Not Guilty

by Christine Gardner

  O’Callaghan left Camellia with another constable and informed Detectives Currie and Commons of the incident. The three policemen then went to the scene of the crime, picking up Dr Boyd on the way. Detective Currie, who knew Camellia from her frequent visits to the police station, stated that when he saw Camellia at the watch house she immediately said to him:

  ‘Oh, Mr Currie, I have killed my little children. I have done it at last. It is terrible, terrible.’ [Currie] said, ‘Good gracious you don’t mean to say you have killed your little children?’ She replied ‘I have. I have. I knew I would.’ [Currie] said ‘How did you do it?’ She replied ‘I knocked them in the head with the tomahawk and then slashed them with a knife. I don’t know how I could do such a thing. I have killed those little darlings and they were the only things I had to live for.’ [Currie] said ‘Why did you do such a thing? Where is McDonald?’ She replied ‘He has gone to Woodstock on his bicycle.’ [Currie] said ‘What has he gone there for?’ She replied ‘On pleasure of course. He has gone back to those women. They are back here in Bendigo again. I tried to destroy myself but the knife would not cut and I took some camphor but it has taken no effect.’

  Camellia’s expression ‘they were the only things I had to live for’ seems to objectify the children; not only were they ‘things’, they were Camellia’s things – the only things she had to live for. No doubt, in her own way, she loved them, but she comes across as a self-centred woman, immature and unable to see the world through the eyes of others. Her children were an extension of her, not people in their own right and with their own rights. They were what kept her trapped in a disastrous relationship; they were also the only means she had to punish the man she blamed for all her problems, their father.

  CHAPTER FOUR: The Crime Scene

  Little did the detectives expect to almost rush upon the body of a child lying at the head of the stairs with its head battered and throat cut.

  When the three policemen and Dr Boyd arrived at the house the first thing they noticed was smoke coming from the building. The front door was not locked and Detective Commons went through the house to the back yard, where he first found the body of Dorothy, the eldest child, then that of her little sister, Ida. From the position of the bodies it appears that four-year-old Dorothy, the last child to be killed, must have seen her mother’s brutal attack on her little sister. It is impossible to imagine the horror of this much-loved little girl’s last moments as she ran away from her mother, who was covered in the blood and spattered brains of her siblings. She was old enough to have some idea what was happening and what was going to happen to her; old enough to be terrified, but not old enough to get away.

  Dorothy was found lying with her face downwards and she had massive cuts and injuries to her head and neck. She was dressed in a brown dress, tan shoes and tan socks. There was blood everywhere on the ground around and underneath her little body and Detective Commons discovered a tomahawk on the footpath nearby, stained with the children’s blood; there was hair still attached to it. He walked further along the same path and found the body of Dolly’s little sister, Ida Helen. Ida was lying on her back near the top of the steps which led down to the breakfast room in the basement of the house. Her feet were pointing towards that room and the body had cuts and injuries similar to those of her older sister. She was wearing a small white hood and a white flannelette gown with two singlets underneath. Camellia complained she did not have enough of an allowance from George to buy clothing for the children and, if she was telling the truth, winter nights in Bendigo must have been a source of great worry to her.

  Dr Boyd examined the children’s bodies as Detective Commons discovered them and he next followed the detective into the basement to the breakfast room. They found the room full of smoke, all of which was coming from a burning chair. It was later discovered that this was the same chair that George had brought from his Ferntree Gully office – the chair where he and Camellia had first become lovers and had made promises to each other of undying love.

  In the sitting room the detectives found a glass which smelt strongly of camphor and in the breakfast room they found the remains of the furniture Camellia had destroyed before she murdered her children. In the kitchen the chairs had also been smashed, while the drawing room was ‘a complete wreck’, with furniture broken and thrown around the floor and the carpet, the hearthrugs and mats cut into small strips. In the main bedroom the couch and other articles were ‘cut and hacked about’ and the chest of drawers had deep cuts.

  It was Detective Currie who discovered the body of little Eric George, Camellia’s only son. He was lying on his back in the hallway near the bottom of the interior staircase and close to the inside wall. His injuries were similar to those of his sisters and there was blood all over the floor. He was dressed only in his nightgown, of red flannelette, and a singlet. As well as the blood on the floor they also discovered brain matter on the wall nearby; brain matter and a piece of skull and hair was also still attached to a vest hanging from a hat rack more than six feet above the body.

  The policemen put the burning chair outside and a fire burning in the fire place was extinguished. The horror of finding those little bodies mutilated by their own mother, with whom Detective Commons was well acquainted, must have stayed with him forever, though in his official statement he does his best to hide his own feelings, as of course he must.

  Camellia said, in her letter to the Police Superintendent, that she would not leave her children ‘to the world’ and she was going to destroy the furniture so that George could not give it to Maudie. She was probably right in thinking that George would replace her with Maudie, if she had killed herself and not killed the children. Maudie was already a mother of one child and had her own mother living with her; the two of them would no doubt have managed the children and their father better than the ailing Camellia had. At least until George strayed again. Camellia could not bear the thought of Maudie having her children any more than she could bear her having her furniture. We could be forgiven for thinking this may have been in her mind when she ‘destroyed’ her children in much the same way she destroyed the furniture.

  She stressed the importance, both to George and to the Police Superintendent, of her remaining belongings going to her father. She also said, in her earlier statement to police about George’s involvement in the Monbulk fire, that she is reporting him because he prefers the other woman to her. She and George could never be married; when she burned the chair she was ‘divorcing’ him and when she killed his children she was punishing him for abandoning her for another woman as well as obliterating the only real tie left between them.

  The Truth newspaper, free from the constraints of formal statements, describes the murders in emotional terms:

  Quite evidently the poor little mite (Dorothy) had been struck down as she ran. There she lay, upon her face, in a great pool of blood, the back of her head stove in as with a tomahawk, an extensive fracture along the side, her neck gashed and her jaw laid open back to beneath the lobe of one ear. Her flaxen curls were soaked in the blood that had poured plenteously from her wounds and her clothing was saturated in the pool that had collected beneath her pathetic little figure and which was still increasing when the police arrived. Indubitably the tragedy had happened but a very short while previously, for this tiny victim’s wounds were still oozing, and rigidity of death had not yet seized upon the small limbs.

  In the days before television newspapers were even more descriptive than they are today. Not only Truth wrote in this manner and not only about such a topic as this. The reports of the inquest all describe in some detail how Camellia was dressed, as well as her demeanour on that occasion. Truth went on to describe the finding of the other bodies, first that of Ida, who was so badly mutilated as to be ‘practically bloodless’ by the time the doctor arrived. Eric’s body was found with the throat cut, the back of the neck also cut and the skull ‘battered in and the brain exuded’. ‘[All the children] lay as
they had fallen at the first onslaught, their wide staring eyes retaining their pitiful expression of uncontrollable terror.’ Truth described Camellia’s attempt on her own life as ‘half-hearted’. It appears from the newspaper report that the reporter was on the scene with the police and the doctor, and in fact he says the police were ‘aghast at the awfulness of the spectacle which was presented to them.’

  The Bendigo Advertiser gave a comprehensive account of the discovery of the scene, as discovered by police and the coroner:

  ... Pressing through the blinding smoke, the detectives came to a staircase, and as it was from below that the smoke was issuing in volumes they rushed downstairs. After groping about for a while they discovered that the smoke emanated from a heavily-padded armchair, which was smouldering in the breakfast room. This they hurled outside, and made their way upstairs to the fresh air.

  Little did the detectives expect to almost rush upon the body of a child lying at the head of the stairs with its head battered and throat cut. Blood was smeared all over the flagstones, and the sight was horrifying. Dr. Boyd at a glance pronounced life extinct. The detectives hurried to make a search for the other two children.

  The basement was dark, and it was only with the light of matches that they discovered the body of Eric, in the passage joining the breakfast room with the staircase. His head was ‘battered far worse’ than that of his twin sister and his throat was slashed with ‘great deep gashes’. His head had been ‘dinted in’ in several places and pieces of his brain had ‘been strewn about’ as his mother had struck him with the tomahawk.

  Dorothy’s body, as described by the Advertiser, was the last one found, and was ‘struck down by a cruel blow on the head with a heavy and sharp weapon’ while she was running away from her mother. The back of her head was ‘smashed in’ and the left side of her face was covered with ‘horrible open gashes, made with a carving knife or some such weapon’. The police took the children’s bodies to their parents’ bedroom and placed them all on the bed, where they ‘presented a heart-rending spectacle, all being shockingly mutilated and more or less ill-clad’. Constable Gormanby, who had followed the detectives to the house, then took the children to the morgue and Constable Westcott was left at the house to wait for George and escort him to the detective office.

  Up to this point the emphasis in the newspaper reports was on the horror of the crime and the brutality with which it was executed. No detail was spared the reader and the story is meant to shock, and of course to sell newspapers. The description of little Dorothy, running away from her mother, and then of her ‘life’s blood’ leaving an ‘ugly trace on the ground’ is evidence perhaps of the reporter’s feelings towards the perpetrator of this horrific crime, or perhaps an attempt to further jolt his readers. There’s little doubt that the sales figures for the Advertiser were considerably higher than usual that week.

  When George finally came home after his day out he probably expected Camellia to still be angry with him. He was reluctant to go home and his actions indicate he avoided his home as often as he could. Like Camellia he felt trapped in the relationship, but he had already left one family behind and he loved his children. He had his mistress, Maudie, who made his life more bearable, and this homecoming, he no doubt expected, would be much like most had been in the past few weeks. Unpleasant. But it was not an annoyed Camellia who waited at the gate when he arrived, but hundreds of people, all wanting as many of the lurid details as possible. It was dark by then and George was shocked to see a policeman in his front garden as well as the crowds of onlookers at the gate. Constable Gormanby told him what had happened to his family and then took him to the detective office. Police advised him to stay away from his house at least for that night, but he had no desire to go there in any case.

  The Advertiser reported that neighbours heard nothing out of the ordinary that day; that although the children were crying, that was not unusual. Later, at the inquest, one of the neighbours did say she thought the screams were worse than they’d been on other occasions.

  Although the locality is fairly thickly populated, none of the neighbours heard anything that would lead them to suspect that such a fearful crime was being committed. One neighbour, Mr. Morcom, heard crying, but as this was not an unusual occurrence, no particular notice was paid to it. Apparently the children were struck down before they could utter a cry for help.

  That the deed was premeditated is clearly proved by the discovery of documents written by the self-confessed murderess. Two peculiarly-worded notes on blue writing paper, and addressed to McDonald in a clear and deliberate hand, were found in the house by the detectives, while a third letter on white writing paper, addressed to a friend in Doncaster, was discovered later.

  Before the inquest the local press clearly judged Camellia as guilty of premeditated murder, because of the letters she wrote beforehand, although none of those mentioned here actually spell out her intentions as does the letter she had written and posted to police. After seeing her at the inquest the press, and perhaps the public, become much more sympathetic towards her, due to her appearance as a grief-stricken and repentant mother. The press then turned on George as the guilty party and depicted Camellia as the victim. Had Camellia behaved in a less appropriate manner at the inquest and her trial would she have been found guilty by the press and popular opinion? And how much was the jury influenced by the press?

  George was horrified and stunned by Camellia’s actions. He’d known she was capable of violence against him and perhaps thought she may harm herself. He never believed she would harm their children. When interviewed shortly after he learnt of the deaths of his children he appears to have been in shock at what has just occurred. When he was questioned, however, he was able to pull himself together sufficiently to lie to the reporter about his affair with Maudie Smith and present himself in the best possible light. He claimed there was no reason for Camellia to be jealous and also that she went around slamming doors deliberately to let the neighbours hear. His only part in the argument, he claimed, was an attempt to ‘pacify’ her.

  George had just been questioned by the detectives in charge of the case when the Advertiser reporter saw him walking away, with ‘his head bowed and presenting a very dejected appearance’. He pushed his bike beside him as he walked and was mumbling, ‘Oh God,’ and ‘Poor Dolly’. When the reporter approached him he was startled, but nonetheless quite willing to be interviewed. He was described as ‘a respectably-dressed man of medium build, and [with] a short grey moustache’ with a ‘most haggard expression’ because of the ‘terrible ordeal through which he was plainly passing’. He was heading to the home of his employer, H.M.Leggo, in Wattle Street, either for the hope of some comfort or to let him know what had happened to his manager’s family. Camellia had written to Leggo as well but this letter was not made public.

  The reporter asked George if he knew why Camellia had killed the children and he said that ‘it appeared to have been wholly due to a mad fit of jealousy, for which there was not the slightest foundation’. He realised when he woke up that morning that she was in a bad mood, and she followed him through the house slamming doors behind him ‘so as to let the neighbours hear’. He claimed he tried to ‘pacify’ her, but she became more ‘boisterous’ and finally accused him of ‘relations with other women’.

  This he denied, but she persisted that there was a woman in Bendigo whom he had known when they lived in Melbourne. This woman, she said, she had seen on every occasion she had passed along the streets of the city, and, in fact, had repeatedly followed her all the time she was doing her business in and out of the shops. McDonald said that to this he had replied that the accusations were all nonsense, and if she wished she could prove that the woman was still in Melbourne by either writing, telephoning, or telegraphing. He added in this connection that he had mentioned the place where the woman was to be found, but this did not serve to allay her suspicions.

  At this time, Mrs Wilson, his mistress’s mothe
r, was in Melbourne, but Maudie was still in Bendigo; he was apparently hoping Camellia would accept the half-truth. After this, he said, the milkman came to the door and Camellia told Dolly to go and tell him not to leave any milk, adding ‘You will not want any milk today, Dolly.’ Then she seemed to change her mind, going to the door herself and getting the milk. She also made a point of telling the milkman to be sure to bring his bill the next morning.

  Although everything was in the house for a meal Mr. McDonald said he partook of no breakfast, as she would give him no peace in the house. He then went outside and fixed his bicycle up, and when he returned to get his hat the mother of his children ‘made use of threatening language’. He took his bicycle, and when he left the residence little Dolly was outside on the footpath wheeling one of the twins in the perambulator. Fearing, as he had always done, that the woman might commit some violent act, he walked around the block a couple of times before finally leaving.

  It was just after 10 in the morning, according to George, when he left the house and he did not get back until around 6.30 that evening, after spending the day walking and riding around the city and surrounding district. He had, he said, been out among the old mine diggings just to ‘keep out of the way and enjoy some peace of mind’.

  As it was nearly sunset he decided to return to his home, and came along Barnard-street, past the hospital, never dreaming that his little Dolly and the twins were lying at home dead. He then rode about the eastern portion of the city, and when nearing his home in Don-street he saw a crowd of people on the footpath in front of his gate. He also noticed a policeman standing in the garden, and immediately a fear crept into his heart that something desperate had occurred. He went inside, and was told by police what had happened.

  At this stage George had not admitted to his affair with Maudie Smith and he was given a great deal of sympathy by the press. The blame was entirely Camellia’s, due to her unreasonable jealousy. After he admitted his infidelity he was no longer portrayed by the press as an innocent man whose children had been murdered, but a vile seducer who had driven an innocent woman to murder her own children.