WEBVTT - A very tangled birthright: Part 1 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:07.200 I mean, what fashionable woman about to come into a 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:12.080 small fortune would first to cut her hair very short 0:00:12.119 --> 0:00:15.440 and wouldn't be fashionable in Tasmania at the time, I'm 0:00:15.480 --> 0:00:19.239 quite sure or carry boomerang. 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:22.040 I'm Jen Kelly from The Herald Son and this is 0:00:22.079 --> 0:00:25.000 in Black and White, a podcast about some of Australia's 0:00:25.000 --> 0:00:28.800 forgotten characters. Today we're heading back to the eighteen hundreds 0:00:28.840 --> 0:00:32.440 to the story of a girl called Leticia Leek, who 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:36.320 has a seven year old child. Inherited the vast Glencoe 0:00:36.440 --> 0:00:40.760 Station in South Australia. She grew up running wild with 0:00:40.840 --> 0:00:44.880 the local Aboriginal children, but then as an adult, became 0:00:45.000 --> 0:00:49.760 caught up in a saga of alleged murder, infidelity, corruption 0:00:50.080 --> 0:00:56.360 and contested wills. Eventually, Letitia inherited an enormous family fortune, 0:00:56.720 --> 0:00:59.400 and during World War One she and her husband turned 0:00:59.440 --> 0:01:03.120 their grand and English a state into a hospital that 0:01:03.240 --> 0:01:08.959 treated thousands upon thousands of Australian soldiers. Letitia's story has 0:01:09.000 --> 0:01:13.319 been told in a book called The Accidental Heiress Journey 0:01:13.400 --> 0:01:17.119 of a Glencoe Squatter's Daughter. It's by John Berger and 0:01:17.200 --> 0:01:20.880 Professor Carol Gerbich, who are volunteers with the National Trust 0:01:20.880 --> 0:01:24.240 of South Australia. Carol joins us now to share part 0:01:24.400 --> 0:01:27.600 one of the incredible story. Make sure you return on 0:01:27.680 --> 0:01:35.440 Thursday for part two. Welcome to the podcast, Carol. 0:01:36.360 --> 0:01:38.679 Thank you. It's lovely to be here now. 0:01:38.840 --> 0:01:42.360 The story that you've uncovered really does have a little 0:01:42.400 --> 0:01:48.120 bit of everything. It's got last alleged murder, infidelity, corruption, 0:01:48.520 --> 0:01:52.800 a family fortune, a vicious court case. I mean, you 0:01:52.880 --> 0:01:55.480 must have thought that you'd struck gold when you began 0:01:55.600 --> 0:01:56.880 researching this story. 0:01:58.440 --> 0:02:01.960 Absolutely did. I had no idea what was going to 0:02:01.960 --> 0:02:05.040 come out, because I started just writing a little leaflet 0:02:05.120 --> 0:02:10.519 for the National Trust property, which was just the Glencoe Woolshead, 0:02:10.560 --> 0:02:14.160 which a beautiful woolshead with a couple of paddocks over 0:02:14.240 --> 0:02:17.000 from where we just bought a property where we wanted 0:02:17.240 --> 0:02:20.880 to build this large garden. And I thought, oh, you know, 0:02:20.919 --> 0:02:24.959 a couple of page pamphlet and then I'll just pull 0:02:25.000 --> 0:02:28.080 away from this. And this little girl just sort of 0:02:28.120 --> 0:02:31.840 popped into the story and disappeared, and then she came 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:35.560 back as an adult and then disappeared again, and I thought, 0:02:35.919 --> 0:02:39.520 good heavens. When I finally finished, I had a book 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:42.480 of about one hundred and forty pages rather than a 0:02:42.480 --> 0:02:46.880 two page leaflet, and it seemed to have become her story, 0:02:47.200 --> 0:02:48.400 so she took over. 0:02:50.440 --> 0:02:54.079 Now, tell us where does Letitia's story begin? In your mind? 0:02:55.880 --> 0:03:01.400 I think his story probably begins, have to say with 0:03:01.560 --> 0:03:05.880 her birth, because that in itself was quite complicated enough, 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:09.560 and then things just seemed to go from there. 0:03:10.040 --> 0:03:12.400 Yes, well, where and when was she born? 0:03:14.000 --> 0:03:17.520 Well, she was actually born in Nelson, just over the 0:03:17.760 --> 0:03:23.080 Victorian border from South Australia in eighteen fifty nine, and 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:27.760 she was born to two very eccentric parents. Her father 0:03:27.880 --> 0:03:31.160 was Edward Leek and he was abround about forty five 0:03:31.240 --> 0:03:33.320 when she was born, and he was one of two 0:03:33.400 --> 0:03:37.960 brothers that had come from Tasmania, South Australia in order 0:03:38.040 --> 0:03:41.800 to basically set up a property, a sheep property, and 0:03:41.840 --> 0:03:44.480 they set up, over a number of years a huge 0:03:44.520 --> 0:03:48.080 property which was about three hundred and fifty square miles 0:03:48.560 --> 0:03:52.560 or two hundred thousand acres of for sheep and cattle 0:03:52.640 --> 0:03:56.160 and horses and so on. And around about the time 0:03:56.240 --> 0:03:59.960 of the teacher's birth, the two brothers were not speaking. 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:04.880 King and Edward Leek, who was Letitia's father, it was 0:04:05.120 --> 0:04:08.040 the reason they weren't speaking was because he just got married, 0:04:08.640 --> 0:04:11.560 and he just got married to someone who the family 0:04:11.640 --> 0:04:15.840 disapproved of totally, because not only was she Irish and 0:04:16.000 --> 0:04:19.960 Roman Catholic, but she had also married to somebody else 0:04:20.200 --> 0:04:24.480 and pregnant to that other person, and somehow her husband 0:04:24.560 --> 0:04:29.799 had just vanished and everyone suspected Edward Leek was probably 0:04:29.839 --> 0:04:32.560 the problem. So that was going to be a bit 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:35.960 of an issue. So the brothers at this point were 0:04:36.000 --> 0:04:38.960 not speaking, and one of them was living down at Nelson, 0:04:39.000 --> 0:04:42.480 the other was on the estate, and Edward was being 0:04:42.520 --> 0:04:45.159 paid about one thousand pounds a year basically to keep 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:48.960 away off the property because his brother had just become 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:51.680 a member of parliament. So that was a sort of 0:04:51.760 --> 0:04:57.600 tricky situation. But the mother, this Irish Catholic girl called Amanda, 0:04:57.760 --> 0:05:02.159 was only eighteen and she was rather happy to marry 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:05.200 a very wealthy man. But then I think she discovered 0:05:05.240 --> 0:05:08.320 he was not all that nice a person and was 0:05:08.520 --> 0:05:12.440 very overweight, and she really preferred younger man, so she 0:05:12.600 --> 0:05:16.000 started having quite a lot of affairs. So it became 0:05:16.160 --> 0:05:19.839 very interesting to know whether or not this child was 0:05:19.880 --> 0:05:23.920 the child of Edward Lee, the man with all the money, 0:05:24.400 --> 0:05:26.920 or whether or not he was perhaps the child of 0:05:27.760 --> 0:05:30.720 some of the other lovers that she'd been having. So 0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:33.520 it was a complicated verse. Shall we say. 0:05:33.760 --> 0:05:36.320 The scandals come very thick and fast in his story, 0:05:36.360 --> 0:05:38.480 don't they. It takes takes on the feel of a 0:05:38.560 --> 0:05:39.920 soap opera very early on. 0:05:41.080 --> 0:05:46.800 It does. Well. Things were a little calm for about 0:05:46.839 --> 0:05:50.400 a year, shall we say? And then the brother died, 0:05:50.440 --> 0:05:52.880 the one who was still living on property, and left 0:05:53.080 --> 0:05:56.600 the whole of the Glencoe estate to Edward. So Edward 0:05:56.680 --> 0:05:59.440 it now moves back on to the Glencoe Estate property 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:03.960 with his wife and his daughter Letitia, where he creates 0:06:03.960 --> 0:06:07.239 this beautiful wall shed which is architect designed, and still 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:14.280 lives there under the National Trust. And then he dies 0:06:14.720 --> 0:06:17.880 as well. Now she's during that time, from about one 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:22.040 till about seven until her father dies, Letitia is pretty 0:06:22.080 --> 0:06:26.480 much living wild on the estate. The estate employs one 0:06:26.560 --> 0:06:31.120 hundred and twenty Bo Indick Aboriginal families, actually employs them 0:06:31.160 --> 0:06:35.240 and pays them. They're not slaves, And she spends most 0:06:35.240 --> 0:06:38.000 of her time just playing with the bo Anddick children. 0:06:38.480 --> 0:06:41.479 I understand she learned how to speak the language she 0:06:41.600 --> 0:06:44.599 came and went with them. She learned how to fish 0:06:44.640 --> 0:06:48.120 and catch things in the lakes, and I think she 0:06:48.200 --> 0:06:50.880 had a really lovely childhood, the sort of childhood you 0:06:50.960 --> 0:06:55.400 dream about. And then suddenly her father dies of a 0:06:55.440 --> 0:07:01.240 heart condition and the family from Tasmania immediately hot footed 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:03.599 onto the next fairy and come up because this is 0:07:03.600 --> 0:07:07.080 a very large estate portfolio. 0:07:07.160 --> 0:07:09.880 But do we know any more about these early years 0:07:09.920 --> 0:07:13.200 of Letitia's life, And do we know any more about 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:16.080 her relationship with her father and how close she was 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:19.559 with him and whether she was devastated by his death 0:07:19.560 --> 0:07:23.679 for example, No, we don't. 0:07:24.080 --> 0:07:28.160 It's tiny little snippets of information that keep popping in 0:07:28.200 --> 0:07:30.520 her relationship with her father, I think would have been 0:07:30.560 --> 0:07:33.480 a good one, because a number of people reported to 0:07:33.560 --> 0:07:36.280 him they didn't think it was his daughter, and his 0:07:36.320 --> 0:07:40.080 response always was was his hair. I like her, I'm 0:07:40.120 --> 0:07:42.640 going to look after her, and that was his line 0:07:42.760 --> 0:07:46.840 on that argument. Now, there was a second child born 0:07:47.080 --> 0:07:51.080 two years after Letitia, and it was very clear that 0:07:51.160 --> 0:07:55.360 it was not Edward's a son. It was a little boy, 0:07:56.160 --> 0:08:02.120 and unfortunately he he was looked after, but he was 0:08:02.120 --> 0:08:04.880 not accepted as being part of the family because it 0:08:04.920 --> 0:08:07.520 was very well known that Amanda was having a fairly 0:08:07.520 --> 0:08:10.520 long term affair with the manager of the estate at 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:14.320 that time. So she did have a brother, but I 0:08:14.360 --> 0:08:18.080 mean he got wished away very quickly when she turned seven, 0:08:18.480 --> 0:08:22.080 So their relationship seems to have been a little bit distant, 0:08:22.480 --> 0:08:24.720 and her relationship does seem to have been much more 0:08:24.760 --> 0:08:29.360 with children closer to her own age. Her mother insisted 0:08:29.400 --> 0:08:32.959 on sleeping in the children's room, so that at least 0:08:33.000 --> 0:08:35.680 she shared a room with her mother. But the reason 0:08:35.720 --> 0:08:38.720 her mother did that was because just to avoid to 0:08:38.720 --> 0:08:42.280 prevent rather Edward from coming in and having sex with her. 0:08:42.480 --> 0:08:43.680 Oh my goodness joy. 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:48.480 Yeah, Aly, we didn't know about that. But the relationship 0:08:48.520 --> 0:08:52.040 with the parents I would say overall was distant because 0:08:52.200 --> 0:08:54.440 as she grew up she never seemed to refer to 0:08:54.480 --> 0:08:56.760 them or to miss them. 0:08:57.160 --> 0:09:00.520 And I wonder how unusual it was during this period 0:09:00.679 --> 0:09:04.640 in Australian history for kids like Letitia to have these 0:09:04.880 --> 0:09:08.080 really close relationships with Aboriginal kids in this way. 0:09:09.440 --> 0:09:13.640 Almost never, I would say, I think the family, the 0:09:13.720 --> 0:09:18.600 Leak family themselves were a very interesting family because the grandfather, 0:09:18.720 --> 0:09:21.680 the people who were done in Tasmania were very much 0:09:21.800 --> 0:09:26.959 anti slavery, anti convicts, and very concerned about the Aboriginal situation. 0:09:27.720 --> 0:09:30.440 So I think the relationships that started out in South 0:09:30.440 --> 0:09:35.400 Australia would have been a much more respectful, appreciative relationship. 0:09:35.440 --> 0:09:38.200 I remember once when all the men went to the 0:09:38.240 --> 0:09:43.439 gold Rush and they were looking for sharers to come 0:09:43.480 --> 0:09:46.720 and share their they actually looked toward the Aboriginal women 0:09:46.800 --> 0:09:50.160 and decided they were the best at sharing. And then 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:53.280 the Aboriginal men were next, and then the German woman 0:09:53.320 --> 0:09:57.000 from the Bossa came next in the line. So they 0:09:57.000 --> 0:10:00.240 were actually very open to what was going to work 0:10:00.280 --> 0:10:02.880 and what was respectful to the people who are involved. 0:10:02.920 --> 0:10:05.679 So why were the Aboriginal women the best at sharing? 0:10:05.720 --> 0:10:06.520 That's fascinating. 0:10:07.040 --> 0:10:09.800 Yes, it fascinated me when I read it, because it 0:10:09.840 --> 0:10:11.600 was in a letter that he wrote to his father 0:10:11.640 --> 0:10:15.600 in Tasmania saying, I am considering taking on the Aboriginal 0:10:15.640 --> 0:10:19.760 women as sharers because they are very gentle and very careful, 0:10:20.000 --> 0:10:23.360 and especially good with the rams, which of course you 0:10:23.360 --> 0:10:25.640 don't want to cut off an important part of the. 0:10:25.640 --> 0:10:32.719 Ramb Amazing Okay, So what has happened now after the 0:10:32.800 --> 0:10:33.720 father has died. 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:37.760 Yes, well we've got, as I said, one of the uncles, 0:10:37.800 --> 0:10:40.480 the six males in the family, one of them came 0:10:40.520 --> 0:10:45.120 hot footing it up from Taz and he immediately passled 0:10:45.240 --> 0:10:49.280 Letitia off to boarding school in Melbourne. I should her 0:10:49.320 --> 0:10:53.040 mother and the other little boy off the estate with 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:55.559 a very large genuity, and said goodbye. I don't want 0:10:55.559 --> 0:11:00.160 to see you again, and didn't. And so she became, 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:03.720 in the sense of a property of the Tasmanian family, 0:11:03.760 --> 0:11:06.920 but particularly of this uncle, who had no children of 0:11:06.960 --> 0:11:09.440 his own, and who eventually adopted her. 0:11:10.320 --> 0:11:14.000 I'm just imagining Letitia in Melbourne at boarding. So she 0:11:14.080 --> 0:11:17.360 was at boarding school in Melbourne, and this was presumably 0:11:17.440 --> 0:11:20.120 her first schooling experience whatsoever. 0:11:21.240 --> 0:11:25.439 Well, she'd actually had a governess just prior who actually 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:29.240 became one of Mary mckillops nuns. So she was a 0:11:29.280 --> 0:11:34.120 proper good Roman Catholic person, suitable for the mother. And 0:11:35.840 --> 0:11:38.240 apart from that, and I think that had been very recent. 0:11:38.360 --> 0:11:42.400 You're quite right, it would have been a very isolated experience. 0:11:43.280 --> 0:11:45.960 But apparently I picked up a letter that she wrote 0:11:46.000 --> 0:11:48.880 to her uncle. You know, I'm learning French, I'm learning 0:11:48.880 --> 0:11:52.439 how to dance, and I am quite enjoying school. It 0:11:52.440 --> 0:11:55.600 would be lovely if somebody came and visited me. So 0:11:55.640 --> 0:11:58.520 you can see she was actually probably feeling quite lonely too. 0:12:00.000 --> 0:12:01.840 I'll be back in just a moment to find out 0:12:01.840 --> 0:12:10.520 what happened next and what happened from there. 0:12:11.960 --> 0:12:14.760 Well. From then, as she became a bit older, she 0:12:14.840 --> 0:12:18.280 had a governess, and the governess became a lady companion, 0:12:18.600 --> 0:12:21.880 and that lady companion eventually became the wife of her 0:12:22.040 --> 0:12:25.000 uncle as well. But the three of them did a 0:12:25.040 --> 0:12:28.800 lot of traveling, and what they were doing were basically 0:12:28.800 --> 0:12:31.400 filling in time until tis she should be twenty one, 0:12:32.040 --> 0:12:36.320 in which time the estates then would become available and 0:12:36.400 --> 0:12:38.760 she could cash in on her inheritance. 0:12:39.000 --> 0:12:42.280 Ah. 0:12:42.320 --> 0:12:45.640 And so what I found when she was twenty one 0:12:45.760 --> 0:12:50.439 then had little snippets of information. We were always looking 0:12:50.480 --> 0:12:54.640 for the sort of data which is like letters home 0:12:54.840 --> 0:12:58.240 or things you can actually hear the voice of the people. 0:12:59.320 --> 0:13:02.439 But we have the photo which I have of her, 0:13:02.880 --> 0:13:06.640 and here she is twenty one. It's taken at Lanceston 0:13:06.800 --> 0:13:10.720 in the studio, and it's the most extraordinary photo. They've 0:13:10.720 --> 0:13:14.240 just come back from England and Europe. And she has 0:13:14.400 --> 0:13:18.600 extremely short hair cut like a boy's, like a young boy's, 0:13:18.960 --> 0:13:21.840 you know, nothing over the ears, nothing over the neck, 0:13:22.360 --> 0:13:25.600 and quite high on the forehead. And I hunted and 0:13:25.679 --> 0:13:28.199 hunted to see if I could find out why would 0:13:28.240 --> 0:13:31.320 she have done this? You know, was it illness? Was 0:13:31.400 --> 0:13:34.240 something wrong? Did she have ringworm or something like that? 0:13:34.720 --> 0:13:38.359 And there's no evidence of that, but there was evidence 0:13:38.440 --> 0:13:41.560 that in Europe at the time, when they'd just been traveling, 0:13:42.160 --> 0:13:46.800 that women who were particularly strong in terms of free 0:13:46.880 --> 0:13:52.440 thinking or suffragettes had actually cut their hair short. It 0:13:52.480 --> 0:13:55.280 was actually a sort of signal to the population, you know, 0:13:55.360 --> 0:13:58.200 this is me and this is who I am. And 0:13:58.240 --> 0:14:01.160 the other thing she was doing was lost her chest 0:14:01.280 --> 0:14:04.920 and up to one shoulder was a very large ceremonial 0:14:05.200 --> 0:14:08.640 aboriginal I mean boomerang. Fashionable woman about to come into 0:14:08.720 --> 0:14:13.040 a small fortune, would you know, firstly cut her hair 0:14:13.160 --> 0:14:16.600 very short and wouldn't be fashionable in Tasmania at the time. 0:14:16.880 --> 0:14:21.280 I'm quite sure or her carry a boomerang and what 0:14:21.400 --> 0:14:25.680 she's signaling. Most of the originies have gone from Tasmania 0:14:25.800 --> 0:14:29.000 even before she was born. But she's had a lot 0:14:29.040 --> 0:14:32.600 to do with the bow and deck people in South Australia, 0:14:33.080 --> 0:14:36.400 so we can only assume that that's what was going on, 0:14:36.480 --> 0:14:40.080 that she was actually making a fairly strong political statement. 0:14:40.800 --> 0:14:43.120 Interesting and that's the photo that you've got on the 0:14:43.120 --> 0:14:43.880 cover of your book. 0:14:43.880 --> 0:14:47.040 Of course, yes, I was so fascinated. But I mean 0:14:47.040 --> 0:14:50.400 her closes are terribly fashionable, and lots of lovely satin 0:14:50.560 --> 0:14:53.240 and buttons and things like that and up to the 0:14:53.240 --> 0:14:56.720 neck and so forth. But her hair and a boomerang, 0:14:56.840 --> 0:15:00.480 I can imagine people would just go, who is this warman? 0:15:01.560 --> 0:15:05.320 That's strange. Well, anyway, they did decide to sell the 0:15:05.320 --> 0:15:10.320 Glencoe estate to the Redock brothers, and the amount, of 0:15:10.360 --> 0:15:13.920 course was around about twenty five million dollars in our term, 0:15:14.080 --> 0:15:18.080 so she was quite a substantial heiress. And the next 0:15:18.120 --> 0:15:21.920 ten years they probably spent their time mostly traveling in Europe, 0:15:22.320 --> 0:15:27.040 and also she spent time fighting off hopeful males who 0:15:27.040 --> 0:15:28.800 wanted to marry her, and she said, no, that I'm 0:15:28.800 --> 0:15:31.680 not going to marry them. They're just after my money, 0:15:31.840 --> 0:15:34.760 and that's the end of that. But then, when she 0:15:34.960 --> 0:15:38.960 was thirty and they've lived like this pretty comfortably, her 0:15:39.080 --> 0:15:43.960 uncle dies and leaves most of his Tasmanian fortune to her, 0:15:44.720 --> 0:15:47.800 to the tune of about fifteen million dollars. So now 0:15:47.800 --> 0:15:52.000 she's a forty million dollar aires. And this was written 0:15:52.080 --> 0:15:55.200 up in pretty much all the newspapers along the eastern 0:15:55.280 --> 0:15:59.080 coast of Australia, and it was taken up by a 0:15:59.160 --> 0:16:02.760 young man who was also thirty, a young lawyer by 0:16:02.800 --> 0:16:06.880 the name of Charles Billiard, and his father was the 0:16:07.000 --> 0:16:10.280 Solicitor General of New South Wales. And he'd just been 0:16:10.320 --> 0:16:15.040 involved in a very interesting financial project which he had 0:16:15.040 --> 0:16:16.800 hoped to make a lot of money on, and that 0:16:16.960 --> 0:16:20.960 was building a bridge over Sydney Harbor. So he'd set 0:16:21.040 --> 0:16:25.280 up this company, the North Sydney Investment and Tramways Company, 0:16:25.680 --> 0:16:27.720 to try and get enough money. And he was looking 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:31.560 for about eighty five million dollars to build a suspension 0:16:31.560 --> 0:16:33.720 bridge over Sydney Harbor. And he had bought lots of 0:16:33.800 --> 0:16:36.400 land on the North Shore and got together a lot 0:16:36.400 --> 0:16:40.560 of investors and pretty much covered the money that was required. 0:16:40.960 --> 0:16:44.120 When the bottom fell out of the economy in eighteen 0:16:44.240 --> 0:16:47.760 ninety and a lot of the investors withdrew and he 0:16:47.840 --> 0:16:51.640 suddenly found he was bankrupt. So he was very much 0:16:51.680 --> 0:16:56.359 in need of an heiress if he could find one. 0:16:56.720 --> 0:17:00.000 So he hotfooted it down to Tasmania on the arreas 0:17:00.000 --> 0:17:03.040 as fast as he could go, and actually managed to 0:17:03.280 --> 0:17:07.080 persuade Letitia that he was her night in Shining Armor 0:17:07.480 --> 0:17:12.520 and they got married, and the wedding again the newspaper. Unfortunately, 0:17:12.600 --> 0:17:15.960 newspapers never took any photos, so I have no photos 0:17:16.000 --> 0:17:19.080 of it, but lots and lots of description of all 0:17:19.080 --> 0:17:22.840 sorts of beautiful gowns and satin and silk and ostrich 0:17:22.880 --> 0:17:27.600 feathers and jewelry, and a wedding cake about two meters high, 0:17:27.640 --> 0:17:30.960 and lovely red carpets from the gate all the way 0:17:31.000 --> 0:17:33.800 to the house, and a special train put on a 0:17:33.920 --> 0:17:37.040 long system down to Ross for the visitors from New 0:17:37.080 --> 0:17:42.119 South Wales, and enough entertainment to go on for a 0:17:42.240 --> 0:17:46.080 week so the local people about three hundred people attended, 0:17:46.440 --> 0:17:49.159 could all just stay and have a lovely time for 0:17:49.200 --> 0:17:51.159 the rest of the week while they went off with 0:17:51.200 --> 0:17:54.439 their honeymoon in New South Wales where they had a 0:17:54.440 --> 0:17:57.880 second wedding, this time with eight hundred people, and they 0:17:57.880 --> 0:18:01.840 went through the whole process again. So it was definitely 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:03.560 the wedding of the century. 0:18:03.840 --> 0:18:10.640 Absolute goodness, it sounds so extravagant, Carol. One thing I'm 0:18:10.680 --> 0:18:14.000 interested to know, given what we know about Letitia's philanthropy 0:18:14.160 --> 0:18:17.000 later on, what has she been doing with all her 0:18:17.119 --> 0:18:20.800 great fortune up until now, apart from traveling and having 0:18:21.040 --> 0:18:24.600 extravagant weddings. What has she been doing? Has she been 0:18:24.760 --> 0:18:28.560 spending some of her great fortune on charity causes for example? 0:18:29.560 --> 0:18:35.440 Absolutely not. No, there's no indication of anything like that whatsoever. 0:18:36.119 --> 0:18:39.520 In fact, it wasn't quite that much later in life, 0:18:39.560 --> 0:18:43.920 and I think different experiences that perhaps changed to views. 0:18:44.520 --> 0:18:49.280 Things to be interesting. So what about is she involved 0:18:49.320 --> 0:18:51.639 in political causes? I mean, we know she had some 0:18:51.680 --> 0:18:53.280 pretty strident views. 0:18:53.960 --> 0:18:58.400 No, she was interested in education. She was interested in 0:18:58.440 --> 0:19:03.320 the possibility, I think of setting up at universities in Tasmania. 0:19:03.680 --> 0:19:06.560 She was interested in art galleries and she often donated 0:19:07.040 --> 0:19:09.800 family portraits or pieces of art that they might have 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:14.919 collected for them, particularly one in Mount Gambia. And but 0:19:15.000 --> 0:19:19.040 apart from that, there's no real evidence. But in fact, 0:19:19.240 --> 0:19:22.639 finding evidence on Letitia right up until quite late in 0:19:22.680 --> 0:19:25.000 her life has been it's been you know, it took 0:19:25.040 --> 0:19:27.920 me a couple of years of digging to actually find it. 0:19:28.440 --> 0:19:31.840 And I'm sure there's a lot more there, but unfortunately 0:19:32.320 --> 0:19:35.359 the few remaining members of the family are not very 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:38.240 interested in supplying it, so we don't have it. 0:19:38.400 --> 0:19:41.760 Ah, that's interesting, Okay, I'll look forward to hearing more 0:19:41.760 --> 0:19:45.040 about that later and what did she and her husband 0:19:45.040 --> 0:19:46.959 get up to after this incredible wedding. 0:19:47.680 --> 0:19:51.840 Well after this incredible wedding, they returned to Tasmania to 0:19:51.880 --> 0:19:54.280 live in a rather gorgeous house that her uncle had 0:19:54.359 --> 0:19:57.760 left her called Ashby, And I think Charles was a 0:19:57.760 --> 0:19:59.560 bit bored, and so he started having a look at 0:19:59.560 --> 0:20:02.159 her fine answers to see if everything was as it 0:20:02.200 --> 0:20:05.280 should be, and found that, in fact, there was some 0:20:05.359 --> 0:20:09.760 serious anomalies that the trustees of the Glencoe estate and 0:20:09.920 --> 0:20:13.280 the local bank had for over the last twenty years 0:20:13.280 --> 0:20:16.639 been investing a lot of the interest from the estate 0:20:16.760 --> 0:20:20.440 in their own little projects, and they were very reluctant 0:20:20.480 --> 0:20:22.720 to agree that that's what they've been doing, or to 0:20:22.760 --> 0:20:27.160 release the money. So Charles immediately sets in place a 0:20:27.200 --> 0:20:30.399 court case and then starts going around the pub saying, 0:20:30.520 --> 0:20:33.200 you know how terrible these people are. Until they got 0:20:33.240 --> 0:20:37.840 an injunction to keep them silent. But the court case continued, 0:20:38.280 --> 0:20:41.040 and then I think something happened, which it was very sad. 0:20:42.000 --> 0:20:45.680 Very few people left of the Leak family down in Tasmania. 0:20:46.200 --> 0:20:49.840 There was the uncle's wife who'd been the companion and 0:20:49.960 --> 0:20:53.320 governess for Letitia, and there'd been a wife of one 0:20:53.359 --> 0:20:55.679 of the other brothers, so there really only two women, 0:20:55.840 --> 0:20:58.520 and this other woman had been almost like a mother 0:20:58.640 --> 0:21:02.080 to her, as you'd come up gone from boarding school. 0:21:02.359 --> 0:21:06.639 So they decided to side with the bank and the 0:21:06.680 --> 0:21:10.680 trustees and told them, which must have been a real 0:21:10.760 --> 0:21:14.359 slap in the face for Letitia, terribly hurtful because he 0:21:14.400 --> 0:21:17.400 seemed like a very gentle kind person as far as 0:21:17.400 --> 0:21:23.320 we can work out, and anyway, yes, and what they 0:21:23.520 --> 0:21:26.480 decided to do was to tell the other people that 0:21:26.520 --> 0:21:28.960 there had been rumors for many years that in fact 0:21:29.200 --> 0:21:33.639 Lea Titia might not be legitimate, that her father was 0:21:33.680 --> 0:21:38.320 possibly a murderer, and the marriage was probably beggary, and 0:21:38.520 --> 0:21:41.240 therefore La Titia probably wasn't entitled to all the money 0:21:41.240 --> 0:21:44.760 that she already had. So you can imagine, you know, 0:21:44.840 --> 0:21:48.479 how this went on in the papers for weeks and weeks, 0:21:48.520 --> 0:21:49.800 and it was very unpleasant. 0:21:50.480 --> 0:21:53.520 What were the allegations about her father being a murderer? 0:21:53.560 --> 0:21:54.960 Who was he meant to have murdered? 0:21:55.960 --> 0:22:00.440 Well, the situation was that the first husband of an Amanda, 0:22:00.640 --> 0:22:04.359 the woman who became his wife and Letitia's mother, was 0:22:04.400 --> 0:22:07.919 a bullocky, a bullock driver, and he used to drive 0:22:08.240 --> 0:22:10.960 huge loads of things from the ships down to Portland 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:14.040 to the Glencoe estate and then carry wool and so 0:22:14.080 --> 0:22:17.239 forth back to Portland. So he actually was attached to 0:22:17.280 --> 0:22:21.280 the Glencoe estate. And one day he came in to 0:22:21.640 --> 0:22:25.440 the Glencoe estate and Edward went down to meet them. 0:22:25.440 --> 0:22:27.400 He was a very sociable sort of man. He took 0:22:27.440 --> 0:22:30.800 one look at Amanda and said to himself, I suspect 0:22:32.720 --> 0:22:35.560 this is a woman I find very attractive. And she 0:22:35.640 --> 0:22:43.640 was a very sprightly, feisty Irish woman, and I think 0:22:43.680 --> 0:22:46.840 they probably fell in love. It was suggested that they 0:22:46.880 --> 0:22:50.120 flirted outrageously, which I'd love to know what that meant, 0:22:50.119 --> 0:22:55.280 but they didn't go into detail. And unfortunately, the next 0:22:55.560 --> 0:22:58.760 she traveled with him a bit, and obviously Amanda and 0:23:00.080 --> 0:23:01.920 would sort a fair bit of each other. And then 0:23:02.080 --> 0:23:08.240 one trip that the Bulaki made he disappeared under very 0:23:08.280 --> 0:23:12.600 suspicious circumstances. They'd stopped for the night halfway. He had 0:23:12.640 --> 0:23:15.800 gone to collect some money. Money of course, wasn't left 0:23:15.840 --> 0:23:18.480 with banks by any sensible people. It was actually left 0:23:18.480 --> 0:23:20.639 with friends, and so they looked after it, and you 0:23:20.720 --> 0:23:22.800 gave them a bottle of something when you picked it up, 0:23:23.440 --> 0:23:25.359 and he had gone off to do that, to collect 0:23:25.480 --> 0:23:29.119 quite a large sum of money, and never returned. Whether 0:23:29.160 --> 0:23:32.080 he was murdered, whether someone took the money, whether he 0:23:32.200 --> 0:23:36.679 was paid to go away by Edward is very unclear. 0:23:37.440 --> 0:23:41.000 But as all the local people got on their horses 0:23:41.000 --> 0:23:44.639 and along with the troopers started looking for the body, 0:23:44.760 --> 0:23:49.440 or looking for the man or whatever and found absolutely nothing, 0:23:50.200 --> 0:23:54.480 they were fairly convinced that some foul play had occurred, 0:23:54.840 --> 0:23:59.359 and particularly when they overheard Edward saying to Amanda, don't 0:23:59.359 --> 0:24:03.280 worry about it, He's not coming back. Marry me. I'll 0:24:03.280 --> 0:24:06.280 look after you, and two months later she did. 0:24:10.800 --> 0:24:13.680 We'll leave part one of the story of Letitia Leek here, 0:24:13.880 --> 0:24:16.240 so come back on Thursday for part two to hear 0:24:16.280 --> 0:24:19.520 how she survived the scandal and went on to create 0:24:19.600 --> 0:24:23.000 a new life for herself in England, including turning her 0:24:23.040 --> 0:24:26.560 grand estate into a hospital for many thousands of Australian 0:24:26.640 --> 0:24:30.480 soldiers during the Great War. Thanks for listening. This has 0:24:30.520 --> 0:24:33.040 been in Black and White a podcast about some of 0:24:33.080 --> 0:24:37.639 Australia's forgotten characters, written and hosted by me Jen Kelly, 0:24:37.920 --> 0:24:41.720 edited by Nina Young and produced by John Tiburton. You 0:24:41.760 --> 0:24:44.760 can find all the stories and photos associated with our 0:24:44.800 --> 0:24:50.920 episodes at Heraldsun dot com a slash ibaw. If you've 0:24:51.000 --> 0:24:53.160 enjoyed this podcast, we'd love you to leave a five 0:24:53.200 --> 0:24:57.199