ROSS’S FIRMNESS.
As far as Ross himself is concerned, he not merely stoutly maintained his innocence from the day he was arrested to the day he was hanged, but his conduct and bearing throughout was that of an innocent man. It was not tactful or amiable. It was blustering and bad-tempered, and at times aggressive. But it was, throughout, that of a sullen man, suffering under a sense of wrong.
He made a free statement to the police on the day that the body was recovered, admitting that he had seen a girl answering to the description of the murdered girl. On January 5, after, or in the course of, a detention of eight hours, he made a full statement to the police which was committed to writing. Not one word of that statement is shown to have been false, by evidence that is worth a moment’s serious consideration. A great deal of it the police did not dispute. A solid phalanx of witnesses, as has been shown, was called on the trial to bear out the statement, and not the smallest flaw was revealed by a skilful cross-examination in that long chain of evidence.
But more than that, on Thursday, January 6, the day following his eight hours’ detention and interrogation, like a man suffering from a sense of wrong and indignity at the questions put to him and the suggestions made against him, Ross went boldly back to the Detective Office and said to Piggott: “Who has been saying these things to you about me?” Piggott said: “I won’t tell you.” “Well, I want to know,” said Ross. Piggott replied: “Well, you won’t know. I never divulge where I get my information. Why are you so anxious to know?” “Because,” said Ross, “I will warm them up,” and he went so far as to tell Piggott that he did not believe anyone had told him. Piggott himself gave this in evidence. It was all very foolish and impudent on Ross’s part, no doubt. It was characteristic of his quite fearless and “cheeky” attitude throughout. But a guilty man, who had just escaped from an eight-hour ordeal with the detectives, might surely be expected to keep as far away from Russell Street as possible.
Again, on the 12th, the day he was arrested, Ross answered: “That’s a lie,” “That’s a lie,” to each new allegation made against him. On the following day he was brought before the Police Court. He was undefended, and was asked if he had any objection to a remand. “Yes,” he said, “I don’t require a remand. There is no reason why I should be here. I can prove my whereabouts on that night. I strongly object to a remand. I have all my witnesses here.” As he left the dock, remanded, he called out: “That’s the country’s law,” and then he added, in his characteristic, blustering tone: “This is a great country, there’s no doubt about it.” It may have been all simulated, but it did not sound like simulated indignation.
It is worth recording, too, that his mother, unable to restrain herself, rose in court that day and said: “I can prove where my son was that night.”
On the morning of February 25th he was found guilty of murder. Asked if he had anything to say why the death sentence should not be pronounced, he stood forward, and, without a quiver on his lip or in his voice, he answered: “Yes, sir; I still maintain that I am an innocent man, and that my evidence is correct. If I am hanged, I will be hanged an innocent man. My life has been sworn away by desperate people.” He listened calmly to the death sentence, and repeated: “I am an innocent man.”
Hanged he duly was, or, rather, he was hanged with more than usual expedition. Within less than a week of his doom being sealed by the High Court, a special meeting of the Cabinet was called, and his execution was fixed to take place in a fortnight. The Government, notwithstanding strong representations, supported by affidavits of new facts, declined to allow time for an appeal to the Privy Council. Ross went to the gallows. He was attended by his minister throughout, and he accepted the ministrations in the most worthy spirit. But he never wavered for a moment in his profession of innocence, either to his minister or to his solicitor. Standing on the scaffold, with the rope around his neck, he delivered a final protestation of his innocence in words which have rung through Australia.
“I am now face to face with my Maker,” he said, “and I swear by Almighty God that I am an innocent man. I never saw the child. I never committed the crime, and I don’t know who did it. I never confessed to anyone. I ask God to forgive those who swore my life away, and I pray God to have mercy on my poor, darling mother and my family.”
Some sticklers for accuracy, who have never made a public speech, and who, it may be hoped, will not have to make a start with a hangman’s rope around their neck, and the gallows for a platform, have fastened on to the words, “I never saw the girl,” as being the assertion of an untruth. Ross signed a statement that he saw a girl answering the description of Alma Tirtschke; he went into the witness box and swore that he had seen such a girl. The words, therefore, at the worst, could only mean, and could only be read by an intelligent man as meaning, that he had never spoken to the girl or seen her otherwise than as he had already said. He was not given much time for correction, or for second thoughts, because within a moment or two of uttering the words he had passed to eternity.
But it is now known that Ross’s words were deliberately chosen, and that he meant to tell the world with his dying breath that he never, as far as he knew, set eyes on Alma Tirtschke. That being his intention, his actual words, it must be admitted, went too far, or not far enough, for from the description he gave of the girl, combined with the other facts, it appears certain that the girl he saw and described was Alma Tirtschke. But that he did not mean to recede from the position he had all along taken up seems so clear as to be beyond the realm of argument or the reach of adverse comment.