WEBVTT - Without a will and a way 0:00:01.400 --> 0:00:05.800 Buried underneath this modern court case, in our own time, 0:00:05.880 --> 0:00:09.400 in our own year of twenty twenty six, is a 0:00:09.480 --> 0:00:15.360 story of human frailty and passion and heartbreak and crimes 0:00:15.360 --> 0:00:18.280 of the heart. One of the things I've worked out 0:00:18.400 --> 0:00:21.680 over years of looking at criminal stuff is that people 0:00:21.800 --> 0:00:25.640 tend to do similar things. Killers nearly always dump or 0:00:25.680 --> 0:00:29.120 buried bodies in an area they know, an area they've 0:00:29.160 --> 0:00:33.400 been to before. I'm Andrew Rule. This is life and crimes. 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:36.959 Today we've got something a little bit different, and this 0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:40.839 is what I've called a crime of the heart. Because 0:00:40.880 --> 0:00:43.800 not all crimes are about bullets and blood poison or 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:48.120 any of that sort of stuff. There are other sort 0:00:48.120 --> 0:00:53.440 of crime, and these are where acts of carelessness and 0:00:53.520 --> 0:00:58.680 cruelty and passion have lasting effects that can hang over 0:00:58.760 --> 0:01:04.080 families for generations until the day when the past reaches out. 0:01:05.319 --> 0:01:08.160 And that's what we're talking about today. This is the 0:01:08.240 --> 0:01:12.560 strange case of an old block called George Thomas Watson, 0:01:13.200 --> 0:01:16.959 who might never have known the true story of his 0:01:17.160 --> 0:01:22.000 birth because he grew up in Melbourne with the lie 0:01:22.640 --> 0:01:28.840 that his mother had woven around his entire life. George 0:01:28.880 --> 0:01:33.440 died back in early twenty and eleven eighty one years old. 0:01:33.520 --> 0:01:37.800 He was an old, childless bachelor with no close relatives 0:01:37.840 --> 0:01:41.840 at all. He had no first cousins, and he had 0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:45.560 no uncles and aunts, and his dear old mother, the 0:01:45.600 --> 0:01:48.400 one who's at the heart of this story, had died 0:01:48.440 --> 0:01:51.960 back in nineteen eighty five at a very great age, 0:01:52.240 --> 0:01:56.040 and like some people, George had not got around to 0:01:56.120 --> 0:02:00.760 making a will. Now, this wouldn't have matted much if 0:02:00.760 --> 0:02:04.520 he'd had nothing much to leave, and it wouldn't have 0:02:04.600 --> 0:02:09.559 mattered much if George's family affairs had been fairly conventional. 0:02:10.440 --> 0:02:14.240 But there were two differences. One is George did have 0:02:14.320 --> 0:02:19.320 something to leave. George had been studious and clever enough 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:23.600 to become an engineer. He actually owned the big, double 0:02:23.639 --> 0:02:27.720 story Victorian house that he lived in in Prince's Park 0:02:27.800 --> 0:02:31.600 otherwise known as North Carlton or Carlton North, and he 0:02:31.680 --> 0:02:35.960 had substantial assets as well. He had assets apart from 0:02:36.200 --> 0:02:39.600 the house, and I'm not sure if it was shares 0:02:39.639 --> 0:02:42.639 and money in the bank and other properties or what, 0:02:42.760 --> 0:02:45.600 but he had quite a bit. And he'd put that 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:49.040 together either from his own efforts entirely, which is possible, 0:02:49.639 --> 0:02:55.560 or possibly maybe because he'd had a silent benefactor a 0:02:55.600 --> 0:02:59.079 lifetime ago. Maybe he got a little leg up when 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:02.080 he was young. We'll never really know that for sure. 0:03:03.480 --> 0:03:08.160 Probably doesn't matter, but it's intriguing now. George Watson's estate 0:03:08.480 --> 0:03:12.320 was estimated when he died in twenty eleven at two 0:03:12.400 --> 0:03:16.079 point three million. That's in twenty and eleven dollars, which 0:03:16.080 --> 0:03:18.560 are worth a lot less now when it comes to 0:03:18.760 --> 0:03:22.800 real estate. But when his house at twenty Arnold Street 0:03:23.360 --> 0:03:26.919 sold late that year, it sold for far more than 0:03:26.960 --> 0:03:29.960 its estimated value. I think they estimated the value at 0:03:30.000 --> 0:03:33.359 one point three million, and they got one point five 0:03:33.360 --> 0:03:36.440 to five or something like that, So his estate was 0:03:36.480 --> 0:03:39.720 actually more by the end of that year, was more 0:03:40.360 --> 0:03:45.960 than the estimation. So I'm saying that it was probably 0:03:46.120 --> 0:03:49.600 even in the year he died, worth more like two 0:03:49.600 --> 0:03:51.800 and a half or more, two and a half million 0:03:51.880 --> 0:03:55.680 or more. Now, this two and a half million, let's say, 0:03:56.400 --> 0:03:59.640 was held in trust by the state trustees, which is 0:04:00.480 --> 0:04:05.320 not unusual. When people die intestate, the state trustees look 0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:09.280 after the estate, pending distribution of that estate to the 0:04:09.480 --> 0:04:14.320 legitimate heirs, and normally that can be slow, but it 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:18.799 follows a process and it all happens. Now it's routine 0:04:19.000 --> 0:04:22.599 when someone dies intestate, that is, without making a will, 0:04:23.080 --> 0:04:28.279 that the state trustees, in their wisdom, search for next 0:04:28.279 --> 0:04:33.120 of kin to identify who should inherit. Now, this can 0:04:33.200 --> 0:04:36.080 be slow, and it can be costly for the estate, 0:04:36.680 --> 0:04:39.279 which of course bears all the costs. They just take 0:04:39.320 --> 0:04:42.960 it off the top. But it should be reasonably fair, 0:04:43.920 --> 0:04:47.520 or at least be equally unfair to everyone. Fairly fair, 0:04:48.120 --> 0:04:51.800 the state trustees, i understand, use their own in house 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:57.600 genealogy people to check out who's related to whom. Now, 0:04:57.640 --> 0:05:01.080 if you die without leaving a will, then it's up 0:05:01.080 --> 0:05:03.440 for grabs who's related to you, So they look through 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:09.840 your birth certificate. Then they established backwards, just like all genealogists, 0:05:10.080 --> 0:05:12.800 who mom and dad were, who your grandparents were, who 0:05:12.880 --> 0:05:15.440 your siblings are, and all that stuff. But it's all 0:05:15.440 --> 0:05:20.200 got to be documented legally and properly. And it turns 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:23.880 out with George Watson that they hit a bit of 0:05:24.200 --> 0:05:27.679 a glitch. They worked out that the person named as 0:05:27.720 --> 0:05:32.840 his mother on his birth certificate that she wasn't any 0:05:33.000 --> 0:05:37.280 Watson has claimed she was in fact Annie McPherson. And 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:40.800 they worked out that the man named as his father 0:05:40.960 --> 0:05:45.400 on the birth certificate same name, George Watson, same name 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:49.600 as as the dead guy, that he hadn't actually existed, 0:05:49.640 --> 0:05:52.839 at least not in the way that he was portrayed 0:05:53.040 --> 0:05:58.120 in these certificates, the certificates claimed. If you work back 0:05:58.160 --> 0:06:02.279 from the certificates, it was claimed that a young Australian nurse, 0:06:03.000 --> 0:06:06.720 claiming she was Scottish born and claiming her name was 0:06:06.720 --> 0:06:11.440 Annie Clark, had at some point traveled to Scotland, in 0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:15.400 this case allegedly home to Scotland, and there had married 0:06:15.839 --> 0:06:22.120 an Australian, a West Australian man called George Watson, in 0:06:22.200 --> 0:06:26.440 the city or town city of Dundee in nineteen twenty six. 0:06:27.000 --> 0:06:31.440 Now that is what was on the paperwork, but it 0:06:31.480 --> 0:06:35.479 didn't take the genealogist many weeks or months to work 0:06:35.520 --> 0:06:39.479 out that this was bogus, a that there was no 0:06:40.279 --> 0:06:44.680 any Clark who became Annie Watson, that in fact it 0:06:44.880 --> 0:06:48.200 was this unmarried woman called Annie McPherson, and she hadn't 0:06:48.200 --> 0:06:50.440 been born in Scotland at all, She had been born 0:06:50.720 --> 0:06:56.039 in Victoria, and b she had not married anyone in 0:06:56.120 --> 0:07:00.599 nineteen twenty six, let alone a West Australian chef called 0:07:00.920 --> 0:07:06.200 George Watson. He didn't exist and the marriage didn't exist. Now, 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:08.360 this would a bit of a spanner in the works, 0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:12.480 to put it bluntly, because they had a dead guy 0:07:12.520 --> 0:07:16.120 within a state, but they couldn't really work out who 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:20.880 his real father was. Now common sense would seem to 0:07:20.920 --> 0:07:23.600 suggest that in a case like this, that is so 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:27.120 long ago. This is now eighty years back. In fact, 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:32.480 speaking today in twenty twenty six, the events we're discussing 0:07:32.840 --> 0:07:36.200 go back one hundred years really, But even back in 0:07:36.240 --> 0:07:40.720 twenty eleven this was old stuff. It was two generations old. 0:07:41.520 --> 0:07:45.560 No one involved would still be alive now. In a 0:07:45.640 --> 0:07:48.920 case like this, I am told on pretty good authority 0:07:49.000 --> 0:07:52.640 by an expert in the field, the state trustees can 0:07:52.640 --> 0:07:56.720 elect to use a legal device which has it as 0:07:56.760 --> 0:08:00.200 a name, and it's well known in probate law. This 0:08:00.320 --> 0:08:03.960 device allows them to make a ruling that the estate 0:08:04.000 --> 0:08:09.040 should be divided up among the legitimate is that present 0:08:09.800 --> 0:08:12.600 and so on and so forth. However, that is not 0:08:12.840 --> 0:08:18.040 what happened here. I am told that what happened here 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:21.960 was that the state trustees officials at the State Trustees 0:08:22.040 --> 0:08:26.800 Office decided in their wisdom to not do that, and 0:08:26.880 --> 0:08:33.720 they instead adopted an extremely conservative approach some would say 0:08:34.040 --> 0:08:41.240 an extremely pro government approach by placing the entire estate 0:08:41.600 --> 0:08:45.160 of two and a half million dollars plus in the 0:08:45.200 --> 0:08:49.240 state government coffers in treasury or state revenue or whatever 0:08:49.280 --> 0:08:52.800 it's called. Now, you know, that's not unusual. That does 0:08:52.840 --> 0:08:55.520 happen with money, and it's sitting there, and when a 0:08:55.600 --> 0:09:01.280 legitimate person turns up, they will get their money eventually. However, 0:09:01.440 --> 0:09:06.320 in this case this has turned into a Charles Dickens scenario, 0:09:06.760 --> 0:09:13.000 like Jarndyce versus Charndace, where fourteen years later the legitimate 0:09:13.120 --> 0:09:17.360 heirs of poor old George Watson, the bachelor who died 0:09:17.400 --> 0:09:21.600 without a will, have not been able to get any 0:09:21.640 --> 0:09:24.320 of the money. Now there are ten of these people. 0:09:24.480 --> 0:09:30.839 They're all quite old. They are, in fact the descendants 0:09:30.880 --> 0:09:36.600 of Ani McPherson's first cousins. These ones Ani McPherson, who's 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:39.839 the mother of the dead man, had first cousins, and 0:09:40.320 --> 0:09:45.080 it is those cousins' descendants, those cousins' grandchildren, I think, 0:09:45.080 --> 0:09:49.560 who are now quite elderly people who lining up to 0:09:49.760 --> 0:09:52.880 share the estate, and so they should. Now there are 0:09:52.920 --> 0:09:56.120 ten of them, but I think there was eleven, but 0:09:56.160 --> 0:10:01.040 one died so already while this is dragging on for 0:10:01.080 --> 0:10:04.760 the last fourteen years. One of these people, one of 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:10.960 the McPherson's in fact, has died. Leading the ten plaintiffs 0:10:11.000 --> 0:10:15.720 in this case is a respected former Victorian magistrate called 0:10:15.800 --> 0:10:21.280 Ian Christopher Elger, and he was a magistrate for several years, 0:10:21.480 --> 0:10:25.280 well known around the traps. Mister Elger and two of 0:10:25.280 --> 0:10:31.000 his siblings and seven others just last week launched Supreme 0:10:31.040 --> 0:10:36.600 Court action to try to get their share of their 0:10:36.640 --> 0:10:41.439 relatives money of George Watson's money. This will be interesting 0:10:41.480 --> 0:10:43.720 to see what happens, and it will be interesting because 0:10:43.760 --> 0:10:46.840 it's a case where the government has held the money 0:10:46.880 --> 0:10:51.200 for fourteen years. It's a case where the money has 0:10:52.080 --> 0:10:56.520 grown notionally at least from the original amount of say 0:10:56.559 --> 0:10:59.800 two and a half million to probably a million dollars 0:10:59.800 --> 0:11:03.640 more than that. If you think of compound interest over 0:11:03.840 --> 0:11:08.080 fourteen years, even at low interest rates like you know, 0:11:08.120 --> 0:11:11.839 three and a half four percent, it does grow appreciably. 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:18.000 And also those people will have the opportunity to demand 0:11:18.160 --> 0:11:21.760 or sue for compensation. They have not only missed out 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:25.040 on the interest that they could have earned, they've missed 0:11:25.040 --> 0:11:28.480 out on opportunity. They have not been able to use 0:11:28.480 --> 0:11:31.720 that money to invest in other ways, and they could 0:11:31.840 --> 0:11:35.600 legitimately claim, and I suspect they will that. You know, 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:38.520 if they'd got the two and a half million back 0:11:38.520 --> 0:11:41.880 in the day fourteen years ago, they could have done 0:11:41.960 --> 0:11:44.520 quite a lot with it. And it might be that 0:11:44.559 --> 0:11:49.000 this squabble, this legal squabble, is ultimately about more like 0:11:49.120 --> 0:11:52.280 four or five million than about two and a half 0:11:53.200 --> 0:11:58.280 and that makes it quite interesting. But buried underneath this 0:11:58.480 --> 0:12:01.280 modern court case, in our own time, in our own 0:12:01.360 --> 0:12:06.600 year of twenty twenty six, is a story of human 0:12:06.679 --> 0:12:11.880 frailty and passion and heartbreak and as I said, crimes 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:15.320 of the heart that dates back a century to the 0:12:15.400 --> 0:12:21.960 nineteen twenties. And that is the story of George Watson's mother, 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:27.959 the woman whose real name was Annie McPherson, the woman 0:12:28.000 --> 0:12:31.600 who was actually born in Victoria in eighteen ninety one, 0:12:32.000 --> 0:12:35.080 who grew up in I think the inner northern suburbs 0:12:35.120 --> 0:12:39.280 of Melbourne, and she became a nurse. So she was hardworking, 0:12:39.920 --> 0:12:45.280 respectable person. In those days, young ladies as they were called, 0:12:46.200 --> 0:12:49.960 would tend to go towards nursing or teaching as a 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:54.800 profession because so many other things were not open to them. Now, 0:12:55.120 --> 0:12:57.440 in those days, of course, a lot of women got 0:12:57.440 --> 0:13:00.239 married quite young. They would get married in their early twenties, 0:13:01.160 --> 0:13:05.600 and in those days, unlike now, women in their mid 0:13:05.679 --> 0:13:09.760 to late thirties were regarded and often called old maids 0:13:10.120 --> 0:13:14.600 or spinsters. These are the strange, old cruel words that 0:13:14.640 --> 0:13:19.240 we used about people not that many decades ago. And 0:13:19.520 --> 0:13:24.280 there is no doubt looking back and interpreting Annie McPherson's life, 0:13:24.960 --> 0:13:28.480 that in her thirties as a nurse working in hospitals, 0:13:29.120 --> 0:13:32.960 that she for whatever reason, hadn't met anybody and married them. 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:37.520 And it is clear, because she did have a child, 0:13:37.520 --> 0:13:40.400 that she did meet someone with whom she had a 0:13:40.480 --> 0:13:46.840 passionate affair, and she got pregnant in late nineteen twenty nine. 0:13:46.920 --> 0:13:50.040 So what we've got here is the world's going to 0:13:50.080 --> 0:13:54.400 hell in a handbasket. Wall Street has collapsed in October 0:13:54.440 --> 0:13:57.640 of nineteen twenty nine. People are being laid off in 0:13:57.679 --> 0:14:01.600 factories all over the world, including in Melbourne. Big bank loans, 0:14:01.640 --> 0:14:05.600 international loans have been called in and suspended. Things are 0:14:05.640 --> 0:14:10.119 very tough, and in that period just before the Christmas 0:14:10.360 --> 0:14:15.120 of nineteen twenty nine, this nurse Annie McPherson, I think 0:14:15.200 --> 0:14:19.240 by then back in Melbourne having worked in Bendigo and 0:14:19.440 --> 0:14:22.840 possibly Ballarat. I think she's back in Melbourne by then 0:14:23.480 --> 0:14:30.280 she falls pregnant. Now we don't know who the father was. This, 0:14:30.400 --> 0:14:33.920 of course, is the glitch or the obstacle that has 0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:42.040 prevented her illegitimate son's estate being divided among her distant relatives, 0:14:42.640 --> 0:14:46.640 because no one knows who daddy was. Now, if you 0:14:46.680 --> 0:14:49.720 were a novelist or a screenwriter, you'd dream up some 0:14:49.800 --> 0:14:54.280 scenario and you would say, let's get the DNA onto it, 0:14:54.480 --> 0:14:56.400 and you'd be able to sort of crack the case. 0:14:56.560 --> 0:14:59.800 Possibly in the real world it's not that easy. But 0:15:00.480 --> 0:15:04.600 if you were a screenwriter or a novelist, let's look 0:15:04.640 --> 0:15:08.520 at the facts here, that few sketchy facts we can 0:15:08.640 --> 0:15:11.880 line up. Who would a nurse be likely to have 0:15:11.880 --> 0:15:15.840 an affair with in the late nineteen twenties, Well, I'm 0:15:15.880 --> 0:15:19.800 saying a doctor. Who would a nurse be unable to 0:15:19.880 --> 0:15:23.000 marry if she became pregnant as many people used to 0:15:23.160 --> 0:15:26.360 they get pregnant and then get married in those days, 0:15:26.440 --> 0:15:30.120 lots of them. Well that would be because the father 0:15:30.280 --> 0:15:33.760 of her unborn child would be already married. That would 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:37.080 be a big problem, a massive problem, a massive social problem, 0:15:37.120 --> 0:15:41.800 because not only would she be sort of ruined and 0:15:41.920 --> 0:15:46.240 lose a job and lose her reputation, etc. Etc. But 0:15:47.320 --> 0:15:51.960 the married father of the child would also in a 0:15:52.000 --> 0:15:57.120 respectable profession like medicine or the law, would also have 0:15:57.960 --> 0:16:00.920 those sort of problems. They probably would lose their livelihood 0:16:01.400 --> 0:16:04.880 and would end up in a VD clinic on the 0:16:04.960 --> 0:16:08.920 other side of the country doing something much less profitable 0:16:09.200 --> 0:16:14.800 and much less pleasant. And if you were pursuing this theory, 0:16:15.480 --> 0:16:18.720 you would say, Okay, a doctor that she worked with 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:24.119 or she met through medical work in working in hospitals, 0:16:24.200 --> 0:16:27.520 let's say at Bendigo, where she did work in the twenties. 0:16:28.200 --> 0:16:33.600 Now there's another clue to this. Annie McPherson called her 0:16:33.840 --> 0:16:38.840 child George Thomas Watson. Watson is the name Watson is 0:16:38.880 --> 0:16:44.360 the name that she allocated to this non existent father 0:16:44.520 --> 0:16:47.240 or husband, the one she said she married in Scotland. 0:16:47.760 --> 0:16:50.360 She said that she or someone very like her married 0:16:50.920 --> 0:16:54.440 George Watson, forty two year old chef from Western Australia. 0:16:55.120 --> 0:16:57.840 She was very keen on this name Watson. Third thing, 0:16:58.120 --> 0:17:01.680 she said she'd gone back at Scotland, place she'd never been, 0:17:02.400 --> 0:17:04.840 that she'd gone back there and married in the city 0:17:04.880 --> 0:17:08.760 of Dundee in nineteen twenty six. That gives you a 0:17:08.840 --> 0:17:13.159 third triangulation. A man called Watson, probably a doctor or 0:17:13.200 --> 0:17:18.879 possibly a doctor, and he's Scottish and he has a 0:17:18.920 --> 0:17:24.800 connection with the Dundee district. Okay, let's look at the 0:17:24.920 --> 0:17:30.120 possible people who could fit this profile. A quick look 0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:33.560 at the government gazettes of the late twenties suggests that 0:17:33.600 --> 0:17:39.200 there were four doctor Watson's registered to practice in Victoria 0:17:40.000 --> 0:17:44.000 in the late nineteen twenties, at around the time that 0:17:45.280 --> 0:17:50.520 nurse McPherson became pregnant. And there's this one, and there's 0:17:50.520 --> 0:17:53.600 that one. But there's only four of them. And one 0:17:53.640 --> 0:17:58.280 of those court would catch a novelist's eye or a 0:17:58.320 --> 0:18:03.520 screenwriter's eye, because that one a recently eminent person. He's 0:18:03.560 --> 0:18:09.040 a tuberculosis expert, and he'd come to Australia from overseas, 0:18:09.119 --> 0:18:12.440 so he came with some sort of reputation. This man 0:18:12.520 --> 0:18:18.600 was called doctor Henry Watson. He was Scottish, tick Scottish. 0:18:19.119 --> 0:18:23.480 Not only is Scottish, he was educated initially at the 0:18:23.880 --> 0:18:28.879 University of Aberdeen in eastern Scotland. Aberdeen is a city 0:18:29.480 --> 0:18:36.760 rather close in social and commercial ties to the smaller 0:18:36.800 --> 0:18:40.920 city of Dundee. In fact, Dundee and Aberdeen are very 0:18:41.000 --> 0:18:46.120 much linked in economically and socially because of the building 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:49.000 of a railroad between the two back in the nineteenth 0:18:49.080 --> 0:18:53.360 century and the building of the rather famous tay Bridge 0:18:53.760 --> 0:18:57.600 tay Tay Bridge, which meant that people in both cities 0:18:57.600 --> 0:19:00.679 could travel up and down on the train, and that 0:19:00.800 --> 0:19:04.920 people from Dundee would go to Aberdeen to university, et cetera, 0:19:05.040 --> 0:19:08.800 et cetera, et cetera. A close link, and there's every 0:19:08.920 --> 0:19:13.480 chance that a young doctor who studied at the University 0:19:13.480 --> 0:19:16.760 of Aberdeen in fact may well have come from Dundee 0:19:17.400 --> 0:19:20.720 or from any of the districts between Dundee and Aberdeen, 0:19:21.200 --> 0:19:24.560 because otherwise, why if he came from somewhere else, why 0:19:24.560 --> 0:19:29.240 would he not go to Glasgow or to Edinburgh. It 0:19:29.400 --> 0:19:32.399 makes sense that if you're from Dundee, you would go 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:36.639 to Aberdeen. And doctor Henry Watson was from Aberdeen. He's 0:19:36.840 --> 0:19:39.680 quite a big shot. He'd made his name during World 0:19:39.720 --> 0:19:43.600 War One as a tuberculosis expert and he came to 0:19:43.640 --> 0:19:47.400 Australia and he married I think in the very early twenties. 0:19:48.240 --> 0:19:54.119 He married a widow an Australian widow called Marjorie Bush. 0:19:54.800 --> 0:19:59.199 And Marjorie Bush had two sons who were, you know, 0:19:59.400 --> 0:20:02.760 sort of semi grown. They were young adults, and I 0:20:02.840 --> 0:20:05.480 don't think either of them made old bones. I think 0:20:05.560 --> 0:20:08.679 one Patrick died at the age of twenty five and 0:20:08.720 --> 0:20:11.679 the other one lived longer but didn't grow old. I 0:20:11.720 --> 0:20:16.600 don't think this would suggest that doctor Henry Watson, who 0:20:16.720 --> 0:20:19.879 was born in eighteen eighty, so he gets to Australia 0:20:20.000 --> 0:20:24.000 when he's about forty in about nineteen twenty, that he's 0:20:24.080 --> 0:20:27.840 married a woman of at least his own age. He's 0:20:27.920 --> 0:20:31.000 married a woman of early middle age who already has 0:20:31.080 --> 0:20:38.080 two semi adult sons. It turns out that Dr Morgan 0:20:38.400 --> 0:20:42.080 and his widow wife, the widow he married, did have 0:20:42.119 --> 0:20:45.720 a daughter in the early nineteen twenties, so they did 0:20:45.880 --> 0:20:50.320 have a child between them. They then at some point 0:20:50.480 --> 0:20:56.560 worked in the region of Bendigo. There is a reference 0:20:56.600 --> 0:21:02.399 to Dr Morgan living at or practicing at the town 0:21:02.640 --> 0:21:05.920 of Talbot. Now Talbot is one of the old Gold 0:21:06.160 --> 0:21:12.280 Territories gold areas, and it's sort of between Bendigo and Ballarat. 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:16.679 Very loosely speaking, that's out near Maryborough, but it's in 0:21:16.720 --> 0:21:21.119 that region, so a doctor from there could easily have 0:21:21.760 --> 0:21:26.440 used Bendigo or Ballarat hospitals for more serious cases. He 0:21:26.480 --> 0:21:30.359 would probably travel to those to see certain patients and 0:21:30.400 --> 0:21:34.040 so on and so forth, and there he would naturally 0:21:34.920 --> 0:21:38.520 meet nurses who are on duty. Now we know that 0:21:38.960 --> 0:21:44.760 our nurse Annie McPherson was a nurse at Bendigo, and 0:21:44.840 --> 0:21:49.760 it's conceivable she also nursed at Ballarat. That gives us 0:21:50.200 --> 0:21:58.399 a putative connection between these people. This is strictly a 0:21:58.440 --> 0:22:05.840 circumstantial thing, circumstantial case that is interesting for a writer 0:22:05.960 --> 0:22:10.200 creating a story. I doubt it would carry much weight 0:22:10.560 --> 0:22:14.919 in a legal sense because it is fairly flimsy. It 0:22:15.000 --> 0:22:21.040 is purely, purely circumstantial, and yet to me convincing. We 0:22:21.160 --> 0:22:26.920 have the name Watson, the name that nurse McPherson adopted 0:22:27.000 --> 0:22:32.480 for herself. Two years after her baby was born. She 0:22:33.680 --> 0:22:36.600 changed her name to Watson and used the name Watson 0:22:36.800 --> 0:22:39.680 for the rest of her life until she died at 0:22:39.680 --> 0:22:43.400 the age of ninety four back in nineteen eighty five. 0:22:44.160 --> 0:22:47.280 If you go to her grave and see her headstone, 0:22:47.359 --> 0:22:53.119 it's got Annie Watson. Secondly, she claimed to have married 0:22:53.480 --> 0:22:58.920 a Manka Watson in Dundee. Why pick Dundee if she's 0:22:58.960 --> 0:23:03.440 making stuff up for a bogus birth certificate, why did 0:23:03.480 --> 0:23:07.440 she not say I met a man called Wilson from Wales, 0:23:08.320 --> 0:23:12.840 or I met a man called Kezale from Canada or whatever, 0:23:13.400 --> 0:23:17.119 or a man called Robertson from Rhodesia, But she didn't 0:23:17.359 --> 0:23:23.639 It was specifically a Scott called Watson from Dundee, the 0:23:23.760 --> 0:23:27.000 eastern part of Scotland. One of the things I've worked 0:23:27.000 --> 0:23:29.960 out over years of looking at criminal stuff is that 0:23:31.440 --> 0:23:36.879 people tend to do similar things. Killers nearly always and 0:23:36.920 --> 0:23:40.399 police rely on this. Killers nearly always dump or berry 0:23:40.520 --> 0:23:43.879 bodies in an area they know, an area they have 0:23:44.000 --> 0:23:48.400 been to before. They do not go to some totally 0:23:48.480 --> 0:23:53.480 unmapped part of the state where they'd never been and 0:23:53.600 --> 0:23:56.040 dump a body. They go somewhere they know, somewhere where 0:23:56.040 --> 0:23:59.240 they camped once, or they went fishing, or they were 0:23:59.280 --> 0:24:02.600 taken there as kids on skill camps or something. The 0:24:02.600 --> 0:24:08.280 homicide squad regard that as a total fact in doing investigations. 0:24:08.640 --> 0:24:11.200 Good tip if you're pulling a murder, take the body 0:24:11.240 --> 0:24:14.400 somewhere you've never been. It will help you in your defense. 0:24:15.840 --> 0:24:19.359 The second thing is that rational liars. We're not talking 0:24:19.359 --> 0:24:25.200 about lunatics here, who just rave on rational liars who 0:24:25.240 --> 0:24:28.000 want to be believed and who want their liars to 0:24:28.040 --> 0:24:32.920 stand up and to stand scrutiny. They don't make up 0:24:33.400 --> 0:24:39.320 complete fantasy. They just take the truth and twist it. 0:24:39.600 --> 0:24:42.639 They edit the truth. They start with the truth and 0:24:42.720 --> 0:24:45.520 just tweak it. And they say, yes, I was driving 0:24:45.760 --> 0:24:50.359 a blue Commodore with mom bombs on the aerial, but 0:24:50.480 --> 0:24:53.080 it wasn't on the Tuesday, I drove it on the Wednesday. 0:24:53.920 --> 0:24:56.520 So they tell the truth about the car, but they 0:24:56.560 --> 0:25:00.720 alter the day or whatever it might be, just fiddle 0:25:00.800 --> 0:25:05.240 with the truth. It's very hard for ordinary, rational, logical 0:25:05.280 --> 0:25:12.040 people to completely make up a completely fantastic, completely bogus scenario. 0:25:13.080 --> 0:25:17.080 We all of us, if we are sane and moderately sensible, 0:25:17.240 --> 0:25:22.080 we all rely on real things which we then tamper with. 0:25:23.000 --> 0:25:28.600 And in my view, Anny McPherson, when she was cooking 0:25:28.680 --> 0:25:32.639 up what was a lifelong lie, a lie that she 0:25:33.080 --> 0:25:37.560 wove around her newborn son, a lie that stayed with 0:25:37.640 --> 0:25:42.440 him for all of his eighty years, that she relied 0:25:42.480 --> 0:25:47.760 heavily on the truth, she just tampered with it. And 0:25:48.600 --> 0:25:52.320 if I were a novelist or a screenwriter, or perhaps 0:25:52.440 --> 0:25:58.359 an enterprising lawyer. I'd be looking at the possibility that 0:25:58.480 --> 0:26:03.320 a doctor Henry Watson might have had his wicked way 0:26:03.359 --> 0:26:10.679 with Nurse McPherson. With that scenario, which is completely circumstantial, 0:26:11.800 --> 0:26:15.560 has any basis in truth, It could never be proven 0:26:16.760 --> 0:26:21.919 except with some sort of complex DNA analysis, and I 0:26:22.000 --> 0:26:26.240 doubt very much if there's any DNA available to do it. 0:26:26.280 --> 0:26:31.199 So that is that Life and Crimes looks forward to 0:26:31.280 --> 0:26:36.479 the result of the Supreme Court action launched by the 0:26:36.520 --> 0:26:44.359 ten heirs of the estate of the late George Thomas Watson, 0:26:45.240 --> 0:26:52.000 who you'd have to say died a lucky old bastard. 0:26:52.320 --> 0:26:55.359 Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald 0:26:55.400 --> 0:26:59.840 Sun production for true crime Australian. Our producer is Johnny 0:27:00.000 --> 0:27:04.560 bur For my columns, features and more, go to Heroldsun 0:27:04.720 --> 0:27:10.080 dot com dot au, forward slash Andrew rule one word. 0:27:10.560 --> 0:27:16.040 For advertising inquiries, go to news podcasts sold at news 0:27:16.080 --> 0:27:19.960 dot com dot au. That is all one word news 0:27:20.119 --> 0:27:25.960 podcast's sold. And if you want further information about this episode, 0:27:26.160 --> 0:27:28.280 links are in the description