Speaker 1: I mean, what fashionable woman about to come into a
Speaker 1: small fortune would first to cut her hair very short
Speaker 1: and wouldn't be fashionable in Tasmania at the time, I'm
Speaker 1: quite sure or carry boomerang.
Speaker 2: I'm Jen Kelly from The Herald Son and this is
Speaker 2: in Black and White, a podcast about some of Australia's
Speaker 2: forgotten characters. Today we're heading back to the eighteen hundreds
Speaker 2: to the story of a girl called Leticia Leek, who
Speaker 2: has a seven year old child. Inherited the vast Glencoe
Speaker 2: Station in South Australia. She grew up running wild with
Speaker 2: the local Aboriginal children, but then as an adult, became
Speaker 2: caught up in a saga of alleged murder, infidelity, corruption
Speaker 2: and contested wills. Eventually, Letitia inherited an enormous family fortune,
Speaker 2: and during World War One she and her husband turned
Speaker 2: their grand and English a state into a hospital that
Speaker 2: treated thousands upon thousands of Australian soldiers. Letitia's story has
Speaker 2: been told in a book called The Accidental Heiress Journey
Speaker 2: of a Glencoe Squatter's Daughter. It's by John Berger and
Speaker 2: Professor Carol Gerbich, who are volunteers with the National Trust
Speaker 2: of South Australia. Carol joins us now to share part
Speaker 2: one of the incredible story. Make sure you return on
Speaker 2: Thursday for part two. Welcome to the podcast, Carol.
Speaker 1: Thank you. It's lovely to be here now.
Speaker 2: The story that you've uncovered really does have a little
Speaker 2: bit of everything. It's got last alleged murder, infidelity, corruption,
Speaker 2: a family fortune, a vicious court case. I mean, you
Speaker 2: must have thought that you'd struck gold when you began
Speaker 2: researching this story.
Speaker 1: Absolutely did. I had no idea what was going to
Speaker 1: come out, because I started just writing a little leaflet
Speaker 1: for the National Trust property, which was just the Glencoe Woolshead,
Speaker 1: which a beautiful woolshead with a couple of paddocks over
Speaker 1: from where we just bought a property where we wanted
Speaker 1: to build this large garden. And I thought, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: a couple of page pamphlet and then I'll just pull
Speaker 1: away from this. And this little girl just sort of
Speaker 1: popped into the story and disappeared, and then she came
Speaker 1: back as an adult and then disappeared again, and I thought,
Speaker 1: good heavens. When I finally finished, I had a book
Speaker 1: of about one hundred and forty pages rather than a
Speaker 1: two page leaflet, and it seemed to have become her story,
Speaker 1: so she took over.
Speaker 2: Now, tell us where does Letitia's story begin? In your mind?
Speaker 1: I think his story probably begins, have to say with
Speaker 1: her birth, because that in itself was quite complicated enough,
Speaker 1: and then things just seemed to go from there.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, where and when was she born?
Speaker 1: Well, she was actually born in Nelson, just over the
Speaker 1: Victorian border from South Australia in eighteen fifty nine, and
Speaker 1: she was born to two very eccentric parents. Her father
Speaker 1: was Edward Leek and he was abround about forty five
Speaker 1: when she was born, and he was one of two
Speaker 1: brothers that had come from Tasmania, South Australia in order
Speaker 1: to basically set up a property, a sheep property, and
Speaker 1: they set up, over a number of years a huge
Speaker 1: property which was about three hundred and fifty square miles
Speaker 1: or two hundred thousand acres of for sheep and cattle
Speaker 1: and horses and so on. And around about the time
Speaker 1: of the teacher's birth, the two brothers were not speaking.
Speaker 1: King and Edward Leek, who was Letitia's father, it was
Speaker 1: the reason they weren't speaking was because he just got married,
Speaker 1: and he just got married to someone who the family
Speaker 1: disapproved of totally, because not only was she Irish and
Speaker 1: Roman Catholic, but she had also married to somebody else
Speaker 1: and pregnant to that other person, and somehow her husband
Speaker 1: had just vanished and everyone suspected Edward Leek was probably
Speaker 1: the problem. So that was going to be a bit
Speaker 1: of an issue. So the brothers at this point were
Speaker 1: not speaking, and one of them was living down at Nelson,
Speaker 1: the other was on the estate, and Edward was being
Speaker 1: paid about one thousand pounds a year basically to keep
Speaker 1: away off the property because his brother had just become
Speaker 1: a member of parliament. So that was a sort of
Speaker 1: tricky situation. But the mother, this Irish Catholic girl called Amanda,
Speaker 1: was only eighteen and she was rather happy to marry
Speaker 1: a very wealthy man. But then I think she discovered
Speaker 1: he was not all that nice a person and was
Speaker 1: very overweight, and she really preferred younger man, so she
Speaker 1: started having quite a lot of affairs. So it became
Speaker 1: very interesting to know whether or not this child was
Speaker 1: the child of Edward Lee, the man with all the money,
Speaker 1: or whether or not he was perhaps the child of
Speaker 1: some of the other lovers that she'd been having. So
Speaker 1: it was a complicated verse. Shall we say.
Speaker 2: The scandals come very thick and fast in his story,
Speaker 2: don't they. It takes takes on the feel of a
Speaker 2: soap opera very early on.
Speaker 1: It does. Well. Things were a little calm for about
Speaker 1: a year, shall we say? And then the brother died,
Speaker 1: the one who was still living on property, and left
Speaker 1: the whole of the Glencoe estate to Edward. So Edward
Speaker 1: it now moves back on to the Glencoe Estate property
Speaker 1: with his wife and his daughter Letitia, where he creates
Speaker 1: this beautiful wall shed which is architect designed, and still
Speaker 1: lives there under the National Trust. And then he dies
Speaker 1: as well. Now she's during that time, from about one
Speaker 1: till about seven until her father dies, Letitia is pretty
Speaker 1: much living wild on the estate. The estate employs one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty Bo Indick Aboriginal families, actually employs them
Speaker 1: and pays them. They're not slaves, And she spends most
Speaker 1: of her time just playing with the bo Anddick children.
Speaker 1: I understand she learned how to speak the language she
Speaker 1: came and went with them. She learned how to fish
Speaker 1: and catch things in the lakes, and I think she
Speaker 1: had a really lovely childhood, the sort of childhood you
Speaker 1: dream about. And then suddenly her father dies of a
Speaker 1: heart condition and the family from Tasmania immediately hot footed
Speaker 1: onto the next fairy and come up because this is
Speaker 1: a very large estate portfolio.
Speaker 2: But do we know any more about these early years
Speaker 2: of Letitia's life, And do we know any more about
Speaker 2: her relationship with her father and how close she was
Speaker 2: with him and whether she was devastated by his death
Speaker 2: for example, No, we don't.
Speaker 1: It's tiny little snippets of information that keep popping in
Speaker 1: her relationship with her father, I think would have been
Speaker 1: a good one, because a number of people reported to
Speaker 1: him they didn't think it was his daughter, and his
Speaker 1: response always was was his hair. I like her, I'm
Speaker 1: going to look after her, and that was his line
Speaker 1: on that argument. Now, there was a second child born
Speaker 1: two years after Letitia, and it was very clear that
Speaker 1: it was not Edward's a son. It was a little boy,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately he he was looked after, but he was
Speaker 1: not accepted as being part of the family because it
Speaker 1: was very well known that Amanda was having a fairly
Speaker 1: long term affair with the manager of the estate at
Speaker 1: that time. So she did have a brother, but I
Speaker 1: mean he got wished away very quickly when she turned seven,
Speaker 1: So their relationship seems to have been a little bit distant,
Speaker 1: and her relationship does seem to have been much more
Speaker 1: with children closer to her own age. Her mother insisted
Speaker 1: on sleeping in the children's room, so that at least
Speaker 1: she shared a room with her mother. But the reason
Speaker 1: her mother did that was because just to avoid to
Speaker 1: prevent rather Edward from coming in and having sex with her.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness joy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Aly, we didn't know about that. But the relationship
Speaker 1: with the parents I would say overall was distant because
Speaker 1: as she grew up she never seemed to refer to
Speaker 1: them or to miss them.
Speaker 2: And I wonder how unusual it was during this period
Speaker 2: in Australian history for kids like Letitia to have these
Speaker 2: really close relationships with Aboriginal kids in this way.
Speaker 1: Almost never, I would say, I think the family, the
Speaker 1: Leak family themselves were a very interesting family because the grandfather,
Speaker 1: the people who were done in Tasmania were very much
Speaker 1: anti slavery, anti convicts, and very concerned about the Aboriginal situation.
Speaker 1: So I think the relationships that started out in South
Speaker 1: Australia would have been a much more respectful, appreciative relationship.
Speaker 1: I remember once when all the men went to the
Speaker 1: gold Rush and they were looking for sharers to come
Speaker 1: and share their they actually looked toward the Aboriginal women
Speaker 1: and decided they were the best at sharing. And then
Speaker 1: the Aboriginal men were next, and then the German woman
Speaker 1: from the Bossa came next in the line. So they
Speaker 1: were actually very open to what was going to work
Speaker 1: and what was respectful to the people who are involved.
Speaker 2: So why were the Aboriginal women the best at sharing?
Speaker 2: That's fascinating.
Speaker 1: Yes, it fascinated me when I read it, because it
Speaker 1: was in a letter that he wrote to his father
Speaker 1: in Tasmania saying, I am considering taking on the Aboriginal
Speaker 1: women as sharers because they are very gentle and very careful,
Speaker 1: and especially good with the rams, which of course you
Speaker 1: don't want to cut off an important part of the.
Speaker 2: Ramb Amazing Okay, So what has happened now after the
Speaker 2: father has died.
Speaker 1: Yes, well we've got, as I said, one of the uncles,
Speaker 1: the six males in the family, one of them came
Speaker 1: hot footing it up from Taz and he immediately passled
Speaker 1: Letitia off to boarding school in Melbourne. I should her
Speaker 1: mother and the other little boy off the estate with
Speaker 1: a very large genuity, and said goodbye. I don't want
Speaker 1: to see you again, and didn't. And so she became,
Speaker 1: in the sense of a property of the Tasmanian family,
Speaker 1: but particularly of this uncle, who had no children of
Speaker 1: his own, and who eventually adopted her.
Speaker 2: I'm just imagining Letitia in Melbourne at boarding. So she
Speaker 2: was at boarding school in Melbourne, and this was presumably
Speaker 2: her first schooling experience whatsoever.
Speaker 1: Well, she'd actually had a governess just prior who actually
Speaker 1: became one of Mary mckillops nuns. So she was a
Speaker 1: proper good Roman Catholic person, suitable for the mother. And
Speaker 1: apart from that, and I think that had been very recent.
Speaker 1: You're quite right, it would have been a very isolated experience.
Speaker 1: But apparently I picked up a letter that she wrote
Speaker 1: to her uncle. You know, I'm learning French, I'm learning
Speaker 1: how to dance, and I am quite enjoying school. It
Speaker 1: would be lovely if somebody came and visited me. So
Speaker 1: you can see she was actually probably feeling quite lonely too.
Speaker 2: I'll be back in just a moment to find out
Speaker 2: what happened next and what happened from there.
Speaker 1: Well. From then, as she became a bit older, she
Speaker 1: had a governess, and the governess became a lady companion,
Speaker 1: and that lady companion eventually became the wife of her
Speaker 1: uncle as well. But the three of them did a
Speaker 1: lot of traveling, and what they were doing were basically
Speaker 1: filling in time until tis she should be twenty one,
Speaker 1: in which time the estates then would become available and
Speaker 1: she could cash in on her inheritance.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 1: And so what I found when she was twenty one
Speaker 1: then had little snippets of information. We were always looking
Speaker 1: for the sort of data which is like letters home
Speaker 1: or things you can actually hear the voice of the people.
Speaker 1: But we have the photo which I have of her,
Speaker 1: and here she is twenty one. It's taken at Lanceston
Speaker 1: in the studio, and it's the most extraordinary photo. They've
Speaker 1: just come back from England and Europe. And she has
Speaker 1: extremely short hair cut like a boy's, like a young boy's,
Speaker 1: you know, nothing over the ears, nothing over the neck,
Speaker 1: and quite high on the forehead. And I hunted and
Speaker 1: hunted to see if I could find out why would
Speaker 1: she have done this? You know, was it illness? Was
Speaker 1: something wrong? Did she have ringworm or something like that?
Speaker 1: And there's no evidence of that, but there was evidence
Speaker 1: that in Europe at the time, when they'd just been traveling,
Speaker 1: that women who were particularly strong in terms of free
Speaker 1: thinking or suffragettes had actually cut their hair short. It
Speaker 1: was actually a sort of signal to the population, you know,
Speaker 1: this is me and this is who I am. And
Speaker 1: the other thing she was doing was lost her chest
Speaker 1: and up to one shoulder was a very large ceremonial
Speaker 1: aboriginal I mean boomerang. Fashionable woman about to come into
Speaker 1: a small fortune, would you know, firstly cut her hair
Speaker 1: very short and wouldn't be fashionable in Tasmania at the time.
Speaker 1: I'm quite sure or her carry a boomerang and what
Speaker 1: she's signaling. Most of the originies have gone from Tasmania
Speaker 1: even before she was born. But she's had a lot
Speaker 1: to do with the bow and deck people in South Australia,
Speaker 1: so we can only assume that that's what was going on,
Speaker 1: that she was actually making a fairly strong political statement.
Speaker 2: Interesting and that's the photo that you've got on the
Speaker 2: cover of your book.
Speaker 1: Of course, yes, I was so fascinated. But I mean
Speaker 1: her closes are terribly fashionable, and lots of lovely satin
Speaker 1: and buttons and things like that and up to the
Speaker 1: neck and so forth. But her hair and a boomerang,
Speaker 1: I can imagine people would just go, who is this warman?
Speaker 1: That's strange. Well, anyway, they did decide to sell the
Speaker 1: Glencoe estate to the Redock brothers, and the amount, of
Speaker 1: course was around about twenty five million dollars in our term,
Speaker 1: so she was quite a substantial heiress. And the next
Speaker 1: ten years they probably spent their time mostly traveling in Europe,
Speaker 1: and also she spent time fighting off hopeful males who
Speaker 1: wanted to marry her, and she said, no, that I'm
Speaker 1: not going to marry them. They're just after my money,
Speaker 1: and that's the end of that. But then, when she
Speaker 1: was thirty and they've lived like this pretty comfortably, her
Speaker 1: uncle dies and leaves most of his Tasmanian fortune to her,
Speaker 1: to the tune of about fifteen million dollars. So now
Speaker 1: she's a forty million dollar aires. And this was written
Speaker 1: up in pretty much all the newspapers along the eastern
Speaker 1: coast of Australia, and it was taken up by a
Speaker 1: young man who was also thirty, a young lawyer by
Speaker 1: the name of Charles Billiard, and his father was the
Speaker 1: Solicitor General of New South Wales. And he'd just been
Speaker 1: involved in a very interesting financial project which he had
Speaker 1: hoped to make a lot of money on, and that
Speaker 1: was building a bridge over Sydney Harbor. So he'd set
Speaker 1: up this company, the North Sydney Investment and Tramways Company,
Speaker 1: to try and get enough money. And he was looking
Speaker 1: for about eighty five million dollars to build a suspension
Speaker 1: bridge over Sydney Harbor. And he had bought lots of
Speaker 1: land on the North Shore and got together a lot
Speaker 1: of investors and pretty much covered the money that was required.
Speaker 1: When the bottom fell out of the economy in eighteen
Speaker 1: ninety and a lot of the investors withdrew and he
Speaker 1: suddenly found he was bankrupt. So he was very much
Speaker 1: in need of an heiress if he could find one.
Speaker 1: So he hotfooted it down to Tasmania on the arreas
Speaker 1: as fast as he could go, and actually managed to
Speaker 1: persuade Letitia that he was her night in Shining Armor
Speaker 1: and they got married, and the wedding again the newspaper. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: newspapers never took any photos, so I have no photos
Speaker 1: of it, but lots and lots of description of all
Speaker 1: sorts of beautiful gowns and satin and silk and ostrich
Speaker 1: feathers and jewelry, and a wedding cake about two meters high,
Speaker 1: and lovely red carpets from the gate all the way
Speaker 1: to the house, and a special train put on a
Speaker 1: long system down to Ross for the visitors from New
Speaker 1: South Wales, and enough entertainment to go on for a
Speaker 1: week so the local people about three hundred people attended,
Speaker 1: could all just stay and have a lovely time for
Speaker 1: the rest of the week while they went off with
Speaker 1: their honeymoon in New South Wales where they had a
Speaker 1: second wedding, this time with eight hundred people, and they
Speaker 1: went through the whole process again. So it was definitely
Speaker 1: the wedding of the century.
Speaker 2: Absolute goodness, it sounds so extravagant, Carol. One thing I'm
Speaker 2: interested to know, given what we know about Letitia's philanthropy
Speaker 2: later on, what has she been doing with all her
Speaker 2: great fortune up until now, apart from traveling and having
Speaker 2: extravagant weddings. What has she been doing? Has she been
Speaker 2: spending some of her great fortune on charity causes for example?
Speaker 1: Absolutely not. No, there's no indication of anything like that whatsoever.
Speaker 1: In fact, it wasn't quite that much later in life,
Speaker 1: and I think different experiences that perhaps changed to views.
Speaker 2: Things to be interesting. So what about is she involved
Speaker 2: in political causes? I mean, we know she had some
Speaker 2: pretty strident views.
Speaker 1: No, she was interested in education. She was interested in
Speaker 1: the possibility, I think of setting up at universities in Tasmania.
Speaker 1: She was interested in art galleries and she often donated
Speaker 1: family portraits or pieces of art that they might have
Speaker 1: collected for them, particularly one in Mount Gambia. And but
Speaker 1: apart from that, there's no real evidence. But in fact,
Speaker 1: finding evidence on Letitia right up until quite late in
Speaker 1: her life has been it's been you know, it took
Speaker 1: me a couple of years of digging to actually find it.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure there's a lot more there, but unfortunately
Speaker 1: the few remaining members of the family are not very
Speaker 1: interested in supplying it, so we don't have it.
Speaker 2: Ah, that's interesting, Okay, I'll look forward to hearing more
Speaker 2: about that later and what did she and her husband
Speaker 2: get up to after this incredible wedding.
Speaker 1: Well after this incredible wedding, they returned to Tasmania to
Speaker 1: live in a rather gorgeous house that her uncle had
Speaker 1: left her called Ashby, And I think Charles was a
Speaker 1: bit bored, and so he started having a look at
Speaker 1: her fine answers to see if everything was as it
Speaker 1: should be, and found that, in fact, there was some
Speaker 1: serious anomalies that the trustees of the Glencoe estate and
Speaker 1: the local bank had for over the last twenty years
Speaker 1: been investing a lot of the interest from the estate
Speaker 1: in their own little projects, and they were very reluctant
Speaker 1: to agree that that's what they've been doing, or to
Speaker 1: release the money. So Charles immediately sets in place a
Speaker 1: court case and then starts going around the pub saying,
Speaker 1: you know how terrible these people are. Until they got
Speaker 1: an injunction to keep them silent. But the court case continued,
Speaker 1: and then I think something happened, which it was very sad.
Speaker 1: Very few people left of the Leak family down in Tasmania.
Speaker 1: There was the uncle's wife who'd been the companion and
Speaker 1: governess for Letitia, and there'd been a wife of one
Speaker 1: of the other brothers, so there really only two women,
Speaker 1: and this other woman had been almost like a mother
Speaker 1: to her, as you'd come up gone from boarding school.
Speaker 1: So they decided to side with the bank and the
Speaker 1: trustees and told them, which must have been a real
Speaker 1: slap in the face for Letitia, terribly hurtful because he
Speaker 1: seemed like a very gentle kind person as far as
Speaker 1: we can work out, and anyway, yes, and what they
Speaker 1: decided to do was to tell the other people that
Speaker 1: there had been rumors for many years that in fact
Speaker 1: Lea Titia might not be legitimate, that her father was
Speaker 1: possibly a murderer, and the marriage was probably beggary, and
Speaker 1: therefore La Titia probably wasn't entitled to all the money
Speaker 1: that she already had. So you can imagine, you know,
Speaker 1: how this went on in the papers for weeks and weeks,
Speaker 1: and it was very unpleasant.
Speaker 2: What were the allegations about her father being a murderer?
Speaker 2: Who was he meant to have murdered?
Speaker 1: Well, the situation was that the first husband of an Amanda,
Speaker 1: the woman who became his wife and Letitia's mother, was
Speaker 1: a bullocky, a bullock driver, and he used to drive
Speaker 1: huge loads of things from the ships down to Portland
Speaker 1: to the Glencoe estate and then carry wool and so
Speaker 1: forth back to Portland. So he actually was attached to
Speaker 1: the Glencoe estate. And one day he came in to
Speaker 1: the Glencoe estate and Edward went down to meet them.
Speaker 1: He was a very sociable sort of man. He took
Speaker 1: one look at Amanda and said to himself, I suspect
Speaker 1: this is a woman I find very attractive. And she
Speaker 1: was a very sprightly, feisty Irish woman, and I think
Speaker 1: they probably fell in love. It was suggested that they
Speaker 1: flirted outrageously, which I'd love to know what that meant,
Speaker 1: but they didn't go into detail. And unfortunately, the next
Speaker 1: she traveled with him a bit, and obviously Amanda and
Speaker 1: would sort a fair bit of each other. And then
Speaker 1: one trip that the Bulaki made he disappeared under very
Speaker 1: suspicious circumstances. They'd stopped for the night halfway. He had
Speaker 1: gone to collect some money. Money of course, wasn't left
Speaker 1: with banks by any sensible people. It was actually left
Speaker 1: with friends, and so they looked after it, and you
Speaker 1: gave them a bottle of something when you picked it up,
Speaker 1: and he had gone off to do that, to collect
Speaker 1: quite a large sum of money, and never returned. Whether
Speaker 1: he was murdered, whether someone took the money, whether he
Speaker 1: was paid to go away by Edward is very unclear.
Speaker 1: But as all the local people got on their horses
Speaker 1: and along with the troopers started looking for the body,
Speaker 1: or looking for the man or whatever and found absolutely nothing,
Speaker 1: they were fairly convinced that some foul play had occurred,
Speaker 1: and particularly when they overheard Edward saying to Amanda, don't
Speaker 1: worry about it, He's not coming back. Marry me. I'll
Speaker 1: look after you, and two months later she did.
Speaker 2: We'll leave part one of the story of Letitia Leek here,
Speaker 2: so come back on Thursday for part two to hear
Speaker 2: how she survived the scandal and went on to create
Speaker 2: a new life for herself in England, including turning her
Speaker 2: grand estate into a hospital for many thousands of Australian
Speaker 2: soldiers during the Great War. Thanks for listening. This has
Speaker 2: been in Black and White a podcast about some of
Speaker 2: Australia's forgotten characters, written and hosted by me Jen Kelly,
Speaker 2: edited by Nina Young and produced by John Tiburton. You
Speaker 2: can find all the stories and photos associated with our
Speaker 2: episodes at Heraldsun dot com a slash ibaw. If you've
Speaker 2: enjoyed this podcast, we'd love you to leave a five
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Speaker 2: Any comments or questions please email me add in black
Speaker 2: and white at Heroldsun dot com dot au. Any clarifications
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