OLIVE MADDOX’S EVIDENCE.
Olive May Maddox was the next witness. She was living at the time of the inquest at Cambridge Street, Collingwood, and when asked, “Have you any other means of livelihood but prostitution?” she answered: “No, not exactly.” She said she knew Ross well, and she used to visit his premises every day up to the time of the shooting affray. (That was in the previous November, and up to that time Ivy Matthews had been employed there.) Since the shooting affray she had only visited the cafe “once, sometimes twice, sometimes three times or four times or five times a week at the most.” She went to the wine cafe on December 30 at five minutes past 5, walked straight into the bar with another girl named Jean Dyson, and ordered two drinks at the counter. She then looked into the parlour through the curtains hanging from the arched doorway between the two main rooms in the saloon, and seeing a girl named Lil. Harrison in that room she went in. As she passed the beaded curtains of the small compartment on the right she saw the little girl in it—that is to say, she described the girl she saw, and if her evidence is true there can be no doubt the girl was Alma Tirtschke. There was a glass in front of her, “but you couldn’t tell whether the contents were white or whether it was empty.” There were, she said, a couple of strange men also in the room. The two men were near the entrance, and the girl was near the corner. After talking to Harrison for a time, she came back into the bar to her friend, and seeing Ross, she said, “Hello, Col., she is a young kid to be drinking.” He replied: “Oh, if she wants it she can have it.”
At a quarter past 5 Maddox left, and she returned about five minutes to 6. She ordered drinks, and went again into the other room. Lil. Harrison was still there, but the little girl was no longer in the beaded room. Maddox left soon after 6, and she did not see Ross on that occasion. She next saw him on Thursday night, January 5, “down where the old Repatriation was in Jolimont, just off Flinders Street.” Maddox had been there with some girls, and Ross, when she saw him, was with “a girl named Florrie Dobson and another named Pauline Warburton, and their two young chaps.” “We started talking about different things,” she said, “and then Ross said: ‘What do you think about this case, Ol.?’ I said: ‘I don’t know; if I knew anything I wouldn’t tell the police.’ He said: ‘You don’t want to tell them if you know anything. The papers all say that she was a goody-goody, but that is only for the sake of the public. She was a cheeky little devil, and’”—and he added a disgusting comment. He said also, the witness added: “I tried to pool the b⸺ b⸺ of a Madame Ghurka. The police came to me and asked me if I saw anything about the little girl, and I told them I saw her looking in Madame Ghurka’s window, and I tried to pool the b⸺ b⸺ because she decoys little girls when they are missing away from home.”
In her cross-examination Maddox admitted that she knew from the papers the description of the little girl’s dress, and that it was after she had had a conversation with Ivy Matthews on the subject that she informed the police. That conversation took place on the Tuesday, January 10. She told Matthews she was afraid to go to the police on account of her convictions, and Matthews asked her whether she really had any doubt it was the little girl, and she said she was positive. Matthews said: “The police cannot touch you,” and she replied: “Well, I will chance it, and go and do it.” She also admitted that on Saturday afternoon, December 31, she was arrested for absconding from her bail, and she remained in the watchhouse until the Sunday afternoon. It is worthy of note that no proceedings have been taken against Olive Maddox on that charge. She admitted also that the meeting on the Thursday evening was purely by chance, as far as she was concerned. Asked how many people were in the saloon when she was there at 5 o’clock, she said she did not know how many were in the bar, but in the parlour there were two girls she knew, and one she didn’t know, and two or three men, and there were two other men in the beaded room with the little girl.
Therefore, there were seven or eight persons who were in as good a position as Maddox to see the little girl, if, in fact, she had been in the saloon.