Читать книгу Stories From Under The Carpet - Jane Turton - Страница 6

Thomas Moylan was born in 1855 in Caulfield, Victoria, to Irish migrant parents: Thomas, a farmer, and Mary. He married Australian born Catherine Riley in 1882 at St Finbar’s Catholic Church in Brighton. Both were then 27 years old. She was the daughter of a landowner and farmer, Brian/Bernard/Bryan Riley. Bryan’s name was recorded differently on various certificates. Thomas had been living in Malvern. He was working as a gardener and her as a domestic, cleaning and keeping house for another family.¹⁰¹

At that time, Malvern would have been more populated than Black Flat, and the distance the couple travelled to start their married life together must have felt like moving to another country. The journey most likely would have taken many hours on horseback, or in a dray being pulled by a horse. The area then known as Black Flat is now known as Glen Waverley. Catherine’s father was granted land in Black Flat, in 1881, the year before Catherine and Thomas married. The land was on the site where the Mountain View Hotel stands today; the young couple eventually moved to the area. The Mountain View Hotel, while it still stands on the corner of Springvale Road and High Street Road, has been rebuilt and refurbished many times.

1892 Mulgrave Shire Map adapted by Clive Haddock¹⁰²

Thomas was the licensee of the Mountain View Hotel from 1882 until 1888, and again briefly in 1895.¹⁰³ In the intervening years, Thomas worked as a farmer on land where The Glen shopping centre now stands. He grew apples, pears and plums. There were at least two homes on the property.¹⁰⁴ Black Flat in 1896 was primitive. Dirt roads were regularly flooded by heavy rains which then cut off the roads, making travel into Melbourne difficult. Gold was found in Black Flat in 1896, drawing hopeful miners into the area. One of the larger mines in the area was opposite the Mountain View Hotel on what is now a McDonalds restaurant and the Glen Waverley Primary School.¹⁰⁵

Children started arriving soon after Thomas and Catherine’s marriage. Daughter Catherine was born in 1885, son Patrick in 1886, Marguerite in 1888 and Bernerd in 1891.¹⁰⁶

The photo below is thought to be of Thomas and Catherine Moylan and two of their children, standing outside the Mountain View Hotel at Black Flat. As the children appear to be of a close age, it is possible they could be Catherine and Patrick, if indeed the photo is of the Moylans.

Moylan’s Mountain View Hotel. Source¹⁰⁷

Life was not easy for the Moylan family: Catherine had been seen several times under the influence of alcohol although, according to a police report, her husband Thomas had reported he had never seen her intoxicated, nor had he seen any signs of delirium tremens.¹⁰⁸ Delirium tremens is the most severe symptom of alcohol withdrawal and can result in death which typically occurs around five days after a person ceases drinking. A person would have had to consume a high level of alcohol intake for many months. The symptoms include hallucinations, confusion, irritability, insomnia and excitability¹⁰⁹

Catherine’s sister Mary Kennedy later reported to police that Catherine had ‘taken a sobriety oath some weeks ago.’¹¹⁰ Catherine was an anxious woman and had told her husband that she was fearful for her health and of hurting her children whom she loved very much. Catherine’s father, Bryan had died in 1885 and before his death had spent time in a lunatic asylum. Her grief may well have added to Catherine’s despair for her own health.

Thomas had reported to police that Catherine frequently warned him that she was frightened she might hurt her children.¹¹¹ On Thursday, January 16, 1896, Catherine’s sister Mary, her husband John Kennedy, their daughter, and Catherine’s brother Patrick were all staying at the Mountain View Hotel. Mary’s 30-year-old daughter, who was also named Catherine had been working in the Black Flat area. However, she had contracted typhoid fever, and although her parents Mary and John had been living in Gippsland, they had come to stay to nurse their daughter while she was unwell.¹¹² Catherine Moylan feared her husband Thomas might also have symptoms of the disease.¹¹³

At around 5pm Thomas heard his two youngest children Bernerd, four, and seven-year-old Marguerite screaming. Minutes earlier they had followed their mother outside to the shed.¹¹⁴ When he went out to investigate, he found Catherine with a hammer in her hand and the two children lying still on the ground, their heads covered in blood. Catherine then turned and ran off into the bush. Was Catherine’s violent behaviour due to her withdrawal from a high alcohol intake?

Police and doctors were called to the hotel. Doctors attended the children and ordered that a horse and cart take them to the nearest hospital. The Alfred Hospital was 27 kilometres away. No ambulances were available to the little village of Black Flat, a trip that would have taken several hours. In the early hours of the next morning, after intricate surgery Bernerd succumbed to his injuries, dying of multiple fractures to the skull and a lacerated brain that was protruding through the pieces of broken skull bone.¹¹⁵

Illustration; Erica Gage

Catherine’s brother Patrick set out to find her, and found her apron weighed down by bricks by a waterhole on land just over a mile away on the property owned by the O’Deas. For a moment Patrick wondered if Catherine had drowned herself.¹¹⁶

Margaret and Thomas O’Dea, a bootmaker,¹¹⁷ owned a farm in Black Flat which fronted onto Waverley Road. Thomas O’Dea told police that Catherine had arrived at their home late that night, her clothing torn and dripping wet, her face was wild and her hair matted. She was all but naked in front of him.¹¹⁸ Margaret had given Catherine a night-dress and put her to bed. The O’Dea couple were ignorant of the events at the Mountain View Hotel.¹¹⁹

Google Maps showing area of O’Dea farm

Nevertheless, Thomas O’Dea was so alarmed at Catherine’s appearance that he set out on horseback to the hotel to find out what had happened, and to reassure Thomas that his wife, Catherine was safe. The police, when seeing the apron under the rock assumed Catherine had tried to kill herself.

An inquest into Bernerd’s death was held the next day at the Alfred Hospital. The coroner found that he had died of injuries inflicted by his mother and recommended she be tried for wilful murder. Catherine had been taken to The Melbourne Gaol hospital on the morning of Bernerd’s death, to be detained there until she was deemed mentally fit to stand trial. But the trial never happened. Catherine remained in the Melbourne Gaol, reportedly too dazed to give evidence. On October 2 that year, a mere nine months after the attack, she was released into Thomas’s custody on his assurance that she kept the peace. Thomas paid a surety of £25.¹²⁰

The case caused a sensation around Australia. Newspapers wrote about the case in detail, but the standard of newspaper journalism in the 1890s wasn’t what it is today. Journalists and police were often loose with the facts. Information was not always accurate. In an era before passports, names and spelling weren’t always checked, and records of births, deaths and marriages were nowhere near as meticulous as they are today. In short, errors were made. So, it is entirely feasible that a boy registered at birth as Bernerd could somehow be misconstrued as Burnett if, as is likely, police or journalists misheard his father and grandparent’s strong Irish accent when they were asked to identify the dead child. Whatever the case, or whatever misinterpretation ensued, the inquest transcripts, newspaper reports and cemetery records all refer to the four-year-old as Burnett. There was never a birth certificate for Burnett Moylan, only for Bernerd. To this day his body lies in an unmarked grave in the Oakleigh Pioneer Cemetery.¹²¹ A Bicentenary project in 1988 laid bricks that recorded for the first time the burial dates of most of the cemetery’s occupants.

Oakleigh Pioneer Cemetery; Photo J Turton 2017

No documents can be located of a Catherine Moylan in either a lunatic asylum or gaol. By 1904, eight years after Bernerd’s death, Catherine was again living at home with her husband Thomas, who by now was a fruiterer or orchardist on the land now occupied by The Glen Shopping Centre on Springvale Road in Black Flat or Glen Waverley. Catherine and Thomas remained living in the Glen Waverley area until they died, in 1919 and 1923 respectively. They are buried together in an unmarked grave in the Springvale Cemetery.

And what of Marguerite? Did she survive her injuries? If so, what became of her? Did she live a healthy productive life? Indeed, she did. Marguerite Moylan remained at home, living with her parents, until their deaths. She was 35 years old. In his will, Thomas left Marguerite a wagon, a horse of her choosing, all his farming equipment and one-third of his land to her.¹²³ Perhaps because Thomas knew before he died that Marguerite was soon to marry, he left the houses on his land to Catherine and son, Patrick.¹²⁴

Thomas Moylan Land Source¹²² courtesy Clive Haddock

Marguerite Moylan married George William Stayner in 1923 when she was 35.¹²⁵ He too was a market gardener, living in Bay Road, Cheltenham. Marguerite and George had three children: Francis, William and Thomas. She died at 45 years of age in a psychiatric hospital in 1934, of unknown causes.¹²⁶ She is buried with her husband in the Old Cheltenham Cemetery.¹²⁷ He survived her by almost 40 years.¹²⁸

Old Cheltenham Cemetery. Note changed spelling. Photo J Charles