Читать книгу Stories From Under The Carpet - Jane Turton - Страница 2

The year was 1855. The land around Oakleigh was bush. The roads were just dirt tracks, people moved about on horseback, or horse and cart, or by foot. The city of Melbourne was a day’s journey to or from anywhere.

Somewhere around June 22, James Wynn went missing from Oakleigh. James was estimated to be about 60 years of age. No one had any idea who his family was, where he had been born or any details of his life. He was a mystery. Most likely a transient worker who would move around the area following short-term work. Very few people at that time had been born in Australia, most were immigrants, many coming to the Colony in response to gold strikes.

According to one witness, James had been drinking at Joseph Gibson’s Oakleigh Hotel, and left the bar at 8.30pm to go home.¹ But no one was able to describe where James Wynn called home.

The Oakleigh Hotel was on the north-west corner of Broadway and Atkinson Street in Oakleigh.² The hotel is no longer the Oakleigh Hotel, after considerable renovation and rebuilding, today in its place is the Leighoak Hotel. Broadway is now known as Dandenong Road.

Oakleigh Hotel circa 1890: Source³

James’s former employer, Maurice Feehan claimed he had searched for James for several days after he disappeared. He even put a note in the local Gazette newspaper asking if anyone had seen him.⁴ He was apparently concerned enough to believe he had not just packed his belongings and moved on.

Maurice, who was the landlord of the Friend in Hand Hotel in Little Collins Street claimed at the inquest into James’s death that he was a heavy drinker who frequently drank at the Oakleigh Hotel.⁵ Either way, we will never know if alcohol was the cause of James’s demise, or had he met with foul play or harmed himself? At the time of his disappearance, James was wearing a flannel shirt, an old coat, a brown vest, and old white canvas trousers and blucher boots.⁶ James’s boots were distinctive enough for Maurice to quickly know that the severely decomposed body that was eventually found was as that of James just by seeing the boots alone.

Blucher Boot. Source: ⁷

Was James dressed warmly enough for the seven degree temperature that was expected the night he disappeared?⁸ Had James actually been 60 years old as witnesses claimed, he would have been regarded as an old man. A man who had not had the medical attention afforded to people in today’s era.

James was a gardener; in 1855, this was considered heavy manual labour. At the time there were no petrol driven lawn mowers, hedge trimmers or mulchers, and it is unclear from any documentation exactly where James worked. The inquest into his death gave no more detail as to where he had lived or worked, and only stated his body had been found in the stringy bark forest near Oakleigh.⁹

James’s body was found five miles from Oakleigh, 77 days after he had disappeared. But in which direction was this? The map on the next page – although undated – shows a stringy bark forest a short distance from the Oakleigh Hotel. It is likely this is where the body had laid unnoticed for many weeks.

The inquest was held on September 11 before Doctor Richard Youl, the Melbourne Coroner, three days after the body was found. As was the custom in the 1850s, a coronial jury was convened to hear the evidence as to how James Wynn had died. Juries were generally made up of respected men from the area. One of the men included on the jury was Maurice Feehan, James’s employer.¹⁰ The jury found that the flesh had been removed from James’s face. The bones and flesh of the toes on his right foot were also removed, possibly by wild animals. The body was too decomposed to determine if any injuries had occurred. James’s body had been lying on its back, with a gun at his feet. There were no signs of a struggle or bone fractures. It was impossible to determine if there were any bullet wounds in the body. The cause of death was recorded as simply ‘found dead in the bush.’

Illustration; Erica Gage

A death certificate was issued for James.¹¹ The document doesn’t inform us where his body is buried. It is not in the Oakleigh Cemetery or in the Melbourne General Cemetery, the closest cemetery at the time to the Melbourne Coroner’s Court. No other details were known to complete the certificate. No place of birth, parents, or time of death. Only ‘found dead.’¹²

James’s death remains a mystery more than 160 years later. Who was James Wynn and was this even his name? Where is he buried? How did he meet his death? In 1855 passports had not been invented so he could have entered and lived in Australia without any proof of his identity or country of origin.¹³

There is no evidence of a James Wynn or Wynne arriving in Victoria as an immigrant or free settler. There were three men: one named Thomas Wynn and two men named John Wynn who had come to New South Wales as convicts between 1821 and 1826¹⁴ Was one of them James Wynn?