Little Fish Are Sweet

by Matthew Condon

  He tells me that I have really made extra work for myself by going ‘outside’ and talking to other people. I tell him that it is an absolute necessity with books like these. That it is a natural part of the job.

  I realise, with the rain falling outside and the light dull in Lewis’s lounge room, that I have totally wearied of this game – the constant denials by Lewis, the repeated skimming of the truth and placing of himself at the very edge of important issues, the personal diminishment of and failure to recognise or acknowledge his responsibility in this whole sorry saga, his pale attempts to steer me in certain directions, to offer dirt on people who knew he was corrupt and maligned him.

  It is immensely frustrating, as I continue to learn more of this story, to sink deeper into it, that Lewis continues his well-worn narrative. I recognise the fiction now from several different directions courtesy of the hundreds of people I have spoken to. The dots are coming together. The picture is getting sharper. Yet he continues to admit nothing. He is an old man in the pattern of a life. He will take it all to his grave.

  These meetings are time-consuming, often pointless and in some ways personally upsetting. I tell him we are mid-stream. I tell him the second book is important, but a bridge to the third.

  As usual, he has come around by the end of our meeting. He is polite and jokey, but there’s something about him this time that’s different. It’s like he wants to stop it all but doesn’t know how to do it. He seems to want to tell me something. He’s a bit hesitant in the conversation at the end. At a loss.

  I know he doesn’t want to tell me the truth. He’s had almost precisely four years to do that. At the beginning of this project, he said on numerous occasions that if I ever suspected he was telling me a lie then I could tell him to get stuffed and go my own way with it. I realise at the door that I have gone so far beyond that verbal contract. I can feel the weight of hundreds of voices and documents.

  I only now realise how far the project has travelled and how it has left Terry Lewis a long, long way behind.

  Box 23

  In researching Doc Whitehouse’s life, I was drawn to the extensive Frederick W. Whitehouse Collection at his old alma mater, the University of Queensland. The 27 boxes of geological papers, reports, correspondence, maps and photographs were held at the university’s Fryer Library. The papers were donated to the university by a relative of Whitehouse’s and one of Whitehouse’s former academic colleagues, the esteemed Dorothy Hill, a geologist and palaeontologist, who would become the first female professor of any Australian university, shortly after Whitehouse’s death in 1973.

  Interestingly, the index to the Whitehouse papers indicated that there was something different about Box 23. ‘Material in this box is subject to restricted access. Please consult with the Fryer Librarian.’

  What was so sensitive about the material, 43 years after Doc Whitehouse’s death?

  To find out, I emailed librarian Simon Farley and formally asked for permission to view the contents of the mysterious Box 23. At the discretion of the serving librarian the material was deemed open for research and a couple of days later I was presented with the box bound by legal-style pink ribbon.

  Of the many interesting items in the box, there were dozens of letters of support for Freddy Whitehouse from friends, colleagues and even strangers following his indecent dealing charges. Mr J.H. Eken, a consultant in naval architecture and marine engineering from Sydney, wrote immediately to Austral Street.

  Dear Sir,

  Hereby I wish to express my feelings of sincere sympathy for you during this time, in which an attempt at ruination of your standing is being made. I am amazed to hear that obvious hoodlums who apparently have no regard for other human beings are given an opportunity to publicly attack your reputation.

  Fearing that this action has resulted in a usually depressing isolation, I wish you to draw comfort from the knowledge that my thoughts and feelings are with you.

  But Dr Whitehouse had no more strident a supporter than the former University of Queensland graduate, radical, publisher and writer, P.R. ‘Inky’ Stephensen. While Inky was enmeshed in the arts, and Doc the sciences, they had touchstones they shared. Inky would edit Galmahra, as would Whitehouse. Inky would end up teaching at Ipswich Grammar, where Freddy had been a boarder. Inky would study at Oxford while Doc tackled Cambridge.

  On 9 May, a thunderous Inky wrote to his friend from his small wooden house at 10 Moor Street, Sandringham, south of St Kilda in Melbourne.

  Freddy,

  Keep your spirit up, especially your fighting spirit! Insist on trial by jury, and take the case if necessary to the High Court and even the Privy Council, and don’t hesitate to engage the strongest and most truculent barrister you can afford, to clear your name!

  The case against you appears to base entirely on the uncorroborated evidence of a delinquent youth, Henry, whom you tried to help. Insist on having his whole career of previous delinquency brought to light! Youths of this kind are pathological liars, and will say anything when questioned by detectives.

  Don’t be disheartened by the monstrous adverse publicity, and by the rancour of the mediocre, you will believe the worst alleged against you.

  Be assured you have many friends, who must feel, as I do, that your accusers are gross liars.

  Given the context of Whitehouse’s arrest – at the time Bischof was Sub-Inspector of the Criminal Investigation Bureau and Murphy, the arresting officer, one of his prized boys – hindsight does raise some interesting questions. Bischof himself, many decades later, would be accused of committing acts of indecency against children in the 1950s. In small-town Brisbane, did he know of Whitehouse’s reputation, and his proclivity for teenage boys? Might something behind the scenes have necessitated Bischof setting Whitehouse up? Or someone else, powerful enough to get Bischof to act, and shut Whitehouse down? Or had Whitehouse transgressed Bischof – was he being taught a lesson?

  Incredibly, Inky Stephensen suggested a similar scenario in his letter of 9 May:

  Even if the worst alleged against you happened to be correct, I would still believe that you were in some way trapped, and that Henry was sent to you by police, for the purpose of getting up a case.

  Inky’s letter to Doc two months later contained much contemplation of his old friend’s plight and the intricacies of the case. He theorised:

  The only evidence against you is the uncorroborated testimony

  of a police informer, or agent-provocateur, a youth with a criminal record (I suppose) who claims to have been an accessory or accomplice with you in committing a crime.

  He [Henry] is a juvenile delinquent, known to the police as such. He is penurious, in fact destitute, and therefore has an incentive to become an agent-provocateur. He turns Queen’s Evidence, and ‘confesses’ to being an accomplice with you in committing a crime.

  On his testimony, he was living with a woman, and therefore was not a homosexual. How could a man of your status and quality be condemned on the uncorroborated evidence of a worthless lout such as Henry?

  I feel very strongly that the U. of Q. should rally to your defence. This attack on you is the kind of thing that occasionally happens when splaw-footed louts in the police become over-eager for promotion. I do not blame them. They are a necessary evil.

  To drag a man of your quality and achievements into the Criminal Court on the word of [a Henry], a Murphy and a Kunst is to make Queensland a laughing-stock …

  In late August, a jury found Whitehouse guilty as charged. He was given a three-month suspended sentence, which raised the ire of the press.

  The Truth blew its loudest trumpets. WHITEHOUSE’S PENALTY SHOCK went the headline.

  The people of Queensland have every right to be shocked at the exceedingly lenient ‘punishment’ of Professor Frederick William Whitehouse, in Brisbane’s Supreme Court this week. Convicted of what Mr Justice Han
gar, the trial judge, himself has characterised as a ‘nauseating crime’, Professor Whitehouse, in this newspaper’s opinion escapes any due punishment other than whatever shame and remorse he feels within himself.

  The newspaper said it was puzzling to the ‘lay mind’ how an offence involving two persons in the same set of circumstances could lead the law to arrive at such ‘divergent degrees of punishment’.

  Professor Whitehouse, a national figure in education, a mature man in his middle fifties, and, by profession a man bearing a public trust in the education and training of young men, might reasonably have been expected to furnish a high moral example, and most assuredly should have been expected to set a peak in behaviour which could have been a criterion for young people coming in contact with him.

  In contrast the youth who was Whitehouse’s partner in this ‘disgusting offence’ had been sentenced to 18 months imprisonment with hard labour.

  What had this strange affair been about? Why had the urbane Whitehouse, who spoke with a clipped British-style aristocratic accent, even been in the proximity of teenage boys, petty criminals living from day to day? How did his world of academic robes and parties with Brisbane’s A-list socialites intersect with this youthful underworld?

  In the end the drama died down and Whitehouse struggled to make a living without his academic tenure. He became Queensland manager of a company called Nickel Mines Ltd that appeared to have cash flow problems. Whitehouse was constantly appealing for his salary in numerous letters penned at his desk in Austral Street. Finance companies, too, wrote to him about unpaid payments for various motor vehicles and equipment he leased in the 1960s and into the 1970s. Still, he had enough money to maintain a housekeeper.

  On 25 August 1964 he wrote to one who had advertised her services in a local newspaper.

  Dear Madam,

  My housekeeper, who was long and happily with me, has had to leave for health reasons, and I need someone in her stead. I am a bachelor, a professional man (a geologist); and being often away on my work in the country I have a member of the University technical staff staying here, so that always there is a man about the place. He looks after his own room and laundering.

  My house is right on the river bank here at St. Lucia, on the sunny side. It has all modern conveniences – septic, fully automatic washing machine, latest TV, and so on.

  If this position interests you will you please telephone me at 7-4495 when I can drive you out so that you can see for yourself before you decide.

  But the contents of Box 23 quickly exposed a story, albeit discreet and sometimes cryptic, of a man not just interested in the company of young men, but a certain type – troubled teens, boys that for whatever reason had experienced the rigours of institutions, homes and orphanages. It seemed Whitehouse was also writing voluminous letters to various institutions in relation to specific wayward youths in their custody. On 27 August 1970 Whitehouse wrote to the medical superintendent of Wolston Park Hospital, or former Goodna Mental Hospital, in the city’s west.

  Dear Sir,

  My enquiries are about Wayne, now approaching his seventeenth birthday, who is lodged in Ward 15M of the Wolston Park Hospital. He has been a State Ward almost from birth. I have known him now for several years. From the time when he was in the Salvation Army Boys’ Home at Indooroopilly, then as a farm lad in the services of Mr and Mrs Clark of Cleveland, then again in Westbrook, and now in the Wolston Park Hospital.

  How had Whitehouse known this troubled child for most of his life? How had Wayne come into Whitehouse’s orbit? Whitehouse had a suggestion for the superintendent.

  I am prepared to offer him a post as office boy (running messages by bicycle, and doing all manner of odd jobs about the place), at award rates, for the Queensland branch of Nickel Mines Limited. This Company, the headquarters of which are in Sydney (a house in the suburb of Burwood), has recently established a Queensland Branch, temporarily at my home at this above address.

  He [Wayne] would be associated, at all times, almost entirely with keen young men, all of them geologists; and the environment would be such that any rare bursts of temper [from Wayne] would not matter a great deal. Will you please tell me if he can possibly be released soon, to take his appointment under my direct supervision?

  Yours faithfully,

  F.W. Whitehouse.

  The following day, Doc Whitehouse wrote a letter to Wayne himself.

  I received a short letter from you this morning … since you asked for some things which I brought, when I was there to see you on Wednesday … you asked also for a pocket radio … I will get you one.

  I wrote yesterday to the Medical Superintendent … I told him that I had known you intimately for some years, and that I had always found you trustworthy, willing and reliable … and that I offered you a job … and I asked if you could be released soon to take the job and start work. I now wait to hear from him.

  Three days later he wrote another letter to the boy:

  I am sending you, in a separate parcel, the pocket radio which you asked if I could get for you. It is an Astor, a good model, and should give you very good service … I will get up and see you again when I can.

  Whitehouse received his answer on 7 September 1970, when Medical Superintendent O.E. Orford replied:

  Thank you for your letter concerning Wayne. As you say he will soon be seventeen years of age. However, he is not due to be discharged at present and the State Children’s Department will be his Guardian until he is eighteen. They will have to approve of any arrangements made for his discharge before that date. Thanking you for your enquiry.

  In vain, Whitehouse wrote back to Wolston, stressing that Wayne’s seventeenth birthday was in early October. ‘Can he come home with me for his birthday – and maybe spend the night. I will guarantee to bring him back in good time.’

  The Salvation Army Home for Boys in Indooroopilly, also known as Alkira, where Wayne had been an inmate before his stint at Wolston Park Hospital, was the subject of interest during hearings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in February 2014 in Sydney.

  Witnesses gave evidence in relation to sexual abuse at the home, and there were suggestions that a child paedophile ring operating at the time was involved in abusing Alkira inmates. One expert witness was retired Queensland Assistant Commissioner of Police, David Reginald Jefferies, who was a member of the force’s Juvenile Aid Bureau (JAB) from the late 1960s through to the 1980s.

  Jefferies told the commission that while working for the JAB police became aware of four members of a paedophile ring involving boys selling newspapers near the Alkira home. One was a wealthy businessman, and another a teacher living in the area.

  The commission heard that one boy had reported to Alkira authorities at the time that he had been flown to Sydney and back by the businessman. Jefferies said police ‘were aware’ that boys in state care had been flown to Sydney for the purposes of sex with adults.

  Two months after his requests concerning Wayne were knocked back, Frederick Whitehouse was this time corresponding with an inmate of the notorious Westbrook Farm School near Toowoomba. The object of his letters this time was a boy called Shane.

  Whitehouse wrote of his recent birthday and having reached ‘the hoary old age of three score years and ten’. He implied that Shane had previously stayed at the house in Austral Street, saying his housekeeper ‘hated you staying here, since it meant a little more house work for her’.

  Just prior to Christmas 1970, Whitehouse was at it again – appealing to authorities at Westbrook to release Shane into his custody. He wrote to Shane: ‘… on Monday I sent copies of the other two [letters] to Mr Arnell, and I reminded him that you should not be kept now in Westbrook any longer than necessary.’

  Whitehouse informed the boy that he had a dark blue towel with SHANE embroidered on it in gold, waiting for him at Austral Street
.

  By late August 1971, Whitehouse had cause to write to officers at the Taringa Police Station about a curious incident involving another young man the old geologist had befriended by the name of William. William, about 20, had come to Whitehouse in July looking for work.

  ‘He was a strong, active and willing fellow and I gave him work about the place,’ Whitehouse would later write to his brother Eric Whitehouse, solicitor, whom he wanted to pursue the matter against William.

  It turned out William took Whitehouse’s car for a spin and didn’t turn up for another week. He then told Freddy the car had been damaged by a hit-and-run motorist and was being fixed. When he left Freddy’s house, however, Willian took with him an Ansett flight ticket to Sydney, the property of Whitehouse’s house guest at the time, and disappeared once more. A new cheque book also went missing.

  The next minute a motel in Sydney rang Whitehouse saying a young man was trying to pass his cheque. Was it okay?

  It certainly wasn’t. Whitehouse complained to the Taringa police and got his solicitor brother into the act.

  The incidence of Whitehouse being used by these boys he was befriending from state institutions only intensified. In March 1972, just a year before his death, Whitehouse was again writing to the Taringa police.

  His letter opened saying that relations between himself and his local police had always been most cordial, ‘but apparently now you have a new senior constable … who is throwing his weight around in no uncertain manner and making an infernal nuisance of himself. And so I protest.’

  His primary complaint centred on yet another boy – Peter, 16, former inmate of Westbrook. Whitehouse wrote:

  He is extremely worried about two things. The attitude of the State Children’s Department, which he is sure just wants to put him back again and which has told him, as it tells so many others, that he must not see me; and the unsympathetic attitude of his parents at Wynnum (his father, he tells me, drinks), which makes it impossible for him to stay at home.