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
The idea that Stanley should have seen, and been a party to, his
brother’s lust, was too much even for the credibility of a Harding, so
Ross is made to say that Stanley couldn’t see the girl when he went
behind the counter, because the screen was down, “and when the screen
was down no one dared to go into the cubicle.” The absurdity of the
story of the screen in one aspect has already been referred to, but
a glance at the plan will show its absurdity in another aspect. But
even the plan does not show that the cubicle walls were only 6 ft. 4
in. in height, the lower 3 ft. being thin lining boards, and the upper
3 ft. 4 in. being glass. There was no top or ceiling to it. A girl
could scarcely breathe in that cubicle without its being noticed by a
man squeezing in and out at the end of the bar counter. Everything,
according to Harding, took place in the cubicle, and the girl never
left it from the time she went in at 3 o’clock until she was carried
out, dead and nude, between 1 and 2 o’clock next morning. There are
none of the perambulations by the child when alive, or by Ross when the
child was dead, backwards and forwards with the body to and from the
cubicle of which Matthews speaks.
According to the Harding confession, the crime was consummated soon
after 6, and the girl was dead. The fact that no trace of blood was
ever known to have been seen in the room had to be accounted for, so
Harding makes Ross first wash out the cubicle, and then the whole
bar. The washing of the cubicle would suggest itself to a much cruder
imagination than Harding’s, but the little touch about the rest of
the bar was worthy of him. Even Piggott and Brophy, when they had the
matter so “well in hand” on the morning of the 31st, that they did not
think to go into the cubicle, might be expected to notice that one
part of the bar was cleaner than the other, for Harding would not have
dreamt that the detectives would neglect the elementary step of looking
into the cubicle. And so Harding put in the touch of verisimilitude
about the washing of the whole bar.
If Harding’s story be true, then it was while Ross was engaged in this
labour of scrubbing out the bar, with the dead body of an outraged and
murdered child keeping vigil over him, that he went out into the Arcade
to borrow a lead pencil from the vaudeville artist, Alberts, who just
happened to have reason, at the psychological moment, to walk half-way
through the Arcade and back again, like a famous character in history.
Of course Mr. Alberts may have been mistaken in his identification, but
at least he, too, as has been said, has shared in the reward for the
information he gave.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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