Now, then, McDonald, I have just posted letters in the pillar-box here to the Palatine Insurance Co. and to Superintendent of Police. You have blamed me before. Now I have done it and told them everything fairly and clearly, and will soon take effect after being searched into. So look out. Hand over the two trunks in the children’s bedroom to my father and their contents. Also, my lord, you will get your desserts, as you deserve them.
C. McC.
The second letter was as follows: -
Sunday: - F. McDonald, - Now you will be satisfied, you double-dyed traitor; you hound. Yes, you have told me your lies and excuses, as you have been this last few months. May your life be a curse to you. Yes, I curse you, you dog, and the day I took up with you. That is all. May every misfortune befall you. You will say I am mad, but I am no such thing.
C. McC.
I am desperate. There is this bill and Hewitt’s, and the baker’s, and Hargreaves’, and the milkman.
A third letter, which was addressed to Mrs Pump, of Doncaster, shows unmistakably how wretched and almost intolerable McCluskey’s life with McDonald had become, and it is easy to read between the lines her poignant regret that she had ever allowed herself to be tempted from the path of virtue into concubinage, to become the mother of AN ILLEGITIMATE FAMILY, whose father, she had become convinced, regarded her as a chattel to be tossed aside whenever and wherever it so pleased him. This was the letter to Mrs Pump: -
Don-street, Bendigo, August 7 –
Dear Mrs Pump, - Your welcome letter received, also card for Dolly, which pleased us greatly. Dolly was in great glee to think it came all the way from Doncaster. She asked me a thousand questions how it came. The old farm will cost Mrs Kent something before she sees it. I often think of the place, and sometimes I wish I was back there. I don’t like Bendigo at all, and I have had a bad time since I came here with one thing and another. I envy you in your nice home and happy life. That is the life I pray for, and have always done so. But is seems it is not to be. I have not made any acquaintances and it is very lonely. Mr McDonald is always working; no half-holiday, and he always has some work or other even on Sunday to do. He never gets home to tea till 8 o’clock and after. Takes his lunch with him now, so you may be sure it’s pretty miserable, especially if the children are peevish and cross.
But MORE REMARKABLE STILL was a letter which arrived at the office of the Superintendent of Police, Mr Beck, at Bendigo, on Monday morning. This showed conclusively that the woman had irrevocably made up her mind to avenge her wrongs, real and fancied, and probably to break from McDonald, and it reveals the motive which prompted her in all that she did on that fateful Sunday. This letter to Superintendent Beck was as follows: -
Dear Sir, - My life is no longer any use to me. 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 (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, were in Bendigo, as I had seen them. And more than that, his excuses why he is absent are so transparent to me. He is never at home on Sunday, his excuse being that he is at work in the factory. I have chopped up all the furniture, so that he shall not have it to present to the others. He is equal to that. I am not mad, but of course he will say I am. He has left this morning with the excuse that he is coming to Woodstock on his bike. I know perfectly well that he is not going alone, nor even with a man. I cannot even get money for necessary clothes for the children. He allows me the princely sum of 2 pounds now, and I have to pay10s. rent out of that. Will you kindly see that my father receives the two large iron trunks in the child’s room and their contents, as they are absolutely my own. Also the bed clothes, curtains, knives and forks and crockery are mine, as I brought them from my mother’s house. He is also a felon and a criminal. He set the Monbulk factory at Ferntree Gully on fire, and why should not he get his desserts? He has given me a time and why should he be allowed to go on his way making lives miserable, destroying them? I told him before he went that I would destroy myself and the children, and he said he wished I would. Of course it would be a load off his shoulders. I wish you to publish this letter to let the world know what he is, and bring him to justice over the Monbulk fire.
I am, dear sir, yours, etc.,
(Signed) C. McCluskey.
P.S. – Will you kindly send word to Messrs. Carnegie to take away the piano. There is a few pounds owing on it. It is in my name, or rather Camellia McCutcheon.
Now McDonald, it should be mentioned, RECEIVES A SALARY of 6 pounds a week from H. M. Leggo and Co., so that his treatment of his mistress in the matter of a housekeeping allowance was not exceedingly generous, and the story about his continuous business and Sunday work and all the rest of it, if it is represented by McCluskey as he told it to her, is all moonshine, for, 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. The letter to Superintendent Beck was evidently written on Sunday morning in the FURY THAT FOLLOWED the quarrel with McDonald and his departure for what she believed to be an assignation with one or the other of the women she has mentioned. She was seen to leave her house about midday on Sunday, carrying letters, and going in the direction of a letter pillar in Mount Korong-road, a quarter of a mile away, and she was observed later on walking listlessly home again. Apparently the contemplation of her woeful situation had overwhelmed her.
Not long after she had been locked up on Sunday afternoon the mental strain to which the unfortunate woman had been subjected was broken, and since then PITEOUS SCENES have been enacted in the cell, where, a prey to the most violent grief, she is carefully guarded by female warders day and night, lest in her abandonment of despair she should seek to take her own life. McDonald, too, has displayed considerable mental perturbation. At the formal opening of the inquest on Monday, he gave the necessary evidence of identification of his children’s bodies, only after repeated efforts to compose himself, and continued to sob convulsively for some time after the Coroner had announced an adjournment until the following Saturday, when the complete evidence will be taken. The bodies of the victims were buried on Wednesday at the Bendigo Cemetery, the three coffins being carried in one hearse, followed by a cab in which were only McDonald and a personal friend. At the cemetery, however, there was a large crowd, composed principally of women, attracted thither by morbid curiosity.
ANTECEDENT HISTORY.
Both Camellia McCluskey and George McDonald, the central figures in the appalling tragedy which occurred at Bendigo last Sunday afternoon, are well known in the Ferntree Gully district. The former, indeed, is a native of Sassafras, where until a few years ago her father engaged in fruit-growing. Camellia was an only child, and as such her parents gave her advantages which might not have been possible had their olive branches been more numerous. She received a good, serviceable education, and amongst the accomplishments which her parents were able to ensure her was music, vocal and instrumental, in which she possessed moderate ability, so that she was in request at local concerts both as a singer and an accompanist. She was a well-built, attractive-featured girl of merry disposition, and was extremely popular amongst the young people of her own age in and about Ferntree Gully and Sassafras – until she became entangled with McDonald. The latter made his appearance in the district about 15 years ago. He took up 10 acres of land AT SOUTH SASSAFRAS, not very far distant from McCluskey’s holding, and he, too, went in for fruit-growing. At the same time he was by way of being something of a store-keeper. He would go into Ferntree Gully and buy largely of things which he knew the village settlers in his neighbourhood required, and these he retailed to them, as, for instance, flour, sugar, tea, molasses, fresh meat, and so on. He was not a popular man amongst those who came into contact with him. He did not court company, but rather on
most occasions repulsed it, thought he was not without a certain affability when he cared to unbend. It was known from the start that he was A MARRIED MAN with a family, and, indeed, his eldest son, Fred McDonald, who was then about 16 years of age, lived with him at South Sassafras for two or three years. But it does not appear that his wife or the other members of his family ever shared his home there, and it is stated that he and Mrs McDonald had separated prior to his advent to Sassafras owing to his Don Juan predilections. Mrs McDonald is said now to be living in Prahran, and carrying on a dressmakers business, but as to that no definite information can be gained. The woman McCLUSKEY’S FATHER, too, is stated to have taken up his abode in Prahran since the death of his wife, which took place some time ago, but as to that there likewise is no authentic evidence. The woman herself has had no communication with her father for some years past: in fact ever since she abandoned herself to her disgraceful liaison with McDonald, and she is unable to furnish the police with any information which will enable them to located the old man.
McDonald was THE PRIME MOVER in the formation of a co-operative company of fruit-growers, which established the Monbulk jam factory about eight years ago, and he was its first and only manager. The woman McCluskey, then a girl of about 20, was engaged at the factory as a clerk. Probably she and McDonald had formed an acquaintance previously to that; it is generally so amongst residents of sparsely-populated country districts, and the disparity of years in the case of this man and girl would be no barrier to friendship. Still, it is not alleged that prior to their business association at the Monbulk factory their relations were MORE THAN PLATONIC.
At that time McDonald possessed a housekeeper, who was known as Miss Lillicrap, but some time after the Monbulk jam factory commenced operations this housekeeper left South Sassafras, and so passes out of the story. By that time affairs were growing apace between McDonald and Camellia McCluskey, and people in Ferntree Gully were beginning to nod disapprovingly when the pair were seen passing to and fro from the factory, invariably in company and with lover-like constancy. The manager appeared to have CAPTIVATED HIS CLERK, and the clerk to have fascinated the manager. By-and-by their association became more marked than ever, and, apparently, they threw off the last shred of a cloak of secrecy. They were not only to be seen daily and nightly together in circumstances which left no doubt as to illicit relationship existing between them, so that the womenfolk of Ferntree Gully looked askance at Camellia McCluskey as they passed her in the street, refusing to acknowledge any acquaintance with her, and drawing their skirts aside as though to avoid contamination, as is the manner of womankind towards disgraced sisters, but the men indulged in ribald remarks behind the manager’s back, and not infrequently in JOCOSE SUGGESTIONS in his presence. To all of which he appears to have been impervious or indifferent, while she was so obsessed of her lover as to be utterly, even contemptuously, disregardful of the disdain of her own sex. At length both deserted Sassafras and made Lower Ferntree Gully their headquarters. Both took lodgings at a hotel in Lower Ferntree Gully, the only hotel in Lower Ferntree Gully, in fact, then kept by a Mrs Grimwood. It is not, of course, suggested that any impropriety occurred at the hotel. There they were, as can be understood, merely boarders who paid their weekly indebtedness and observed the relationship generally existing between boarders at the same establishment. They had, of course, ample opportunities for the indulgence of THE ILLICIT ALLIANCE at the factory where they invariably arrived together and which they just as consistently left together at the close of the day’s work. Nor was there anything extraordinary in that, seeing that they boarded at the same place, but the other facts – their previous residence at Sassafras, McDonald’s separation from his wife, the disparity in their ages, their constant companionship by day and night, in season and out of season, and their general disregard for the commonest conventions of society, together with the rumours that were flying about the little hamlet, made Mrs Grimwood uneasy, and she has said to have intimated to them that their room would be PREFERABLE TO THEIR COMPANY in her house. After that it is said the pair went to Doncaster. They had abandoned subterfuge and lived in open adultery. Then the first child – the senior victim of its mother’s passionate outburst – was born, and the secrecy was no longer possible, even had they desired to maintain it, which idea they had relinquished long before. Thereafter they lived at Canterbury, Camberwell and Auburn, and in other suburbs of Melbourne, and in course of time the twin boy and girl were born under the same unlucky star that attended their elder sister’s advent into the world. In the meantime the Monbulk Co-operative Jam Factory had been destroyed by fire. The outbreak occurred AT MIDNIGHT on a stormy night and the buildings and plant were totally destroyed. The origin of the fire was enshrouded in mystery, there was not a particle of evidence as to how or where the flames arose. Miss McCluskey, in her letter to Superintendent Beck, alleges that McDonald played the part of the incendiarist, but there is nothing to show that that damaging statement is more than the figment of a diseased imagination. There was no suspicion of foul play at the time; there has never been since; and there appear to be neither motive nor ultimate gain to prompt such an act by McDonald. However, when the Monbulk factory this COMPULSORILY SUSPENDED operations McDonald secured premises at North Melbourne, and subsequently at Burnley, where operations were continued to the extent of pulping fruit, instead of engaging in the compete operation of jam making. The factory was subsequently rebuilt and McDonald again took up the management of its affairs. But it was not a financial success; never had been, in fact, from the first, and about 12 months ago the company went into liquidation, and was wound up, and McDonald disappeared from the face of Ferntree Gully, and, with his paramour, Camellia McCluskey, was forgotten until the publication of the reports of last Sunday’s ferocious outbreak by the woman whom he had betrayed and ruined. And she meanwhile lies in Bendigo Gaol, prostrate in an abandonment of grief and despair, realising all too late the hideous vortex into which she precipitated herself when in the innocence of her young womanhood she listened to the wiles of McDonald, and at his behest sacrificed virtue on the altar of lust.
APPENDIX 2
‘Truth’ reports on the Inquest.
TRUTH, AUGUST 20, 1910.
THE MURDERED BABES AT BENDIGO.
Immoral Monster McDonald.
THE SEDUCING SCOUNDREL’S SALACITY.
How He Ruined a Good Girl.
HIS CRUEL JESTS AND MURDEROUS SUGGESTIONS.
Camellia McCluskey Driven Mad – ‘The Armchair of Seduction’ –
What Truth Thinks.
(By Truth’s Special)
Much public interest was manifested at Bendigo on Saturday in connection with the Coronial inquiry concerning the murder of three children – Dolly, Ida, and Eric McCluskey, who, as will be shown later, was driven to desperation by George McDonald, her heartless paramour.
There was a large crowd – mostly women – anxious to gain admission, but, by order of the Coroner, the court was kept clear.
Before proceedings commenced, Detectives Commons and Currie, the officers in charge of the case, arranged a number of GRUESOME EXHIBITS, including a tomahawk, a carving knife, a woman’s blouse (bespattered with blood and brains), and an arm-chair- mutilated and charred.
A cab, containing Camellia McCluskey – accompanied by Miss Brennan, gaol matron, and a police escort – was surrounded on arrival by the inquisitive crowd, who, however, were doomed to further disappointment.
The unfortunate woman was sedulously sheltered from public view by her escort, and was conveyed to the court by a back entrance.
She was attenuated in appearance, and wore an anxious, hunted expression; but there were, nevertheless, unmistakable traces of A DEPARTED BEAUTY.
She was clad in a blue cloth, tailor-made costume, with a lace collar. Her hat was of heliotrope straw, with a rosette of the same shade, and violet feathers.
Matron Brennan placed her in a seat by a coal fire, which was burning brightly.
The poor creature appeared composed, and talked in whispers to her custodian, but, when the Coroner, the officers of the court, the barristers, and the press entered and took their respective seats, she quailed perceptively, and dropped her head.
On the formal announcement anent the cause of the inquiry; coupled with the names of the dead infants, being made, she wept. She is a SLIGHTLY-BUILT WOMAN and at intervals her slender frame was apparently convulsed with an agony of black despair.
Not Guilty Page 9
