The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer

by Kate Summerscale

  Harold Smith moved with his family to Grafton. . . Smith was found guilty of assaulting Isaac Cundy, and fined a further £7 plus £10 9/- in medical and witness expenses. See Grafton Daily Examiner, 30 July 1930.

  he had to re-enrol. . . See Nana Glen Public School Register 1928–1981, Coff’s Harbour District Family History Society.

  the band kept going. . . In 1925, for instance, the 45th Battalion band performed in a competition in Taree, 150 miles south of Nana Glen, in a military tattoo to welcome the American fleet to Sydney, and in the Sydney Armistice Day parade (Cessnock Eagle and South Maitland Recorder, 5 May 1925, Sydney Morning Herald, 31 July and 10 November 1925). From 1928, the band also played at battalion reunions. The popularity of brass bands in Australia faded after the advent of radio in the 1920s. See Duncan Bythell, ‘The Brass Band in the Antipodes: the Transplantation of British Popular Culture’, in Herbert, The British Brass Band.

  competed in chess tournaments. . . See Australasian, 26 November 1927 and 14 January 1928.

  after a year of drought. . . See Barrier Miner, Brisbane Courier-Mail, Grafton Daily Examiner and Lismore Northern Star, 29 October 1936, and Brewer, Looking Back. In 1945 Robert wrote to the AIF to request replacements for the discharge papers that had been destroyed in the blaze (see NAA: B2455, Coombes RA). He said that since he did not have his birth certificate he needed the papers for ‘some legal formalities’ – he may have been applying for a pension: if he had been born in 1886, as he had claimed when he joined the Army in 1940, he would have been about to turn sixty.

  the 15th Light Horse Regiment. . . The Light Horse had just doubled its troopers’ pay to eight shillings a day. See Bou, Light Horse.

  The couple won. . . See Grafton Daily Examiner, 14 October 1938 and 6 June 1939.

  Robert volunteered for the 8th Garrison Battalion. . . See NAA: B884, N105727. Call for recruits and terms of service in Newcastle Morning Herald, 21 November 1940.

  led the Armistice Day parade. . . See Newcastle Morning Herald, 10 November 1941.

  Harry was training. . . See his service records, NAA: B883, NX46646.

  in 1946 he was guest of honour. . . Grafton Daily Examiner, 7 March and 13 June 1946.

  died on 7 May. . . See death certificate, repatriation case file NAA: C138, R30557 and obituary in Grafton Daily Examiner, 13 May 1949.

  The assets he had bequeathed to Harry. . . See deceased estate files at State Records Authority of New South Wales: NRS 13340/B29325/20/4740.

  he appealed to the War Graves Commission. . . See NAA: C138, R30557.

  Harold Smith, who had died in 1944. . . See obituary in Grafton Daily Examiner, 21 December 1944.

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