Speaker 1: She's going to have had a lot of followers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not all of them with as good as name as hers.
Speaker 1: One of the best bylines I've ever heard.
Speaker 2: She read it and thought this isn't very good. I
Speaker 2: could do better.
Speaker 1: How did she know much about how they operated? Was
Speaker 1: she involved some way? And it shows you that there's
Speaker 1: always been an appetite for what.
Speaker 2: We're doing here, nothing but murders and bloodshed and hanging.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's a great title.
Speaker 1: I'm Andrew Rule. This is life and Crimes. And today
Speaker 1: we've got something a little bit different. We have Lucy
Speaker 1: Sussex here. Lucy and I met many years ago at
Speaker 1: a neck Kellier Woods and we had a chat. And
Speaker 1: she didn't forget that because recently she got in touch
Speaker 1: and said, I've now done a book about some people
Speaker 1: who did naughty things a long time ago. And I said, well,
Speaker 1: you sound like somebody that should come and talk to
Speaker 1: us on laughing crimes. Lucy, and she's coming, and she's
Speaker 1: got not one, but two books. I believe, Lucy Sussex,
Speaker 1: why are you here?
Speaker 2: Me and Mike co writer Meghan Brown, we're launching two books.
Speaker 2: One is our biography of Mary Fortune, who was one
Speaker 2: of the first two women to write detective stories. All right,
Speaker 2: she lived in Melbourne.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great, name was a real name.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was her second marriag name.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's gorgeous name.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Irish, Irish, beautiful. And so she wrote over five
Speaker 2: hundred detective stories.
Speaker 1: She didn't what short ones for newspapers or periodicals.
Speaker 2: Well, she wrote for the Herald. She wrote short ones,
Speaker 2: but slightly longer ones for a periodical called The Australian Journal,
Speaker 2: which was founded in the eighteen sixties and lasted until
Speaker 2: the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: Ge. That's a good innings.
Speaker 2: It was a very good innings for a fiction magazine.
Speaker 3: Were they serialized.
Speaker 2: It wasn't a series called the Detective's Album. And the
Speaker 2: idea behind it was a was a police detective who
Speaker 2: had a photo album and these were all the crimsi'd encountered.
Speaker 3: I see.
Speaker 2: So she published that under theme w W, and nobody
Speaker 2: ever realized it was a woman. Her publishers kept its secret.
Speaker 2: And so the second book where theres a collection of
Speaker 2: her detective fiction called Nothing but Murders and Bloodshed and Hanging.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's a great title.
Speaker 2: It's out of one of her actual stories.
Speaker 1: Is that you've lifted it from there, And how does
Speaker 1: the collection go? How does it stand up to modern eyes?
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's rollicling good yarns. But I mean,
Speaker 2: if you're thinking Colin Doyle, well no, but these are
Speaker 2: these are police, these are police procedurals. So she writes
Speaker 2: with them, writes about the mounted police that was in
Speaker 2: the bush and they were based on the Royal Ulster Constabulary,
Speaker 2: and then the town police was based on the English.
Speaker 2: So she then goes to writing about detectives.
Speaker 1: How did she know much about how they operated? Was
Speaker 1: she involved some way with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, she came to Australia for the gold in
Speaker 2: eighteen fifty five.
Speaker 1: She and many others.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, many of our ancestors, I suspect, I think so.
Speaker 2: But she was joining her father and it looks like
Speaker 2: she ran away from her husband in Canada and her
Speaker 2: father was running a goldfields store in Cassle, Maine region, right,
Speaker 2: So she joined him. And she wrote this up on
Speaker 2: a memoir slightly disguised and fictionalized because she was a
Speaker 2: bit of a wild lady.
Speaker 1: She must have been. So she's abandoned, She's Irish by birth,
Speaker 1: she's abandoned husband, number one in Canada, or he abandoned her.
Speaker 1: Then she's come to the goldfields in Australia. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is what people don't realize is that gold attracted people.
Speaker 2: They crisscrossed the world incredibly mobile.
Speaker 1: Mobile.
Speaker 2: You just topped on us on a sailing ship.
Speaker 1: Where you were and unless it sank, in which case
Speaker 1: you weren't.
Speaker 2: Well exactly. But she goes get to the central goldfields
Speaker 2: after gaining knowledge of a few things like slie rog selling,
Speaker 2: which was the only way a goldfield store could really
Speaker 2: make money. It was illegal and on the goldfield she was.
Speaker 2: She was only there a month or two and there
Speaker 2: was a murder and she writes about it, so you know,
Speaker 2: she got a taste for true crime. But she goes
Speaker 2: out what bender go away? And she's in a gold
Speaker 2: field and she meets a handsome young copper mounted policeman
Speaker 2: called Percy Brett, and they elope and get married quite bigamousley,
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 1: Because she hadn't she wasn't actually divorced.
Speaker 2: Well, a bit difficult those days, expensive.
Speaker 1: So but he was in Canada. That's not bad.
Speaker 2: I didn't know. He didn't know. So she marries Percy
Speaker 2: Brett and they lie about their ages. The on the
Speaker 2: wedding certificate.
Speaker 1: She went up a bit in hers down he went.
Speaker 2: He's went down a bit, and her state. Hers went
Speaker 2: down a little bit, and his went down to he
Speaker 2: was only about twenty oh and she was about twenty four.
Speaker 1: Oh, I say, okay, so.
Speaker 2: They And now the lie was that she said she
Speaker 2: was a widow.
Speaker 1: Oh well, you know, well she might have been by then,
Speaker 1: for all she knew. He might have a grizzly bear,
Speaker 1: might have eaten him in Alaska.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. The thing was that my grandfather was a clergyman,
Speaker 2: and he said, if he was marrying a widow and
Speaker 2: they looked suspicious widow or widow, and they looked suspiciously young,
Speaker 2: it may make absolutely certain. They wrote the date of
Speaker 2: when they were bereaved on the certificate because it cleared him.
Speaker 3: Oh I see.
Speaker 2: Because people couldn't get divorced. And the most common thing
Speaker 2: was that she just ran off to another colony married.
Speaker 2: And yeah, so Daisy Bates who married Brent. She she married,
Speaker 2: managed about two big of mis marriages.
Speaker 1: Oh, Daisy Baits, she was a very interesting book about
Speaker 1: the passing of the natives. I think she called it
Speaker 1: something like that.
Speaker 2: Yes, and of course Breaker Morant was absolutely.
Speaker 1: Not as not the charming chap that perhaps he was
Speaker 1: presented as. I think he might have made.
Speaker 2: A rogue the film. Yeah, well there's a lot of
Speaker 2: charming chaps who rogues. But anyway, marriage doesn't last still,
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, look at all the con men around
Speaker 2: the place.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, there's many of them. Now, so Mary Fortune,
Speaker 1: where did she pick up the fortune? Name was that
Speaker 1: from she picked up? That was her first husband, that's
Speaker 1: the Canadian.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the Brett marriage didn't last. He nicked off
Speaker 2: to New South Wales and oddly enough ends up being
Speaker 2: held up by Ned Kelly in the Deildary Bank robbery.
Speaker 2: Oh magnificent, And he actually behaved using his copper skills.
Speaker 2: He actually talked down Steve Hart from from shooting somebody.
Speaker 2: Really Steve Hart was getting a bit excited, and Percy Brett,
Speaker 2: who was by this stage, you know, a bit of
Speaker 2: a father figure. And now, no, Ned Kelly, this won't do.
Speaker 1: This, won't do. Don't be shooting them.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly, which took guts.
Speaker 1: Very good man. And did they have any children?
Speaker 2: No, they didn't, but she had an illegitimate child beforehand,
Speaker 2: and this child whom she called George, grew up to
Speaker 2: be a He started a thief, and he robbed banks,
Speaker 2: and he correcked safes, and he spent a lot of
Speaker 2: his time in jail.
Speaker 1: Did he use of the name Fortune? He has various names.
Speaker 3: I suppose he's.
Speaker 2: Stuck with the name Fortune initially, and then Tortune, and
Speaker 2: then he had a few aliases. And if you go
Speaker 2: to Trove and type in George Fortune and you'll sort
Speaker 2: of find quite a lot of material, including the Herald.
Speaker 1: The bank robber. Yes, is magnificent. So we've seen her
Speaker 1: go from her twenties to her thirties. When did she
Speaker 1: really take to the writing big time?
Speaker 2: She sees that there's a new fiction magazine, and I
Speaker 2: think that she's in the loop as regards contributors, because
Speaker 2: when she was on the Castlemone Goldfield, she actually was
Speaker 2: writing revolutionary poetry. A lah Eureka was she? And so
Speaker 2: the editor said, it's the Irish course, of course, Well
Speaker 2: her name was. She used her initials, and there was
Speaker 2: a request that MHF will call in the offices at
Speaker 2: his earliest conveniences, And so she walks in a crinoline
Speaker 2: with a small small child. They say, oh, well, we
Speaker 2: were in need of a sub editor and thought MHF
Speaker 2: would suit. So no such thing as Lady Journo's those.
Speaker 3: But she did get the she got the job.
Speaker 2: No, she did not in calcimone. But she did end
Speaker 2: up working for the Herald in the eighteen seventies. But
Speaker 2: in the meantime Australian Journal came out. They had a
Speaker 2: police story in it, and she read it and thought
Speaker 2: this isn't very good. I could do better, So she
Speaker 2: sends it in and they sign her up to do
Speaker 2: us to do a series, which doesn't last terribly long
Speaker 2: because it's a first attempt. But later on, after a
Speaker 2: few things, other jobs like being on a governess and
Speaker 2: working as a housekeeper. Would you believe for the family
Speaker 2: that turned into Brown Brothers?
Speaker 3: Is that a fact?
Speaker 1: Millowa?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Miloa yeah, good lord. Small world, small world indeed.
Speaker 2: But she sees this chance and so a few years
Speaker 2: so she thinks she's looking for a hook and she's
Speaker 2: writing for the Australian Journal, all sorts of things, from
Speaker 2: Gothic novels to poetry, and she thoughts gets the idea
Speaker 2: of a detective's album, and once she's got that she's got.
Speaker 2: She can make a series from that because every month
Speaker 2: it's a new photo and she tells the story of
Speaker 2: that photo, and that lasts until about nineteen oh nine.
Speaker 1: That was a very good idea, and it shows you
Speaker 1: that there's always been an appetite for what we're doing here,
Speaker 1: which absolutely we're talking about crime more or less to
Speaker 1: people who want to listen. But those same people, their
Speaker 1: great grandparents also had that interest, and she would marry for,
Speaker 1: among others, would provide the material for them to read.
Speaker 1: In an era before radio and television. Of course, journals
Speaker 1: and newspapers provided that fascinating reading material with factual true
Speaker 1: crime and also fiction.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she could mix both up. You can can
Speaker 2: trace actual crimes. One of georgie's Burg's was an old bury.
Speaker 2: They robbed a bank and they wheeled the safer way
Speaker 2: to the river bank so they can break it open
Speaker 2: in a wheelbower, which they nicked, of course, laughing all
Speaker 2: the time, and she puts the detail of the safe
Speaker 2: and the wheelbower into her story, so she was using
Speaker 2: him for copy.
Speaker 1: Safe cracking was a very big thing until there are
Speaker 1: still people alive that have Cracksaves went out probably in
Speaker 1: the eighties and nineties.
Speaker 2: I suspect probably the last possible point when they got
Speaker 2: really too complex.
Speaker 1: Complex and also cash started to be less of a
Speaker 1: yeah thing, the saves got very good and well, he's
Speaker 1: no longer with us, But had he not been shot
Speaker 1: dead back twenty five or thirty years ago. Like Graham
Speaker 1: Kinderbaro known as the Monster, he was extremely good at
Speaker 1: opening safety and others developed the magnetic duelking technique and
Speaker 1: a very big one at m Willembar in New South Wales.
Speaker 1: And they happened to know, interestingly that there was a
Speaker 1: lot of money in.
Speaker 3: The safe that week because he talked.
Speaker 1: Somebody suggested that perhaps a local policeman from up there
Speaker 1: might have heard something and might have had his heat
Speaker 1: of the ground. It's a two way street, I think
Speaker 1: so that possibly, possibly, so this might be a wicked
Speaker 1: rumor and gossip. And if that policeman is alive, clearly
Speaker 1: it's a rumor and gossip absolutely, But if he's dead,
Speaker 1: well maybe not.
Speaker 2: Just one detail about the fortune.
Speaker 1: The fortune fortune, yeah, well, yes.
Speaker 2: A George fortune. When he was doing that safe cracking,
Speaker 2: it was covered when it was retrieved, it was covered
Speaker 2: in green paint. Work out why, and then I thought
Speaker 2: composition of paint, and then looking at other cases because
Speaker 2: I had to read really so much. I had to
Speaker 2: get educated in this. And paint contained had oil in it,
Speaker 2: and oil was if you were drilling into the safe
Speaker 2: you needed lubricants so that it didn't overheat, right, and
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah said everything, And so they oil to keep
Speaker 1: the Yeah, the drill bit cool and that made everything green.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they were covered in green paint.
Speaker 1: That fact and staff very very interesting stuff, all the detail.
Speaker 1: Mary went on, did you say till nineteen oh nine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a bit of a break when George.
Speaker 1: Big Gap it's a big from the gold rushers from the.
Speaker 2: Late fifty fifties, forty years. Yeah, and it's about the
Speaker 2: longest cereal worldwide of the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 3: Is that a fact?
Speaker 2: So nobody else goes on so long?
Speaker 1: I mean, this is an unknoble traditional well perhaps not noble,
Speaker 1: but Charles Dickens of course made his name by writing.
Speaker 3: Pretty good copy, pretty fast that hooked.
Speaker 1: People into buying every day or every week, she realized stuff,
Speaker 1: which is why he over wrote so much. That's why
Speaker 1: those stories are so voluminous. And the sentences are so
Speaker 1: long and fluffy because he was writing Penny a line. Essentially,
Speaker 1: there's a.
Speaker 2: Difference between him and her, and that she's not got
Speaker 2: so much education, and so if you look at Victorian novels,
Speaker 2: they're incredibly heavy, they are and lots and lots of words.
Speaker 2: She's much more direct, Yes, and she likes doing dialogue,
Speaker 2: does she? And the first her first crime.
Speaker 1: She's a screenwriter.
Speaker 2: Oh, she could have been in the right place. I mean,
Speaker 2: of course, she wrote a pantomime.
Speaker 1: She's a screenwriter. She's writing dialogue about crime. If she
Speaker 1: was here today, she'd be writing under.
Speaker 2: I wish that somebody would make TV out of her fiction.
Speaker 2: I reckon to be good.
Speaker 1: It's not so silly, particularly if the plots still work
Speaker 1: and the stories work, that could be actually modernized. So
Speaker 1: you haven't got a necessarily a costume drama, because they're
Speaker 1: very expensive. You know, we've got to have horses and
Speaker 1: buggies and oh and it's very expensive to do a
Speaker 1: costume drama. But if the stories lines work at the
Speaker 1: level of humans doing bad things, probably you could.
Speaker 2: I mean, she's got a locked tent mystery, A lot
Speaker 2: of locked tent mystery.
Speaker 1: I locked tent mystery. And how does that's the premise
Speaker 1: a locked ten? How do you lock a ten?
Speaker 2: Well, you open it from the front and then you
Speaker 2: murder somebody. Then you cut a seam out the back.
Speaker 2: You make it look as if it's been closed from insight,
Speaker 2: and you cut a seam and then you sew it open.
Speaker 2: And that's actually based on a real case.
Speaker 3: So it shut.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it shut so that nobody takes and he
Speaker 1: noticed for a farewell until they smell things.
Speaker 2: Well, that's exactly what.
Speaker 3: We just get a four day start.
Speaker 2: Well, it's the most gruesome story of that era I
Speaker 2: can find, because the actually describes the stench and the flies,
Speaker 2: and as they get close to it, the flies buzz
Speaker 2: up and against the walls of the tent, and it's
Speaker 2: he thought, she's actually seen that.
Speaker 1: She's seen that.
Speaker 3: That's a real thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is so clever, because when people going past
Speaker 1: saw a tent all closed, they leave it alone because
Speaker 1: it's a fellow digger or something. I gave the bad
Speaker 1: person a many days that they could be getting on
Speaker 1: a boat in Port Philip, heading off to Sydney or
Speaker 1: somewhere Adelaide.
Speaker 2: It was a lot easier to vanish In those.
Speaker 3: Days, it was, wasn't it.
Speaker 1: I've been struck that even in our lifetime, and I
Speaker 1: know we're quite young, you and I, and in our lifetime,
Speaker 1: the differences. If you got away with something when we
Speaker 1: were kids in the sixties, you get away with it,
Speaker 1: no one saw you do it, and you didn't leave
Speaker 1: any fingerprints. Every chance you're going to get away with
Speaker 1: it for good because there's no electronic stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: I often bang on about this, but if you could
Speaker 1: just avoid that first few days, that's absolutely true, and
Speaker 1: that you didn't have to be a master criminal, providing
Speaker 1: you a bit careful and a bit lucky. Nowadays, if
Speaker 1: you commit a serious crime, murder or something, it's very.
Speaker 3: Difficult to get away with because there's there will be clues.
Speaker 1: And there will be electronic stuff, and there will be
Speaker 1: something somewhere. There'll be you know, the footage in cars
Speaker 1: and the CCTV and all the rest of it. We're
Speaker 1: in a world that's just full of cameras now.
Speaker 2: Well, in those days, I mean, the camera was pretty
Speaker 2: new and they didn't even have much forensics, and they
Speaker 2: couldn't distinguish blood from no animals or human. But what
Speaker 2: they did have, of course, I guess that this is
Speaker 2: eternal and the police was that they had informers.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, and this.
Speaker 2: Is a subject which she knows too much about, don't she.
Speaker 2: Nice middle class lady journalists of the time weren't supposed
Speaker 2: to know about police informants.
Speaker 1: But she'd been married to policeman that was willing to
Speaker 1: have a bigger mismarriage. Oh.
Speaker 2: I don't know if he knew.
Speaker 1: He may not have known she had an illegitimate child.
Speaker 1: She was a nice middle class lady up to a point.
Speaker 2: Up to a point. Okay, she was about She was
Speaker 2: a bohemian.
Speaker 1: She wasn't exactly the bishop's daughter. She well, I don't
Speaker 1: know now what is her background. When we say she's
Speaker 1: not the bishop's daughter, who was she really? You know?
Speaker 2: Well, her father was an engineer, civil engineer, but of
Speaker 2: course his name's Wilson, so it's really hard to trace.
Speaker 1: And she was obviously educated fairly well in Ireland.
Speaker 2: And her father I think wrote her poetry, so he
Speaker 2: was a bit of a man who was interested in literature.
Speaker 1: I see Anglo Irish praps.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Scott's actually Scott's first North of course. But yeah,
Speaker 2: you had a degree of education, seems to know French,
Speaker 2: seems to know Latin, but has this very direct way
Speaker 2: of talking. And it's like she's a tour gauge from
Speaker 2: the past and you're going around in Melbourne. But if
Speaker 2: she takes her on a tour of underbelly Melbourne, she'd
Speaker 2: be using a word which not even old old style
Speaker 2: coppers used now, which is fiz gig And that was
Speaker 2: what they called Did you ever hear that word?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know what it means. And when years ago,
Speaker 1: old time older coppers would say.
Speaker 3: He's a fizz.
Speaker 1: So they still the older crooks and the older coppers
Speaker 1: would refer to an informer as a fizz, but often
Speaker 1: not in a derogatory way. They an old copper would say,
Speaker 1: I've got a fizz. There's a bloke in this part.
Speaker 1: He's a bit of a fizz for me. He's one
Speaker 1: of my Hysits wasn't a totally derogatory term, whereas you
Speaker 1: know crooks who hate informers will call them dogs or lag.
Speaker 1: You know he's a lagger.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well she uses that word, and that's among the
Speaker 2: earliest uses of that word in print. She might have
Speaker 2: sort of popular well, I don't know. I mean sort
Speaker 2: of she knew. There's evidence that she knew Thomas O'Callahan,
Speaker 2: who was a police commissioner, and he was a detective
Speaker 2: and he was a pretty rough and extremely efficient thief taker.
Speaker 2: There's another old word. But I put this to a
Speaker 2: couple of detectives. I've like Sandra Nicholson who's ex super detectives,
Speaker 2: and she said, look, and I said, could could she
Speaker 2: have been his fizz? And Sandra said, yeah, sure, she
Speaker 2: fits the profile.
Speaker 1: And because she was running around hearing things in her yeah,
Speaker 1: and she could. It would buy osmosis the other.
Speaker 2: Circles, which yeah, And she describes the process quite well
Speaker 2: and how it's kind of it's an odd relationship. She
Speaker 2: was getting story ideas from them and they were giving
Speaker 2: her and giving information. Yes, I see, So there is
Speaker 2: evidence that she was working.
Speaker 1: Both sides, both sides, which you know, she's a person.
Speaker 1: If she was here now we'd understand her because it's
Speaker 1: what a lot of journals do.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, they rub shoulders.
Speaker 1: With this one and this one and this one, and
Speaker 1: some of them to a gradual, lesser extent, they trade information. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know some do it too much, probably picking
Speaker 1: up information from this source to so they can pass
Speaker 1: it on to someone else. That's what they do.
Speaker 3: History a long history. It does.
Speaker 1: Indeed, Mary didn't invent it, but she's going to had
Speaker 1: a lot of followers, Yeah, not all of them with
Speaker 1: as good as name as hers. One of the best
Speaker 1: bylines I've ever heard.
Speaker 2: It's a really good name. When I first came across it,
Speaker 2: I thought this can't be real, but it did turn
Speaker 2: out to be.
Speaker 1: Whis as good a name as Elmore Leonard.
Speaker 2: Now that's a really good writer too, He's.
Speaker 1: A very good writer, and well Leonard.
Speaker 2: But I think because her stuff was printed for so long,
Speaker 2: and it was being reprinted way into the nineteen twenties,
Speaker 2: and was it and really the Australian Journal used to
Speaker 2: bind its yearly volumes and these would be passed around
Speaker 2: and I think, okay, it's possible that, say Arthur Upfield
Speaker 2: read the stuff very good.
Speaker 1: Point. So these were sort of pioneering writers slash entertainers
Speaker 1: journalists in a pioneer society that's pretty frontier society really,
Speaker 1: where there was not much else to do once the
Speaker 1: chooks went to bed, but turned the owl lamp on,
Speaker 1: which I remember doing as a kid, deal care and read,
Speaker 1: and that this sort of stuff would when particularly crime.
Speaker 3: Staff, it would be popular with all.
Speaker 1: Sorts of people undercommon people, shearers and drovers and all,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because she was writing about them.
Speaker 1: And they'd identify with that and they could read it.
Speaker 1: Especially she wrote simply.
Speaker 2: It's clear and it addresses you directly, and in journalism
Speaker 2: in particularly you get a real sense of personality. It
Speaker 2: shines through.
Speaker 3: That's good.
Speaker 1: We saw that sort of clear, direct writing very modern
Speaker 1: in a way in the bulletin of the eighties and
Speaker 1: nineties Henry Lawson and others.
Speaker 2: She precedes them, and she was.
Speaker 1: Really part of that push to do that, to be
Speaker 1: direct and not flowery.
Speaker 2: Another thing is that the Australian Journal was and this
Speaker 2: bulletin claimed to be full of Australian themes, but the
Speaker 2: Australian Journal said, we're not going to print anything there
Speaker 2: isn't of colonial interest and our writers going to be colonial.
Speaker 2: There was nothing of the cultural cringe there, and they
Speaker 2: recognized that people really wanted to read about this surrounding.
Speaker 1: About themselves, really their own lives and values, which was smart.
Speaker 1: These were very entrepreneurial and interesting, but I mean it's
Speaker 1: just as clever as some people that start up Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1: They see an opportunity and it's right for the times,
Speaker 1: and they did it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And I mean the fact that the magazine lasted ninety years,
Speaker 2: that's a very long time.
Speaker 1: In Australia, daggering. And to think that she wrote for
Speaker 1: that massive change. She starts basically in the gold fields here,
Speaker 1: which is pre trains really and all that sort of
Speaker 1: thing in Victoria pretty well, so it's a horse and
Speaker 1: buggy era and bullicks and she writes right up until
Speaker 1: there's primitive aircraft and cars around and telephones, early telephones, telegraph, yeah,
Speaker 1: or a lot of the things that the modern world
Speaker 1: was predicated on. She saw that inside her working life.
Speaker 1: It's quite astonishing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And she could even vote towards the end, Yes.
Speaker 1: Could vote good honor.
Speaker 3: What are the titles?
Speaker 2: Well, given that George, given that the pair of them
Speaker 2: were such wild characters, we caught it outrageous fortunes. I
Speaker 2: love it, Yes, And we took a line out of
Speaker 2: her own story for the collection of detective fiction, and
Speaker 2: that's called nothing but Murders and Bloodshed and hanging.
Speaker 1: Oh, it's a wonderful line. I really want to steal
Speaker 1: it myself. Just hanging. It's wonderful.
Speaker 3: I've told this story before.
Speaker 1: John, our producer, will be throwing things at me. But
Speaker 1: I can recall I'm so old, and I can recall
Speaker 1: sitting in what was in the VFL football rooms down
Speaker 1: in Jollymont when players would be reported and they'd have
Speaker 1: a tribunal. And one of the old, old, gray beard,
Speaker 1: gray haired journos at the time, this would be in
Speaker 1: the probably nineteen seventy nine nineteen eighty, was an old
Speaker 1: fellow called Jerry Whiting who worked for AAP and he
Speaker 1: was a really good, efficient, old reporter, and he had
Speaker 1: good shorthand, and he was a red face and lots
Speaker 1: of gray hair. And we were talking about hangings and stuff.
Speaker 1: We were waiting, and there'd been quite a few journalists
Speaker 1: that were very upset because they'd seen the Ryan hanging.
Speaker 1: And one had written a very eloquent piece, and one
Speaker 1: had got sad about it, and one had a nervous
Speaker 1: breakdown whatever, you know, some of them missed burst into
Speaker 1: tears about it and all this. And he said, I
Speaker 1: don't know what they're on about. And I said why,
Speaker 1: He said, I covered three or four hangings. Back before
Speaker 1: the war, he'd sent several hangings and covered them for
Speaker 1: the newspapers, and it was just sort of what he'd done. Well.
Speaker 2: Dickens was all in favor of hangings until he actually
Speaker 2: witnessed a public hanging and he was really put off
Speaker 2: for the way people behaved. Yes, and after that he
Speaker 2: wasn't in favor. And so they put the hangings, made
Speaker 2: them more private, and in a way that coincides with
Speaker 2: the rise of detective fiction, because you'd have the public
Speaker 2: spectacle of someone being hanged, and you can't do that anymore.
Speaker 2: So what do you do? Yeah, you read stories.
Speaker 3: You've read stories instead. Well, that's true.
Speaker 1: It was part of the creeping gentility of society was
Speaker 1: to read about this stuff rather than just go out
Speaker 1: and throw tomatoes at people in the stocks and watch
Speaker 1: them absolute they breathe their last on the gibbet, which
Speaker 1: would be a very awful thing.
Speaker 2: Unless if you've got an inexperienced hangman who didn't know
Speaker 2: how to do it proper. Lea, oh not good. Oh
Speaker 2: you're slightly strength, slowly strall.
Speaker 1: At one end you're slowly strangled, and the others sometimes
Speaker 1: their head would be pulled off, So not good either way.
Speaker 2: No, because especially for the people who had to clean
Speaker 2: up all the.
Speaker 1: Blood and blood and other bodily fluids.
Speaker 2: I think that they made them wear rubber nickers.
Speaker 1: Yes, it was a very savage business, and I think
Speaker 1: anybody that witnessed them didn't really love it unless they
Speaker 1: unless they were, you know, a little bit weird.
Speaker 2: Well, let's not get into capital punishment. But it doesn't
Speaker 2: really work.
Speaker 1: No, it doesn't.
Speaker 3: That's a good point.
Speaker 1: Capital punishment is a story for another day. So thanks
Speaker 1: Lucy for coming in and filling us in on Outrageous Fortunes.
Speaker 3: It's a great title, but of course, really.
Speaker 1: It's the name you had to give it because it's
Speaker 1: about Mary and the wonderful Mary Fortune and a scoundrel
Speaker 1: of a son, George.
Speaker 2: So we're indeed outrangers.
Speaker 1: Now, Liscy. Both books will be in bookshops by the
Speaker 1: time this broadcast goes to air. It so if you
Speaker 1: want it, go in and ask for Outrageous Fortunes and.
Speaker 2: Nothing but murders and bloodshed and hanging. It's a long day.
Speaker 2: I've like, can't here remember my own title. Thank you
Speaker 2: for having.
Speaker 1: Me, thank you, thanks for listening. Life and Crimes is
Speaker 1: a Sunday Herald Sun production for true crime Australia. Our
Speaker 1: producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns, features and more,
Speaker 1: go to harold'sun dot com dot au forward slash Andrew
Speaker 1: rule one word. For advertising inquiries, go to news Podcasts
Speaker 1: sold at news dot com dot au. That is all
Speaker 1: one word news podcasts sold And if you want further
Speaker 1: information about this episode, links are in the description.