The Amazing Mrs Livesey

by Freda Marnie Nicholls

  This time Florence Elizabeth Ethel Livesey, 53, domestic, appeared in the Adelaide Police Court for three offences alleged to have been committed by her, four years previous, in 1946.

  Mrs Ethel Nelson had obtained a job as a domestic at the home of Jonathan Morris Powell in Lower North Adelaide, from 9 October to 6 November, 1946. His wife was ill and they needed some help around the house, but they soon got more than they bargained for.

  On 31 October, Mrs Ethel Nelson had made her way to a second-hand dealer, Rosellen Tredrea, pretending to be a Mrs Ethel Morris living at Fitzroy Terrace in the Adelaide suburb of Prospect, and pawned most of the Powells’ good glassware for £2 5s. In early November, armed with crystal-ware and linen, she again returned as Mrs Morris, having moved to Port Elliot, and received a further £4 17s 6d.

  Mrs Powell passed away in early November, and Mrs Nelson’s services were no longer needed. Not long afterwards, Mr Powell noticed that a few items were missing around the house, but thought perhaps his wife had put them away and he’d find them when he was feeling up to sorting through things. When he recognised Mrs Nelson as Mrs Livesey from the press photos that appeared when the Bankruptcy Court was looking for her, he immediately searched the house for the missing items and, not finding them, reported the theft to the police, as well as the earlier presence of the wanted woman in his home.

  Mrs Livesey remained elusive to the South Australian police until November 1950, when one sharp policeman recognised her and promptly arrested her, charging her with the outstanding arrest warrant.

  On Wednesday 29 November, Mrs Livesey faced court, this time with a lawyer, Mr Philcox, and pleaded not guilty. The charges were read and old Mr Powell slowly made his way to the stand. He told the court about the loss of his property and his wife, while the lady they knew as Mrs Nelson was with them.

  The prosecutor next called up the woman from the pawn shop, Mrs Tredrea, who identified Mrs Livesey as the woman who in 1946 had brought in the items she had purchased in good faith—the same items that were later identified as stolen from Mr Powell.

  On Mr Philcox’s advice, Ethel changed her plea from not guilty to guilty. It was not looking good.

  The prosecutor brought Mr Powell back to the stand. With a quavering voice, he added more damning evidence. When his wife had passed away, Mrs Nelson had suggested donating his wife’s clothing to the United Nations clothing appeal for people in Europe who were struggling through a tough winter and had suffered greatly during World War II. He told the court how horrified he had been when he noticed a woman wearing his wife’s distinct boots a few months later. When he asked her where she’d bought them, she said a woman had been selling off her old clothes; but strangely, the clothing had been a much smaller size than the woman actually selling them. When Mr Powell told her the full story, the woman had insisted on giving the boots back to him. He had sadly thanked the woman, but told her to keep the boots; he was glad they were being used.

  Mr Powell told the court how his horror had turned to anger when he knew that Mrs Nelson was really Mrs Livesey.

  As Mr Powell resumed his seat, the prosecutor told the court that Mrs Livesey had, since the beginning of 1928, been convicted 26 times—mostly for false pretences—in England, Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia.

  Mr Philcox defended his client, saying she’d only had one serious conviction in the past fifteen years, and that she’d had a grim life. She’d had to battle for herself since being deserted in England after marrying at the age of sixteen, and had been left with a small child.

  The judge asked Ethel to stand in the dock, and without any qualms sentenced her to two months gaol.

  Clasping the dock rail tightly as her sentence was delivered, Ethel broke down sobbing.

  Two months later she was dragged from Adelaide Gaol, back into the Criminal Court yet again, on a charge of having broken her three-year good behaviour bond of £300.

  A shattered woman, Ethel admitted she had broken the bond by stealing from the Powells within three years of the bond being imposed.

  The court told her son Basil and his wife Sylvia that the full bond of £300 had to be paid. To cover the bond, they would have to sell their newsagency business and residence, which would send them broke and leave them homeless.

  Ethel was sent back to gaol to finish her sentence.

  Two weeks later, she was released.

  And then she disappeared again.

  AFTERMATH

  In the 1980s, Ethel’s estranged son, Frank, went searching for his birth certificate. He could not find it anywhere, and thought momentarily about his mother. If he found her, perhaps she could tell him where he was born.

  Ethel was a notorious, selfish con woman, whose choices Frank could never forgive. She was an adventurous woman, an incredibly charming woman when she wanted to be, a woman trying to survive in a man’s world, living with her selfish mistakes, of which there were many. He would have known that if Ethel was still alive in the 1980s she’d be old, but perhaps there would still be time.

  But where did she go? Did she, upon her release from gaol in 1951, seek work under the name Mrs Livesey? It is doubtful, as that name was forever tarnished.

  She was a woman who could not help but spend any money she had, and being middle aged when released from gaol and with limited means to support herself, would more than likely have fallen back into the only means she knew to earn the funds she so desired.

  Was she really as sick as she had claimed over the years, and had that illness finally taken her in middle age?

  A death notice appeared in the South Autralian Advertiser, stating that Mrs Florence Ethel Livesey had passed away in the small country town of Clare, South Australia, in March 1953.

  So that was that: Ethel was gone at the age of 55. Or was she? After ordering the death certificate, it showed the death of an 87-year-old woman who had died from gangrene in her left leg. The details on the death certificate were given by the local undertaker, not a doctor or a family member. Mrs Livesey had died alone.

  Strangely enough, there were newspaper reports about a woman looking uncannily like her, eighteen months after she’d been released from Adelaide Gaol. She was being sought for three counts of false pretences in Western Australia. This large, middle-aged woman had a nice little scheme happening, where she’d say she was going to buy a house, then get the keys from the owner or estate agent without even paying a deposit, then show the house to young couples, offering it at a greatly reduced price, and would then pocket their cash deposits before disappearing. Could this have been Ethel? Or was there another con woman of about the same size and age plying her trade against unsuspecting victims?

  As to the money—the fortune she came out to Australia with—it looks like she actually spent it. The £40,000 she’d mentioned was perhaps the true value of stock and property she swindled out of her father and Thomas Livesey, but from the bankruptcy files it appears more likely that she received and spent a bit over £27,000 (over $1,400,000) in just over six months when she came back to Australia, on clothes, food, fresh flowers delivered daily, jewellery, travel and lifestyle. She hadn’t arrived with that sum; after each asset was sold, she’d get the funds wired into her bank account, and then promptly spend it. The only long-term asset she appeared to have purchased with all that money was her son Basil’s newsagency.

  About the same time Frank went searching for his birth certificate, he also managed to get back in touch with his brother Basil, after many years. They talked about their families, and their lives, and Frank asked about Ethel. Basil said he hadn’t seen her since 1951, and that she was pretty ill at the time. Basil had then lost touch with her, and assumed their mother was dead.

  Ethel certainly left a lot of people in her wake.

  Her first husband, Alexander Charles Carter, divorced Ethel just after the end of World War I. He died on 17 October 1935 at the age of 43, leaving his considerable wealth of over £4000 to his two sisters, Gladys Carter a
nd Doris Robinson. He is buried at the Southern Cemetery at Chorlton-cum-Hardy in Manchester.

  Ethel’s first son, Frank Alexander Carter, went to live with his aunt Doris and her husband Stan at their garage in Eccles. At the outbreak of World War II he signed up and became a captain in the 90 Field Regiment Royal Artillery that landed at Syracuse in Sicily on 13 July 1943. Six days later, at the age of 26, he was killed in action under the shadow of Mt Etna. He left his estate of £544 to his aunt Doris, and is buried at the Catania Commonwealth War Cemetery in Italy.

  Corporal Raymond Ward was killed in action in France in 1918. On his military records, Ray Ward’s mother was listed as his next of kin, not his wife Ethel.

  Jack Smith remains a mystery, with nothing to go on other than his very common English surname—over 2000 English Jack or John Smiths fought in World War I.

  Fred Lee and Ernie Stevens are another mystery, both common names at the time, making it difficult to pinpoint them exactly, even though both are listed as co-respondents (persons accused of misconduct with the petitioner’s spouse) on the divorce petition of Alexander Charles Carter the younger and Florence Elizabeth Ethel Carter nee Swindells.

  In 1937 Ethel divorced William Lloyd Thompson, the man she married when she abandoned her sons Frank and Basil to the orphanage in Cobargo, New South Wales. The divorce went through when she was married to Mr Coradine, so perhaps she was trying to clean up her trail of bigamous marriages—or at least those that she could—before Mr Coradine passed away.

  Alfred Spurgess had already obtained a divorce from her in 1928, nearly ten years after their very brief marriage at the end of World War I.

  Captain Norman Giblett continued on as the postmaster at Thornleigh in northern Sydney for many years, marrying Ruth Wockner in 1931, nine years after divorcing Ethel.

  Captain Midford Stanley Hourn finally got his divorce in 1927, and married Viera McEachern in 1943.

  George Addie Anderson, Frank’s supposed father, would have been 40 when he married Ethel. Despite Ethel’s claims of bigamy, no record of another marriage for George was found, only a record of his death in 1955 in Victoria.

  William Coradine died in 1943, and Ethel inherited all his property and belongings, as his legal wife.

  Ellen and Leo Kane continued to successfully run the Howstrake Hotel Majestic on the Isle of Man for many years. Ethel’s father, Frank Swindells, moved in with them after she left. When he died in December 1947, he left £50 to his nurse, and £100 to his daughter Mabel and her son, together with his late wife’s jewellery. The balance of his estate—£205 16s 7p—was left to Ellen Kane. Ethel was written out of his will.

  James Rex Beech passed away at the War Veterans Home in Narrabeen, in the hinterland behind Sydney’s northern beaches, on 3 August 1965, at the age of 77. He had no next of kin, so the Office of the Public Trustee sent a letter to the Army Service Records asking if he had a will in place when he enlisted. All they could determine was that in 1915 his next of kin was his father—James Beech, Whitby House, Stoke-on-Trent, England.

  The Honourable George Roy William ‘Mac’ McDonald was a Labor Party and then Nationalist politician, and a successful lawyer, before passing away at his home in Bellevue Hill in 1951, aged 68. After his death, his impressive home at 93 Victoria Street was sold to the French Government and became the French Consulate, and was then purchased by British–Australian newspaper heir Lachlan Murdoch in November 2009 for $23 million.

  Dr William Cunningham continued practising in Sydney, though he apparently earned a ribbing nickname among his work colleagues of ‘Ting-a-ling Cunningham’ after the Pekinese pup he gave Mrs Livesey as a wedding gift. Ting-a-ling, the dog, led out his days in the care of May and Mac McDonald.

  Messrs Lander & Isaacs paid the Bankruptcy Court £267 15s 6p after their bills of costs were reviewed. Together with recovered jewellery that was sold, the sale of the two remaining English properties, and money collected from Mrs Livesey’s bank account, the total sum available to pay the creditors was £429 6s 9p. Though an unproven debt, Justice Clyne and the other creditors agreed to pay Mrs Sarah Stanbury back in full the £10 that she and her husband had saved for their funeral expenses; Mr Stanbury had already passed away by then. Those creditors who at the end of 1948 had maintained contact with the Bankruptcy Court received approximately one shilling for every pound Ethel owed, after legal and court costs were paid.

  Thomas Livesey bought back his two properties from Ethel’s bankrupt estate for £150, and promptly disappeared off the radar, a darn sight poorer than when he first met the charming Mrs Ethel Coradine!

  Ethel’s son Basil continued to run his newsagency until he retired; his wife Sylvia, who was liable for the £300 security for Ethel’s bond in 1946, renegotiated it with the courts down to £50 in 1951, and they eventually paid it off. She and Basil had two more children and stayed together until Sylvia died from cancer in 1993.

  Ethel’s son Frank George Anderson was married with five children when he met the love of his life, June Bolan. She was a widow, her husband having died young, leaving her destitute with four small children. Having been put into foster care when he was young, Frank stood by her and they raised the children together, determined not to let their combined brood be torn asunder, and together had another five children, one dying at birth. Frank and June travelled around Australia sundowning for many years. He took on June’s surname as well, and became Frank George Bolan. There were too many bad memories with the surname Anderson.

  Frank never saw his mother again after 1946.

  At the height of her career, if you could call it that, Mrs Livesey was a household name. She had over 40 aliases, eight official marriages, five divorces, four children to different men, and had travelled throughout the Continent, to America, the Orient and the Pacific in the best style possible, had numerous arrests and court appearances, and was imprisoned several times.

  Florence Elizabeth Ethel Swindells was an actress, an artist, a stowaway, a spy, a gambler, an air-raid warden, a nurse, an heiress and, above all, a notorious con woman. She could never stay still, she loved a good story, she sought fame and fortune, flaunted the law, deceived and had little regard for others, was impulsive and never seemed to plan ahead.

  Ethel was one amazing woman.

  PICTURE SECTION

  Mrs Daphne Giblett—the photo presented in the 1923 divorce proceedings of William Norman Giblett and Florence Elizabeth Ethel Carter nee Swindells, who falsely called herself Daphne Vivienne Pollard at the time of their marriage. The same photo confirmed to another husband, Midford Stanley Hourn, that he too was a victim of bigamy.

  Mrs Florence Gardiner trying to avoid the press on her way to court to answer the Coles & Hughes fraud charge—The News (Adelaide), Thursday 16 November 1933.

  A rare police photo on the front page of the New South Wales Police Gazette listing just four of the names Ethel was using: Gardner, Anderson, Dunkley and Pilkington. At the time this was distributed in June 1934, Ethel was back in Victoria facing twenty-five charges of false pretences under the name of Gloria Gray and Gloria Grey.

  Falcon Cliff Hotel from the promenade, 1899. The impressive entrance led to steep steps that were later replaced with a vertical lift built by the Kane family. It has since been refurbished as an office building overlooking the bay.

  ‘Ivydene’, Little Switzerland, Isle of Man, the home Ethel rented with Mr Livesey to live and entertain in throughout the later part of World War II.

  Ethel Livesey with her Pekinese puppy Ting-a-ling in the garden of her flat in Edgecliff, days before her highly publicised wedding to Rex Beech. The Daily Mirror, 6 December 1945.

  Two of the bridesmaids arrive at Hotel Australia with the flowergirl Marigold Dezarnauld after the wedding was cancelled. Truth (Sydney), 10 December 1945.

  Mrs Livesey sitting in the courtyard of her Edgecliff apartment days before her highly publicised society wedding. Despite the newspaper’s claims, she is not wearing her imported
Parisian bridal gown.

  Ethel and Rex Beech socialising prior to their planned wedding. The News (Adelaide) 10 December 1945.

  Still searching for the missing cotton heiress. This professional photograph of the bride was taken prior to the cancelled wedding. The News (Adelaide), 12 December 1945.

  Still missing. This photo of Mrs Livesey and her secretary Joyce Dick at Edgecliff was published around the country as the police tried to track her down.

  Ethel’s elaborate wedding bouquet cost over four times the weekly wage at the time.

  This newspaper headline says it all.

  Mrs Livesey with one of her bridesmaids, Mrs Jack Sharpe, socialising before the upcoming society wedding of the decade.

  Mrs Livesey leaves Central Court December 1945 with her lawyer Mr Lander after being charged with the 1933 case and is remanded to appear in Adelaide.

  A relieved Mrs Livesey is granted bail to appear the following day in the Central Court.

  Bride missing, gifts returned, the mystery of the wealthy cotton heiress keeps the world enthralled.

  Mrs Livesey arrives back in Adelaide belatedly by plane after being delayed in Melbourne and being questioned over an outstanding fraud case from 1936.

  After being found guilty on a now thirteen-year-old charge, Mrs Livesey gives another interview to her favourite paper from the yellow press, Truth.

  A grim faced Mrs Livesey and her lawyer leave the Adelaide Central Court during her 1946 trial.