The Gun Alley Tragedy: Record of the Trial of Colin Campbell RossBrennan, T. C. (Thomas Cornelius)
History
The Gun Alley Tragedy: Record of the Trial of Colin Campbell Ross
Brennan, T. C. (Thomas Cornelius)
Ross, Colin Campbell, 1892-1922 -- Trials, litigation, etc.; Trials (Murder) -- Australia -- Victoria -- Melbourne
Olive Maddox’s testimony is also worthy of a few lines of examination.
She said that, having seen the girl in the beaded room, two men also
being in it, she came out and said to Ross: “That is a young kid to
be drinking there.” The room in which the child was alleged to be was
only 7ft. by 6ft. 7in. The girl, therefore, must have been within three
or four feet of the men. Ivy Matthews, in her evidence at the Morgue,
said it was no unusual thing, when respectable women came into the
place for a drink with a child, to show them into the little room.
Olive Maddox, a daily visitor to the place in Matthews’ time, must have
known of this practice. Therefore, even if she did see the child in
the same little room with two men, there was not the slightest thing
about the circumstance to suggest that she was not with one of the men,
and everything to suggest that she was. At the worst, she had an empty
lemonade glass in front of her, and that, combined with the fact that
she was with two men, would never have prompted Maddox to say anything
about “a young kid” drinking.
When it is remembered that Matthews and Maddox were old and close
acquaintances, and that Maddox admitted that it was after consultation
with Matthews that she decided to speak to the police, and when it is
remembered that this consultation was just at the time that Matthews
was trying to enlist the services of Halliwell, which will be referred
to later, and when it is remembered that just at this time the reward
had been increased to £1250 (including £250 offered by the “Herald”),
it does not seem hard to suggest what may have happened. Matthews says
that she saw a drink being brought into the cubicle to the child at
3 o’clock. It was suggested in the Appeal Courts that Maddox was to
say that she saw the child in that room at 5 o’clock, with an empty
glass before her; that Maddox was a stupid girl—according to her own
testimony, barely able to read; that she blundered in the simple task
assigned to her by the master mind, and put the child in the wrong
room. The rooms at that time had no distinguishing names. It was
not until the trial that they became known as the “cubicle” and the
“beaded” room. Matthews did not know at the inquest of this blunder,
but on the trial she tried to repair it by telling the absurd story of
how Ross got the girl to go into the beaded room, and kept her there by
some form of mesmerism for over an hour, while he entertained Gladys
Wain in the cubicle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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