by Peter Corris
* * *
* The quotation should read: ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool.’ (Isaiah 1.18)
SALVATION?
Blood and Fire
WORDS ON THE CREST OF THE
SALVATION ARMY
George Murphy, the county sheriff, approaches Moxley's cell and nods to the guard. The cell is brightly lit for 24 hours a day and the guard has a clear view of the prisoner through a barred window. The guard unlocks the door and Murphy enters. Moxley is sitting at a small table in the corner of the cell, slowly turning over the leaves in a book. He looks up.
‘They've named the day, have they?’
‘The seventeenth of August.’
‘Not long.’
‘No. Is there anything you need? Do you want to see the chaplain?’
‘Tonight. Will visitors be allowed? There's a few people I'd like to see. I've got the names here, Mr Murphy.’
Murphy takes the sheet of paper. ‘It's up to the comptroller, but I'm sure that'll be all right. Within reason.’
‘Good. Thanks again.’
The sheriff leaves and Moxley closes the book, Broken Earthenware, by Harold Begbie, which deals with the struggles of London slum-dwellers. It has been sent to him by one of the many people who've written to him expressing the wish that he find comfort in religion. He takes the bundle of letters from a shelf and shuffles through them. He's read them several times but the passionate devotional language in some still makes him smile.
A guard approaches William MacKay as he leaves the section where Moxley is housed. ‘The superintendent'd like to see you, Mr MacKay.’
MacKay nods and follows the guard through a passage and up several flights of stairs to an office. He shakes hands with the superintendent, accepts a cigarette and sits.
‘What did he have to say?’ the superintendent asks.
‘Not much. How sorry he was. He's worried about his kid.’
‘Bit late for that. I have to be sure things go smoothly. First time for me and most of the people here.’
MacKay blows smoke. ‘Saw a bit of it in England. It's pretty quick provided the hangman's up to the job.’
The superintendent nods. ‘We've got an experienced man from interstate. I meant more about Moxley himself. How d'you think he'll stand up to it?’
‘Colonel Pennell from the Salvos seems to have done a good job of bolstering his courage. I think he'll be all right. Don't suppose there's any chance of a reprieve?’
The superintendent consults a memo on his desk. ‘The Cabinet's unanimous. You've got some sympathy for him, I think.
‘He was useful.’
‘Why did he do it?’
‘God knows,’ MacKay says.
Colonel William Pennell sits in Moxley's cell. He is round-faced, stocky with thinning hair and a determined chin. He is clean-shaven and has a scrubbed look. His pale grey eyes are steady behind round, wire-rimmed glasses. Pennell opens the Bible and reads: ‘Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. That's you, William. That's you if you truly repent and accept Jesus into your heart.’
‘It's hard, Colonel. I never had much of a chance…’
‘No, no. You must not think like that. You must not think of yourself, but of Him and His capacity to forgive you.’
Hard not to think of yourself when your neck's going to be snapped, Moxley thinks. But he nods and listens as Pennell reads the rest of Psalm 32. A lot of it makes no sense to Moxley but something about Pennell's calmness calms him in turn. He wants the man to like him, so he murmurs his answers to Pennell's questions in a reverential tone. Pennell points to the bundle of letters.
‘A lot of people thinking of you, praying for you, William.’
‘A lot looking forward to hearing that I'm dead, too.’
‘You must not think of them. Their thoughts are impure. It's the godly people you must think of.’
‘Yes, Colonel. Read the bit about being forgiven again.’
Linda Fletcher comes into Moxley's cell and stands awkwardly as he lifts himself from the bunk and pulls out the chair for her. She sits, takes off her gloves and touches her hat nervously.
‘How are you, Bill?’
‘Not too bad, Lin. Pretty frightened, but it'll all be over soon. I'm worried about Dougie.’
‘That's one of the things I wanted to tell you. The Salvos have found a nice family for him.’
‘You can't keep him yourself? He likes you.’
She shakes her head. And there is a long silence.
‘How're the headaches? Do they give you Aspros?’
‘Powders,’ Moxley says. ‘The head's real bad sometimes but the final cure's coming.’
‘Don't joke, Bill. It's a terrible thing what they're doing.’
‘The colonel says it's not so bad. I'm forgiven and I'll go to a better place. D'you believe that, Lin?’
‘I don't know.’
‘Me, too. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. Trouble is, if I don't believe it it won't happen. There's a sort of catch to it all. Anyway, I am truly sorry for what I did. Truly sorry. The colonel says that'll work in my favour.’
‘Who with?’
‘God, he says.’
Moxley rolls a cigarette, lights it and smokes it down to a tiny stub, which he drops into the lavatory bowl. It hisses.
She stands. ‘I have to go. Goodbye, Bill.’
She is sobbing and he holds her in an awkward embrace.
HANGED BY THE NECK
Moxley is taken to the condemned cell at 6 pm on the evening before his execution. The area has been prepared beforehand. There are two cells measuring 7 feet by 12 and new grill doors have been installed in each. A few feet from the cells a section measuring 6 feet by 8 has been cut in the floor and a trapdoor constructed. This has a lever attached to it and a hidden, intricate hinged mechanism that causes it to spring open when the lever is pulled. Sixteen feet above the trapdoor a heavy oak beam has been installed. A chain hangs from the beam. Shortly before the appointed time, a rope with a noose will be attached to the chain.
A partition conceals the trapdoor from the cells, but only partly. There is an opening through which the prisoner will pass. The area is brightly lit and, from where he sits in his cell, the prisoner can see part of the trapdoor. The area under the trapdoor is called the well, into which the condemned man will drop when the trapdoor opens.
PLAN OF GALLOWS AND EXECUTION AREA,
LONG BAY GAOL, 1905, AND CROSS-SECTION OF
EXECUTION AREA, LONG BAY GAOL, 1905
In the early hours of the morning of 18 August, Moxley wakes from a dream. In the dream he was chopping wood; the axe slipped from his hand and gashed his leg, sending a spray of blood over his body. He wakes bathed in sweat and trembling. It is the third time he's woken since going to bed at 9 pm. It is difficult to sleep in the brightly lit room. The guard sitting outside has a cold and his snuffling and coughing add to the problem. Moxley pulls the blankets over his head in an effort to shut out the light and the noise.
He spoke and prayed with Colonel Pennell of the Salvation Army the night before and thought he'd reached a calm place.
‘You're lucky to have the colonel,’ a guard told him. ‘There's not a prisoner in the place doesn't speak well of him.’
Moxley nodded his agreement. He'd thought the Salvos were holier-than-thou do-gooders when he'd seen them asking for money in the pubs and singing in the streets. His opinion is different now. The colonel is on his side and there's been few enough people like that in his life, he thinks. Lying on his back, he closes his eyes and tries to pray; the words come but not the feeling that accompanies them when the colonel is with him. The colonel said he'd be back at 6 am to help him through the morning.
He clears his throat. ‘What's the time?’
The startled guard comes to the barred door. ‘Just gone five. Is there something you want?’
&
nbsp; Moxley doesn't answer. Something I want, he thinks. Too many bloody things. Mustn't swear. Mustn't think of myself Must think of Jesus. He mutters the words of the psalm as best he can remember them. He could look them up in the Bible but he feels he doesn't have the strength to get out of bed, pick up the book and turn the pages. Give me strength, he thinks. That's better. Give me strength.
Thirty-four people are gathered outside the gaol. They are about equally divided between people who've come to hear the news that the ‘Mad Dog’ is dead and protesters against capital punishment, some of whom are praying earnestly as the minutes tick by.
One of the pro-execution brigade hands round a crudely printed broadsheet and recites some doggerel from Patrick ‘Paddy the Poet’ Collins with relish:
My name is William Moxley
And I'm about to die
A most disgraceful death indeed
Upon the gallows high;
I killed two people in cold blood,
And I deserve my fate,
I'm sorry now for what I did,
But sorrow came too late.
Colonel Pennell arrives shortly after 6 am and is admitted to the cell.
‘Let us pray, William,’ he says.
The two men kneel and pray, Pennell in his tightly buttoned uniform and Moxley in a blue flannel shirt and dark trousers. They talk quietly and Pennell reads passages from the Bible. At 7 am the guard brings Moxley's last meal: toast, a boiled egg, plum jam and a mug of tea. Moxley eats, sips the tea and nods in answer to Pennell's questions about his faith in Jesus. The food finished, Moxley rubs flakes of tobacco in his palms, detaches the paper from his lower lip and rolls the strands into a cigarette. He puts the cigarette on his bunk and repeats the procedure.
‘Time for a couple I reckon,’ he says. His hands shake as he lights one.
At 8 am the sheriff, accompanied by two of his officers, enters the cell.
‘It's time, Moxley,’ the sheriff says.
‘You will be brave, William,’ Pennell says.
Moxley nods. ‘I'll try, Colonel.’
Pennell shakes his hand and leaves the cell. Moxley takes a piece of cardboard and scribbles on it. He writes: You can fool the world son sometimes. But you are the fool if you try to fool the world all the time. He tucks the cardboard inside his copy of Broken Earthenware.
‘Please give this to my pal, Patrick Monahan,’ Moxley says to the sheriff. He gathers up a few papers and asks that they be given to Colonel Pennell. The sheriff reads from a card.
‘By the authority of the Executive Council of the State of New South Wales, you are here to be executed for the crime of murder. Do you have anything to say?’
Moxley shakes his head. At a nod from the sheriff, Moxley walks the few steps stiffly but without assistance. Fifteen men are present: Moxley, the executioner, the sheriff, five men from his department and seven witnesses. A railing has been removed to make more space, but the onlookers are only a few feet away from where Moxley will stand. The sheriff, his assistant and Moxley reach the trapdoor. The officers step back. The executioner is standing beside the trapdoor. He is tall, wearing a blue overall, a hat and aviator or motorcyclist goggles. He moves swiftly. He adjusts the noose around Moxley's neck, placing the heavy knot behind his right ear, takes a black hood from his pocket and drops it over Moxley's head. He moves clear and pulls a lever. There is no sound as the trapdoor opens. The rope goes taut and quivers several times.
Dr Holloway enters the space below the trapdoor. He wears a white coat and has a stethoscope around his neck. He approaches the hanging body and puts the stethoscope to the chest. He listens, nods and steps away. He is careful to avoid the stream of urine running across the cement floor.
POSTSCRIPT
Why did William Moxley kill Frank Wilkinson and rape and kill Dorothy Denzel? With particles of lead in his head, being subject to, if not fits, then dizzy spells and disturbances of his normal conduct, and with syphilis in his system, Moxley clearly was not a mentally stable person. His criminal propensity formed a long-established pattern and he had once been convicted of ‘actual menaces’ accompanying a robbery and possession of a firearm. But the sexual nature and extreme physical violence of the murders represents a different pattern of behaviour.
Psychiatrists have diagnosed various forms of dissociative fugue states in which the subjects are unconscious of their actions for a period of time and have no recollection of them thereafter. Stress is usually the triggering factor. Moxley told a doctor that anger caused him to ‘lose all control’. Could it be that Moxley believed Dorothy deliberately threw or let fall her beret from the car and that this, plus anger at Frank Wilkinson's solid resistance, triggered a version of this dissociative state?
This would amount to a validation of Moxley's claim to have blanked out and to not recollect his actions for a certain period. The difficulty with this analysis is that dissociative fugue states usually involve behaviour such as sudden unaccountable journeys or the temporary assumption of other identities in a different location. They are not typically accompanied by violent actions out of character with the subject.
A dissociative fugue state remains a possible explanation, but in 1932 such a condition was little understood, particularly in Australia where psychiatry was undeveloped. Even if evidence along those lines had been presented, it is likely that scepticism about psychiatry among the public would have prevented the jury from feeling the one thing that could have helped Moxley – a reasonable doubt.
This close-focus account of an event at a time that is still, if only just, within living memory points up how much life in Australia has changed over the period between 1932 and the present. Parts of Sydney now closely settled, such as Liverpool and Bankstown, were still semi-rural where the horse and cart was a commonplace. Motor vehicles were much less common and people tended to notice their details while travelling, most usually, by train and tram.
A butcher and a baker called at Mrs Harding's house at Bankstown; Moxley delivered bags of wood to people who needed it for heating and cooking. A shilling would buy a gallon of petrol while phenacetin, a substance now deemed to be carcinogenic, was cheap and widely available.
The legal system functioned differently. Moxley faced an all-male jury in court proceedings whose duration and cost were closely monitored. Funds available for the collection and presentation of evidence were limited; Dr Bray's recommendation of an examination of Moxley's spinal fluid was evidently a step too far for the authorities.
In other ways, things remain recognisably the same. Moxley was part of an underworld milieu, a world of criminals, informers and police, a world in which, then as now, there were many casualties.
APPENDIX
THE REMAINS OF WILLIAM MOXLEY
Permission was given for Moxley to be buried outside the gaol but reports on his final resting place are conflicting. One newspaper stated that Moxley was buried at the Matraville cemetery, another at Botany; these are alternative names for the same place. The cemetery has complete records for the period and Moxley's name does not appear on its register.
The Daily Telegraph reported on 12 August that Moxley had written to Linda Fletcher asking her to tell the paper that, in planning to will his body to the university, he intended its examination to prove his claim to have been suffering from ‘delusions’. The paper quoted a spokesman for the Department of Anatomy: ‘If the university authorities agree to accept the offer, the brain would be our interest.’
But no will for Moxley was lodged with the Supreme Court. A memo from the superintendent of Long Bay Gaol states that Moxley handed over certain items, including a request concerning the disposal of his body, to Colonel William Pennell of the Salvation Army. It is possible that Moxley's wish was for his body to be given to the university, but Salvation Army archives shed no light on the matter and the university has no record of such a bequest.
The whereabouts of the remains of William Moxley are unknown.
REFERENCES
OFFICIAL RECORDS
Department of Justice and Attorney-General, Registry of Births, Death and Marriages, State of Queensland.
National Archives of Australia, Australian Customs Service, State Administration, South Australia: D596, Correspondence files, annual single number series, 1871–1962; 1932/2152, William FLETCHER, alias William MOXLEY.
National Archives of Australia, Australian Imperial Force, Base Records Office: B2455, First Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1914–1920; William MOXLEY.
STATE RECORDS NSW
NRS 2713, Court Reporting Transcript [6/1621]
NRS 880, Papers and Depositions, R v Moxley [9/7342]
NRS 5994, Judge's notebook, Halse Rogers [3/2354 part]
Court of Criminal Appeal, Register of Appeals, 1932 [4/7954 p. 33]
STATE PENITENTIARY, LONG BAY
NRS 2464, Entrance book [3/8075]
Photograph Description sheet, No. 26706 [17/1504], 1932
Previous gaol photographs
NRS 2467, Photograph Description books:
• No. 18072 [3/6106], 1921
• No. 19221 [3/6108], 1923
• No. 21244 [3/6115], 1925
NRS 4335 (Plan 1905), Erection of gallows. Plans, sections, elevation and details.
JUSTICE & POLICE MUSEUM, SYDNEY
Documents and items relating to murders committed by William Cyril Moxley, 1932
NEWSPAPERS
Canberra Times
Daily Mirror
Richmond & Windsor Gazette
Smith's Weekly
Sydney Daily Telegraph
Sydney Morning Herald
War Cry (Salvation Army)
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Hugh Anderson, ‘Research essay: “Paddy” the Sydney street poet,’ in Labour History, May 2002.