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

by T. C. Brennan

There are some further facts about Matthews which help to explain why she, although, according to the detectives, she made no statement to them until she gave her evidence in the Coroner’s Court on January 25, has yet got away with the lion’s share of the reward. That, however, will be dealt with fully when we come to deal, under the head of the new evidence, with the extraordinary story of a man named Halliwell.

OLIVE MADDOX TESTED.

Olive Maddox’s testimony is also worthy of a few lines of examination. She said that, having seen the girl in the beaded room, two men also being in it, she came out and said to Ross: “That is a young kid to be drinking there.” The room in which the child was alleged to be was only 7ft. by 6ft. 7in. The girl, therefore, must have been within three or four feet of the men. Ivy Matthews, in her evidence at the Morgue, said it was no unusual thing, when respectable women came into the place for a drink with a child, to show them into the little room. Olive Maddox, a daily visitor to the place in Matthews’ time, must have known of this practice. Therefore, even if she did see the child in the same little room with two men, there was not the slightest thing about the circumstance to suggest that she was not with one of the men, and everything to suggest that she was. At the worst, she had an empty lemonade glass in front of her, and that, combined with the fact that she was with two men, would never have prompted Maddox to say anything about “a young kid” drinking.

When it is remembered that Matthews and Maddox were old and close acquaintances, and that Maddox admitted that it was after consultation with Matthews that she decided to speak to the police, and when it is remembered that this consultation was just at the time that Matthews was trying to enlist the services of Halliwell, which will be referred to later, and when it is remembered that just at this time the reward had been increased to £1250 (including £250 offered by the “Herald”), it does not seem hard to suggest what may have happened. Matthews says that she saw a drink being brought into the cubicle to the child at 3 o’clock. It was suggested in the Appeal Courts that Maddox was to say that she saw the child in that room at 5 o’clock, with an empty glass before her; that Maddox was a stupid girl—according to her own testimony, barely able to read; that she blundered in the simple task assigned to her by the master mind, and put the child in the wrong room. The rooms at that time had no distinguishing names. It was not until the trial that they became known as the “cubicle” and the “beaded” room. Matthews did not know at the inquest of this blunder, but on the trial she tried to repair it by telling the absurd story of how Ross got the girl to go into the beaded room, and kept her there by some form of mesmerism for over an hour, while he entertained Gladys Wain in the cubicle.

Maddox herself says that when she saw the girl in the beaded room there were three girls and two men in the adjoining parlour, and there were two men in the little room with her. It was a busy afternoon, the eve of the closing of the wine saloon, and almost the eve of the New Year. If that girl were in the wine shop from 3 until 5 or 6 she would have been seen by anything from fifty to a hundred people. It is incredible that all these people were degenerates, who would connive at a dastardly outrage, by whomsoever committed. Yet the simple fact remains that the only persons who came forward, in response to earnest and widely-published appeals for information about the girl, were the prostitute, Olive Maddox, and her mysterious friend, with the inscrutable past, Ivy Matthews. And neither of them came forward until a handsome reward was offered for the information. Of this reward, Ivy Matthews has received £437/10/-, and Olive Maddox £214/5/-. If we know all the services rendered by each, the positions should have been reversed, for it was Olive Maddox who first gave the information which put the police on what they, no doubt, still honestly believe was the right trail. But do we know all? It will be shown later that, at the time Colin Ross’s doom was sealed, we did not.

HARDING’S COCK-AND-BULL STORY.

Turning now to the alleged confession to Harding, it will be seen that it will bear analysis no better than Matthews’s. The questions supposed to have been put by Harding bear their own refutation.

Take the words near the opening:—“I said: ‘Did you see the girl?’ He said: ‘Yes!’” What would have happened had the conversation reached that interesting stage? All eagerness, Harding would have followed it up by asking what happened. But what does he do? He inquires weakly, like a lady of fashion: “How was she dressed?” With great minuteness Ross described her dress, down to her shoes and stockings, and with great accuracy Harding remembered it all. Then Harding inquired, still curbing his curiosity: “Did you tell the detectives that you saw her?” And Ross replied: “Yes; but I told them that she had black boots”—a little touch not borne out by Ross’s written statement, but clearly designed to furnish corroboration of Harding’s story that Ross had confessed. Then a little later on we have Harding interposing with the unreal inquiry: “What time was this?” as if time were, at that stage of the inquiry, either important or interesting. There are many other questions equally unreal. The purpose of all of them is quite clear. They are plainly detective questions, devised to establish at the outset, as he had no doubt been instructed to establish, or as he knew by experience detectives are wont to establish, the identity of the girl Ross was talking about. There was to be left no room for misunderstanding, such as Brophy left in his bungled interview of the 16th.

Again, take the question supposed to have been put by Harding when the conversation was resumed on the second day. It is on a different footing from the others. “I asked him,” said Harding, “did you always have a screen up in that cubicle?” and Ross is supposed to have replied: “No; I used the one in the parlour—the red screen.” The reference, apparently, was to the screen which hung in the arched doorway between the two main rooms of the saloon. Can any earthly reason be suggested why Harding should have put such a question to Ross? The only possible answer is: “None whatever.” But a reason can be suggested why, if his story were an invention, he should have invented that particular part of it. Harding had been in the saloon, and he could not have missed the conspicuous screen that hung between the two rooms. He would probably not have remembered clearly whether there was a curtain over the cubicle door or not. For aught he knew, he might have been confronted by fifty witnesses who could swear truly that there never had been a curtain there. He tried to rise to the occasion, and invented the ludicrous story of Ross having said that he removed the large curtain and hung it over the cubicle door to hide the little girl from the public gaze—the same little girl as, according to Matthews, Ross got deliberately to reveal herself when Matthews took her hasty glance over Stanley Ross’s shoulder. The idea of Ross removing the large curtain from between the rooms and hanging it over the cubicle door (all in the presence of Stanley), in order to prevent Stanley, amongst others, from seeing the girl, would be laughable if anything about this terrible case could be laughable.

Being reticent up to a certain stage, Ross, according to Harding, then determined to speak, for what reason no one can suggest, seeing that he knew Harding’s reputation as a “shelf,” and seeing that he had been warned by his solicitor to “keep his mouth closed.” That much Harding admitted, but in fact Ross was warned that the remand yard would be full of pimps. The Harding touch was made apparent by another little incident. He makes Ross throughout speak of the small compartment at the end of the bar as “the cubicle.” It is a most fitting name, and it has stuck to the room throughout the trial, but it had never been called that by the Rosses. They had never even heard the word, and prior to the trial did not know what it meant. But Harding, during his inglorious war service, had been employed on a hospital ship, and that is the expression used in hospitals to denote a little room with a couch in it such as this. Then Ross is made to say that none of the customers could see the girl because they were in the parlour, whereas, according to Matthews, the little girl thrust her head out as if in order to be seen, and, indeed, thrust it out in pursuance of Ross’s suggestion, and, according to Maddox, she was in the beaded room with two of the customers, and was seen by Maddox herself, who was an excellent customer. But, furthermore, if the Maddox story is true, the customers would have had to be in the parlour in order to see her, for the beaded room is part of the parlour. Then Ross offered this quiet, bashful little girl a glass of wine, and she took three, and fell off into a stupor in the cubicle, though, according to Matthews, he gave her a glass of lemonade, and afterwards sent her over to the beaded room, where she was seen by Olive Maddox, bright and alert, sitting up with an empty glass before her, at 5 o’clock.