Speaker 1: She's pickled inside and out. She's toughened inside and out.
Speaker 1: She's lost pretty much everyone close to her by death, disease,
Speaker 1: or her own bad behavior. She's burnt a million bridges,
Speaker 1: but she just keeps going because she has nothing. You know,
Speaker 1: she has no other form of resistance than to keep persevering.
Speaker 1: I do find that quite admirable in any ways, she
Speaker 1: puts up with conditions that would flaw most people.
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 back for part two of the
Speaker 2: story of vaudeville performer Mabel Walley. Make sure you listen
Speaker 2: to part one first. We're chatting again with Carin Ball,
Speaker 2: Senior curator at the History Trust of South Australia. As
Speaker 2: we heard in part one, Mabel gave birth in a
Speaker 2: destitute asylum after falling pregnant in scandalous circumstances, then ran
Speaker 2: away and joined a circus. Left part one, Mabel was
Speaker 2: beginning her journey onto the stage. Let's jump back in
Speaker 2: to find out what happened next. So back to South Africa.
Speaker 2: So eighteen ninety nine. What's happened next? So they finished
Speaker 2: the tour and then home, Yes, so without incident, I
Speaker 2: hope without incident.
Speaker 1: Yes, they come home briefly, and then they start another
Speaker 1: contract in nineteen oh three, and the trail kind of
Speaker 1: goes a little bit cold there. I haven't quite worked
Speaker 1: out how Eleanor who is then going by a stage
Speaker 1: name which I'm not going to tell you. I'm going
Speaker 1: to be a bit kober. She eventually makes her way
Speaker 1: back to Australia, I think via England, but I don't
Speaker 1: have any records of her performing there, but I'm fairly
Speaker 1: certain she arrives under her stage name in England. But somehow,
Speaker 1: at some point, by nineteen oh four, she's back in
Speaker 1: Australia and Mabel is in trouble. So Mabel has been
Speaker 1: I don't know what she's been doing between nineteen hundreds
Speaker 1: and nineteen oh four, but something goes terribly wrong and
Speaker 1: there seems to be a rift between Mabel and her daughter.
Speaker 1: So by nineteen oh four, her daughter is now nearly sixteen,
Speaker 1: and you know, I've got a sixteen year old girl home,
Speaker 1: so I know what they're like. And this young lady
Speaker 1: has a mind of her own. She wants to play
Speaker 1: on the stage, and she wants to be in the
Speaker 1: circus with her uncle, Mabel's brother. And Mabel is really
Speaker 1: starting to get into trouble with the law. She's living
Speaker 1: in Melbourne, away from the circus from the family show.
Speaker 1: She starts to get into trouble for bad behavior and
Speaker 1: living rough and for drinking in public. And soon in
Speaker 1: nineteen oh five, she really things go really badly for
Speaker 1: her and she gets a four year sentence for being
Speaker 1: an accessory to larceny. So, yes, something has gone terribly
Speaker 1: terribly wrong, and I don't know what it is, and
Speaker 1: I will never stop looking to try and unpick this.
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what happens. There's some kind of
Speaker 1: family rift and she and her daughter part ways. Okay,
Speaker 1: a Pentridge. So in the book there's the mug shots,
Speaker 1: which I think you've seen, And that was when I
Speaker 1: found those. When I found those mug shots on the
Speaker 1: Public Records Office of Victoria website, I think that was
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen. I hadn't ever actually seen a picture of
Speaker 1: Mabel until then. We didn't know what she looked like
Speaker 1: when we did the gallery, and so the only images
Speaker 1: I've ever had of her have been mugshots. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: doesn't both as well, but you know, so she gets this,
Speaker 1: she gets this sentence in nineteen oh five, and by
Speaker 1: the time she comes back out again, she is aged
Speaker 1: a decade and she's only been in prison for three years.
Speaker 2: And just for the benefit of our listeners, can you
Speaker 2: describe the mugshots or what you draw from those mug shots?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the first one is done not long after
Speaker 1: she's been sentenced. I'm assuming she's had her hair cut,
Speaker 1: so her hair is very short. She obviously wouldn't be
Speaker 1: a thing, wouldn't cause any issues now, but at the
Speaker 1: time was very demeaning for women to have their haircut.
Speaker 1: It obviously was to do things like prevent life, but
Speaker 1: yes had the extra added dimension of making them almost
Speaker 1: unwomanly because women always had long hair at the time.
Speaker 1: So she has this short, very short haircut. Her face
Speaker 1: is kind of round, and she has this almost kind
Speaker 1: of deer in the headlights look. And so she's got
Speaker 1: a face on face on and a side profile. And
Speaker 1: then next to that are two photos in similar so
Speaker 1: her face on a profile that were taken in nineteen
Speaker 1: oh eight, just before she's released, and She's only thirty
Speaker 1: six in that second set of pictures, but she looks
Speaker 1: a decade older to me.
Speaker 2: She actually actually looks to me like she's in her fifties.
Speaker 2: But she does have like a hint of a smile
Speaker 2: on her face, which I found quite intriguing. I was
Speaker 2: wondering what was making her smile. Perhaps something the photographer said.
Speaker 1: Well, I think she's had a really rough time while
Speaker 1: she's been inside. You know, she hasn't seen her family
Speaker 1: for over three years. All sorts of things have happened
Speaker 1: in the background, and really I think she's at a
Speaker 1: point where they can't really throw anything else at her.
Speaker 1: She has experienced the worst that she can experience. Also,
Speaker 1: she thinks at that point, and I think she discovers
Speaker 1: this kind of grit inside her that has to get
Speaker 1: her through this three year sentence. Yes, so she does
Speaker 1: have this kind of knowing smile almost or she's really
Speaker 1: kind of you know, eyeballing the photographer and saying, you
Speaker 1: think you're in a position of power, but I've got
Speaker 1: this structure that is holding me up inside.
Speaker 2: Now, Karin, if you're happy to share the mugshots with me,
Speaker 2: I would love to add them to the story that
Speaker 2: accompanies this podcast for our readers to see. So that's
Speaker 2: the story that's in The Herald's son in print and
Speaker 2: also online. Are you happy to do that, of course,
Speaker 2: so that readers and listeners can see what we're talking
Speaker 2: about as well.
Speaker 1: Yes, she's an interesting looking lady. She's certainly not beauty
Speaker 1: by the standards of the day, but she has real
Speaker 1: in her face and that was one of the things
Speaker 1: I think that really kind of spurred me onwards.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. And while we're talking about photos, there's a picture
Speaker 2: on the front of your book, and it's not a
Speaker 2: photo of her, but it's what you have imagined she
Speaker 2: might have looked like during her circus career. So where
Speaker 2: did you get the picture from? And can you describe
Speaker 2: what that picture is like?
Speaker 1: So it's a postcard from the National Library of an
Speaker 1: unnamed French artist performing artist. So it's a black and
Speaker 1: white picture that's been colorized by hand. So it's a
Speaker 1: lady with a gorgeous pink kind of chiffon, almost Greek
Speaker 1: goddess kind of costume, but very short in the leg.
Speaker 1: You can just see a little kind of flash of
Speaker 1: white tights underneath, and she's holding a set of diablos,
Speaker 1: so juggling sticks with the string and the little kind
Speaker 1: of yo yo thing that jumps on the string. And
Speaker 1: so she is in this beautiful kind of classicals. She's
Speaker 1: got ribbons in her hair, her lips have been painted.
Speaker 1: It's just just as soon as I saw it, I said,
Speaker 1: that is the cover of the book, and so it's
Speaker 1: my own little piece of vaudeville and circus flim flam.
Speaker 1: It's not Mabel, but it certainly could have been someone
Speaker 1: like Mabel, and it's very likely that she wore something
Speaker 1: like that when she was performing. You know, the whole
Speaker 1: the whole circus of vaudeville thing is about an actor
Speaker 1: would be given a new costume and new makeup and
Speaker 1: then passed off as a new person or four different
Speaker 1: acts would actually be comprised of the same people, but
Speaker 1: they've been you know, they've had changes to make them
Speaker 1: look like different people. So there's there's all this kind
Speaker 1: of sleight of hand that happens in these shows. You know,
Speaker 1: a performer like Elna, who might have been seven or
Speaker 1: eight or nine, would be would be billed as a
Speaker 1: child of five Summers, you know, to make it seem
Speaker 1: more exciting. That they're younger than they should than they
Speaker 1: actually are, all of these things. So using that picture, yes,
Speaker 1: it's my own way of kind of getting into the
Speaker 1: mindset of in vaudeville and theater truth, whatever you say
Speaker 1: it is. So there we go. That's where that picture
Speaker 1: comes from.
Speaker 2: I look at that picture and I think, how far
Speaker 2: has she come in her life from this destitute asylum
Speaker 2: girl to this amazing world, This amazing world where she's
Speaker 2: traveling around the world, this vaudeville life, traveling from continent
Speaker 2: to continent on the stage. She came so far and
Speaker 2: then she fell so far to end up in Penridge
Speaker 2: for four years for the crime of larceny, you know,
Speaker 2: an incredible an incredible, colorful life, a tragic life. Do
Speaker 2: we know any more about the crime that she ended
Speaker 2: up in Penridge for?
Speaker 1: So she's an accessory to larsony. So essentially what happens
Speaker 1: is that she meets a gentleman called mister Pert on
Speaker 1: the streets in Melbourne and she takes him back to
Speaker 1: a hotel where her side man or whatever beats him up.
Speaker 1: So it's a shakedown. The intimation is that she may
Speaker 1: have been doing sex work, although she's not actually accused
Speaker 1: of prostitution in her trial, actually recommends clemency, but the
Speaker 1: judge is not having it, and he gives her this
Speaker 1: four year sentence and she serves just under three years.
Speaker 1: So she's just at the really unfortunate end of some
Speaker 1: new kind of legislation and the way of dealing with
Speaker 1: particularly destitute women on the street. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of anxiety in Melbourne in the late nineteenth early twentieth
Speaker 1: century that street population was increasing and that it's you know,
Speaker 1: a place of immorality and bad behavior and sex and
Speaker 1: money and all this kind of stuff. So she's really
Speaker 1: unfortunate that she's kind of tired with this thrush because
Speaker 1: up until then, the worst offense that she'd committed was
Speaker 1: bad language. And she gets, you know, she gets a
Speaker 1: fine for that. What she does five days in the
Speaker 1: lock up if she can't pay the fine, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. So she's very much at the edges of
Speaker 1: the criminal world at that point, and then she gets
Speaker 1: this stinging sentence and when she comes out, really that
Speaker 1: means that she is now considered part of the criminal
Speaker 1: underclass and it all goes downhill from there. Essentially. Yeah,
Speaker 1: poor Mabel, it's like watching a car craft from one
Speaker 1: hundred years distant, and every time I just wish, just once,
Speaker 1: just please once, can she not muck it up? You
Speaker 1: want her to do well. She tries so hard in
Speaker 1: some ways. In another way she doesn't try at all,
Speaker 1: because that's mable for you. But you know, she has
Speaker 1: this spirit and spark that I found completely irresistible. So
Speaker 1: when things start to go wrong, she starts to slide
Speaker 1: down the social scale and she ends up with a
Speaker 1: series of sentences for being drunk and vagrant. So because
Speaker 1: she's on house, she's homeless, and she's living rough and
Speaker 1: you know, working and doing all this sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: And so she's in and out of Penridge, in and
Speaker 1: out of Pentridge, in and out of Pentridge. She does
Speaker 1: a couple of sessions with people like the Salvation Army,
Speaker 1: and there's St. Vincent de Paul's to do what we
Speaker 1: would now think of as probably rehab because she's drinking
Speaker 1: by this point. But nothing really sticks for her, and
Speaker 1: so she just the next few decades are really moving
Speaker 1: from place to place, trying to make her fresh start
Speaker 1: and then unsuccessfully doing so. But she does have some
Speaker 1: really big adventures along the way. So as she slides
Speaker 1: down the social scale. She'd becomes stuck in this cycle
Speaker 1: of she is living rough, she's drinking, she's getting into trouble.
Speaker 1: She does a few short sentences and then she's of
Speaker 1: course more noticeable to the police because she's been in
Speaker 1: the lock up recently, so she tries to make a
Speaker 1: break for it. She actually comes back to South Australia
Speaker 1: in nineteen twelve and she's trying to she's trying to
Speaker 1: do the best she can. But within a few days
Speaker 1: really of landing, she's back in prison for sleeping rough
Speaker 1: on Hindley Street. She can't leave Hindley Street, you know,
Speaker 1: it's her home and her spiritual home. And so she
Speaker 1: is given a chance and she's allowed to leave Adelaide
Speaker 1: to make a new start in the country, and she
Speaker 1: ends up in Port Lincoln and she very quickly shacks
Speaker 1: up with a very unsuitable man called MacDonald. At this
Speaker 1: point she's putting on a Scottish accent and pretending that
Speaker 1: she's from Scotland. She's using this theatrical vent all the time,
Speaker 1: which is another reason why I'm so fond of her.
Speaker 1: She's just clearly very clever and thinks on her feet
Speaker 1: but when she's in Port Lincoln, she does a couple
Speaker 1: of short sentences for being drunk. By that time, she's
Speaker 1: actually addicted to methylated spirits, so she's desperate for a drink.
Speaker 1: And so when she's in Port Link and Jail, at
Speaker 1: one point she just pushes a load of boxes against
Speaker 1: a low fence in the cell yard and hooks it
Speaker 1: over a ship. Yeah, she stated this wonderful one woman
Speaker 1: prison break. She's picked up an hour later by the car. Oh,
Speaker 1: desperate for a drink. She says she feels like she's
Speaker 1: dying because she has probably got the DTS, so she
Speaker 1: probably really feels like she's dying. So, yes, it's not
Speaker 1: a very successful prison break. But just the fact that
Speaker 1: she sees this opportunity and decides to take it good
Speaker 1: for her quite charming. Yes, you know, she just refuses
Speaker 1: to be contained.
Speaker 2: So how old was she at this point?
Speaker 1: So that's nineteen twelve or third, So she's forty at
Speaker 1: that point. She's still young by any.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she's still got plenty of years.
Speaker 1: To live she has, Yes, she's got plenty of plenty
Speaker 1: of spirit and spark. But you know, once she's caught
Speaker 1: after having made this one woman prison break, she gets
Speaker 1: sent to Adelaide jail and then it's all over. You know,
Speaker 1: she can't there's no more coffee over fences when you're
Speaker 1: at Adelaide jail. And unfortunately she's also caught up in a
Speaker 1: cycle of another piece of legislation that doesn't work in
Speaker 1: her favor. So in nineteen thirteen, South Australia introduces the
Speaker 1: Inebriates Act. It's a way of dealing with problem drinking.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of social concern about excessive alcohol consumption,
Speaker 1: of course, particularly by working class people, and women's drinking
Speaker 1: in particular is seen as really problematic because there are
Speaker 1: all sorts of implications for the you know, for the
Speaker 1: future of Australia as a nation, and the sort of
Speaker 1: people and children that women are producing if they're you know,
Speaker 1: if they're a low character or low physical attribute because
Speaker 1: they're drinking. So there's a lot of anxiety about this
Speaker 1: sort of thing. So South Australia introduces this new legislation
Speaker 1: which convicted inebriates. If you get if you get arrested
Speaker 1: for being drunk more than three times in a twelve
Speaker 1: month period, you're then given a compulsory sentence as a
Speaker 1: convicted inebriate, and the first sentence is eighteen months, the
Speaker 1: second sentence is two years, and the third sentence onwards
Speaker 1: is at his at his majesty's pleasure. So really unfortunately,
Speaker 1: whereas in Melbourne she might have got three months, four months,
Speaker 1: six months for being drunken disorderly, in Adelaide she's suddenly
Speaker 1: doing these very very long sentences.
Speaker 2: So the prisons must have just been full.
Speaker 1: Well, see what happens is that Adelaide Jail and sorry
Speaker 1: part of Adelaide Jail and Gladstone Jail are gazetted as
Speaker 1: inebriates institutions, so they become this kind of place that
Speaker 1: we would now think of potentially as rehab. You know,
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be an inebriates retreat, it's supposed to
Speaker 1: be a place where they can dry out and you know,
Speaker 1: get back on their feet, but essentially it's jail. They're
Speaker 1: in jail being looked after by prison warden's doing exactly
Speaker 1: the same backbreaking work that prisoners are doing, and in
Speaker 1: fact they're in for longer sentences and then they're subject
Speaker 1: to more stringent controls afterwards because they're released on license
Speaker 1: and if they break their license again then they immediately
Speaker 1: get the second longer sentence. So she does eighteen months
Speaker 1: and she's only out for a month or two, breaks
Speaker 1: her license and she has to go back in again
Speaker 1: for two years, and she begs in begs in court,
Speaker 1: you know, please don't send me back there. I've just
Speaker 1: done nineteen months actually at Gladstone, and you know, she
Speaker 1: comes down to Adelaide and she has some teeth out,
Speaker 1: and she has some cocaine which is legally prescribed, but
Speaker 1: then she decides to have a couple of glasses of
Speaker 1: brandy on top and passes out in light square. Because
Speaker 1: she's broken her parole, she is sent back for two years.
Speaker 1: So it's a really quite tough system, and she is
Speaker 1: right at the pointy end of it. She is Gladstone's
Speaker 1: female and the Brittan number two and Adelaide Jail's female
Speaker 1: neb Brittan number four, So she is right at the
Speaker 1: beginning of this new system coming in and it doesn't
Speaker 1: play out well for her. Over the next decade, between
Speaker 1: nineteen thirteen and nineteen twenty three, she spends what years,
Speaker 1: nearly seven or eight years in jail in total, and
Speaker 1: she's only out for weeks sometimes months before she's back again,
Speaker 1: and it's really tough conditions as well. And then of
Speaker 1: course the war comes and everything gets tougher, you know,
Speaker 1: the rations get tougher in prison, and water is really
Speaker 1: bad at Gladstone and they have to boil it all
Speaker 1: and it's just a really, really unpleasant environment.
Speaker 2: We'll be back shortly to hear more about Mabel's life,
Speaker 2: so stay with us. And after that, did she get
Speaker 2: out for good or was she still in and out
Speaker 2: of prison for the rest of her life?
Speaker 1: Oh, Mabel. She eventually goes back to Melbourne in nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty three, so she you know, she has burnt all
Speaker 1: her bridges, but the magistrate who picks her up gives
Speaker 1: her a train pass and tells her to go. You know,
Speaker 1: they'll hold off sending her back to prison if she
Speaker 1: you know, for a day or two until she leaves.
Speaker 1: And at this point she's still trying to get in
Speaker 1: touch with her brother's circus. Her brother circus has been
Speaker 1: to New Zealand for several years and then come back,
Speaker 1: and she says that she's going to meet them at
Speaker 1: Langhorn Creek at one point, but then she MUCKs it
Speaker 1: up again and she ends up in the Slammer when
Speaker 1: they're going past and she misses them. She she marries
Speaker 1: Big Musley in nineteen eighteen, so she marries her second
Speaker 1: husband while her first husband is alive and well in
Speaker 1: Western Australia, and her second husband is another one of these.
Speaker 1: His name is Patrick Madden. He's a tall, quite good
Speaker 1: looking Irishman who's also one of these people who drinks
Speaker 1: in the west end of Finley Street, around Light Square
Speaker 1: and all that lot. She comes out of prison just
Speaker 1: after Armistice in nineteen eighteen, so the end of the
Speaker 1: war in nineteen eighteen. She's only out for three days
Speaker 1: before she marries Patrick Madden, so something must have been
Speaker 1: going on there. They must have known each other beforehand,
Speaker 1: or it was a really well wind romance. But it
Speaker 1: doesn't last. He's back in the Slammer in weeks and
Speaker 1: so is she, and there's no indication that they actually
Speaker 1: reconcile in any way. So yeah, she's living this very
Speaker 1: kind of hand to mouth life when she's not in prison,
Speaker 1: but the bulk of her time she is in prison,
Speaker 1: which is why in nineteen twenty three she takes this
Speaker 1: free pass to go back to Melbourne, and after that
Speaker 1: she never comes back to South Australia, which is really
Speaker 1: quite sad. So she's in Melbourne and she has all
Speaker 1: these great ambitions that she's going to live a life
Speaker 1: of the straightened arrow and she's going to be a
Speaker 1: good girl. But that never really works out for Mabel.
Speaker 1: She just can't help herself, and really, I mean she
Speaker 1: becomes institutionalized. So she does again more sentences for being vagrant,
Speaker 1: for being drunken, disorderly, for bad language, and really spends
Speaker 1: the next ten years after she gets back to Melbourne
Speaker 1: doing that. It's a pretty sad it's a pretty sad tale.
Speaker 1: But again has all the you know, has the occasional
Speaker 1: light moment. She's arrested at one point for dancing in
Speaker 1: the middle of Victoria Street in Melbourne's CBD in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night, and you know it, goes off
Speaker 1: to Pentridge to do a few weeks after doing that.
Speaker 1: So she has these wonderful little light moments, and you know,
Speaker 1: she's she's lived a very vibrant life. She's very interested
Speaker 1: in music and the stage, I think, and I think
Speaker 1: there are lots of you know, live performance is still
Speaker 1: a massive, massive thing at that point. So I think
Speaker 1: she's trying to kind of move in this in this world,
Speaker 1: and you know, maybe she hangs around theater doors and
Speaker 1: you know, tries to get in and see shows and
Speaker 1: stuff all that kind of thing. I don't have a
Speaker 1: lot of evidence about what her life outside of prison
Speaker 1: is like, other than the fact that she is writing
Speaker 1: letters to try and catch up with her brother's circus,
Speaker 1: and she's trying to you know, she does more time
Speaker 1: with the Salvasian Army in Melbourne as well, having done
Speaker 1: time with them in Adelaide. So she tries all these
Speaker 1: different approaches, but nothing quite sticks for her. And then
Speaker 1: towards the end of her life, it's the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: the depression has come. Street life in Melbourne is really tough,
Speaker 1: you know. Nineteen thirty three, George Orwell releases his book
Speaker 1: Down and Out in Paris and London, which tells you
Speaker 1: a lot about what life on the street would have
Speaker 1: been like at this period. And women are a very
Speaker 1: small part of this world. You know, they might be
Speaker 1: five to ten percent of the homeless population in Melbourne
Speaker 1: at the time. You know, they are a tiny, reviled
Speaker 1: subset of a subset of society that has already reviled
Speaker 1: by the mainstream, and so it's a really tough existence,
Speaker 1: you know. But you can see by her criminal record
Speaker 1: that she is essentially living a living rough in a
Speaker 1: patch of suburbs that moves around from Melbourne, North Melbourne, Carlton, Fitzroy.
Speaker 1: She's kind of pacing these areas like almost like a
Speaker 1: caged animals and the institutionalized. She doesn't want to be
Speaker 1: in jail, but she also can't cope when she's not
Speaker 1: in jail. It's a sad thing to have to watch
Speaker 1: and to put myself in that mindset. I actually spent
Speaker 1: a long weekend in Melbourne in the rain, walking around
Speaker 1: those cobblestone streets in Fitzroy and Carton and North Melbourne,
Speaker 1: trying to feel what that felt like. And it was
Speaker 1: quite it was quite challenging. You know, I'm a woman
Speaker 1: over fifty and I was walking around these streets in
Speaker 1: the rain and the cold, and I could go back
Speaker 1: to my hotel any time I liked. It was really
Speaker 1: you know, illuminating to kind of put myself in that
Speaker 1: mindset of you know, what would it have been like
Speaker 1: for her, you know, she would have been going from.
Speaker 1: You know, she might have had a cup of tea
Speaker 1: for breakfast with the Salvation Army in one suburb and
Speaker 1: then walked to the other side of the city to
Speaker 1: go and have lunch at a soup kitchen, and then
Speaker 1: walk to a different suburb for the evening to find
Speaker 1: somewhere to doss, you know, for a doss house or
Speaker 1: under a bridge, or she might have been able to
Speaker 1: get into a temporary accommodation of some description. But she
Speaker 1: doesn't like doing though, is because the approach in lots
Speaker 1: of those places is plain food, lots of prayer, lots
Speaker 1: of introspection. I think that really works for her. So
Speaker 1: she is moving around this small set of inner Melbourne
Speaker 1: suburbs trying to make her way in and out of prison.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that I realized when I
Speaker 1: was doing the research for this, as she gets older,
Speaker 1: the gaps between her incarcerations get shorter and shorter and shorter.
Speaker 1: In her thirties or forties, she might have had months,
Speaker 1: maybe even half a year or a year or more
Speaker 1: where she's not in prison. When she's in her fifties
Speaker 1: and going into her sixties, she's out for a fortnight
Speaker 1: or a week three before she's back in again for
Speaker 1: three months or two months or a month or whatever.
Speaker 1: So it's a very kind of relentless, relentless life.
Speaker 2: And she was obviously a heavy drinker, and she spent
Speaker 2: years in prison, so it's pretty remarkable that she lived
Speaker 2: such a long life. So she was what late sixties
Speaker 2: or early seventies by the time she dies.
Speaker 1: She dies and she's pickled inside and out. She's toughened
Speaker 1: inside and out. She's lost pretty much everyone close to
Speaker 1: her by death, disease, or her own bad behavior. She's
Speaker 1: burnt a million bridges. But she just keeps going because
Speaker 1: she has nothing. You know, she has no other form
Speaker 1: of resistance than to keep persevering. And I do find
Speaker 1: that quite admirable in many ways. You know, she puts
Speaker 1: up with conditions that would flow most people. She endure,
Speaker 1: endures trauma and tragedy that would you know, sideline anybody,
Speaker 1: But she keeps going, you know, there's that phrase. But
Speaker 1: she persisted, and she does. She just keeps going because
Speaker 1: she has no other choice. She has, you know, she
Speaker 1: has not a lot of education, not a lot of
Speaker 1: family left by this point, very few options. She doesn't
Speaker 1: really have a skill or a trade. She's done a
Speaker 1: hell of a lot of laundry and a hell of
Speaker 1: a lot of sewing in prison. She probably never wants
Speaker 1: to scrub a floor again, you know, and she's you know,
Speaker 1: this is the inverse of her high points of her
Speaker 1: career of being on the stage in New Zealand, giving
Speaker 1: this vital, exciting life under the electric lights of the theater.
Speaker 2: And then I hope she at least had her memory
Speaker 2: right up until the end and could remember those incredible days.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely she does. Because one of the things I
Speaker 1: found very late in the piece while I was doing
Speaker 1: my trip to Melbourne where I and that was like
Speaker 1: there was that little window in twenty twenty one where
Speaker 1: you could go to Melbourne for a few weeks at
Speaker 1: the beginning of twenty twenty one when they between their lockdowns,
Speaker 1: and that was when I went and walked around in
Speaker 1: the rain and literally I was at the airport on
Speaker 1: the way back Google it, you know, going through Trove,
Speaker 1: which is the online newspapers through the National Winmy of
Speaker 1: Australia one hundred percent recommend fabulous resource. I was looking
Speaker 1: just to see if I could find an end to
Speaker 1: this story because I've spent this weekend, you know, walking
Speaker 1: around in the rain feeling, oh my god, how the
Speaker 1: hell am I going to end this story? And I
Speaker 1: found a newspaper report that says that she is sent
Speaker 1: to Ballarat Benevolent Home in mid to late nineteen thirty six.
Speaker 1: She's had a fall of suther description probably just you know,
Speaker 1: a drunken tumble in the street. Although she says in
Speaker 1: that she's interviewed or she's interviewed by repute, it says
Speaker 1: that she's had an accident in the circus. But that's poppycock.
Speaker 1: You know, she hasn't been in the circus for twenty
Speaker 1: or thirty years at that point. But you know, as
Speaker 1: Mabel always does, she tries to put a gloss on it.
Speaker 1: And so she's at Ballarat Benevolent Asylum and she catches
Speaker 1: wind that her brother's circus is coming to Ballarat for
Speaker 1: the first time in a long time, and she pulls
Speaker 1: whatever strings she has left and she gets the old
Speaker 1: men from the asylum to be able to go to
Speaker 1: the circus show for free. Fabulous. So yeah, she doesn't
Speaker 1: go because she is bedridden after a fall that she
Speaker 1: In the report, it says, you know, because she's had
Speaker 1: an accident when she was working in the circus, which,
Speaker 1: as I said, I know that that's not correct, so
Speaker 1: she doesn't go, but she makes this arrangement so she's
Speaker 1: still even after all that time and all the bridges
Speaker 1: that she's burnt and all the people that she's lost,
Speaker 1: she has enough connections to make that happen. And that
Speaker 1: was a wonderful way for me to finish the story,
Speaker 1: because she dies only a few months later. She dies
Speaker 1: early in nineteen thirty seven, and it just seemed to me,
Speaker 1: you know, it's her final performance. She has this very
Speaker 1: very high and then she has these very very lows,
Speaker 1: and then I like to think of her, you know,
Speaker 1: tucked up at ballaratte Asylum in her bed, you know,
Speaker 1: sending telegrams or making these requests for the circus to come,
Speaker 1: and she's got this captive audience for all these incredible
Speaker 1: tales that she can tell, these tall stories, and some
Speaker 1: of them might even be true, and you know that
Speaker 1: she can have this one last performance of being this
Speaker 1: aging circus star who still has some cachet and can
Speaker 1: still pull these strings. And to me, that was just
Speaker 1: a wonderful place to end did because it's like a
Speaker 1: kind of you know, last minute redemption of her. And
Speaker 1: I was so pleased when I found that newspaper report
Speaker 1: because I had really worried about how I was going
Speaker 1: to finish this really quite tale and then yeah, so
Speaker 1: she's just doing this last little show just for the
Speaker 1: audience of the Benevolent Home, pretending to be you know,
Speaker 1: the former start of stage and ring that in some
Speaker 1: ways she was. And so yeah, that was that was
Speaker 1: the end. She dies very early in nineteen thirty seven
Speaker 1: of senile decay, which is you know, it was very
Speaker 1: commonly listed as the cause of death, but realistically she
Speaker 1: was pretty pickled by that point. And she is buried
Speaker 1: at Ballarat New Cemetery, which I went to last year.
Speaker 1: Had a little cry. She's in an unmarked section, so
Speaker 1: there's just a lawned area. A lot of the older
Speaker 1: particularly the pauper graves, aren't very well recorded, and so
Speaker 1: what the cemetery has done is there's a lovely, beautiful
Speaker 1: lawned area under some trees with a big like a
Speaker 1: big round rock that's got a memorial plaque on it
Speaker 1: that says, you know, there are thousands of people buried
Speaker 1: in this area. But we don't have any specific information
Speaker 1: about where the exact graves are, so I took a
Speaker 1: little bunch of flowers and I laid it on the memorial.
Speaker 1: I had a little cry under the trees. And I
Speaker 1: had never felt at any closer to her than I
Speaker 1: did at that moment, which was really cool. Yeah, for
Speaker 1: eight years I worked in the building that she had
Speaker 1: her daughter in, but actually being able to go there
Speaker 1: and know that she was meters away, even though I
Speaker 1: didn't have a specific gravesite to go to, it was
Speaker 1: a really lovely moment of closure. And I wasn't expecting
Speaker 1: it to be as emotional as it was, and it
Speaker 1: was just a really lovely way to say goodbye to Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a great moment.
Speaker 2: We'll be back soon to hear more about Mabel. To
Speaker 2: stay with us, and did you ever find out what
Speaker 2: happened to Mabel's daughter?
Speaker 1: I did, but not going to anybody here is interested.
Speaker 1: Will have to read the book.
Speaker 2: Okay, And just one more question, Karin, you mentioned in
Speaker 2: the notes that you sent me about this story a
Speaker 2: link between Mabel and Russian spies.
Speaker 1: What's that all about? Yeah, this is one of the
Speaker 1: wonderful things about researching this this world of vaudeville and circus,
Speaker 1: particularly the small jobbing circuss who haven't been very well recorded,
Speaker 1: is that there's this huge kind of cast of thousands
Speaker 1: of people who kind of flit in and out of
Speaker 1: these various troops. And one of them, well, actually there's
Speaker 1: a trio that we're fascinating. So snake charmers, Russian spies
Speaker 1: and Daisy Baits, yes, actually Daisy Baits all kind of
Speaker 1: are in the orbit of Mabel's brother's circus. The Russian Spy.
Speaker 1: He's a sharpshooter who claims to be a Russian dissident.
Speaker 1: He isn't, but actually his wife is. And he's a
Speaker 1: master armsman, so he does things like, you know, shoots
Speaker 1: apples off people's heads at you know, five hundred yards
Speaker 1: of this kind of stuff. But yes, he claims to
Speaker 1: be a former white Russian spy but he's not. But
Speaker 1: his wife really was a white Russian dissident who comes
Speaker 1: to Australia. So yeah, there's these amazing, colorful characters that
Speaker 1: you just couldn't make up. And while I was writing it,
Speaker 1: I was texting my colleague Miikki and saying, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: believe who's turned up now you know, there's this Russian
Speaker 1: spy you wouldn't play, snake chumps who get bitten andla.
Speaker 1: So yes, it's a cast of thousands who I never
Speaker 1: knew existed, and I think everyone will really enjoy finding
Speaker 1: out about this very colorful, very rich, very exciting world
Speaker 1: that is entirely forgotten by mainstream life these days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just a wonderful playground to explore. And I
Speaker 1: spent five years essentially writing Mabel, and I'm kind of
Speaker 1: sad to see it go, but I will never stop looking.
Speaker 1: You know, there's still that five year gap between ninety
Speaker 1: nine in nineteen oh four that I don't know what
Speaker 1: she was up to. So I will never stop looking
Speaker 1: for Mabel. She's going to be with me forever, much
Speaker 1: to the chagrin of my children, like my mum, what
Speaker 1: are you doing? Maybe she's an obsession. You know, she
Speaker 1: got under my skin and she didn't want to leave.
Speaker 1: So this book was really a way of kind of
Speaker 1: honoring that life where she was seen as worthless for
Speaker 1: most of her life. You know, she was at the
Speaker 1: very edge of society. But I think she deserves a
Speaker 1: whole lot more, and I think many women like her
Speaker 1: deserved a whole lot more, and that was one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why I wrote the book.
Speaker 2: Fantastic Now, just to remind listeners the book, it's called
Speaker 2: Three Ring Circus, The Dramatic, mysterious and tragical Life of
Speaker 2: Mabel Walley, a destitute asylum Girl. Where's the best place
Speaker 2: for people to buy the book?
Speaker 1: So, it's published by Australian Scholarly in North Melbourne. It's
Speaker 1: readily available through Dimicks or you can order it off
Speaker 1: the Australian Scholarly website. I would actually also like to
Speaker 1: to my horn that the book was awarded the Historical
Speaker 1: Society of South Australia Keen Medal for Historical Nonfiction in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. It was the joint winner of the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two Medal round. So I actually got a lovely, lovely,
Speaker 1: nice piece of bronze for that. Well done, that's really nice,
Speaker 1: gat versions, that was wonderful.
Speaker 2: And we'll actually put the link to buy a copy
Speaker 2: of the book in the show notes to this episode
Speaker 2: if any listeners would like to buy a copy. Well,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for sharing the story with us today. Krein,
Speaker 2: don't really enjoyed it, no worries.
Speaker 1: You're very welcome.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. This has been In Black and White,
Speaker 2: a podcast about some of Australia's forgotten characters, written and
Speaker 2: hosted by me Jen Kelly, edited by Nina Young and
Speaker 2: produced by John Tiburton. You can find all the stories
Speaker 2: and photos associated with our episodes at Heraldsun dot com
Speaker 2: dot au slash ib aw. If you've enjoyed this podcast,
Speaker 2: we'd love you to leave a five star rating on
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts. Even better, leave a review. Any comments or
Speaker 2: questions please email me at In Black and White at
Speaker 2: Heroldsun dot com dot au. Any clarifications or updates will
Speaker 2: appear in the show notes for each episode, and to
Speaker 2: get notified when each new episode comes out, make sure
Speaker 2: you subscribe to the podcast feed