In reply to your favour of Feb 28 we beg to state as in our previous letter, that Camellia McCluskey will be received into this Institute on any day, forenoon or afternoon, that it may please the Attorney General to have her conducted to Abbotsford. The Convent entrance is in Clarke Street, a short distance from tram terminus. If it be convenient to inform us when she is likely to arrive here, I could be on the spot and meet her without delay.
The press found out about Camellia’s release from Bendigo Prison, in spite of the authorities’ attempts to keep it secret and there is a good deal of correspondence showing efforts to find out where the press got the information.
McCLUSKEY TRANSFERRED
The woman Camellia McCluskey, who, five months ago was before the Bendigo Supreme Court on a charge of wilfully murdering her three children at a house in Don-street on Sunday 7th August, and who was acquitted on the ground of insanity and ordered to be detained during the Governor’s pleasure, was released from the Bendigo Gaol yesterday morning.
It may be remembered that in consequence of representations made by Mr Luke Murphy the woman’s legal adviser, Dr J M Eadie, the medical officer of the gaol, made a special report upon McCluskey’s medical condition. The authorities declined to make the contents of that report known to the public, but it is understood that it was upon the recommendations contained therein that the Attorney-General (Mr J D Brown) agreed to the woman’s release. In order to comply with the order of Mr Justice A’Beckett, the discharge certificate was signed by the State Governor (Sir Thomas Gibson Carmichael).
McCluskey, whose health is only moderately good, left the Bendigo Gaol about 11.30 o’clock yesterday morning in company with Miss Brennan, the female warder, and journeyed to Melbourne by the midday train. She will there enter the Abbotsford Convent, and the date upon which she will be finally released, will, it is said, depend solely upon her conduct.
Local reporters called at the gaol the same day Buckley, Governor of the gaol, received the Governor’s orders to release Camellia. Buckley declared that neither he nor any of the staff at the gaol were to blame for the leak to the press. He stated that he received orders from the Governor, for Camellia’s release, at about 8.30 am on Tuesday 7th of March and that he then instructed a female warder, around 10 o’clock, to prepare her for the trip to Melbourne. He also informed the warder that she was to accompany Camellia on the train and arranged with Sergeant Smith to organise a railway pass for the two women. He ‘impressed on the Sergt the desirability of keeping the matter secret’.
That same day, about 12.30, two local reporters called on Buckley and said they had heard from Melbourne that Camellia was to be released and sent to the Abbotsford Convent. Buckley said he had no authority to give them any information and refused to do so. He stated firmly that he told no-one at any time what the conditions of her release from Bendigo Gaol were.
After the story was published in The Melbourne Herald later that day, Buckley then answered further inquiries from the local reporters, informing them Camellia would be leaving the prison the following day and that she was going to Melbourne.
At 9 am on the Wednesday Buckley told the Sergeant of Police to arrange for a cab to call at the prison in time to meet the midday train to Melbourne. Buckley stated that although warders knew Camellia was to be released, he was satisfied that none of them knew of the conditions of that release. He believed that no information had been given to the press from any of the gaol officials in Bendigo and that there was no point in interviewing them. He added that the female warder who travelled to Melbourne with Camellia would not return until Thursday evening.
CHAPTER NINE: Sisters of the Good Shepherd
From the moment of her admission, the frail or fallen or deserted woman or girl is placed under careful observation.
It appears from Buckley’s statement that the leak may have come from Melbourne rather than from the gaol in Bendigo. It was evident that the reporters knew not only of Camellia’s release, but that she was being transferred to Abbotsford. The Abbotsford Convent was not a holiday home, nor was it a mental asylum. It was primarily a home for women and girls who were in need of care. Women who were homeless and destitute, providing they were penitent, found ‘peace, consolation and strength to battle again with the waves of life’.
It was also a commercial laundry, the largest in Melbourne, providing services for hospitals and hotels, and the older girls and women were expected to work to help provide for their keep. The laundry used ‘modern mechanical equipment’ such as a rotary automatic washer and the ‘most up-to-date wringers and mangles,’ operating on ‘scientific principles’. The convent was almost self-sufficient, with its own farm and gardens and a bakery. It was set on the Yarra, where it remains to this day, although it is no longer a convent. Many of the buildings are now in very poor condition, while some have been renovated and serve various uses.
It is still possible to see just how grand and beautiful the main buildings, such as the chapels and the convent itself, once were, with their stained glass windows, polished wooden floors and grand staircases. The vast and once busy laundry rooms are in a very sad state, the metal ceiling rusted away and the walls crumbling. Built in 1909, it was no doubt a very modern building in top condition when Camellia worked there, and the nuns’ idea of rehabilitation for their charges centred on hard work and penance. The convent complex was divided into quite distinct areas, for orphans, boarders, preservites and penitents, and each group was confined to its own area, apart from a weekly mass held in the main chapel. The acres of beautiful gardens leading down to the Yarra River were for the enjoyment of the nuns and perhaps the paying boarders. Novices walked the grounds in groups of three to ensure they kept their vows of silence. The Sisters of the Good Shepherd lived under very strict rules themselves and would expect nothing less from the women and girls doing penance under their care. The penitents had their own chapel and daily attendance was required by all.
Some financial assistance was provided by the government as well as the public, and that may have been why the sisters came in for some criticism about their methods. A Truth reporter wrote a very positive piece in 1907 after a visit to Abbotsford, in answer to one of the critics, the ‘wild-eyed and bitter bigot, the great irreverent Tregear’, who evidently preached at the Collingwood Wesley Church against the nuns and their work. According to the reporter, Tregear depicted the sisters as ‘torturing demons, proselytising the souls’ of their ‘luckless victims’, and represented the convent as a ‘gloomy prison’, where the inmates were ‘most cruelly tortured’. He also complained that some of the nuns had had the ‘audacity and temerity’ to visit some state schools.
The Truth reporter found the convent to be quite the contrary, a place where ‘there [was] throughout an air of real happiness, the happiness begotten, on the one part, of the consciousness of a noble duty nobly done, and on the other part, of an assurance of protection, nurturing, comfort and contentment’. He was able to speak freely with the inmates and claimed they all expressed love and gratitude for ‘the noble gentlewomen’ who had chosen to spend their lives helping others. Some inmates had no desire to leave, such as one he spoke to who had lived there for 27 years and had every intention of staying. The report also describes the separation of each group of inmates, describing it as part of a carefully conceived plan.
The work carried on in the convent is varied and manifold. Throughout all is the connecting link of a carefully-conceived system. Excellent management is evident all through. But although there is a ‘plan’ the different sections of the operations are sharply and clearly separated so that there is no contamination, no possibility of that mental infection which corrupts more viciously than any disease originating from physical contact. From the moment of her admission, the frail or fallen or deserted woman or girl is placed under careful observation. She is not permitted to enter into the society of her fellows until she has proved herself to be physically and mentally worthy of such assoc
iation. Absolute cleanliness, both of person and of mind, is, of course, insisted upon.
This may have been simply a Catholic versus Protestant argument; the truth was probably somewhere in between the cosy picture the reporter gives and the ‘gloomy prison’ Tregear described. The reporter’s enthusiasm is even more apparent in his description of the nuns themselves:
And everywhere the white-robed sisters, exercising a loving care and sisterly solicitude, with a devotion and a personal affection which is reciprocated by those who are its objects. Lives devoted to the work, lives from which all the taint of the world has been voluntarily removed, lives which are to the ladies and to their sister women perpetual benedictions, transfiguring the beautiful faces of many of them into countenances of perfect elegance and holiness; lives of holy and noble self-sacrifice and high and inspired duty. And these ladies are amused, if shocked, when their noble work is reviled and ridiculed by sectarian scoundrels for party and pulpiteering purposes. They have the knowledge that their labour is a great and God-like one, and they have the esteem and affection of all people whose approval is worth having. Nothing can take from them the conviction that they are carrying on a divinely-ordained duty.
The reporter claims that the medical facilities at the convent were far better than anything at the Melbourne Hospital, with well-trained nurses working under the supervision of a doctor. One would think that this was a perfect place for Camellia to recover from her ‘frailty’ of mind and body. Wholesome food, fresh air and spiritual comfort for those willing to do penance, both of a physical and spiritual nature.
Whether Camellia was penitent or not, she found little peace at Abbotsford. She believed the other women were talking about her and indeed they very likely were. Her crime was given a huge amount of publicity in Melbourne newspapers and of course everyone in such a small isolated community would gossip about the child-murderer in their midst. This was not like Bendigo Gaol, where such crimes might be, if not accepted, at least to some extent, understood; it was a home for women who needed help, even though some were sent there by the courts. The crimes of most of the women amounted to little more than vagrancy or insolvency and unwed mothers also accounted for a large number of inmates.
Camellia may have been ostracized by the others and by all accounts tended to keep herself isolated even before the murders. She came from a middle-class background and may have considered herself above the working-class women, who in turn were possibly less forgiving than they would have been with one of their own social class. By the end of May the Abbotsford nuns were having second thoughts about Camellia’s stay. She did not fit in with the other women and was not at all happy with the place:
With regret we have to inform you that the poor woman Camellia McCluskey whom you committed to our care is not at all contented with her present surroundings and requests us to lay before you her desire to be transferred to her father’s home.
Owing to her having been so run down in health and emaciated at the time of her admission here, we have refrained from exacting of her to perform any work, - she has been treated with every possible consideration and kindness, but even so she complained to relatives lately that she could not content herself among the many other Inmates here.
In offering her a place here we did in a spirit of sincere compassion and sympathy for her sad history, in the hope of uplifting and encouraging her, - but as she is now so dis-satisfied, we shall be grateful if you will kindly consider her case, with as little delay as possible.
The Government Medical Officer, O’Brien, was asked to visit the convent, and reported to the Attorney General on June 11, 1911. He spoke to the nuns and found that not only was Camellia not working as the inmates were expected to, but she had actually escaped from her dormitory one night and gone to visit friends:
I visited the Convent of the Good Shepherd in the morning of the 13th and again in the afternoon of the 16th instant. I had a long conversation with the lady in charge of Camellia McCluskey and she informed me that she was not capable of undertaking much work; that even in the lightest ironing she was incapable of exercising the energy and continuing at it for any great length of time. This she stated was due to a debilitated bodily health but at the same time the probationer’s statements are – ‘That she is possessed of the ability and does a considerable amount of work.’
I was informed that during Sunday night or early in the morning of the 12th inst, she escaped from the dormitory where she slept, by unscrewing the lock of her door and went to some friends of hers living in one of the suburbs. In reply to my questions the probationer stated that she was dissatisfied with her surroundings; that the other inmates were aware of and discussed the particulars of her case and she considered she would be better out with her father and that the position of the Convent itself was making worse a severe cough from which she suffered.
Camellia was not the only one to escape from the convent of course. Some girls climbed from the windows overhanging the laundry roof and climbed from there down to the ground where they swam across the Yarra. Life at the convent was neither easy nor comfortable. In winter it would have been very cold and damp next to the river. Food would have been adequate, but the penitents received a lower quality than the other residents. The constant rules and the confinement would have been the worst aspect of life for those who did not feel they either needed or deserved to be there. O’Brien visited the convent a second time, after a phone call from the Reverend Mother, who had clearly had enough of Camellia’s ‘dis-satisfaction’. Her presence was making things difficult for everyone there as she clearly did not consider herself to be on a level with the other inmates. She said she would rather be back in prison than with them and claimed that her health had worsened:
I saw her again in the afternoon of the 16th instant, in response from a telephone message received from the Abbotsford Convent. The Reverend Mother who met me stated she was anxious for the removal of Miss McCluskey; that there was considerable amount of unrest among the other inmates and that she felt it would be to the interests of both them and the probationer if such were done as speedily as possible. She does not regard her as mentally well although she cannot give evidence in support of this, beyond the fact that Miss McCluskey has extraordinary high ideas of her capabilities.
I again had a long interview with the probationer and could discern no symptom of mental aberration. She had stated to me at the former interview that she would rather be in prison, owing to the fact of her being here mingled with the other inmates, and the deterioration of her bodily health. I explained to her fully the position in which she was placed, what was meant by the probationary period and stated the action of the Honourable the Minister would largely depend on the reports he received. Subsequently she expressed the desire to remain at the Convent for the rest of her probationary period. I pointed out to her that it would be absolutely necessary to exercise more control to prevent her being swayed by such impulses as led to her escape on the date in question. I am informed that the cough is very severe, especially at night.
Owing to the expression of the opinion by the authorities and her own dissatisfaction I advise that steps be taken for her removal without delay.
Perhaps an extension of my supervision would be desirable, as it would not be advisable at present to transfer her to her father’s home.
Whatever happened in those next few days, by June 22 the Abbotsford nuns had had enough. This time they wrote to the Crown Law Department in a somewhat firmer tone:
We find it necessary now to request that immediate arrangements be made for the removal from this Institution of Camellia McCluskey and we shall feel gratefully indebted if you will kindly have the matter dealt with at your earliest convenience.
Clearly the patience of even the Nuns of the Good Shepherd was wearing thin with Camellia. The Secretary of the Law Department replied on June 29 that a suitable home had been found for Camellia and the authority for her transfer would take a few days.
/> Mr Drysdale Brown [Attorney General of Victoria] directs me to convey to you and the Nuns of the Good Shepherd his thanks for your kindness in having received the abovementioned into your custody and having maintained her for so long.
CHAPTER TEN: South Yarra
‘I am prepared to receive her into my home and together with my daughters will keep a watchful eye over her’.
George Clancy and his family offered to put Camellia up at their home in South Yarra. Clancy had known her since childhood and, like the Abbotsford Nuns, was more than willing to make her more comfortable. He wrote to Drysdale Brown on June 27, 1911.
In reference to inquiries made by an officer of your Department in regard to the case of Camellia McCluskey, I beg to inform you that I am prepared to receive her into my home and together with my daughters will keep a watchful eye over her. It gives me very much pleasure to be able to help her in her trouble.
The Secretary to The Law Department wrote to O’Brien asking his opinion about Clancy’s request:
Re Camellia McCluskey
Referring to previous correspondence I am directed by the Minister to enclose for your perusal the accompanying copy of a letter received from Mr George Clancy of South Yarra, in which that gentleman states his willingness to receive into his home and take care of the above-named.
Mr Drysdale Brown will be glad before taking any action in the matter if you will favour him with your opinion as to the advisability of accepting Mr Clancy’s offer. I am to add that in view of the desire of the Nuns of the Convent of The Good Shepherd at Abbotsford that McCluskey should be removed from that Institution without delay, a reply at your earliest is desired.
Having declared Camellia to be sane and yet to be detained at the Governor’s Pleasure created problems as to her accommodation and Clancy’s offer must have been very welcome. O’Brien received and answered the letter the same day, June 29, 1911:
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