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

by T. C. Brennan

WHY CONFESS TO MATTHEWS.

Let us take first the evidence of Ivy Matthews. Suppose Ross were guilty, why should he have made a confession to this woman? They were at daggers drawn. He had cast her out of his employment with terms of the deepest insult. They had fought bitterly, through their lawyers, almost up to the date of the tragedy. They had not seen one another, much less spoken to one another, between the date she was turned out of his employment and the 31st of December. Yet on the 31st of December, according to the Matthews evidence, we have them addressing one another as “Ive” and “Colin,” and we have Ross handing his life over to the unsafe keeping of this “woman scorned.”

The strongest appeals were made through the press for anyone who saw the child to inform the police. But Ivy Matthews, if her evidence is true, not only saw the child in the saloon on the Friday, but on the Saturday she had a full confession from Ross. Yet she remained silent, according to herself and the detectives, until she gave her evidence at the inquest. She gave no reason for keeping silence, and she gave two reasons for eventually speaking. At the inquest she said: “I pledged my word to Ross I would not give evidence against him,” but even if he had not been arrested, she said: “Perhaps my conscience might have made me tell.” “If some other man had been put in the dock on this charge,” she added, “I would have come up and said Ross is the guilty man.” On the trial, when asked why, if she had given her word, she had not kept it, she answered: “Would you expect me, a woman, to keep the secret?” But the fact is that she did keep the “secret” for over three weeks. At the inquest she said that the circumstance that the £1000 reward was offered should not be put to her, for, she said, “money and those sort of things hold no interest for me. I do not suppose I will get anything, and I do not want it.” But, again, the fact is that now she has been allotted £350 out of the £1000 Government reward offered, and £87/10/- out of the £250 offered by the “Herald.” This is not a negligible inducement for a lady who had done no work between November and the end of February.

CHANGES IN MATTHEWS’S EVIDENCE.

But it is the changes in Matthews’s evidence, as between the inquest and the trial, that cast the most doubt on it. She makes Colin Ross in his confession, as retailed at the trial, get the girl to come out of the cubicle in the afternoon, and stay in the beaded room for an hour or so, while he talks to Gladys Wain; she makes him bring the girl back to the cubicle when Gladys Wain is gone; she makes him cause the girl’s death there after 6 o’clock, and then carry the dead body back to the beaded room, in order that he may make love to Gladys Wain in the cubicle later on; she makes him come back, after seeing Gladys Wain home, and carry the dead body back from the beaded room to the cubicle.

There are several features about that narration which are absolutely incredible. Nothing was said about any of these incidents at the inquest. In the first place, how did this modest, good, retiring little girl come to remain for over an hour in the beaded room in the afternoon, while Ross talked with Gladys Wain in the cubicle? It was separated from the Arcade only by a sheet of glass, and there were two doors opening into the Arcade through which the girl could have passed. Again, it is utterly unbelievable that Ross would have indulged in the unnecessary perambulations with the dead body, as deposed to, and it is equally unbelievable that, if he had done so, he would have given those details to a person to whom he was confessing the simple fact of the murder.

Why, then, were the additions put in? The answer is quite simple. At the inquest Olive Maddox gave her evidence before Matthews, and Matthews was out of court. Olive Maddox said that she saw the child in the beaded room at five minutes to 5. Ivy Matthews followed her into the witness box, and said that she saw the child in the cubicle at 3 o’clock. How or why did it come about that the child went from the one room to the other? On the trial Matthews has to be, or thinks she ought to be, ready with an explanation. So she makes Ross say that he sent the little girl into the beaded room while he was with Gladys Wain in the cubicle. According to the stage setting, the death has to take place in the cubicle, for there is where the only couch was, and there is where the blankets with the sheen of golden hair came from. So Ross is made to say that, when Gladys went, he got Alma to come back again from the beaded room to the cubicle, where she met her death soon after 6. Ross in his statement said that Gladys Wain was with him again in the cubicle in the evening from 9.15 for over an hour. The police were satisfied that that was a fact. Matthews has again to reconcile her story with that position, and again she is equal to it. She makes Ross say that he carried the dead body from the cubicle to the beaded room in order that he may make love to Gladys in the cubicle. But before she gave her evidence on the trial, the hero of the bloody bottle had been in the box, and his evidence had appeared in print. He is supposed to have seen and heard certain things which showed that the body was in the cubicle after midnight. Matthews thinks it desirable to meet that, so she makes Ross say that he came back to the cafe after seeing Gladys home, and before he went home himself, and carried the body once more back from the beaded room to the cubicle. No possible theory can be advanced why Ross should have done all these things; no possible theory can be advanced why, if he had done them, he should have given the details of them to Matthews. But if we assume Matthews’s knowledge of Maddox’s evidence, and Upton’s evidence, and her knowledge that Gladys Wain was in the cubicle from 9.15 until after 10.30—all of which we are entitled to assume—then we are in possession of ample material for explaining why Matthews should have invented the details.

Then there is the change in the place at which the conversation is supposed to have taken place. At the inquest it was put as beginning in Little Collins Street, at the end of the Arcade, and as being resumed a short distance from the end of the Arcade, but still in the street. On the trial it was put as beginning, and going on for a little time, at the door of the saloon, and then as being resumed, when Ross suggested that people were looking, out in Little Collins Street. The significance of this change will not be realised unless it is disclosed that just prior to the trial notice was served on the defence that it was proposed to call as a witness on the trial Julia Gibson, otherwise Madame Ghurka, to prove that she saw Ross talking to Matthews on the Saturday afternoon. Ghurka was not, in fact, called. There may be some doubt as to whether her evidence would have been admissible. Probably it would have been admitted in rebuttal, when Ross swore that he did not have any conversation with Matthews on that afternoon. At any rate, her evidence was not tendered. The fact remains, however, that Ghurka must have told the police, or Ivy Matthews must have told the police, that Ghurka saw the two in conversation, and was prepared to testify to it. She could not, from her own door, have seen them in conversation in Little Collins Street.

Matthews, in her evidence, said that she had not told the police that Madame Ghurka had seem Ross talking to her, and added that, if Madame Ghurka was to give evidence of having seen them conversing, she did not know how the police acquired the information. When asked, however, “Have you discussed with Madame Ghurka at any time anything about this case?” she answered: “To say I had not would be a lie—I have.”

It has been published in a Sydney paper, which, during and after the trial, was in the closest touch With the witnesses for the Crown, that it was Madame Ghurka who induced Matthews to tell all she knew about the case. It is also a fact that both were well acquainted with Ross, and both were unfriendly with him, a circumstance which would make discussion natural; and that Matthews had lived at Madame Ghurka’s house from November, 1921, up to the date of the trial, a circumstance which would make discussion easy. It is also a fact that Madame Ghurka and two of her family have shared in the reward, though nothing has ever appeared officially to show what services Madame Ghurka rendered to the police, which entitled her thus to share. We may assume, further, that the reward was not allocated until the views of the police had been ascertained. When we know what Madame Ghurka’s services to the State under this head were, and when we know—what may appear irrelevant, but what is very germane to the matter in hand—why nobody was ever prosecuted for the recent theft of Ivy Matthew’s box of clothing, and when we know why a charge of indecent language laid against Sydney John Harding was precipitately withdrawn when called on in the police court, then we shall know something which has a very close connection with the making of a case against Colin Ross.[3] And if Madame Ghurka gave information (undisclosed) to the police, which they felt entitled her to share in the reward, her information should be considered in the light of the fact that she gave evidence in a recent divorce suit, and was then described by the presiding judge as a “bitter, vindictive woman,” and “the sort of woman who would say anything, whether it was true or false.”