We now come to a different class of evidence—the evidence which purported to tell of the movements of Ross on the important dates. The conflict between this evidence and the supposed confessions and the inherent improbability of the evidence itself will be dealt with later.
David Alberts, an eccentric-looking individual, who described himself as a vaudeville artist, residing at 47 Little Smith Street, Fitzroy, said that he left home about half-past 6, and between half-past 7 and a quarter to 8 he walked into the Arcade through the Little Collins Street gate. Opposite the wine saloon he saw a man whom he now recognised as Ross. The man asked him if he could lend him a pencil. Alberts said: “I am sorry; I have not got one,” and walked on. He went as far as the middle of the building, and seeing there was no light in the office upstairs, he walked back, and the man was then standing in the doorway of the wine saloon. He recognised Ross by his gold teeth and by his hair, which was brushed neatly back. It would, he said, be about three weeks after the incident that he went to the Detective Office and reported it. He knew the reward was offered in the meantime, “but,” he said, “I was looking for no reward.” It should, however, be mentioned here that he has shared in the reward. It may also be taken as certain that, if Alberts was honest, he was mistaken, for the evidence that Ross was at home between 7 and 8, and came back to Footscray on the tram with Mrs. Kee and George Dawsey, may be accepted as being beyond question. Apart from that, however, it is simply incredible that a man who was engaged in the gruesome task of washing away the bloodstains of a murdered victim, and who would have the deepest interest in keeping his presence in the Arcade at an unwonted hour a close secret, should have gone out deliberately to ask a passer-by for a lead pencil, which could be of no imaginable service to him.
Alexander Olson, who described himself as a phrenologist, carrying on business in the Eastern Arcade, said that, between 9 and a quarter past 9, he walked out into Little Collins Street, to go to a Chinese laundry, and he saw the accused man pacing up and down between the back gate of the Eastern Market and the back gate of the Eastern Arcade. How this evidence, so far from being damaging, supports the truthfulness of Ross’s statement to the police, can be seen by a reference to the statement, for this was the exact time that he was waiting outside the Arcade gates for Gladys Wain.
Then we come to the evidence of George Arthur Ellis, “and very important evidence it is,” said Mr. Justice Schutt in summing up to the jury. Ellis keeps the “lodging-house” previously referred to as the old Adam and Eve Hotel. On the night of the 30th December he was sitting at his front door, at the corner of Alfred Place and Little Collins Street. He saw Ross a little after 9 on that night. He next saw him before 10 o’clock, then at 11, and two or three times after that, until ten minutes to 1, when the witness wound his clocks and went to bed. Ross was walking in and out of the Arcade. There was an arc lamp, hung over the centre of the street, between where the witness sat and where Ross was walking up and down. At a quarter to 1 two Italians came out of the Arcade and bade him good-night. Some time after he had gone in he heard a loud report, and he rushed out on to the pavement, and looked up and down for a few seconds, but saw no one. He had never before seen Ross until that night. The light was almost equal to broad daylight, and he admitted that he would be as obvious to Ross as Ross was to him. When the two Italians came out the man walked down towards Russell Street. They went up to Exhibition Street, and when Ellis turned to look again Ross was back at his post. He would walk in and out of the Arcade. Half the gates were open, and it was very dark inside. He first informed the police of what he had seen on the Sunday after the tragedy. His house, he said, was a lodging-house—night and day. Anyone could get a bed for the night; they paid in advance, and were sometimes gone before he got up. He identified Ross on the day he was arrested—January 12. He had known the wine shop for years, but had never been in it, though he had seen some “terrible bad characters there,” and had seen some “terrible carryings on” there as he had been coming through from Bourke Street. It was his habit to sit outside his lodging-house every night as long as it was fine.
The two Italians, Michaluscki Nicoli and Francisco Anselmi, had been in the Italian Club until about a quarter to 1. The club is at the Little Collins Street end of the Arcade, upstairs, and the stairs go up close to the wine saloon. There was an electric light upstairs, and as they came down they noticed a light in the wine shop. When they got into Little Collins Street one of them saw a man walking towards Russell Street. They said “Good-night” to Ellis, and walked up towards Exhibition Street. A third Italian, Baptisti Rollandi, the caretaker of the Italian Club, came down about a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes after Nicoli and Anselmi had gone, to lock the back gate, and he saw no light in the wine shop when he came down. It was his duty to lock the gate when the last member had left the club, whatever time that happened to be.
A curious piece of evidence came out quite incidentally whilst this last witness was in the box. Ross, at about 3 o’clock, or half-past 3, on the Friday, had asked Rollandi for the loan of a key of the back gate. The witness said: “I can’t give my key to anybody; go to Mr. Clarke, the manager; he might give you one.” This looked suspicious, until it was revealed that Ross wanted the key in order to get into the Arcade early on the Monday morning to remove his things from the saloon, Saturday being the last night of the license, and Monday being the New Year’s Day holiday. The prisoner did get the key from Mr. Clarke on the Saturday afternoon, and did remove his things early on the Monday morning. This was mentioned to the police in the statement, was no doubt verified by the detectives, and was not challenged when Mr. Clarke was called. So far, therefore, from the circumstances of Ross wishing to borrow the key being incriminating, it was entirely in his favor, for it showed he had no key of his own, and is almost conclusive evidence against his having told Harding that he had a key, or having told Matthews that he came back “between 1 and 2,” when he could not have got into the Arcade unless he had a key.
THE SHEEN OF GOLDEN HAIRS.
Two other pieces of evidence, of still another class, were used against Ross. One was that hairs, which it was claimed were identified as Alma Tirtschke’s, were found on blankets taken from Ross’s house at Footscray on January 12; the other was that pieces of serge, which it was claimed were identified as being part of the child’s dress, were found on January 27 on the Footscray road, thus confirming the supposed confession to Harding.
The story of the hair is one of the most remarkable and one of the most unsatisfactory, in a case every feature of which is unsatisfactory. On January 3, the day Alma Tirtschke was buried, Constable Portingale went to the house where the body was lying, and with a pair of scissors he cut a lock of hair from the left side of her head, just over the ear, “and about six inches from her head.” When the detectives went to Colin Ross’s house to arrest him on January 12, nearly a fortnight after the tragedy, they took two blankets from a sofa in a vestibule. “Brophy and I,” said Piggott, “opened one of the brown blankets which were folded up. I turned the blanket back, and I could see the sheen of what appeared to be some golden coloured hair. I said to all present: ‘Fold those blankets, and carefully place them in the car; they must go to the Government Analyst.’” They did go to the Government Analyst next day. Where they were kept in the meantime was not disclosed on the trial, except that Ross, at about 2 o’clock on the afternoon of his arrest, saw them lying across the back of a chair in the clerk’s room of the Detective Office. The detectives, in the room of the Government Analyst (Mr. Price), next day, spread the “reddish brown blanket” over a wooden screen, and removed from it in his presence twenty-two hairs. Five hairs were taken from the other blanket by Mr. Price himself. Mr. Price then took ten or twelve hairs from the envelope containing Alma’s hair. They had an average length, he said, of 6½ inches, the longest of them being 9 inches. Let it be remembered that these were cut 6 inches from the girl’s head. He then took the twenty-two hairs, and found they, too, averaged 6½ inches, but the longest of them were 15, 12, 10, 9 inches, down to 2½ inches.
“They were not identical in colour with the hairs in the envelope,” said Mr. Price; “they were of a light auburn colour. They were not a deep red; they were of a light red colour. They were not cut-off hairs; they had fallen out, or had been taken from the scalp somehow or other. They did not appear to have been forcibly removed. One had a bulb root, but the others did not show the presence of any bulbous portion or root, as they would if dragged direct from the scalp. I came to the conclusion that they were hairs about to be cast off in the ordinary process of nature.”