from her frequent visits to the police station inquiring about Maudie Smith, as well as her information about the Monbulk fire in which she believed George was involved. Commons had told her that was a very serious matter and suggested she think about it first, but she went back and made a formal statement implicating George in arson. Commons said she ‘appeared like a woman who had been driven to desperation’ and called often asking about the result of inquiries into the fire. He said she had seemed ‘greatly troubled’ when he’d first met her and had become more so ‘as time advanced.’ Commons said he believed the chair which Camellia had attempted to burn was from McDonald’s private room at Ferntree Gully and that she had not tried to burn the house, just the chair. Detective Commons seems to have been very sympathetic towards Camellia. Was he her only friend, the only one who understood her and what led her to that final desperate act? Or was he a man of his time, unable to imagine a middle-class lady like Camellia committing such a crime of her own accord?
CHAPTER SIX: The Trial
‘I am of opinion her crime, which was accompanied by a useless destruction of property, was the result of a fury or passion invoked by jealousy; neglect; broken promises; the mode of life she was living (she looked upon herself as an outcast) and by the knowledge her children had no name.’
Camellia had lost contact with her father at some stage, perhaps because he disapproved of her relationship with a married man. Bendigo Police were trying to find him in the hope that he could provide some help in her defence and on August 12th a friend of his, Stephen Donoghue, wrote to them. Donoghue had worked with Patrick McCluskey on a railway bridge and suggested they might find him at White Cliffs, near Mildura, where he had secured a selection:
If he is not on his land he will very probably be working on some of the new lines being constructed, if so you can find out at Engineer in Chief’s Office in Melbourne. A sister of hers took the veil as a nun about Jan or Feb last – I was personally acquainted with all the family and am very sorry for what has happened and I may also tell you that Camellia McCluskey met with a severe accident when a child (about 3 years of age) which may have something to do with this sad affair. She was placed on the back of a young colt by her father, the horse got a fright and threw the child and then ran over her. She was in a bad way for some time afterwards.
Camellia’s sister, Adelaide Bessie, who was eight years younger than her, had entered the Convent of Mercy in Mansfield, in 1906, receiving the habit in November of the same year as Sister Mary Imelda. She became a teacher, working at several different convents during her lifetime, and was apparently a strict disciplinarian. What happened to her between the time of her mother’s death, in 1902, and her entry into the convent is unknown, but perhaps the scandal of Camellia’s behaviour had some effect on her decision to choose that lifestyle.
Patrick McCluskey was not able to pay for Camellia’s defence so her late mother’s family stepped in. Detective Commons had asked that the Mildura Police interview Patrick on that subject and also stated that Camellia ‘had for some time prior to the tragedy been most anxious about her father and she seemed isolated’. Sergeant Carter, of Mildura Police, interviewed Patrick and asked him to arrange for his daughter’s defence.
He said he was unable to help her because he had put his savings into his fruit block at White Cliffs, ‘and just now I am doing a little work for fellow settlers, and am earning a little money, which just keeps me going’. There were many new settlers in the Mildura area in the early 20th century, clearing the bush and turning the desert into orchards. Some were successful, many were not, but it was backbreaking work for all and many men worked away from their own property to make enough money to get by, hoping that eventually their land would bear fruit.
Sergeant Carter wrote that Patrick ‘seemed a respectable man and I think his statement is true. He promised to write to his daughter’. Patrick wrote to the Sergeant of Police, Bendigo, telling him that his daughter had been kicked by a foal when she was two and been ‘insensible’ for two days. He also claimed that when she was
four or five she was dragged by a horse when her foot caught in the reins and was again ‘insensible’ for two or three days.
Dear Sir, I may mention that my daughter had her head kicked by a foal when she was about 2½ years and was insensible for 2 days also again between 4 and 5 years I was putting her on a horse I had just ridden when he pulled back and her foot caught in the rein and the horse ran around the yard and up railway at Euroa a distance of 15 chains and she was another 2 or 3 days insensible and again 12 years ago a mare ran away with her and dragged her nearly a mile.
Camellia herself dismissed the later two incidents as minor and had no recollection at all of the first one. This would be expected if it happened when she was only two, but doctors found no evidence of any early head injury. Camellia’s father may have been ‘stretching’ the truth a little in an effort to gain some sympathy for her. His final words confirm this: ‘all her troubles caused by that scoundrel would upset any woman’s brain’. In the same letter he requested police give Camellia a letter he had enclosed for her and ‘oblige a grief-stricken father’. Patrick McCluskey was clearly not a well-educated man, but he was determined to do all he could to gain his daughter’s release.
The Medical Officer of Bendigo Gaol, who had first examined Camellia the day after the murders, reported on September 15:
I first saw her on Monday 8th August/10 when I found her in a condition of high mental excitement – strange in manner and speech – but I am not prepared to say, notwithstanding above, that she was of unsound mind. From that time onwards to present time she has been calm and collected and perfectly rational and has improved in health very much.
She has been kept under observation and has not been a good sleeper. Regarding injuries said to have been received in early childhood she knows nothing nor can I find evidence [of any injury to her head].
Camellia’s trial was held in Bendigo on October 4, 1910. According to the Melbourne Age’s report, Camellia ‘presented the appearance of one whose spirits were broken down’.
Doctors Gaffney and Fullerton gave evidence for the Defence, stating that Camellia was ‘not responsible for her actions at the time of the murder’ and the Government Medical Officer, Dr Eadie, stated his opinion that she was ‘a neurotic, both mentally and physically, the result of worry and trouble’. He also concluded that she ‘did not know what she was doing when she killed the children’.
If she was insane, it was temporary, judging by the doctors’ accounts not long afterwards, which all claim her to be sane. Was the theory of her insanity based simply on the method she used to kill her children? Bendigo Advertiser reported Camellia’s defence counsel, when addressing the jury, said that they had only to look at ‘the mutilation of those little ones and the smashed furniture to see that it was the work of an insane mind’. If she had had sleeping tablets or some other less brutal method of murder available to her, would she still have been considered insane?
At the trial Camellia’s father, Patrick McCluskey, told the court of her childhood accidents and claimed she had complained of ‘head trouble’ since the accident when she was about six.
Dr Gaffney testified that when he had seen Camellia in the gaol, he ‘could not fix her attention on the moral aspect of what she had done. She was so much taken up with her own wrong and how she had been treated’. He concluded from this meeting that, if she were ‘not altogether insane, she was at least very unstable.’ She seemed to be callous and not recognise the enormity of what she had done, looking at it as though from an outside point of view. He believed she had committed the murders in a ‘blind state of fury’ and was ‘absolutely unconscious of the moral or legal aspect of the deed at the time’. While he could not ‘positively’ associate her childhood accidents with her present condition, he implied such an association was possible.
Crown Prosecutor, Mr Gurner, asked Gaffney, ‘Was it passion?’ and Gaffney replied, ‘I could consider it a mental rage if you can differentiate between a mental rage and an ordinary rage’.
Justice A’Beckett then asked if there was any difference between ‘the fury she worked herself into and the fury which a physically sound and vindictive man might work himself into against the person who had offended him’. Gaffney replied, ‘In the case of a strong man it was anger, and anger alone and resentment. In this case it was not that so much as worry and anxiety about her own condition’.
Dr Fullerton, in answer to the same question, said that a ‘sound honest man would be able to use his judgement at the time. In this case the privation of bodily functions produced by the circumstances would not allow the woman’s judgement to come into play the same as would a strong man’s’.
Dr Fullerton appears to be saying that Camellia was physically unwell and that therefore her judgement was somehow lacking. She has been described as frail and yet George asked for help when she was attacking him with a razor. She frequently walked the two kilometres to the police station and back from the house in Don Street, which is near the top of a very steep hill. A strenuous enough walk even if she was not pushing a pram with either a four year old or two two year olds. She was certainly thin but perhaps she was not as frail as she looked. As to any mental weakness, was that no more than the point of view of Edwardian men who had no desire to be responsible for the conviction of a woman, a conviction that could see her hanged?
Camellia did not behave the way a respectable woman was expected to act. She left her family to live with a much older married man and had his children. When he took another mistress, instead of quietly making the best of things, as many women would have, she followed his mistress, spied on her and George and went to his workplace and caused a public scene. She also attacked him with a razor. All of these incidents can be explained as acts of desperation or even madness, but is that the only explanation? Is it possible that Camellia was a wilful, self-centred woman who was misunderstood by men who could not understand her behaviour as anything but madness?
Dr Fullerton also said, in answer to Mr Gurner, that he believed Camellia was not ‘in her normal senses altogether’ and ‘at the time she committed the deed she was not conscious of the actual act she was doing.’
(Gurner asked) Do you think she was conscious she was slaying a fellow being? (Fullerton answered) I think she just went with the idea of destroying associations with a certain individual.
Was she carrying out an intention formed previously of sound mind or unsound mind?
After she became of unsound mind I think.
Do you say that necessarily a person who does such a deed must be of unsound mind?
No, not always.
Dr Eadie, the Medical Officer of the Bendigo Gaol, testified that Camellia became hysterical when the doctors were examining her the previous Saturday and that he would expect such a reaction from any sane woman who had killed her children. Especially, he said, ‘from this woman who was a neurotic subject, debilitated both physically and mentally’.
‘Worries and things like that had debilitated her.’ On Monday, 8th August, (the day after the murders) she seemed to realise fully what she had done. He thought from the tone of her conversation that she thought it was for the benefit of the children that she did the deed – to save them from their father.
Camellia’s defence counsel’s address to the jury, published in the Bendigo Advertiser, was an attack on George. Mr Maxwell thought she should be looked after until she ‘had regained her normal condition.’ He suggested she had been ‘born under an evil star’ and that the injuries in her early life, described by her father, may have had a greater effect than the jury could imagine. She had been a girl well-prepared for her future at Sassafras, when, in ‘an evil hour’, she was induced by George to go and live with him.
She was in reality his wife, though she had no claim on him. They went from place to place, and after a few years she had borne him three children. One would think that a man who induced a girl to go with him under these circumstances would have done everything in
his power to make up to that woman what she lacked by reason of the irregularity of the union. But how did he treat her?
He (Mr Maxwell) thought on his own showing in the witness box that McDonald had just simply treated her in a way calculated to drive her out of her mind. He came to Bendigo, and before Miss McCluskey came up two women arrived at his instance. Miss McCluskey had evidently been suffering before she came to Bendigo on account of these women. She had not a friend. McDonald practically turned his back on her. The police were the only friends she had in the place.
McDonald was away enjoying himself with other women, and Miss McCluskey got to know of it, and it preyed on her mind. One could not help being struck with the tone of evidence given that day, and he thought it did the police credit. Every mind, it seemed to him, had its breaking strain, and she got into such a state that her mind was upset, and she was incapable of seeing what was the moral quality of the act she was about to do. The day came. She saw everyone round her happy, and she looked at her own lot, with the scandal of shame on each one of these children. The evidence was that she was a good mother, and they only to look at the mutilation of these little ones and the smashed furniture to see that it was the work of an insane mind.
Mr Maxwell told the jury that, if they accepted the evidence of the medical men, it was their ‘bounden duty’ to bring a verdict of not guilty on the grounds of insanity.
Not Guilty Page 5
