THE MATTHEWS CONFESSION.
Ivy Matthews was the next witness. She “didn’t quite know” what to say her occupation was, as just at present she was out of employment, but she had been a barmaid. She had been employed by the accused from the 23rd of December, 1920, up to some time in November, 1921. She left the day following Ross’s acquittal on the shooting charge. She described minutely the interior of the wine saloon as it was in her time, and on being shown two blankets, said that one of them—a greeny-blue military blanket—was on the couch in the cubicle in her time, but not the other, a reddish brown blanket. On the afternoon of Friday, December 30, she was at the bar door, she said, talking to Stanley Ross, who had beckoned her up while she was talking to a friend in the Arcade. Whilst she was talking to Stanley, Colin Ross came out of the little room at the end of the bar, and as he opened the curtains to come out she saw a child sitting on a chair. Colin came along the bar and poured out a drink. She saw the glass, but did not see what was poured into it. Colin returned to the little room, and as, he did so he must have said something to the girl, because she parted the curtains “and looked straight out at me.” She gave a very minute description of the child’s hair and clothing, considering the very cursory glance she admitted having had. Colin, she said, must have noticed her, but he did not acknowledge her in any way.
Matthews said nothing of how long she stayed. Next day, at the Melbourne Hotel, at 3 o’clock, where she had an appointment, she read in “Truth,” so she said, of the murder of the little girl, and she went straight to Ross’s wine cafe. “He was busy serving behind the bar,” she continued, “and I walked past the wine cafe door twice. I mean that I walked past and I came back again. The second time he saw me and he came to the door without a coat, and he spoke to me [although he wouldn’t acknowledge her on the previous day]. I was the first to speak. I said, ‘I see about this murder; why did you do it?’ He said,‘What are you getting at?’ I said, ‘You know very well; why did you do it, Colin?’ He said, ‘Do what?’ I said, ‘You know very well what you did. That child was in your wine cafe yesterday afternoon, for I saw her.’ He said, ‘Not me.’ And with that he said, ‘People are looking at us; walk out into Little Collins Street, Ivy, and I will follow you.’ He returned to the wine cafe and put on his coat. I stood at the corner in Little Collins Street for perhaps two minutes, and then he followed me. Before that, when he said, ‘I did not do anything like that,’ I said, ‘Don’t tell me that, because I know too well it is you, for I saw the child in your place yesterday.’ It was then he passed the remark that people were looking.”
“When he came into Little Collins Street what did he say,” she was asked.
“I cannot think of the exact words,” she replied.
“Well, tell us the substance of it,” said His Honour.
Mr. Macindoe: What did he say when you resumed the conversation?—First of all he tried to make out that I did not see the girl.
His Honour: Well, what did he say?—He said it was not the child. He simply said: “You know I did not have that child in there.” I said, “Gracious me, I looked at the child myself, and I know it was the same child by the descriptions given,” and for a long while he hung out that this was not the child.
Mr. Macindoe: How did he hang out?—He said it was not the child. I cannot tell you exactly every word he said.
This was in the Arcade?—It was in Little Collins Street, just at the corner of the Arcade.
Well, what then?—I was so sure it was the child, and I would make him know it was the child.
Will you tell us what he said?—I am trying to explain it.
His Honour: You have been told several times that you are only supposed to tell what was done, or what was said, between you and the accused, instead of telling your inferences, or assumptions, or suppositions. Tell us now what took place—what was said.
Mr. Macindoe: Don’t tell us why he said things; just tell us what he said.—Well, at last he told me that it was the child. He told me that the child came to him while he was at the door, on the Friday afternoon. He said there was no business; there was no one there and he was standing at his door, and when the child came up and asked him for a drink he said, “I took her in and gave her a lemonade.” I said, “When the child came and asked you for a drink of lemonade why didn’t you take her into the bar? Why did you take her to that little room?” I said, “I know you too well. I know what you are with little children.” He said: “On my life, Ivy, I did not take her in there with any evil intention, but when I got her there I found that she knew absolutely what I was going to do with her if I wanted her. Assuming that this ⸺”
Mr. Macindoe: Never mind the assumption. Did he say what he assumed?—Well, you cannot expect me to say it just the way he put it to me.
His Honour: No, it is the substance of it we want.—Well, I am trying to tell you to the best of my ability.
I am not saying that you are not, but tell us what he said.—He said that after taking the child in there he gave her a drink of lemonade. He did not say wine; he said lemonade. And she stayed on there talking to him for a while. She stayed there until about four. He said a girl named Gladys came to see him and he told the child to go through to the little room with curtains and he kept her in there until Gladys Linderman left, and he then brought her back into the little private room.
Mr. Macindoe: What did he say then?—After that, he said he stayed with her during the rest of the afternoon, with the full intention at six o’clock of letting her go; but when six o’clock came she remained on. He said that after six o’clock, when Stanley went, he left us in there together. I could not tell you just exactly what he said that led up to the⸺
His Honour: No, you need not tell us exactly; just as far as you remember the substance of it.—I can remember everything quite well, but it is⸺
His Honour: I think if you would not go quite so fast you would remember better.
Mr. Macindoe: What did he say then?—Just after that he said that he had outraged the child; he said that between six and eight o’clock he had outraged her.
What did he say about it?—What do you mean?
Well, I suppose he didn’t say, “I outraged the child”? No, that is the hardest part of it.—I cannot say it.
His Honour: Is it because you cannot remember it, or because it is too foul?—It is because the language he used is too foul. I cannot say it.
Will you write it down?—I will try to the best of my ability to say it.
Mr. Macindoe: What was it, as near you can remember?—He said, first of all, “After Stan went, I got fooling about with her, and you know the disease I am suffering from, and when in the company of young children I feel I cannot control myself. It was all over in a minute.”
Are those his words?—That is just using my own language.
His Honour: Is that the substance of what he said?—Yes, that is the substance, and he said: “After it was all over I could have taken a knife and slashed her up, and myself too, because she led me on to it. He tried to point out to me that, so he believed, she went there for an immoral purpose. That is what he said to me. That is what he tried to imply to my mind.”
The witness then wrote down the exact words used, which was a statement in coarse language that the girl had previously been tampered with.
The witness went on to tell what happened after the girl’s death. “After it had happened, he said that he had a friend to meet—a girl friend. He took the body of the little girl and put it into the beaded room, and left it wrapped up in a blanket, and at nine o’clock, or half-past nine he brought a girl named Gladys Wain there. She stayed until ten o’clock. He took her home at ten o’clock, and came back between ten and half-past, after seeing her to the station or tram, and removed the body from the beaded room into the small room off the bar. He then went to Footscray by train, but came back again between one and two a.m. I asked him how he got back, and he said he came by motor car, and went in there and looked for a place to put the body. He first thought of putting it in the recess alongside the wine cafe, but that the ‘Skytalians’ would be blamed for a thing like that. Then he thought he would put it in Mac’s room (that is room 33 opposite, occupied by a man named McKenzie). I said what an awful thing to do. He said: ‘I did the very best thing. I put it in the street.’”
It will be noted that up to this time the witness had not said a word of the actual death of the child, and that great difficulty had been experienced in dragging a consecutive story from her. She was brought back to the main point by the question: “Did he tell you at any time how the girl had died?” She answered: “I had better write it down. He strangled her while he was going with her. He said he strangled her in his passion. He said he heard or saw where they were saying a cord had been round the child’s neck. He said that was not so. He said: ‘I pressed round her with my hands. I did not mean to kill her; but it was my passion that did it.’ He said she was dead before he knew where he was. That was just his words to me.”
In cross-examination, the witness absolutely declined to say anything that would let light in on her past life. She objected to saying where she lived, and when that was forced from her she said at an apartment house at 25 Rathdown Street. Asked if among the people who lived there was a woman named Julia Gibson, she replied that she was the proprietress. Asked if Julia Gibson was identical with Madame Ghurka, she said she did not feel called upon to say anything as to the names Mrs. Gibson assumed. She knew her as Mrs. Gibson, the proprietress of the boarding-house, but didn’t know she was a fortune-teller, though she knew her as a phrenologist. She had lived with her since the previous November. She admitted that she had made several additions to her evidence as given at the inquest, and these are so suggestive that they will be referred to in more detail later. She admitted that she had gone—or “may have gone”—at different times under the names of Ivy Sutton, Ivy Dolan, and Ivy Marshall. She swore that she was married, but declined to say what her married name was. She admitted that Ross had dismissed her from his employ following the shooting case with the intimation that, after the evidence she had given in the case, he “would not have a bitch like her about the premises.” “Those were his exact words to me,” she said. She admitted that, after her dismissal, she claimed to be a partner, and that a lengthy correspondence ensued between her solicitor and Ross, in which she demanded a week’s wages in lieu of notice, and claimed a share in the partnership; that Ross claimed £10 from her as a debt, and that her solicitors wrote to him, in reply, accusing him of insulting her by calling her Miss Matthews, instead of Mrs., “on account of not being able to force from her the sum of £10 which he wished to obtain.” She admitted that Ross sued her for the £10, but withdrew the case on the morning of the return of the summons in petty sessions; that her solicitor wrote saying that, if the costs were not paid, a warrant would issue. All these letters were written with her authority, but she denied that there was any ill-feeling whatever between her and Ross. She did admit, however, that Ross and she had never spoken from the day she left his employ until the day she spoke to him about the tragedy.
By comparing the evidence which Matthews gave at the inquest with that which she gave at the trial, it will be seen that on the trial important additions were made. The significance of the additions will be discussed later when her evidence is being analysed, but here it may be said that at the inquest she said nothing about Ross going back for his coat; she never mentioned the name of Gladys Wain (or Gladys Linderman), or anything about meeting with such a woman. She did not say in the Coroner’s Court anything about the tragedy having happened after Stanley left; she did not say anything about Ross having got the murdered girl in the afternoon to go from the little room (the cubicle) off the bar to the little room off the parlour (the beaded room), in order to clear the way for Gladys Wain, or about having brought her back when Gladys Wain was gone; she did not say that Ross had said that, when Gladys was coming in the evening, he took the dead body from the cubicle to the beaded room, and then came back between 10 o’clock and half-past 10, and shifted it from the beaded room back to the cubicle.
What is more important than all this, at the inquest Matthews made the conversations all take place in Little Collins Street. In one way this may seem a small matter, but it is very important, because when one is retailing a conversation he can clearly visualise the place where he was standing when certain things were said. Matthews’s exact words at the inquest were: “After I passed the third time he came out, and I spoke to him in Little Collins Street.” She gives some words of the conversation, and then she added: “then he told me to walk along a little bit, as people were looking at us from the Arcade. I walked along a little bit, and several people went past, and they could have noticed me.” On the trial the witness made the early part of the conversation take place at the door of the saloon, and then the suggestion came from Ross, she says, that they should walk out into Little Collins Street, as people were looking at them. The significance of this alteration will also be adverted to later.