The Gun Alley Tragedy: Record of the Trial of Colin Campbell Ross

by T. C. Brennan

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.