Some keepers make you feel small with gloriousness of their reports. You feel as if you couldn’t match their words.
Stephen Moore, 1882, now, was a social reformer. Came back from the Tower determined to do good works, and did, until his ticker gave out. He established a food kitchen in the streets of Sydney, ensuring that no child who came to his door went unfed. Old Eugene Barton was his greatest helper until the end. There is much to read between the lines in Moore’s report. He talks of his dreams and how he imagined the deaths of his wife and child. There is barely concealed anger in this, and of course terrible grief, and guilt as well. He felt as if he caused their deaths by his absence and he loses touch with the truth. He knows they are dead, but he doesn’t at the same time. They all re-write history to suit themselves. History should be set in stone, as is, done is done. Beware the nature of the tower; the real may seem un-real before long.
There were plenty of cleaning rags in the Time Ball Tower. All had a touch of grease to them, a sense of filth I have not seen, even on the streets of Sydney, even in the poorhouses. Using sand as an abrasive, I tried to remove the troll from the side, but there was nothing I could do. Instead, I outlined it in charcoal, thinking at least to define its edges. Perhaps we can contain it this way.
As for the men; if we consider them less than human, then we will find our lives far easier. If we tell them nothing of ourselves, they will have nothing to use against us.
They are capable of so little and yet still, one managed to smother another, fill his mouth with sawdust, hold his nose.
I blame myself. I could not bear to be near them so left them alone for days at a time.
I recommend solitary confinement for all, ongoing.
David Hennessy
Carl Potts: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1891
“The Mayor” tells me I should find a wife. He tells me we have ladies here, all I need to do is sniff them out.
I like a quiet one. I like one who has the sense to know who has the sense.
Too many of the ladies in our town take after the ladies who founded the town, those ladies like Harriet Barton who were so big for their boots you’d think they were giants.
Then there are the ladies who pack the baskets, who send the provisioning once a month. Sweet treats. Oranges. Little notes from them, and dried flowers, and all the best produce.
Such kindness makes a man weep.
Carl Potts
Robert Deeming: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1892
I couldn’t spend a year without clocks! I bought two dozen with me and I’ve placed them with the prisoners.
They beg me daily to stop the ticking and I say, I can stop the ticking, but I cannot stop time.
I take great satisfaction in that.
Robert Deeming
Alfred Merton: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1893
The Executioner convinced me to make a list. He says he’ll get to them, one by one if I set him free. He’ll do it as a favor to me; a reward.
He is well past any real violence, but his intent remains. Is it wrong of me to enjoy our discussions?
Alfred Merton
Stephen Cooke: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1894
Move them around so they don’t become too familiar. Shift them into each other’s spaces and puddles.
Stephen Cooke
Willie Muskett: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1895
The creak of the door as I rose early one morning alerted me to the possibility there was another in the tower. Not likely, of course, but women have been known to venture out and I admit I would be delighted to simply touch the soft skin of a woman’s inner arm.
I did venture downstairs to investigate, but all I saw was a small disturbance in the dust, and all I heard was the soft slap of oars on water. By the time I climbed the stairs to look out, I could see nothing at all.
Willie Muskett
Michael Dyer: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1896
A new prisoner. This one says he is Franciso Lopez, a man described as “a monster without parallel. A man whose name will live in infamy.”
Of course, he is nothing of the sort, all gossip aside. He is a man who killed many, most certainly. But he has no name.
He has no place in history.
Michael Dyer
Miles Barton: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1897
There is a woman they call a witch, but this inappropriately lessens her evil. Calling a woman a “witch” takes away her power, I believe.
My ancestor Harriet was called a witch sometimes. She had sharp opinions. After she ran away, her husband was angry, wouldn’t hear a good word about her. Being the chief policeman, he carried a fair bit of weight in the town, and he could make true whatever he wanted.
Miles Barton
Thomas Penfold: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1898
Some days the tower feels far colder than it should. I shiver in my bed although I have eight blankets piled heavy.
These are the days, I think, when the troll is stretching, reaching around the tower to touch his own fingertips.
Thomas Penfold
Phillip Ross: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1899
Tick tock tock tick tick tock and the ball drops and the ball drops and the ball drops. Such beauty in the time pieces.
Phillip Ross
Logan Brennan: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1900
You can know an evil man by the hardness of his heart. A man who has no kindness, no joy in him.
Logan Brennan
Ben Butler: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1901
I took delivery of a new prisoner, one Anne Elizabeth Graham. Baby Farmer. Forty-two tiny bodies found buried in her backyard, eighteen near-dead babies inside her house. The descriptions in the popular press of their conditions would make a grown man cry.
She arrived preserved, but still full of spit and vigor. A diet of pure tallow and some time in the box will soon settle her, as will leg irons and as many indignities as I can lay upon her.
My only regret is the entertainment the other prisoners take from her punishment. I turn their faces away, or I carry her to another part of the Time Ball Tower, but that does not help. Still better it is for her fall to be witnessed. Her suffering compounded, I hope, by the shame she must feel on them watching.
They’d kill her if I gave them the chance. We’ve got them all so isolated, though. Only together rarely.
Ben Butler
Roland Staunton: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1902
It was quiet on shore as I departed. So many of the families have gone, moved away. Families of the prisoners, with the connection lost, little to tie them anymore except tradition. They stay for many years and then they go.
In one of my monthly deliveries of fresh food, I found notes folded into tiny shapes, addressed to the prisoners.
I took great pleasure in throwing them out onto the rocks. Why should these foul bags of bones receive notes from home when I do not?
Roland Staunton
Walter Harcourt: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1903
The chief of police saw me off personally. That is quite something, isn’t it? They are the men with power.
This is what I will have when I return.
Walter Harcourt
Monk Heath: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1904
A short visit to the Keepers’ Club. Marvelous! Absolutely marvelous. Worth a year out here just for membership, in my opinion. Such good people there, such support. A place to call home away from home.
Monk Heath
John Bunting: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1905
The others talk of tick tock, I talk of click click. There is a certain vision a photographer has that others do not. A certain understanding of timing, of exposure, an acceptance of these things.
A photographer must understand the nature of cruelty. A photographer mus
t be cold, or the subject can be lost.
John Bunting
Joshua Parsons: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1906
“Who’s there?” the prisoners call out, “who is it, who is there?”
They are trying to cause a disturbance and I won’t be listening to them.
Joshua Parsons
Marshall James: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1907
The Black Widow married men still in their teens and murdered them. For blood? She never said. She says that this place was built on blood, that my granddaddy sacrificed actual human babies to ensure it keeps standing.
She also says I’m more handsome than any of her other husbands, more charming, cleverer.
It is lonely here, I’ll say that.
And she is more than willing.
I will not love her, though. That would not be right.
Marshall James
Ray Bailes: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1908
These things barely have a pulse. A heart. They are barely alive, barely human. Like stone. They fascinate me with their slow blinking eyes, their begging, pathetic words. They are close to insanity from solitude and they are irrational. I decided to move them back together; they are more manageable that way.
I hung one of them upside down through the window. A traveling salesman, took his own daughter with and sold her as they went along. Picked up another, sold her. Didn’t care what happened to each of them. Laughed about how many “daughters” he’d had. I could not bring myself to make him suffer minute for minute what his victims suffered. Even after just twelve hours, his head was suffused with an awful pus that seemed to squeeze out of his ears and drip onto the rocks. His moans became so disturbing that I relented and pulled him in. He was blind as a bat anyway.
Others who follow should attempt longer periods of observation.
Also, the woman. There are certain investigations underway with her and again I encourage all who follow to proceed with such.
So many decisions to make every day. And some of them larger than others.
Ray Bailes
Oscar Sheward: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1909
Many of the prisoners had no family, of course. They slaughtered the lot of them.
Oscar Sheward
Aiden Hennessy: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1910
The traveling salesman asks me if I’ll ever have a child. He says, “You’ll never be loved like a child loves you. You can’t even imagine the beauty of unconditional love.”
I think of his daughters, all those poor young girls. Some of them never found.
I’m kind to him, though, and I talk to him, because, one by one, he tells me where he sold them, and sometimes to whom.
At least the girls can be saved.
Aiden Hennessy
Morrison Webster: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1911
From the work of Aiden Hennessy, three girls were found and saved. This is something to remember. Not that these prisoners can be redeemed; that will never happen. But that, perhaps, they can give us information. They can help us to help the victims or understand evil.
Prisoner Thirteen has no right hand. He says he lost it in the Congo, a victim of the truly horrendous Leopold II, who insisted on seeing right hands to account for bullets. Of course, Prisoner Thirteen said, in order to save on bullets, or to steal bullets, the soldiers would cut off the hands of people they hadn’t murdered.
He thinks we don’t know. That he was one of the soldiers, responsible for many deaths. That he cut off his own right hand to try to prove his innocence.
Morrison Webster
Rufus James: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1912
When my grandfather, Michael James, built this Time Ball Tower, he expected that it would make our family famous. That there would be a family tradition of engineers, and that we would be known throughout the world. Like Christopher Wren or Robert Adam. He told me much about the place and its nooks and crannies.
I would not have liked to see the prisoners when they were first preserved. They would have been more solid, then. Louder. They would have looked more like men and less like husks. They’re not a happy bunch. They were given the choice, life imprisonment or eternal life. They chose eternal life. But were they shown the results? Did they see our own Burnett Barton? Did they talk to a man who’s been given the treatment, see what he thought of it?
Yet husks they are, and husks they remain.
And yet. Inside.
Inside, they carry a heart of stone.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Rufus James
Hitchens Manning: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1913
They used to get gifts from women, too. Crazy bitches who fell in love with them. They’d send proposals of marriage and other stuff. Underwear. Nude photos. Shit like that. These days, the prisoners are too far from human. No one falls in love with them now.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Hitchens Manning
Spencer Harcourt: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1914
It’s a beautiful thing and I shall not question it: the appearance of the whisky bottle on my kitchen table.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Spencer Harcourt
Porter Heath: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1915
There are those who fight and die for the greater good. But who is to say what that greater good is?
Better to be here, keeping these prisoners confined. Than there.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experienced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Porter Heath
Warren Bailes: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1916
I could vaguely see the charcoal outline of the troll but didn’t get to it myself. Superstition never helped a soul. Why should I follow a tradition that only helps me to be cold and wet with all that outdoor work?
Mr. James, the builder, thought the troll would act like a gargoyle to scare off the evil spirits. It began as an error, a flaw in the building that stretched from the ground up, and from afar it became clear this was a menacing mistake. I remember how the painting disturbed him; he couldn’t imagine he had such horror within him. I say the tower is a giant: great and powerful.
My brother was here in 1908, but he has spoken little about his time. His report shows how stretched he was. With war work looming over us, I worry about him more than most others. He has a delicate soul, more than any woman I have known. I cannot even imagine how he survived out here, and sometimes I think perhaps he didn’t. That these men, over the decades, these women, have developed a method of taking one’s body. Filling themselves into the corners of it and animating it that way, with very little of the original inhabitant left. Certainly we all return more bad-tempered than when we arrived.
It’s the noises, for me. Things that can’t be explained.
SUMMARY OF CONDITIONS: I found the prisoners to be well nourished and of sound mind. Prisoners bathed successfully. Prisoners appeared distressed on waking and have trouble sleeping. Prisoners experien
ced dry skin, chronic pain and halitosis.
All normal for this report.
Warren Bailes
Rossiter Styles: The Time Ball Tower Keeper’s Report 1917
Here I am at last, at last. Waited so long, and all I’ve seen, and all I’ve loved, all the world I’ve known.
The cruel, the envious, will say I am far from the best man. That I only got in because all the good men are at war.
Ruby’s brothers are all gone to war. I do feel the weight of guilt upon me. I am so grateful to be here, to love my Ruby.
But then she knows it is up to her to carry on. I dream of our babies sweet in their cot and I glimpse the future. Generations of us, just as Burnett wishes.
There were plenty of us, all right. My cousins numbered twenty-eight, many of them with children. There was no sign of my family dying out.
Yes, I was twenty-seven, well beyond the years of usual keeperdom. But you could say I was young at heart. Never to know the suffering of war, because the Lord saw fit to make me unsuited for all that. But I kept at them and at them.
Tide of Stone Page 9
